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: A lot of people on both sides of the decades-long abortion debate were likely muttering “Say what?” themselves recently about both the unprecedented leak of the draft of a Supreme Court decision, and the stunning fact that it would not just weaken but overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling, which has stood for almost 50 years. The left predictably went into a tirade, saying the sky is falling for women and doxxing the conservative Supreme Court justices to gin up protests outside their homes. And the 46th president refused to say a single discouraging word about the extraordinary protests, instead suggesting this decision is just the tip of the spear from the extremists who support Donald Trump.
Joe Biden: What happens if you have state changes (sic) the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit under the way the decision’s written? What are the next things that are going to be attacked? Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history.
Elizabeth Warren (Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images)
Tim: How this president could say overturning abortion on demand as a constitutional right relates to LGBTQ youth is befuddling at best, but we’ve come to expect that. And the hysterical rhetoric from the left just kept on coming. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) went on The View and asserted that this decision will open up threats from every direction.
Elizabeth Warren: Now they’ve opened up the possibility of your contraception, might be a contraception like an IUD, that works after an egg is fertilized. That your miscarriage could what? Be investigated by the local police. That you could be monitored, that you lifted a package that was too heavy and threatened a pregnancy.
Tim: OK, if that wasn’t hysterical enough, Warren’s fellow Democrat Senator Amy Klobuchar (MN) declared that this Supreme Court decision sets the cause of women’s rights back not just decades but centuries.
Amy Klobuchar: The women of this country and the men who stand with them will vote like they’ve never voted before, because this is 50 years of rights in a leaked opinion where Justice [Samuel] Alito is literally not just taking us back to the 1950s, he’s taking us back to the 1850s.
Janet Yellen (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Tim: Even the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, got into the act, attacking the draft decision on the basis of a perverse, jaw-dropping assertion that, while abortion on demand may take the lives of the unborn, it is good for the economy.
Janet Yellen: Eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades. Roe v. Wade and access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, helped lead to increased labor force participation.
Tim: Yes, folks, she actually said that. The treasury secretary of the United States: Aborting pregnancies leads to increased labor force participation. Do these people have any self-awareness? Any at all?
And when they weren’t enraged, like they always are, about abortion or doxxing justices or holding vile protests in their peaceful neighborhoods, they were busy decrying the imminent outbreak of free speech on Twitter, attacking a man who bought the tech giant, Elon Musk, for daring to declare he will end censorship of the right on the platform he will soon own.
Leftist talking head #1: A petulant and not-so-bright billionaire casually bought one of the world’s most influential messaging machines and just handed it to the far right.
Leftist talking head #2: His idea of freedom means freedom to be a jerk.
Leftist talking head #3: It’s about free speech for straight white men.
Tim: That is from MSNBC and, of course, The View. So the left has now clearly come down almost universally on the side of speech codes, anathema to the First Amendment.
Joe Biden (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Meanwhile, Biden certainly continues to act dazed and confused about all of this, to the point of serious concern beyond any ideological considerations. Listen to this president rambling on about plans to take down Russian President Vladimir Putin’s oligarchs.
Joe Biden: I’m also sending to Congress a comprehensive package that will enhance our underlying effort to accommodate the Russian oligarchs and make sure we take their ill-begotten gains. We’re going to accommodate them. We’re going to seize their yachts, their luxury homes and other ill-begotten gains of Putin’s, yeah … (stumbles) … (stumbles more) … kleptocracy and the guys who are kleptocracies (laughs nervously).
Tim: Most people don’t find that type of incoherence in the leader of the Free World to be funny, but we’re told he won the election, so what are you going to do? Demand that he be replaced by Kamala Harris?
Meanwhile, as inflation continues to rage — still over 8% despite a very slight drop in the last month — it’s threatening the political future of most Democrats. And the heart of the problem may have been unwittingly revealed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) when he almost spilled the beans on the Democrats’ answer to inflation.
Chuck Schumer: If you want to get rid of inflation, the only way to do it is to ra—, uh, undo a lot of the Trump tax cuts and raise rates.
Tim: He almost said “raise taxes” then stopped himself, avoiding a gaffe, which in Washington parlance means accidentally telling an inconvenient truth.
And while we’re at it, here’s another gaffe, and a breathtaking one at that. This is from the archive, but it perfectly expresses how the media view their role in the public sphere. This is from Mika and Joe on MSNBC discussing the dangers of Donald Trump.
Mika Brzezinski: He’s trying to undermine the media, trying to make up his own facts. He could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think and that is our job.
Joe Scarborough: Yeah.
Tim: So there it is, the most naked admission we’ve yet to hear of what elite corporate media see as their ultimate goal.
