BUCK: I got some good news for you. I like to share good news whenever I can, ’cause the news cycle is obviously a lot of stuff that’s concerning to say the least. A grain shipment has departed Ukraine for the first time since the Russian invasion. You may be saying, “Well, why does this really matter to us here?” Ukraine’s one of the biggest grain exporters in the world, and absent that supply on the global market — because grain is a global market — you’re likely to see substantial increases in the price of food.

And in poorer countries you might have even seen hunger and perhaps even some famines popping up in different places, depending on, if it got really bad. Now it looks like they have a deal to at least export the grain. So, from the port of Odessa, 26,000 metric tons of corn headed to Lebanon and from there will be distributed to other places. That’s going on right now. That’s a good thing. Russia is also a very big producer of fertilizer; so, that was another concern here for the global food production market, which very few people think about. You know, when I say things about… We obviously constantly think about food.

I think about food too much. But where our food comes from and who has to do what to make sure that there is bread on the shelf, so to speak. People don’t spend very much time thinking about it. We live in this world of incredible abundance now. But as you’ve seen even with the supply chain disruptions, the problem with baby formula, it doesn’t take that much to throw our very complicated system off a bit, and there can be real suffering that results from that. So, good news from the grain front, which matters. I mean, think about it almost like if we had lost a major oil producer entirely offline now.

Of course, Russia is still producing oil despite all the stuff in the early days of that invasion, still selling its oil on the global market. But if we lost an oil producer, everybody would realize the downstream effects of that. Same thing for grain, price of food. And already with the rising prices you’re seeing in the grocery stores, this was a real challenge, something people were concerned about. So I don’t know, by the way, if it’s still gonna hit pretty hard or not; but at least there is some deal and there is some — think about this. Russia and Ukraine are at war, but they know they gotta get the grain out.

That gives you, I think, a sense of the incentives here and the seriousness of the situation. And then there’s the incentives for Joe Manchin to have done this last-minute deal to do essentially a scale down, a skinny Build Back Better, if you will, which is the Biden plan, right? Build Back Broke, as some people call it, whatever. But this is a slimmed-down version of that. It was interesting. ABC’s Jon Karl over the weekend, asked him why — you know, ’cause he had been saying, “Oh, I won’t do anything with climate provisions. I mean, this was a huge head fake from Manchin.”

And let’s just get this out of the way right now. There are a lot of lies they’re telling you about this. Oh, it’s not gonna reduce taxes, oh, it’s not gonna increase inflation, oh, it’s not true. Tax and spend. Democrats have a fever, and the only prescription is taxing and spending. That’s it. That’s really what this does. It moves some money around to people that they like or causes that they like. And it’s going to increase costs in a lot of ways for the people. But don’t worry. They’ll point to the… You know, everything is gonna be more expensive for you, but there’s some money being thrown or some additional leeway to negotiate prices for prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare; so, that’s how they’re hoping politically to distract people from the fact that, well, everything else is gonna get more expensive and jobs are gonna be hurt by this and spending more money at a time of serious inflation.

Here is ABC’s Jon Karl asking Manchin, why the secrecy?

.@JonKarl on Schumer-Manchin deal: “Why did it have to be negotiated in secret?”

Sen. Joe Manchin: “I understand all the frustration…I did not know if we would come to an agreement, so why would I put people through all this drama?” https://t.co/iSv0xpNsRW pic.twitter.com/jfbpK6k2rl

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 31, 2022

BUCK: It is remarkable that this guy has been elected as many times as he has in West Virginia, a very red state, a very pro-Trump state. And you’re voting for a Democrat, for anybody in that state — remember that. You’re not just voting for Joe Manchin. You’re voting for Joe Manchin, Democrat. And up to this point we were always talking about how it seemed that he was holding the line against insanity and saving his own party. But really, it just meant that he ratcheted down their craziness, but he’s still going along with it.

He’s still a part of the machinery of the Democrats that has led us to this point where everything is more expensive, where everything in the economy is heading in the wrong direction. So, how much credit can you give somebody for going along with bad ideas, just a little less than the truly wacko Dems wanted him to? Now, he’s claiming that the inflation — first of all, the fact that they call it the Inflation Reduction Act really tells you all you need to do know. It is not reducing inflation, but they know that’s a huge problem for them right now, inflation is at a level where the political consequences are being felt for the libs.

So, if they’re gonna pass a bill that spends a whole lot money on climate — the number of dollars that we should be spending from the federal government, your dollars, taxpayer dollars, to address the climate crisis is zero. It’s not 300 billion. It’s not three billion. It’s zero. But Manchin knows, it seems, that the Democrats have turned this into a religious belief; so he’s going along with the “it fights inflation and lowers energy costs.”

BUCK: That’s just not true. He is raising taxes, okay? This would raise taxes when it’s passed and done. And in fact, the latest analysis of this that you can see suggests that it is going to fall — some of the tax burden will fall — on people making less than $400,000 a year, which, that’s not a surprise to you. I mean, this is classic Democrat bait-and-switch. Oh, it’s all about just bringing down the price of prescriptions for seniors. That’s just trying to get… That’s just Democrat propaganda so seniors don’t realize that especially if you’re on a fixed income, Democrats, the Biden administration are horrible for your quality of life.

“Oh, no, that’s why we’re trying to just… We’re gonna let Medicare do better negotiation over prescription drug prices.” Well, what about the food, the rent or the mortgage, the gas for your car, all that, where’s that price all gone? It’s going up. It’s going up. But on this one they’re saying they’re gonna do the right thing. Notice how even Manchin says it’s gonna bring the cost of energy down by producing more energy. They’re going to give money to windmill farms and, you know, solar energy manufacturers or whatever, they’re gonna spread money around the Green New Deal apparatus.

So, the most expensive, least efficient energy sources possible are gonna get as much taxpayer cash as possible. And they’re gonna tell you it’s bringing down the cost of energy. We all know, you want to bring down the cost of energy, you want to get out of the way of the fossil fuel producers, you want to get out of the way of the folks working in and around the Permian basin and in North Dakota. You want to allow American domestic energy production, which is what Trump did, which is how we got to true energy independence.

And Biden just gave it away or decided he didn’t like that, didn’t like it ’cause of all the fossil fuels and the climate change. They’re all such frauds, friends. They really are. You know. You see Taylor Swift, who does have some catchy tunes, getting a lot of heat. She has some catchy tunes. I’m not saying I’m a huge fan. I’m saying I’m like a medium fan-ish. But she is getting a lot of heat ’cause she flies everywhere private but is a big climate activist. Pay attention to what people do, not what they say, folks. Good lesson for life all the time. Good lesson for looking at Joe Manchin right now too. Oh, yeah. Holding the line for sanity: $360 billion for green energy, folks. Yeah. Only $360 billion. Sure. Great idea. That’s really gonna help a lot, Joe. West Virginia, we got a lot of West Virginia listeners. If you vote again for this guy, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know. Right? West Virginia, you’re disappointing me.