Regime Blames Record-High Inflation on Putin

BUCK: Welcome back to Clay and Buck show.

BUCK: There’s the man who actually got the Tea Party going years ago, if you recall, on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange saying, “We need a Tea Party,” and people took him seriously. That’s Rick Santelli. But he’s pointing out the shifting excuses for 7.9% inflation. It’s remarkable when you see how quickly they move from, “It’s not gonna last,” to, “It’s no big deal,” to, “It’s Russia,” right? They’re always changing the explanation for this. They’re always trying to tell you, “Oh, wages are going up! Don’t worry about it.” They’re not keeping up with inflation. That’s for sure. Here’s actually over at Fox Business Dagen McDowell saying just that.

BUCK: We’ve been saying it’s gonna get worse, Clay. The economy’s gonna get worse. We have, what, negative growth? I’m sorry, zero growth, really, it’s looking like for the first quarter. And if we go into a negative growth quarter, now we’re talking recession under Biden. Oh, and the threat of possible nuclear exchange because of Ukraine situation. It’s not good right now.

CLAY: Not good. We’ve still got two million fewer people employed right now — and I think this is important to keep beating this drum — than were employed before we shut down the country. And, by the way, we’re about to come up on “15 days to slow the spread” the anniversary — two-year anniversary of “15 days to slow the spread.” I believe that started on Thursday of next week was the first time that phrase was ever uttered, to my knowledge.

So what I thought Dagen McDowell said there is so important because the Biden administration, Buck, keeps trying to argue, “Oh, wages are growing rapidly.” But it doesn’t matter if your wages are growing if inflation is 7.9% , and this doesn’t include, Buck, most of the rapid run-up we’ve actually seen in the price of gas because this is the February number. So as we move into March, it seems likely — and this, by the way, is a 40-year high.

And one of the things that’s interesting is, if you use the CPI index that they used in the 1970s and eighties, we would be I believe it’s over 16% on the inflation rate. They changed the way this they calculate inflation. You can still go look at that old number, and if you see that it’s actually higher than it would have been in the 1980s, and I just don’t know how this is going to the end anytime soon.

And certainly, March is likely to be worse than February. And the thing that keeps standing out to me, Buck, is it’s the old thing, as if every time these new inflation numbers come out, they’re considered to be a surprise. Have you noticed this? All of the economic experts say, “Oh, this is higher than our expectations were!” Well, if your expectations are too low like eight or nine months in a row, maybe your expectations are really out of whack with the reality as the rest of the country is experiencing it.

BUCK: Did anyone think that this administration really had a handle on economics and how to create prosperity and growth? I would love to sit down with the economists… Now, unfortunately there are a lot of very left-wing economists and Biden will draw upon them say, “Err, they all agree with me.” But this was the most predictable thing you could ever find.

Joe Biden comes into office; they spend $1.9 trillion beyond the trillions that were already spent on a bipartisan basis in the early days of the pandemic. They’re spending too much money; inflation is rising. This is not a surprise. This is what happens, and yet they act like, “Wait a second, what’s with all the inflation?” Well, turns out —

CLAY: Yeah, Modern Monetary Theory said this was not gonna happen. Looks like they got that one wrong.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BUCK: So there’s an increased demand for gas every year in this country. The economy expands — with exception of covid, of course — and so they say, “Well, the first year of Biden versus the first year of Trump, there’s more oil.” Okay. So then why don’t we just kick open all the spigots, so to speak, and go all out with as much energy as we can? Oh, they don’t want to do that, Clay.

There’s some dissonance here in the position, which is they love fossil fuels. They’re all about fossil fuels, except they’re gonna destroy the planet and we need the Green New Deal ASAP. They cannot have it both ways, and people are picking up on it. Look, sh’s effectively in this PR role for the White House, White House press secretary. But more than others that I can think of, she’s just willing to say whatever.

It’s pretty shameless stuff you’re seeing here because the price of gas has been rising since Biden came into office, way before anybody was even thinking about Ukraine. We can all see it. We all know it. And I just want to know, what exactly is Biden going to do to bring the price down? Because they say it’s not his fault the price has gone up but he’s doing everything he can to bring the price down.

Let’s not forget, these are the same morons — and I mean the exact same people — who are telling us in the middle of January, “Don’t worry. We’re gonna send you a billion at-home covid tests,” which arrived like yesterday — defunct, frozen, destroyed, and completely useless for most people. That was a great move, a billion tests. Well done.

CLAY: Largely purchased from China, as if that were not enough. And, by the way, they just doubled down on the testing strategy. So if you are such a loser that you are sitting around obsessed constantly testing yourself for covid, you can go get four more covid tests for free — and I put “free” in quotation marks because the media’s really complicit in all this. It’s not free. We’re paying for it. It’s our tax dollars.

So this idea of free covid tests that they constantly spread. No. No, no, no. It’s not free. We’re all paying for it — and, Buck, what’s going on is, the Biden administration is poor at responding to issues that arise, but they’re also poor at forecasting the issues that might arise. And so when they say, “Hey, there’s no way for us to increase production of oil and gas this quickly; we can maybe do it by the end of the year,” well, that’s why you want to have the capacity to get as much oil and gas out of the ground available as you can, which is why the pipeline would have made such a big difference.

It would be coming online about now, and it would be adding 800,000 additional barrels of oil, according to the updates and things that I have seen, which would replace all of the Russian oil that is being purchased right now. Now, hopefully there is a lot of speculation and fluff in the gas markets. I think that’s probably the best-case scenario for American consumers is that the price of gas has gotten ahead of where the market-based reality should be based on speculation and that maybe that might lead to some retrenchment in gas prices.

In the short term, it’s gonna continue to go up, I think. But maybe in the month ahead, it’s gonna change a little bit. But does anybody…? Here’s the big issue, Buck. Does anybody trust the judgment of the Biden administration on anything? Because let’s just be honest here. We talk about this all the time, because I think you have to contemplate not only what your arguments are, but what the other side’s arguments are. What can the Biden administration argue that they’ve done well a year, 16 months into the tenure of Joe Biden?

BUCK: I’m gonna say this, Clay: There were times when, for example — and I’ll just put this out there. The Obama administration. I was opposed to Obamacare and got very involved. That was the early stages of me leaving the CIA coming into media, and I would say to people, “This is bad for the following reason,” but there were people who would reach out to me and say, “Hey, look, I’m on my parents’ insurance until I’m 26. I think that’s great,” and I would try to explain.

“Well, but that’s not good,” or the people say, “My preexisting condition is covered now,” and so you actually had this back-and-forth of, “I think the tradeoff you’re making is not worth it. I think you’re not seeing the long game.” But at least there was some point they were making that you would have to address. I almost don’t trust how crappy this Biden administration is at running the country in the sense that they don’t even have anything to point to.

There’s nothing. I’m just sitting here saying, “You guys, every decision they made seems to be contra or seems to be for the detriment of the country in a way where I don’t even…” It’s hard to believe they’re so bad at this, is what I’m actually saying. It’s hard to believe they could make so many stupid, obvious blunders and decisions throughout without any response that’s worthy of the name. I mean, look at Jen Psaki. It’s Vladimir Putin’s fault that the…? Really? That’s it?

CLAY: Yeah. Look, this is the difference between having a good lawyer that you’re arguing against and a bad lawyer. Because if you’re a good lawyer, there’s probably a case you can make for your clients. If you’re a bad lawyer you’re creating one mess after another. And basically, we have a series of bad judgments that are virtually indefensible from the Biden administration one after the other.

Such that, Buck, if you really start to think about what their argument is gonna be at the midterms, I struggle to even come up with one that is logical. They may try to say that they beat covid, but when you’re not allowing people to fly on airplanes without wearing masks, you haven’t beaten covid, and they may try to argue that… I don’t even know what their arguments are, Buck.