Hold These Truths with Dan Crenshaw

Bernie and the Squad want you to believe poverty and income inequality are worse than ever in America. But what's the truth? Dr. Scott Winship, director of poverty studies at American Enterprise Institute, joins us to look at the current state of poverty in America. We examine Bernie's claims that the rich are stealing wealth from the middle class, assess how our social welfare programs and safety net benefits are impacting everything from employment to income mobility to intergenerational poverty, and ask what reforms we could implement to help Americans who are truly trapped in the poverty cycle. Dr. Scott Winship is a senior fellow and the director of poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he researches social mobility and the causes and effects of poverty. He also focuses on economic insecurity and inequality, among other poverty issues. Follow him on Twitter at @swinshi.

Bari Weiss joins us to look at how the woke progressives' monoculture, intolerance, and cowardice, which has been creeping into America's most treasured institutions for decades, has finally taken over. Bari describes in vivid detail what it was like to be an editor at the NY Times when their owners caved to the journalists who claimed their lives were "in danger" because of a Tom Cotton oped. And we discuss what conservatives need to do better to reach liberals and moderates who believe in the core first principles which created America, and which the progressive movement is seeking to erase from the culture. Bari Weiss is the host of Honestly Podcast and a writer on Substack. From 2017 until 2020, Bari was a staff writer and editor for the Opinion section of The New York Times. Before joining the Times, Bari was an oped editor at the Wall Street Journal and an associate book review editor there. Her first book, "How to Fight Anti-Semitism," was a Natan Notable Book and the winner of a 2019 National Jewish Book Award. Follow Bari on Twitter at @BariWeiss.

Dan joins his friend and fellow veteran LTC Daniel Gade, PhD to recount their post-combat injury experiences with the VA's perverse structure of incentivizes which cause veterans to become sicker, poorer, and disempowered. We look at the policies and culture which enable this victimhood mentality among injured and non-injured veterans alike, and what we should be doing to help our veterans thrive in civilian life. LTC Daniel Gade, PhD is the co-author of “Wounding Warriors: How Bad Policy Is Making Veterans Sicker and Poorer.” He is a twice wounded retired US Army lieutenant colonel, professor, public policy leader, and former US Senate candidate from Virginia. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielMGade.

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD joins us to review the mistakes, misrepresentations, and institutional barriers at the CDC and other public health institutions that hindered our response to the COVID-19 pandemic - along with the tactical steps we must take to defeat the next pandemic. We also discuss reforming the FDA approval process to allow medical innovation and why the drug price controls found in the Democrats' HR3 legislation will stop the next breakthrough drugs from emerging. Scott Gottlieb, MD, is the author of "Uncontrolled Spread: Why COVID-19 Crushed Us and How We Can Defeat the Next Pandemic." He is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. From 2017 to 2019 he served as the 23rd commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. Dr. Gottlieb is also a special partner with the venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates and serves on the boards of Pfizer, Illumina, Aetion, and Tempus. Follow him on Twitter at @ScottGottliebMD.

This episode originally premiered on August 25, 2020. Historian Amity Shlaes joins us for a new look at the origins and aftermath of LBJ's Great Society – the massive federal poverty-reduction programs of the 1960's. The debates in that era were the same debates today: socialism vs capitalism, public-sector vs private-sector, victimhood vs self-empowerment. And the cost of these programs led to devastating outcomes which are still unfolding to this day. Amity Shlaes’ most recent book is Great Society: A New History. She is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man/Graphic, Coolidge, and The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy. Miss Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and the Manhattan Institute's Hayek Book Prize, and serves as a scholar at the King's College. A former member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, Miss Shlaes published a weekly syndicated column for more than a decade, appearing first in the Financial Times, then in Bloomberg. Follow her on Twitter at @AmityShlaes.

There are a lot of reasons being thrown around for the rising price of gasoline – inflation, COVID ending, Biden's attacks on oil and gas, decisions by OPEC – but what’s the truth? Petroleum economist Karr Ingham joins us to shed light on the current state of the domestic and global oil markets, regulatory uncertainties, and geopolitical trade wars that are affecting your costs at the pump. Karr Ingham is an Amarillo, Texas economist, and is the owner and President of InghamEcon, LLC, an economic analysis and research firm specializing in statewide, regional, and metro area economics, and oil & gas/energy economics. Since 2003, he has served as the Consulting Petroleum Economist for the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers. He is the creator of the Alliance Texas Petro Index, a tool for tracking growth rates and industry cycles in the Texas oil and gas exploration & production sector, as well as the Alliance Texas Permian Basin Petroleum Index. He is a member of the Texas Comptroller’s Economic Roundtable, a group of statewide and national economists convened to offer economic insight to the Comptroller in terms of the general condition of the Texas economy and the ongoing revenue outlook. He also co-chairs the Supply and Demand Committee of the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA).

You probably didn't read the recent United Nations IPCC 4,000 page report on global warming impacts. But you definitely saw the media headlines about it screaming, "A Code Red for Humanity!" But the report did not predict any catastrophic, extinction level events, and if you ask Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, it was actually quite reasonable. Bjorn returns to break down what the report actually says, the truth about heat wave and hurricane trends, and give reasons why we can all be optimistic about Earth's future. Dr. Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. The Copenhagen Consensus Center is a think-tank that researches the smartest ways to do good. For this work, Lomborg was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. His numerous books include "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet", "The Skeptical Environmentalist", "Cool It", "How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place", "The Nobel Laureates' Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World 2016-2030" and "Prioritizing Development: A Cost Benefit Analysis of the UN's SDGs". Follow Dr. Lomborg on Twitter at @BjornLomborg.

Two big trends have radically transformed space exploration over the past decade: the privatization of the space industry thanks to Elon Musk and the rise of the Chinese space program. What does this mean for NASA’s mission in the 21st century? Are we on the verge of geopolitical battles with China over Moon territories? Why does Elon maybe want to nuke Mars? Space journalist and author Eric Berger joins us to look at what we can expect as humanity enters the next great era of space travel. Eric Berger is the author of "Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX." He is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering SpaceX, NASA, and everything beyond. Follow him on Twitter at @SciGuySpace.

Is there an infrastructure crisis in America? Would we really need $1.5 trillion in new spending to solve it? Dr. Ed Glaeser joins us to break down the good, the bad, and the ugly of the new infrastructure bill, and help debunk the magical thinking among Democrats that if we just spend massive amounts of money on rail lines, we'll revitalize stagnant economies. Ed Glaeser is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 1992. He regularly teaches microeconomic theory and, occasionally, urban and public economics. Glaeser’s research focuses on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission. He has published dozens of papers on cities, economic growth, and law and economics. Glaeser is the author of Cities, Agglomeration, and Spatial Equilibrium (2008); Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier (2012); and coauthor of Rethinking Federal Housing Policy: How to Make Housing Plentiful and Affordable (2008). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Taking orders from terrorists, silencing political opponents, and implementing unconstitutional COVID mandates ad infinitum. When a political ideology with no limiting principles controls our institutions, the inevitable outcome is tyranny. Ben Shapiro returns to show us how the authoritarian left is creating a grave danger to our republic and free societies across the globe, and what we can do to stop it. Ben Shapiro is the NY Times bestselling author of the new book "The Authoritarian Moment," host of "The Ben Shapiro Show," and Editor Emeritus of www.dailywire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @benshapiro.