THE SHOW NOTES: The State of Our Union, DeSantis Plays It Smart, & Details on the Balloon

Welcome! Biden's IRS plans to crack down on waiters' tips.

NEW: Church of England might give God gender-neutral pronouns - NY Post

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Clip of the day: Don Lemon’s worst moment yet. Full story here

Alex Christy @alexchristy17

Don Lemon says that he "can't believe that we're here" where Republicans are "citing the New York Post as a credible source" and that "The American people are going to have to suffer through all of this stuff"

State of the Union

Joe Biden’s State of the Union address did not disappoint. Here are the highlights:

Biden claimed without any evidence that Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset.

Benny Johnson @bennyjohnson

Chaos ERUPTS during State of the Union after Joe Biden flat-out LIES about Republicans' Social Security plan @mtg calls him out, stands up and yells "LIAR!" at him on LIVE TV 🔥

Biden claimed that we are going to need oil “at least for another decade.”

Greg Price @greg_price11

Biden says “we are going to need oil at least for another decade" and all of the Republicans start laughing.

Your guess is as good as mine:

RNC Research @RNCResearch

BIDEN, screaming: "Name me a world leader who changed places with Xi Jinping. Name me one. NAME ME ONE." 🤔

The GOP response: “The Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than the hard reality Americans face every day.”

Greg Price @greg_price11

Gov. Sanders: "We are under attack in a left wing culture war we didn't start, and never wanted to fight. Every day we are told we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols...That's not normal. It's crazy, and it's wrong."

Here’s a Twitter thread you should follow:

Chris Jacobs @chrisjacobsHC

THREAD: @JoeBiden attacked @GOP in #SOTU for wanting to 1) sunset Medicare/SS, 2) “cut” those programs, and hold the debt ceiling hostage to pass those “cuts.” As we’ll see, those are all things BIDEN PROPOSED HIMSELF. Follow/RT for additional details… 1/

Trump vs DeSantis

Ron DeSantis held a roundtable discussion on implementing Trump’s policyies regarding easing restrictions on suing media outlets. The roundtable in Miami was focused on “the damaging impacts of defamation from the legacy media” per the DeSantis team.

Trump is big mad: The lawyer DeSantis used at the roundtable is Libby Locke, a noted conservative attorney who has worked for the likes of Sarah Palin and James O’Keefe. However, Locke’s latest client is Dominion Voting Systems in their defamation suit against multiple figures in the Trump universe including Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell. The move infuriate Trump-world with Lindell and others making statements.

The response: Donald Trump recirculated discredited stories on Truth Social about Ron DeSantis in response to the move.

Watch my full clip here.

China Was Spying On Us

The Chinese spy balloon has been linked to an international surveillance program used by China on five different continents to collect information on foreign military assets. This is from The Washington Post.

“What the Chinese have done is taken an unbelievably old technology, and basically married it with modern communications and observation capabilities” to try to glean intelligence on other nations’ militaries, said one official. “It’s a massive effort.”

The rest of the news:

• Gov. Greg Abbott tells state agencies to stop considering diversity in hiring - The Texas Tribue

• House GOP’s under-the-radar Hunter Biden problem: DOJ got there first - Politico

• Romney told Santos ‘You don’t belong here’ in tense exchange in House chamber before SOTU - CNN

• NBC, MSNBC employees plan walkout in protest of layoffs - MSN

• Google AI chatbot Bard offers inaccurate information in company ad, shares slump - Yahoo

• Russia Throws Soldiers into Ukraine Firing Line to Gain Inches - WSJ (paywall)

• The Grotesque Bipartisan Moment during Biden’s State of the Union Address - NR (paywall)

• This is dumb: Conservatives want to control what kids learn, but it may backfire - The Washington Post (paywall)

Tweets that caught my eye:

Erick Erickson @EWErickson

I get hate mail all the time that I’m a terrible radio host, no one listens to me, and the moment my contract is up, they’ll let me go. Sorry to report I’ll be sticking around at least three more years as the midday talker in Atlanta.

Nate Hochman @njhochman

It boggles my mind that the White House hasn’t made an effort to find a more competent press secretary

Mike Palicz @Mike_Palicz

Those 87,000 new IRS agents that you were promised would only target the rich... They're coming after waitresses' tips now: "monitoring of employer compliance based on actual annual tip revenue and charge tip data from an employer's point-of-sale system."

irs.govIRS introduces new service industry tip reporting program | Internal Revenue ServiceIR-2023-19, Feb. 6, 2023

Market snapshot: