Steve Cortes, co-host of Newsmax’s Cortes & Pellegrino, predicted on Monday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow that inflation and global supply chain breakdowns would yield what he dubbed a “Biden Blue Christmas” for Americans.
Increased costs of goods and services — including for expenses such as food, gasoline, and home heating — reduce Americans’ available income to spend on Christmas holidays, Cortes noted.
“If you combine this Biden inflation spike with the supply chain breakdowns … what I think we see coming … I think it portends for a Biden Blue Christmas,” Cortes assessed. “I really believe this is going to be a miserable Christmas where consumers, number one, don’t don’t have as much to spend, anyway, but what they do have to spend, they’re going to go to the store and the items they want and need are not going to be there, or if they are there, they’re going to be there for a massively higher price, because of scarcity and because of supply chain breakdowns.”
He went on, “Combine the Biden inflation spike — which means incredibly elevated heating prices for many Americans … as the weather cools into Christmas and the supply chain breakdowns, I think all of this — it’s a confluence of factors — [is] going to make for a frankly miserable Christmas. I’m coining it [and] calling it the Biden Blue Christmas.”
President Joe Biden’s policies are increasing unemployment by disincentivizing work, Cortes stated.
“There’s a massive backlog of massive tankers docked [and] trying to get to the United States,” he remarked. They can’t get them shipped throughout the United States. Why? Because there’s a worker shortage. It’s because there are not enough workers to unload them. There are not enough truckers to drive them. That worker shortage is largely caused by two things with Joe Biden.”
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 20: In an aerial view, container ships (Top L) are anchored by the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles as they wait to offload on September 20, 2021 near Los Angeles, California. Amid a record-high demand for imported goods and a shortage of shipping containers and truckers, the twin ports are currently seeing unprecedented congestion. On September 17, there were a record total of 147 ships, 95 of which were container ships, in the twin ports, which move about 40 percent of all cargo containers entering the U.S. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
He continued, “[Biden] gave massive incentives to not work — incredibly juiced payroll benefits, rent moratorium — he provided all kinds of incentives for people to not have to work. We are reaping the bitter harvest right now of a lot of people choosing to not work because of the incentives we put in front of them.”
Cortes noted that mandating vaccines as a requirement for work will further drive up unemployment.
“The newer issue are these vaccine mandates,” he said. “[Biden] is also saying, ‘Guess what? Even though you may not need or want this jab’ — perhaps you had COVID, perhaps you have other valid reasons that you’re not fearful of the virus — ‘I’m going to force you to get this jab if you want to go back to work.’ That is also deterring people from going back to work. So we have a massive worker shortage [and a] supply chain breakdown. That’s only going to get worse, and I figure it’s going to get massively worse in the next few weeks.”
Cortes concluded, “Even if your pay is going up — if your pay is rising three percent with inflation rising 5.4 percent, which the most recent CPI read — you are getting poorer.”