Ted Cruz wins Iowa, Donald Trump has a meltdown, and Hillary Clinton defeats Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary in a close contest that was decided by a coin toss. Ben Shapiro breaks it all down and explains the implications for the future of the race and the impact of the results on both sides of the aisle. Plus, a look ahead to the New Hampshire primary and what it means for the rest of the field and the chances of a Trump fade in the coming days. All that and much more on today's show from Ben Shapiro's reaction to the results of the Iowa primary and the reaction from CNN and CNN's post-custodial analysis of the night's results. Tweet me if you have any thoughts on this or other stories you think we should cover, and we'll get them on The Ben Shapiro Show! Timestamps: 1:00 - Ted Cruz's big win in Iowa 2:30 - What does it mean for the 2020 race? 3:15 - Is it over? 4:10 - Can Marco Rubio and Donald Trump have momentum? 5:00 6:15 Is it time to pivot to New Hampshire now? 7:20 - Can Hillary Clinton finally take the nomination? 8:20 9:30 Is Bernie Sanders going to make a move? 11:10 12:10 Is Hillary Clinton about to lose? 13:00 | Bernie Sanders is having it rough? 14:30 | What's next for Hillary Clinton? 15:15 | What s going on with Bernie Sanders? 16: What does she have a chance of winning in 2020? 17: Is she about to be a shot of gold? 19:30 Is she going to have a shot at the nomination at it? 21:10 | Can she be a serious contender? 22:20 | Is there any chance of a real chance of taking the nomination of a serious shot at winning in the next primary? 26:40 | Is she really a serious presidential candidate? 27: What s the best chance of defeating Donald Trump? 25:00 Is she's going to run for president? 29:40 - Is she running for president in 2020 or is she's not running for anything? 35:00 Can she really have a serious chance of actually running for something other than a chance? 36:00 Does she have any shot of winning?
00:00:48.000Trump 24.3, so he was down 4.3% from his estimate.
00:00:53.000Cruz 27.7, which means that he was up 3.8% from his estimate.
00:00:58.000And the biggest jump of the night belonged to Marco Rubio, who jumped 6.2%, all the way up to 23.1%, barely coming in third behind Donald Trump, who's actually very close.
00:01:08.000So, what this means, of course, is that Cruz has some momentum coming out of Iowa.
00:01:12.000It means that Rubio has some serious momentum coming out of Iowa.
00:02:08.000New Hampshire is a much more secular crowd, much more Northeastern crowd, probably more friendly to Marco Rubio's style of politics, sort of the conventional
00:02:17.000So we'll talk in a minute about sort of how this race is going to play out, what the forecast looks like, and we'll also talk about what's happening on the Democratic side of the aisle, where Hillary and Bernie were locked in a death struggle.
00:02:28.000They were beating each other with their walkers late last night, and gripping each other by the throat with their feeble grips.
00:02:35.000Basically, their entire primary came down to, I think it was less than 100 votes.
00:03:15.000It's always coming up roses for Hillary, so we will get to what that means for Hillary, and I think that she is about five seconds away from sticking her head into an oven.
00:03:23.000I mean, I think she really is having it rough, and if Bernie Sanders made one move, he would take the nomination away from her.
00:03:31.000Hillary Clinton is a cartoon character trying to grip a wet bar of soap.
00:03:34.000The harder she squeezes the soap, the less likely she is to actually attain the object of her desire.
00:03:42.000After his big win, and it was because he had great turnout on the ground, he won with every group except for the people who are highly educated, and the people who are barely educated, barely educated people went Trump, highly educated people went Rubio, everybody else, women, men, evangelicals, not evangelicals, went for Cruz in Iowa, so he had some broad appeal.
00:04:01.000So, Ted Cruz, after he wins, he goes out to give his victory speech.
00:04:05.000And, you know, I want to give him his due for winning.
00:04:07.000It's a major thing and it's going to have major implications for how these primaries play out.
00:04:12.000And I say that Cruz is the temporary frontrunner, assuming that
00:04:52.000So the idea that this was not a great accomplishment by Cruz is insane, especially in light of the fact that Trump had been viciously beating Cruz in the press for several weeks leading up to this caucus, calling Cruz a liar,
00:05:26.000What makes Ted Cruz great is that Ted Cruz does not compromise on his beliefs or on his principles.
00:05:33.000Ted Cruz believes what he believes, and he is that person.
00:05:36.000He may manipulate in service of those principles, that's the accusation about the government shutdown, for example, but there's no question that he is an ideologue.
00:05:44.000It also means that he doesn't, unfortunately, have real grasp of optics.
00:05:48.000So, after you win Iowa, after you win Iowa, this is your big moment, right?
00:05:52.000This is your moment on the national stage, your moment to prove to everyone in the United States that not only do you belong as the Iowa winner, but that you are a viable presidential candidate for the long haul, that you can unify Americans.
00:06:04.000The best person I've ever seen do this, actually, was the person who I probably dislike most in American politics, Barack Obama.
00:06:10.000President Obama, back when he was Senator Obama in 2008, after he won, I remember watching this on TV, he went up and he had the human backdrop behind him, right?
00:06:18.000He had all sorts of people who were standing behind him.
00:06:20.000And he proceeded to do a speech from a teleprompter.
00:06:50.000Instead, he proceeded to serve and thank the people who are in the room and the people who'd given him the victory, which is justifiable on a personal level, but on a national political level, it's problematic.
00:08:31.000But we'll be chosen by the most incredible, powerful force, where all sovereignty resides in our nation, by we the people, the American people.
00:10:00.000By any objective measure, the two, at least two of the three most conservative people in this race are Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and the only other person there would be Rand Paul, right?
00:10:10.000Rand Paul, but he's an isolationist, so I don't really consider him conservative on foreign policy.
00:10:14.000But Cruz and Rubio are probably the top two conservatives in the field.
00:10:18.000If Rubio had not embraced the Gang of Eight Amnesty Bill, then he and Cruz would be neck and neck.
00:10:24.000I mean, they would be just as conservative.
00:10:25.000They both have incredible ratings from the American Conservative Union.
00:10:29.000They both have 0% ratings from Planned Parenthood.
00:10:37.000They're both heavily conservative on social policy.
00:10:40.000These are, if you, after 2012, those of us who are grassroots conservatives and were very frustrated, very frustrated, that the person picked by the establishment was the only guy in America who had designed Obamacare before Obamacare, Mitt Romney, those of us who said we need a conservative, a real conservative,
00:10:59.000People like me who have spent several weeks railing against Donald Trump for not being conservative.
00:11:03.000I am thrilled today that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are basically the two frontrunners.
00:11:12.000Because the idea that Rubio is an establishment guy.
00:11:15.000I mean, Rubio, remember, he was opposed by the establishment in 2010.
00:11:18.000He ran against Charlie Crist, the governor of Florida.
00:11:22.000I mean, you want to talk about somebody who has political regrets?
00:11:24.000Jeb Bush spent, I think, $2,800 per vote in the state of Iowa.
00:11:29.000He finished with 3% in the state of Iowa.
00:11:31.000But if you go back far enough, you really want to talk about regrets?
00:11:34.000In 2010, when Marco Rubio ran and won the Senate seat over Charlie Criss, you know who was originally supposed to run for that seat and take it?
00:11:57.000Cruz, Tea Party guy, defeated an establishment guy named David Dewhurst, who was the Lieutenant Governor of Texas.
00:12:02.000So you have two Tea Party guys, one of whom is being identified as the establishment guy because at one point he supported the Gang of Eight bill.
00:12:09.000Now, do I trust Marco Rubio on immigration?
00:12:12.000No, I don't, because he flipped on me once.
00:12:15.000So the idea that he wouldn't flip again is bizarre to me.
00:12:17.000The one thing about Rubio that I think is interesting in terms of the Cruz-Rubio dynamic, Cruz is the strong guy who has the off-putting personality, and Rubio is the weak guy with the winning personality.
00:12:29.000I think the question for Rubio is going to be whether he is a weak
00:12:33.000Is he a weak person with strong convictions or a strong person with weak convictions?
00:12:52.000That means that even if Rubio deeply believes in comprehensive immigration reform, and he becomes president, we can push him off the point.
00:13:00.000If he is a strong person with weak convictions, then he might just run roughshod over everybody the way that George W. Bush tried to do in 2004 after he won re-election pushing comprehensive immigration reform.
00:13:11.000So this is not me being sanguine about Marco Rubio and immigration reform, but it is to say that if you are a conservative right now, this choice has to be great for you.
00:13:20.000Now, I do want to contrast the persona.
00:13:21.000So you've got Cruz, who's optically not particularly strong, but really, really on message.
00:15:14.000For everything that makes this nation great now hangs in the balance.
00:15:18.000This is a time where we need a president that will truly preserve and protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not one that undermines, attacks, and ignores the Constitution of the United States.
00:16:10.000You don't know, but you know that they are out to get you.
00:16:13.000And then, he swivels his attack, not inside the Republican Party, but directly to President Obama, right?
00:16:18.000He immediately says, I am the counterweight to President Obama.
00:16:22.000He's elevating himself above the other Republicans, and he's already putting himself in a weight class with Obama and Hillary Clinton, which is very- look, it's smart politics.
00:16:30.000So this is why Rubio is being given a lot of credit.
00:16:34.000Now again, the hard work on the ground was Cruz.
00:16:37.000The guy who did the major grunt work here was the guy who took down Donald Trump.
00:16:42.000And if Rubio ends up as the nominee, he should actually be thanking Ted Cruz because the fact is that Rubio was not going to take down Donald Trump in Iowa.
00:16:50.000If Ted Cruz is not in the race, most of those votes probably were down to Donald Trump.
00:16:55.000Or at least a heavy percentage of those votes.
00:16:56.000Probably splits half and half at best for Marco Rubio.
00:16:59.000Because Cruz is seen as anti-establishment.
00:17:01.000Rubio is seen as establishment, again, because of immigration reform.
00:18:30.000And I want to congratulate Ted, and I want to congratulate all of the incredible candidates, including Mike Huckabee, who's become a really good friend of mine.
00:19:35.000Right, so actually the most recent poll from UMass Lowell has Trump up 38 to 14 over his nearest competitor.
00:19:42.000So Trump is still the frontrunner in terms of these polls.
00:19:45.000If you just take polls into account, Trump is still the frontrunner.
00:19:48.000And people are rightly taking these polls with a grain of salt, because polling data only lasts so long as nobody gets hit in the nose, and Trump just got hit in the nose.
00:19:56.000But if Trump plays it smart, right, if Trump says, you know, we did as well as we could in Iowa, we really didn't have much of a ground game, but we've put all of our resources into New Hampshire, I look forward to a massive victory there,
00:20:19.000Donald Trump, because he has no self-control.
00:20:21.000Here's what Donald Trump did on Twitter.
00:20:23.000He went silent on Twitter for 13 hours, to the point where there were a lot of people who were actually keeping track of how long he was off Twitter.
00:20:32.000There was actually a clock that got posted on Politico to keep track of how long he was off of Twitter.
00:20:38.000So here is what Donald Trump did this morning.
00:20:48.000What Donald Trump did this morning, he said, quote, my experience in Iowa was a great one.
00:20:53.000This is about eight o'clock this morning, Pacific time.
00:20:55.000My experience in Iowa was a great one.
00:20:57.000I started out with all of the experts saying I couldn't do well there and ended up in second place.
00:22:04.000Right, so he goes from, we're moving on to New Hampshire to, I'm not even sure that it's worth it for me to be doing this honorable thing of self-funding my own campaign.
00:22:47.000This is assuming that Trump falls apart.
00:22:48.000So there's, we really have to discuss two separate scenarios.
00:22:51.000One is Trump falls apart, one is Trump does not fall apart.
00:22:54.000Okay, so, to understand how this works, you first have to determine how many delegates come from where.
00:22:59.000So in order to win the nomination, you need 1,237 delegates.
00:23:04.000That's how many delegates it takes out of something like 2,000 delegates.
00:23:07.000So you need to win a slight majority out of the 2,100 or so delegates.
00:23:12.000A large percentage of those delegates are located in blue states, and blue states tend to allocate their delegates not proportionally, but in terms of winner-take-all.
00:23:49.000There are about 1,000 delegates, 1,037 delegates.
00:23:52.000They come from heavy red states that should favor Cruz.
00:23:54.000These are all the southern states, some states in the Midwest.
00:23:57.000Only 115 of those delegates are apportioned based on a winner-take-all system.
00:24:02.000531 of those delegates come from district-by-district apportion systems, so it's kind of sort of winner-take-all, but not really.
00:24:09.000It means that you're going to get more than you would in a basic proportional representation system if you win a lot of districts, and you win all the- let's say you win all the districts 51-49, you win 100% of the votes, right?
00:24:47.000Remember, he still needs another 437 delegates.
00:24:50.000In the purple states, there are about 162 delegates from winner-take-all systems, and 116 from proportional representation states, and about 46 come from district-by-district selections.
00:26:22.000You see Rubio winning a lot of these purple states and all of the blue states, and if Rubio wins a few red states, if Rubio pulls out of Tennessee, for example, a state that is red but could theoretically go to Rubio or Cruz, then you see Rubio walking away with the nomination.
00:26:36.000So in a Cruz versus Rubio head-to-head advantage, Rubio.
00:26:40.000However, Donald Trump is still in the race.
00:26:43.000If Donald Trump is still in the race, then things get kind of interesting.
00:26:46.000Because the truth is that Trump is more competitive with Rubio than he is with Cruz in a lot of these states.
00:26:50.000If you look at how this breaks down, look at Donald Trump in New Hampshire.
00:26:53.000Let's say Donald Trump wins in New Hampshire.
00:28:01.000After the guy bleeds, the question is, when the guy bleeds, is he caught?
00:28:05.000Or is he going to bleed out into the gutter?
00:28:06.000And we really don't know the answer to that particular question as of yet.
00:28:11.000So, odds on favorite, if I had to put money on it, I say that Rubio wins the nomination.
00:28:16.000Right now, because Trump is still in it, Ted Cruz is the favorite, this could go any which way, and I'm not going to pretend that I have any better insight than what the possibilities are.
00:28:26.000You know, the field of prediction is not quite what people crack it up to be.
00:28:31.000It's not Dick Morris getting on TV and just saying the wildest crap that comes into his head and being wrong.
00:28:35.000My job, if I'm going to predict for you, is to give you the range of possibilities and the likelihood of each possibility.
00:28:41.000Rubio, Trump, Cruz, all three possibilities exist.
00:28:45.000If I were to handicap it, I would probably say that Rubio has the easiest shots in the nomination.
00:28:50.000I would say that Rubio has about, I would say,
00:28:53.000Maybe a 40% shot at winning the nomination.
00:28:56.000I'd say that Cruz has about a 35% shot at winning the nomination.
00:28:59.000I would say that Trump has about a 25% shot at winning the nomination.
00:29:02.000At this point, if Trump falls apart, things change radically.
00:29:07.000And there's a case to be made that Rubio's even stronger than that.
00:29:10.000But, for the moment, Trump has not fallen apart.
00:29:12.000So just looking at a snapshot of now, of today, Ted Cruz is the favorite, and that's a big win for Cruz.
00:29:18.000Because if Cruz had lost last night, he'd be toast.
00:29:21.000If Cruz had lost in Iowa, it would be over for Ted Cruz, even though he still has the most money, because Trump would have won.
00:29:26.000And if Trump won there, he would have won in New Hampshire, he would have won in South Carolina, and this thing could have turned into a domino set really, really quickly.
00:29:34.000Okay, moving on to the other side of the aisle.
00:29:37.000There's a lot of allegations of voter fraud in Iowa.
00:29:40.000The Democrats and voter fraud go together like peanut butter and jelly.
00:29:44.000The more dead people vote for the Democrats every year than are even running for their presidential nomination.
00:29:49.000There are two dead people running for their nomination right now.
00:29:52.000So, this is a video, what we're about to show you, of what people are saying is voter fraud in Iowa.
00:29:58.000This is at one of the precincts in Iowa.
00:30:09.000If you want to raise a motion to the body to be heard I don't they said they found that there are three people that left so if you want to if you want to challenge those results and do another count
00:30:36.000The vote, so you guys know what the vote was.
00:31:14.000If you want to challenge it, then challenge it, but you have to wait until I announce the vote.
00:31:17.000It should be a full count of both sides, like you guys did.
00:31:20.000Okay, so as you can see confusion breaking out over on the Democratic side of the aisle again Hillary Clinton Magically won six separate coin flips in order to win the Iowa Democratic caucuses, but I mean the fact is that
00:32:52.000If Bernie Sanders were to embrace slavery reparations today, I'd like to see him do it, because I want to see this drama.
00:32:59.000And first of all, as I mentioned last week, I have my movie that's still in production called Burning With Love, and it was the romance between Bernie Sanders and Hillary, and the ending has yet to be decided, but
00:33:13.000If Bernie Sanders were to embrace slavery reparations, if he were to take the most left-wing position he could possibly take on race and start winning black people, Hillary would be toast.
00:33:28.000And she'd be at home crying and cackling and...
00:33:32.000Melting as you know somebody hit her with a bucket of water, and it was just it would be so glorious And I would love to see Bernie Sanders do this like I don't think Bernie Sanders wins a general election I don't think he beats Cruz.
00:34:13.000is capable of running and winning in any state in this country.
00:34:17.000We look forward to doing well here in New Hampshire.
00:34:21.000And after that, we're off to Nevada and then South Carolina, where I think we're going to surprise a whole lot of people, just as we did in Iowa.
00:34:29.000And do you anticipate contesting this vote count at all?
00:34:32.000Honestly, we just got off the plane and we don't know enough of it to say.
00:37:24.000And I am very proud to tell you that we are the only candidate on the Democratic side without a super PAC.
00:37:32.000And the reason that we have done so well
00:37:47.000Here in Iowa, the reason I believe we're going to do so well in New Hampshire and in the other states that follow, the reason is the American people are saying no to a rigged economy.
00:38:03.000Okay, all of this, by the way, we can pause it here.
00:38:06.000All of this is a tacit rebuke to Hillary Clinton.
00:38:09.000Bernie Sanders basically just beat Hillary in Iowa.
00:38:12.000He's about to kill her in New Hampshire.
00:38:13.000He's done all of this without even opening up his guns on her.
00:38:17.000Okay, for the last several months, he's been doing his whole, no one cares about your damn emails!
00:38:22.000Two days before the caucuses, he said it's a very serious issue.
00:38:25.000So he hasn't even opened up the guns on her yet, and he hasn't played the slavery reparations card, and the minute he plays the race card, she's toast.
00:41:35.000She says that she is excited, by the way, next clip she says she's excited to debate with Bernie Sanders and there's nothing that Hillary Clinton is less excited to do than debate with Bernie Sanders unless it is to have sex with her husband.
00:42:18.000There's a guy eating the stickers in the background.
00:42:35.000I am thrilled at all of the people who are playing a part in that.
00:42:39.000Okay, Hillary Clinton transformed that guy into a newt, so behind her there's a guy who's actually trying to eat the stickers off his own face.
00:42:49.000So all we've got here is an arm-wrestling scene at the old age home between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.
00:42:57.000Honestly, I feel pretty good about Cruz vs. Rubio if what we got on the other side is a screaming old wench and Bernie Sanders.
00:43:13.000Okay, so Hillary, by the way, says that she... I can't stop playing this because it's strangely addictive watching Hillary Clinton lose her mind in front of a mass audience.
00:43:21.000And the media treated this like this is a fine speech.
00:43:23.000The media treated this like there's nothing wrong here.
00:43:25.000Hillary Clinton looks like she is going to nuke the Soviets.
00:43:29.000Okay, that's what Hillary Clinton looks like here.
00:43:31.000I haven't seen a public speaker this mad since Khrushchev.
00:43:35.000Here's Hillary Clinton saying that she's breathing a big sigh of relief.
00:44:39.000I will always work to achieve the America that I believe in, where the promise of that dream that we hold out to our children and our grandchildren never fades.
00:44:52.000Okay, Bill is- Then she gets pissed off again.
00:44:54.000Bill is literally sitting there drooling as he watches Lady on Lady action in his mind.
00:44:59.000That's what he's doing in the background here.
00:45:01.000He's got his mouth kind of- For people who can't see this, this is why you need to subscribe so you can see this tape when I'm mocking it.
00:45:06.000Bill is there with his mouth, like, hanging half open, gazing off into the distance.
00:45:26.000So the real star of the show, by the way, and you're about to see real conflict break out between Sanders supporters and Hillary supporters.
00:45:32.000When Hillary was speaking last night, Sanders supporters were gathered around the state.
00:45:36.000Here's what Sanders supporters were doing during Hillary's speech.
00:46:03.000Yeah, things are about to get interesting between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.
00:46:07.000The real star of the show, though, we really need to put some spotlight on the real star of the show at Hillary Clinton's rallies, is this guy behind Hillary Clinton, who is really enjoying himself in a unique way.
00:46:43.000In the last few weeks, we finally began to have what I think is one of the most important substantive conversations that the Democratic Party could have.
00:47:17.000I followed their campaign very closely.
00:47:21.000I understand what they're appealing to, and I intend to stand against it.
00:47:25.000This guy, folks, he's crossing his eyes, and he's, like, trying to chew stickers off his face.
00:47:29.000He's gotta be thinking to himself, I came to a Hillary campaign because I was gonna pretend to be a feminist and try and get laid, and that just all went wildly wrong when I realized everyone here was above the age of 70.
00:47:37.000He's standing behind them, just, like, making faces, crossing his eyes.
00:47:59.000First of all, I always like to give you an update on what I'm reading.
00:48:03.000So, finishing up that Nate Silver book I was talking about, good book, there's another book that I'm reading now by a guy named Jonathan Gottschall, who's a professor somewhere in the East, and it's called Professor in the Cage.
00:48:14.000And it's all about basically why it is that men love watching the fights.
00:48:37.000Why is it that human beings are built this way?
00:48:39.000And he makes a really compelling case that human beings, particularly men, are built this way.
00:48:43.000And all of this nonsense you hear about there are no brain differences between men and women... Okay, you really have to be an idiot to believe that there are no differences between men and women.
00:50:44.000And the reason I'm mean to Lena Dunham is because she sexually abused her sister, bragged about it, accused a guy falsely of rape, bragged about it, and now endorses Hillary Clinton, who has covered up for a rapist, and brags about it.
00:50:56.000So, Jamie Lee Curtis and a bunch of these other idiot women in Hollywood have now endorsed Hillary Clinton.
00:51:02.000Jamie Lee Curtis, I mean, if you one look at this face, why wouldn't you trust her to pick your presidential candidate?
00:51:10.000I'll read off the names for people who can't see.
00:51:13.000I want my President of the United States to make decisions on my behalf, based on her experience, her command, her intelligence, and from her big, warm, embracing, feminine heart.
00:52:50.000I'm sorry, but I'm not particularly enamored of Hollywood starlets who got famous, presumably many of these women, particularly Lena Dunham.
00:52:57.000She got famous for taking off her clothes in an unusual way because she's ugly.
00:53:01.000But even Jamie Lee Curtis was a starlet at one point.
00:53:24.000But if Jamie Lee Curtis says, we need someone with a big, warm, feminine heart, which, by the way, is Bill Clinton's pickup line, then, all of a sudden, that's totally fine.