The Ben Shapiro Show - Idiot Congressman Pulls Fire Alarm

00:00:00.000 All right, so it looked as though there was going to be a government shutdown over the weekend.

00:00:03.000 It was averted at the very last minute, mainly because Kevin McCarthy decided that he was going to move forward with what we call a clean continuing resolution.

00:00:11.000 It takes about 45 days into the future, takes us into November.

00:00:15.000 It does not include funding for the Ukraine war.

00:00:18.000 The Senate then quickly passed that.

00:00:20.000 And then it was signed by President Biden.

00:00:21.000 This happened about three hours before a shutdown was set to take effect.

00:00:25.000 The Democrats obviously did not want to have some sort of deep abiding fight over Ukraine funding in the continuing resolution.

00:00:30.000 They didn't want to go to the American people and say the reason we're having a government shutdown right now is because we need X billion dollars more for the Ukraine war.

00:00:38.000 Again, the sentiment against the American funding of the Ukraine war is growing and growing mainly because the United States has never presented a plan for any sort of off-ramp.

00:00:46.000 If you actually want the American people to back a plan, you have to have a plan.

00:00:49.000 But the Biden administration has no plan.

00:00:51.000 Democrats didn't want to have that debate publicly.

00:00:54.000 The reason that this deal ended up getting done in the way that it got done is because there was a wing of the Republican Party that actually scuttled a significantly better deal just a couple of weeks ago.

00:01:03.000 It looked as though the Republicans were going to pass a House resolution that would provide for continuing funding for the government that would have amounted to an 8% cut in discretionary spending over the course of the next X number of months.

00:01:17.000 And not only would it include an 8% cut, it would also include border security measures.

00:01:20.000 And for some reason that no one can discern, Matt Gaetz and company on the right wing of the Republican caucus decided that they were going to not vote for that.

00:01:28.000 They wanted more.

00:01:28.000 They wanted no spending whatsoever.

00:01:30.000 They weren't going to explain exactly what it was that they did want or what they thought could pass the Senate.

00:01:35.000 Instead, they were just going to stand there and shout no at Kevin McCarthy.

00:01:38.000 And a lot of people are like, I don't even understand why you're shouting at him.

00:01:41.000 What do you think he can do?

00:01:42.000 He has a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president. 0.98

00:01:44.000 He already won one government shutdown debate with Joe Biden because Joe Biden, like a fool, came out and suggested that he was not going to negotiate whatsoever over spending. 0.90

00:01:53.000 And then he ended up caving and McCarthy got some Well, the same thing was going to happen here. 0.50

00:01:59.000 McCarthy was going to pass a bill that included an 8% discretionary funding cut and border security measures.

00:02:04.000 It was then going to go to the Senate, and Democrats were going to be forced to argue that they would rather the entire government shut down than that these cuts be allowed or that border security be allowed again.

00:02:13.000 Wrong-footing Democrats is what you have to do to win future House elections.

00:02:18.000 Instead, the right wing of the caucus, again, all it takes is a couple of votes for the Republicans

00:02:22.000 to lose their majority on any vote because they only have 221 votes

00:02:26.000 in the actual House of Representatives of the United States.

00:02:30.000 They can only afford to lose about four votes and still pass a piece of legislation by majority vote.

00:02:36.000 And so that got scuttled and instead a worse deal got done.

00:02:40.000 And then that worse deal is being used as we'll see in just a second by Matt Gaetz

00:02:43.000 to suggest that Kevin McCarthy ought to be ousted from the speakership.

00:02:45.000 So it was basically a catch 22 that Gaetz was setting up for McCarthy.

00:02:50.000 He wasn't going to pass a better version of the bill for some unspecified reason, because McCarthy was a sellout.

00:02:54.000 And then when a worse version of the bill gets passed, then it's because McCarthy is a sellout.

00:02:58.000 In any case, according to the Wall Street Journal, the House voted 335-91 for the measure, exceeding the two-thirds majority needed to clear the bill, which was considered, under special procedures, requiring a supermajority of votes.

00:03:08.000 All but one Democrat voted in favor of the measure, while nearly half of Republicans voted against it.

00:03:13.000 Several hours later, the Senate voted 88 to 9 to pass the legislation, and then Joe Biden signed the measure.

00:03:19.000 The surprise breakthrough upended expectations Congress was too divided to pass anything in time to keep the government from partially shutting down at 12 and 1 a.m.

00:03:25.000 on Sunday.

00:03:26.000 House Democrats initially were suspicious of the proposal and stalled for time.

00:03:30.000 As we will talk about in just a second, one of the procedures for stalling for time involved actively pulling a fire alarm in order to create some sort of emergency protocol response to delay the vote.

00:03:41.000 On the Senate side, anger over the move to pull Ukraine led to a nerve-wracking dinnertime delay.

00:03:45.000 The measure includes $16 billion in disaster relief, it omits assistance for Ukraine, it excludes border security measures sought by Republicans, and it renews the expiring flood insurance program through November 17th and reauthorizes the Federal Aviation Administration through the end of December.

00:04:01.000 Kiev, for its own part, is in Ukraine.

00:04:03.000 They're downplaying the lack of Ukraine aid in the new spending bill.

00:04:07.000 Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markova, she said, there are funds, the government will work, there's no threat to the supply of previously approved weapons and equipment.

00:04:16.000 She said, there is time, there are resources, more importantly, there's bipartisan and bicameral support for Ukraine.

00:04:22.000 And that may well be true, that you might be able to pass some sort of Standalone Ukraine aid provision, but that is not going to be true for very long in the U.S.

00:04:31.000 Congress.

00:04:31.000 In other words, there better be an exit plan, as we say before.

00:04:34.000 Joe Biden, for his part, he came out and he praised the Congress for avoiding the shutdown, but then blasted extreme House Republicans for a manufactured crisis.

00:04:41.000 He put out a statement saying, quote, Tonight, bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate voted to keep the government open, preventing a necessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hardworking Americans.

00:04:51.000 This bill ensures that active duty troops will continue to get paid.

00:04:54.000 Travelers will be spared airport delays.

00:04:56.000 Millions of women and children will continue to have access to vital nutrition assistance and so much more.

00:04:59.000 This is good news for the American people. 0.78

00:05:01.000 But I want to be clear, we never should have been in this position in the first place just a few months ago.

00:05:05.000 Speaker McCarthy and I reached a budget agreement to avoid precisely this type of manufactured crisis.

00:05:10.000 For weeks, extreme House Republicans tried to walk away from that deal by demanding drastic cuts that would have been devastating for millions of Americans.

00:05:16.000 They failed.

00:05:17.000 Now, the reason they failed, by the way, is not because of Democrats.

00:05:19.000 The reason that they failed is because Matt Gaetz and company decided that they were going to fight back against that particular provision.

00:05:26.000 Again, for a reason that no one can discern.

00:05:29.000 It is not conservative to walk away from bigger spending cuts simply out of personal ire, apparently, at Kevin McCarthy.

00:05:36.000 Biden continued, while the Speaker and the overwhelming majority of Congress have been steadfast in their support for Ukraine, there is no new funding in this agreement to continue that support.

00:05:43.000 We cannot, under any circumstances, allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted.

00:05:46.000 I fully expect the Speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment.

00:05:52.000 So he's throwing it back on McCarthy and saying that we definitely need more aid.

00:05:55.000 Obviously, that's a battle that's going to be pretty significant as to how much more aid McCarthy is willing to pass or how much aid Republicans are willing to put forward.

00:06:04.000 Biden then followed up with that.

00:06:05.000 He said, I hope that McCarthy has now had a personal revelation with regard to the extremism of his own caucus.

00:06:10.000 Or at least that's what Biden is trying to say.

00:06:11.000 His face hole doesn't work anymore.

00:06:14.000 Mr. President, are you going to be able to trust Speaker McCarthy when the next deal comes around?

00:06:23.000 We just made one about Ukraine.

00:06:26.000 So we'll find out.

00:06:27.000 But are you worried that he is going to be forced by fellow Republicans to back away from any deal he cuts with you?

00:06:38.000 I hope this experience for the Speaker has been one of a personal revelation.

00:06:50.000 I'm not being facetious. I, uh, um...

00:06:54.000 Anyway...

00:06:59.000 I, uh...

00:07:03.000 I mean, honest to god, you watch that clip and you're afraid he's going to expire right in front of your eyes.

00:07:07.000 My God, he looks terrible.

00:07:08.000 The idea that this dude is going to serve until, say, 2028 is nuts.

00:07:14.000 It's nuts.

00:07:14.000 I mean, first of all, everybody knows going into the next election cycle that Joe Biden is not going to serve out those four years, right?

00:07:19.000 We all know this.

00:07:20.000 That he's going to be a year and a half in, he's going to step down, and Kamala Harris is going to be the president.

00:07:23.000 Because there's no way this can continue.

00:07:25.000 It cannot continue this way.

00:07:27.000 Again, I know this is off topic from the continuing resolution and all, but you cannot watch a clip of this man and assume that he is still going to be living five years from now.

00:07:34.000 That is not a wish.

00:07:36.000 That is just a reality.

00:07:37.000 Maybe he will, but he's basically losing it right now.

00:07:40.000 And that is not good news for the American people.

00:07:43.000 In just one second, we'll get to the Democrats trying to hold up the vote through illegal measures.

00:07:47.000 You might say insurrectionist measures.

00:07:49.000 We'll get to that momentarily first.

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00:09:00.000 Okay.

00:09:00.000 So meanwhile, Democrats were taken up short by McCarthy, moving forward on a clean CR without the Ukraine funding.

00:09:07.000 And they were pissed because they wanted the Ukraine funding in the continuing resolution.

00:09:11.000 And they want to continue to pour money into Ukraine.

00:09:13.000 And so they were mad.

00:09:14.000 They tried a bunch of tactics to delay the vote, trying to come up with some other sort of solution without having to vote for it.

00:09:20.000 Hakeem Jeffries basically tried to filibuster the thing. 0.95

00:09:23.000 But Jamal Bowman, the moronic congressman from New York, and there is no other way to put it. 1.00

00:09:29.000 He is a moron. 1.00

00:09:30.000 I mean, because either he is a moron because he thinks what he was going to do is going to work, or he's a moron because he doesn't know how fire alarms work. 1.00

00:09:35.000 Let me explain. 0.99

00:09:36.000 So, as this vote was about to take place, he apparently pulled a fire alarm in a Capitol office building on Saturday.

00:09:45.000 We don't... Like, what?

00:09:47.000 So, apparently, a security video was distributed to the office so they could find the person who pulled the video alarm.

00:09:54.000 See if you can spot who this is.

00:09:56.000 Yeah, that's Joel Melvin, standing directly behind a sign that says, Emergency Exit Only.

00:10:02.000 He, instead of walking through the tunnels, there are tunnels that connect the various office buildings on the hill.

00:10:07.000 Instead of walking through the tunnels, he walks over to a fire alarm and he pulls the fire alarm.

00:10:14.000 Representative Jamal Bowman pulled a fire alarm in Canon this morning, an account controlled by Republicans on the committee.

00:10:19.000 He said an investigation into why he pulled it is underway.

00:10:23.000 There's a resolution that is now circulating to expel Bowman from the House over the incident.

00:10:29.000 The idea of pulling the fire alarm in order to delay a vote is insane.

00:10:32.000 Today at 12.05pm, a fire alarm was activated on the second floor of the Cannon Office building.

00:10:37.000 A Capitol Police spokesperson said, the building was evacuated while USCP officers checked the building.

00:10:42.000 The building was reopened after it was determined there was not a threat.

00:10:44.000 An investigation into what happened and why continues.

00:10:48.000 Democrats were trying to delay starting the vote.

00:10:50.000 They'd been given very little notice about the vote.

00:10:52.000 Many complained Republicans were trying to vote before Democrats had time to read the bill.

00:10:55.000 Hakeem Jeffries delivered a 52-minute speech in an attempt to have everybody sort of come up with some strategy to thwart McCarthy.

00:11:03.000 Ultimately, the vote began two and a half hours after it was scheduled to start.

00:11:06.000 Democrats overwhelmingly then voted in favor of the bill because they'd been essentially outplayed by McCarthy on the Ukraine aid, and they were getting pretty much everything else that they wanted in this particular bill.

00:11:16.000 So, the big question is, why is Jamal Bowman pulling the fire alarm?

00:11:19.000 And the answer is, he's obviously attempting to delay the workings of Congress.

00:11:22.000 Now, I'm old enough to remember when attempting to delay the workings of Congress in the official duties that they were attempting to effectuate was considered a criminal violation, punishable with years in prison.

00:11:34.000 If you attempt to stop the business of Congress, that's an actual criminal charge.

00:11:39.000 And if you're a congressperson who pulls a fire alarm in an attempt to stop the business of Congress or delay the business of Congress, that is similarly criminal.

00:11:45.000 Jamal Bowman, for his part, he apparently is suggesting that he doesn't know how fire alarms work.

00:11:51.000 Which is weird, since we all know how fire alarms work.

00:11:53.000 Have you ever pulled a fire alarm thinking it was going to open a door?

00:11:56.000 Is that a thing you've ever done?

00:11:57.000 No, because you can read?

00:11:58.000 And because you have a functioning brain?

00:12:01.000 So you have two choices if you're Jamal Bowman. 1.00

00:12:02.000 Either you're too stupid to understand what a fire alarm does, or you're trying to delay the vote in Congress, which is criminal. 1.00

00:12:07.000 So either you're criminally stupid or just criminal. 1.00

00:12:10.000 One of the two. 1.00

00:12:11.000 Those are the only two choices.

00:12:12.000 There is no third choice. 1.00

00:12:14.000 Either you're a moron who doesn't understand that if you pull a fire alarm, the fire alarm is going to go off, or you are actively attempting to stop a vote in Congress from taking place, which is a violation of law. 0.99

00:12:24.000 Here is his statement, quote, I want to personally clear up confusion surrounding today's events. 0.99

00:12:28.000 Today, as I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes, but today would not open.

00:12:33.000 I'm embarrassed to admit I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door.

00:12:37.000 I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused.

00:12:40.000 To be very clear, You're lying.

00:12:41.000 I mean, like, you're not just lying, you're lying like a rug.

00:12:43.000 I was trying urgently to get to a vote, which I ultimately did, and joined my colleagues

00:12:47.000 in a bipartisan effort to keep our government open.

00:12:49.000 I also met after the vote with the sergeant at arms and the Capitol Police at their request

00:12:52.000 and explained what had happened.

00:12:53.000 My hope is no one will make more of this than what it was.

00:12:55.000 I am working hard every day, including today, to do my job, to do it well, and deliver for

00:12:58.000 my constituents.

00:13:00.000 Peace and love.

00:13:01.000 Uh, you're lying.

00:13:02.000 I mean, like, you're not just lying, you're lying like a rug.

00:13:05.000 Like, obviously lying.

00:13:07.000 We have more information about that in just one second.

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00:14:12.000 Okay, so it's not just that Jamal Bowman is lying. 1.00

00:14:15.000 Like he's still, and this is like a stupid lie. 0.97

00:14:18.000 According to Breitbart, Representative Jamal Bowman ripped down two signs warning a second floor door in the Cannon House office building was for emergency use only, before pulling the fire alarm and running out through a different door on a different floor, Breitbart News has learned exclusively. 0.97

00:14:30.000 Multiple sources familiar with the investigation into Bowman pulling the fire alarm in the house, which triggered a full-scale law enforcement and emergency services response leading to the full evacuation of the building, told Breitbart News exclusively that Bowman ripped two signs down and threw them on the ground first.

00:14:44.000 The sources familiar with the investigation provided Breitbart News with photographs of the scene of the alleged crime later after the emergency door had been restored after the damage Bowman did to it.

00:14:53.000 So, here is what the door and the sign look like right afterward.

00:14:58.000 You can see, first of all, even in the photo, you can see there's a giant sign that says, Emergency Exit Only.

00:15:02.000 Even in the photo of Bowman, that sign is right there, Emergency Exit Only.

00:15:05.000 Now, I don't know about you, but I can read.

00:15:07.000 And I expect my congressman to be able to read.

00:15:09.000 I know these are like really, really big, these are hard things to do, like expecting a congressperson to be able to read the language of English.

00:15:17.000 Emergency exit only typically means you can only exit in an emergency.

00:15:23.000 I know this is like, I know, listen, I know Congress is filled with absolute abject rejects from the community of people with sentient function.

00:15:32.000 I understand this. 0.96

00:15:33.000 I mean, right now, if you look at our Congress, we have John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, who does not have a functioning brain. 0.88

00:15:41.000 We have Lauren Boeber, who's fondling people during Beetlejuice. 1.00

00:15:44.000 We have Jamal Bowman who's pulling emergency.

00:15:46.000 I mean, we're not sending our best.

00:15:48.000 I gotta be honest with you.

00:15:50.000 We have a lot of adults who are occupying these seats in Congress, but this is pretty next level.

00:15:56.000 The fire alarm that was pulled, I know I shouldn't have to describe a fire alarm to you because it looks like a fire alarm, but it has a giant word on it.

00:16:02.000 It says, fire, push in, pull down.

00:16:06.000 In the photos of the double doors with glass windows, there are clearly two giant red signs on the door.

00:16:09.000 They both say, emergency exit only.

00:16:11.000 Push until alarm sounds.

00:16:12.000 Three seconds, door will unlock in 30 seconds.

00:16:15.000 My favorite part about this whole story is the media attempting to cover for Bowman.

00:16:20.000 So Matt Brunink, who is a self-described socialist, he tweeted out,

00:16:26.000 Bowman was trying to walk from the Cannon Building to the Capitol Building to vote.

00:16:29.000 Unusually, the Cannon exit he went to wouldn't open and had this confusing sign on it.

00:16:33.000 He thought it was saying you had to press the alarm to get out.

00:16:35.000 This all makes sense. What am I missing?

00:16:37.000 The part where it says, emergency exit only.

00:16:42.000 That's the part that you're missing. 0.99

00:16:44.000 They're all, this is so ridiculous. 0.81

00:16:46.000 If any Republican claimed that they pulled a fire alarm and then they did so by accident, not thinking it was going to open a door. 0.96

00:16:51.000 When is the last time, again, when is the last time you pulled a fire alarm thinking it would open the door?

00:16:56.000 Fire alarms are all about us in society.

00:16:58.000 Every time you go to your kid's school, every time you go to an auditorium, every time you go to a post office, there are fire alarms everywhere.

00:17:04.000 And you know, one of the things that no one I know or I've ever heard of has ever done?

00:17:08.000 He pulled the fire alarm to actually, you know, open a door.

00:17:15.000 So, again, his spokesperson says, So, as I say before, there are only two choices.

00:17:18.000 who would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote.

00:17:21.000 The congressman regrets any confusion.

00:17:22.000 What do you think happens when you pull a fire?

00:17:25.000 So as I say before, there are only two choices. 0.99

00:17:27.000 Either he's a moron who doesn't know how English works, or he's attempting to delay the vote. 1.00

00:17:31.000 AOC for her part, another moron. 1.00

00:17:35.000 Again, we are only sending people with IQs below 70 as members of Congress. 1.00

00:17:39.000 This apparently is the new rule.

00:17:40.000 Here is AOC defending Jamal Bowman's stunt.

00:17:44.000 There he is pulling the fire alarm.

00:17:46.000 He says it was an accident.

00:17:47.000 He thought pulling the alarm would open a door based on the fact that the doors to his right there were locked and there was a sign that he said he was... I think someone said it was confusing.

00:17:57.000 I'll be honest, it doesn't really make sense to me his explanation.

00:18:01.000 Have you talked to him?

00:18:02.000 What's going on?

00:18:04.000 I mean, listen, I think if you actually do see some of the photos of the signs, I think there's something to be said about the government's about to shut down, there's a vote clock that's going down, the exits that are normally open in that building were suddenly closed.

00:18:19.000 So you pulled a fire alarm?

00:18:22.000 What I am here to say is that House Administration and U.S.

00:18:26.000 Capitol Police and Jamal Bowman are inactive and he's fully participating in saying there was a misunderstanding. 1.00

00:18:34.000 Not only is she stupid, she thinks you're stupid. 1.00

00:18:37.000 It's just, it's incredible, incredible stuff. 1.00

00:18:38.000 Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy went off on Bowman.

00:18:40.000 He says, listen, I noticed again that when you try to delay the workings of Congress, then you go to jail for like ever.

00:18:46.000 If you are a, if you are a Republican who backs Trump, and if you are a Congress person who does this sort of thing, then we all pretend that you don't know how to read the language of English.

00:18:54.000 You know, I think ethics should look at this, but this is serious.

00:19:00.000 When you think of how other people are treated when they wanted to come in and change the course of what was happening in this building.

00:19:07.000 And did he deny he did it when it's on tape?

00:19:11.000 And I'm going to have a discussion with the Democratic leader about it.

00:19:18.000 But this should not go without punishment.

00:19:22.000 Okay, so, um, yeah.

00:19:24.000 And there is talk as to what that punishment will be.

00:19:26.000 Will he be fully expelled from the House?

00:19:27.000 Very doubtful.

00:19:28.000 Will he be stripped of committee assignments?

00:19:30.000 Almost certainly.

00:19:31.000 Because again, this sort of activity...

00:19:33.000 Not sure how it would be appropriate from any congressperson.

00:19:36.000 President Trump, then of course, jumped into the fray as well.

00:19:38.000 He put out a statement saying, will Congressman Jamal Bowman be prosecuted and imprisoned

00:19:42.000 for very dangerously pulling and setting off the main fire alarm system in order to stop

00:19:45.000 a congressional vote that was going on in DC? His egregious act is covered on tape.

00:19:48.000 A horrible display of nerve and criminality. It was a very dangerous obstruction of an official

00:19:52.000 proceeding. The same is used against our J6 prisoners. 0.62

00:19:54.000 Actually, his act may have been worse.

00:19:56.000 He must suffer their same fate. When will his trial begin?

00:19:59.000 So, you know, again, not not not wrong.

00:20:03.000 I mean, the fact is that Jamal Bowman, participating in attempting to stop the workings of Congress, if you think it's serious on one side, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, or it should be.

00:20:12.000 And just a second, we'll get to stupidity on the other side of the aisle, as Matt Gaetz seems to believe that running directly headlong into a wall over and over is genius congressional strategy.

00:20:20.000 We'll get to that momentarily.

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00:20:56.000 Okay, meanwhile, Matt Gaetz is attempting to undercut Kevin McCarthy.

00:21:00.000 He has been since McCarthy won the speakership.

00:21:02.000 Remember, there were 15 rounds of voting and Gaetz was the lead holdout in the I'm not going to vote for McCarthy caucus.

00:21:08.000 Now, what was weird about that whole situation, as I explained at the time, is there was no one to back him up, meaning there was no other option to McCarthy.

00:21:14.000 He had 190 Republicans who had already pledged to McCarthy.

00:21:17.000 He had like 20 25 would not.

00:21:20.000 Most of them were okay with going with McCarthy as long as they got a few concessions.

00:21:23.000 That would include people like Representative Chip Roy of Texas.

00:21:25.000 Again, Chip Roy is a conservative with a plan.

00:21:27.000 Matt Gaetz seems to be a dude without a plan very often.

00:21:31.000 And we went through 15 votes.

00:21:33.000 McCarthy ends up winning the speakership.

00:21:35.000 And since then, Matt Gaetz, because he recognizes all it takes is peeling off five votes in order to basically thwart McCarthy being able to do anything with a pure Republican House majority, He's been attempting to bring McCarthy down.

00:21:47.000 I don't know whether that is a personal animus thing.

00:21:49.000 I don't know whether he thinks that this is going to just simply elevate him in the minds of the American public.

00:21:54.000 I don't know what it is.

00:21:55.000 But, according to the Wall Street Journal, McCarthy's most vocal political antagonist, Representative Matt Gaetz, has repeatedly threatened to try to oust him as Speaker if the California Republican scheduled a vote on the continuing resolution.

00:22:05.000 Shortly after the House vote, Gaetz shouted, Mr. Speaker, to get the attention of Representative Steve Womack, who's chairing the proceedings.

00:22:11.000 Womack did not acknowledge Gates and Trout and gaveled the session to a close.

00:22:14.000 Total capitulation, said Representative Bob Good, Republican of Virginia, who's indicated he would be open to supporting an effort to oust McCarthy as Speaker if he fails to do anything that he has promised to do.

00:22:23.000 Now again, the problem is that you haven't made actual demands that he's capable of achieving.

00:22:28.000 If you actually wish to pry concessions out of Kevin McCarthy, as I say, Representative Chip Roy has done that repeatedly.

00:22:34.000 But if your version of McCarthy needs to go is, he is not governing, he's a small government conservative, so he has to go, I urge you to look at the constituency of the Senate of the United States, which is Democrat, thanks to the personal intervention of Donald Trump in the Georgia Senate races, and the presidency, which is run by Joe Biden because Donald Trump lost to him.

00:22:52.000 Those would be the places to look if you're thinking about how far can you cut the government successfully?

00:22:56.000 And the answer is not particularly far since you don't run the Senate and you also don't run the presidency.

00:23:00.000 And also, I seem not to remember Matt Gaetz being particularly vocal about cutting spending when Donald Trump was the president and the Republicans controlled the Senate.

00:23:07.000 I don't remember him attempting to shut down the government over spending protocol when it was an entirely Republican Congress and a Republican president of the United States who blew out the budget to the tune of $7 trillion.

00:23:15.000 I don't remember that at all.

00:23:17.000 Do you?

00:23:18.000 Maybe I'm just forgetful.

00:23:20.000 Or maybe this is just politics.

00:23:23.000 I've tried for eight months, McCarthy then told reporters, I tried yesterday with the most conservative stopgap funding you could find.

00:23:28.000 I couldn't get 218 Republicans.

00:23:29.000 And that's correct.

00:23:30.000 He tried to get an 8% budget cut on the discretionary side and Gates and company voted against it.

00:23:36.000 But here's McCarthy yesterday blasting the Republicans who held out.

00:23:38.000 It's like you held out.

00:23:39.000 And so I had to cut a worse deal.

00:23:40.000 Thank you for that.

00:23:42.000 Would secure our border?

00:23:44.000 Cut wasteful spending?

00:23:45.000 Yes, I did.

00:23:46.000 But I had some members in our own conference that wouldn't vote for that.

00:23:49.000 So if you have members in your conference that won't let you vote for appropriation bills, doesn't want an omnibus, and won't vote for a stopgap measure, so the only answer is to shut down and not pay our troops?

00:24:01.000 I don't want to be a part of that team.

00:24:03.000 I want to be a part of a conservative group that wants to get things done.

00:24:06.000 Yeah, well, Matt Gaetz clearly does not.

00:24:08.000 I mean, there are certain things that Matt Gaetz has done that I like.

00:24:11.000 This is certainly not one of them. 0.93

00:24:12.000 And his personal grudge match against McCarthy seems to be one of the dumbest things going on in Congress. 0.99

00:24:16.000 And again, Congress is filled with dumb things these days. 0.80

00:24:19.000 So Gaetz says he is now going to file a motion to vacate the speakership.

00:24:22.000 And again, all it requires, basically, is peel off five Republicans, and McCarthy has to go through another speakership battle.

00:24:28.000 Again, what concessions is he going to pry to McCarthy?

00:24:29.000 He won't say.

00:24:30.000 What does he want from McCarthy?

00:24:31.000 He won't say.

00:24:32.000 Who's his backup to McCarthy?

00:24:33.000 Who's he going to put in the speakership position to take over for McCarthy?

00:24:36.000 He won't say, and neither will anyone else.

00:24:38.000 Steve Scalise does not want it.

00:24:39.000 Jim Jordan does not want it.

00:24:41.000 In fact, one of the worst positions in American politics is Speaker of the House.

00:24:43.000 And I gotta be honest with you, McCarthy, so far, has handled it pretty well, considering the slim majority that he actually has, and a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic President.

00:24:51.000 But here's Matt Gaetz saying he's going to file a motion to vacate the chair.

00:24:54.000 Are you going to make a motion to vacate?

00:24:56.000 Speaker McCarthy made an agreement with House conservatives in January.

00:25:00.000 And since then, he's been in brazen, repeated material breach of that agreement.

00:25:06.000 This agreement that he made with Democrats to really blow past a lot of the spending guardrails we'd set up is a last straw.

00:25:14.000 And then overnight, I learned That Kevin McCarthy had a secret deal with Democrats on Ukraine.

00:25:20.000 So as he was baiting Republicans to vote for a continuing resolution without Ukraine money, saying that we were going to jam the Senate on Ukraine, he then turns around and makes a secret deal.

00:25:30.000 Now, I know you and I probably have different views on U.S.

00:25:33.000 involvement in Ukraine, but however you think about that question, it should be subject to open review analysis and not some backroom deal.

00:25:41.000 So I do intend— Motion to vacate tomorrow?

00:25:43.000 I do intend to file a motion to vacate against Speaker McCarthy this week.

00:25:46.000 I think we need to rip off the Band-Aid.

00:25:49.000 I think we need to move on with new leadership.

00:25:52.000 Okay, so what is that leadership?

00:25:54.000 He won't say.

00:25:55.000 So he was asked, so who'd be the Speaker?

00:25:57.000 If you get rid of McCarthy, who takes over for him?

00:25:59.000 And Matt Gaetz is like, mm-mm.

00:26:02.000 If you somehow succeed after multiple tries, I mean, who would be the speaker?

00:26:07.000 Look, we have a lot of talented people in our conference.

00:26:10.000 Obviously, it's an awkward discussion while our number two, Steve Scalise, is in treatment for blood cancer.

00:26:16.000 So I'm not going to pass somebody over because they're getting a medical treatment.

00:26:20.000 I want to see how Steve Scalise comes out of that.

00:26:24.000 So, Steve Scalise is not going to be the guy.

00:26:26.000 He already does not want to be the guy.

00:26:28.000 He has said that repeatedly.

00:26:29.000 Gates says this is impersonal, by the way.

00:26:31.000 This is all based on principle, which I find hard to believe, considering that he voted with Donald Trump's position in the 117th Congress 100% of the time.

00:26:39.000 Literally 100%.

00:26:41.000 Which includes, presumably, all of Donald Trump's big budget blowouts.

00:26:45.000 Anyway, here's Matt Gaetz talking about how this is impersonal about McCarthy.

00:26:49.000 Well, matter of fact, just a couple weeks ago, Kevin McCarthy appointed me to the National Defense Conference Committee on the NDAA, and we spoke about some of our aligned defense priorities.

00:26:58.000 So, this isn't personal.

00:27:00.000 Some people make policy disagreements personal because their own policy failures are so personally embarrassing to them.

00:27:10.000 I hold no personal animus with any of my Republican colleagues.

00:27:14.000 By the way, including my Republican colleague you're about to have on next, who said some pretty terse words for me.

00:27:19.000 But at the end of the day, this is about spending.

00:27:21.000 This is about the deal Kevin made in January.

00:27:25.000 Again, it really isn't.

00:27:26.000 It really isn't.

00:27:27.000 Okay, so then Gates says, since the 1990s, it's been about debt.

00:27:30.000 It's been really about debt here.

00:27:33.000 Since the mid-90s, this government has been ruled by a continuing resolution or omnibus bill.

00:27:39.000 That's why we're $33 trillion in debt.

00:27:41.000 My plan to go into single-subject spending bills would actually allow us to put that downward pressure.

00:27:47.000 And I acknowledge that in divided government, you have to work with Senate Democrats.

00:27:51.000 You have to work with the White House.

00:27:52.000 But I don't think you should work with them on a continuing resolution or an omnibus bill.

00:27:56.000 You should make those Senate Democrats have to take up our defense bill to give troops a raise, take up our homeland security bill to make changes at the border, take up our veterans bill.

00:28:04.000 And if they did those things, people would have to vote on specific programs rather than just saying, oh, well, you know, I voted for the government funding bill, and sure, there's some stuff at the Department of Education I don't like, but I had to be there for the vets.

00:28:15.000 I mean, listen, I would love all that stuff, too.

00:28:17.000 It's also not going to happen.

00:28:18.000 And the reason it's not going to happen is because every time one of those bills gets brought up, Democrats reject it, and McCarthy doesn't have a durable enough majority in the House to actually get this stuff done in the first place.

00:28:28.000 Now, to be fair to Matt Gaetz, when it comes to spending, Matt Gaetz has voted against pretty much every budget bill that's ever been presented to him as a congressperson.

00:28:35.000 Matt Gaetz's voting record when it comes to spending is significantly better than his verbal record when it comes to spending.

00:28:40.000 He seems to become very vocal the minute that Donald Trump is not in office.

00:28:43.000 And when it came to spending while Donald Trump was in office, he voted frankly how I would vote on a lot of these budget bills, no.

00:28:49.000 But he didn't talk a lot about it because that would have put him at direct odds with President Trump.

00:28:54.000 So again, he's not wrong on the spending, but this is part of the great lie of how conservative politics works these days.

00:28:59.000 You got to get what you can get. 0.89

00:29:01.000 The notion you can always get the moon is silly.

00:29:04.000 I know that there's a whole group of people out there who believe that if you just shout loud enough that magically things manifest, that's not how this works.

00:29:12.000 When Ted Cruz decided to shut down the government over Obamacare in the vain hope that Barack Obama would repeal Obamacare, it was never going to happen.

00:29:20.000 It was never going to happen when Matt Gaetz is doing this routine in the vain hope that he's going to get Republicans to cut the budget by 50 percent.

00:29:26.000 Democrats in the Senate and Joe Biden will go along with it.

00:29:28.000 That obviously is not going to happen.

00:29:30.000 Kevin McCarthy, for his part, he says, you know, bring it on.

00:29:32.000 You want you want to do this thing again?

00:29:33.000 Let's do it.

00:29:35.000 Matt Gaetz, who says he's going to seek a motion to vacate.

00:29:40.000 He's going to try to oust you, Speaker of the House.

00:29:43.000 That's nothing new.

00:29:44.000 He's tried to do that from the moment I ran for office.

00:29:47.000 Look.

00:29:47.000 Well, this time he says he's going to keep going.

00:29:49.000 May not get there before the 15th ballot, but it took 15 for Kevin McCarthy.

00:29:53.000 He says he's coming for you.

00:29:54.000 Can you survive?

00:29:55.000 Yes, I'll survive.

00:29:56.000 You know, this is personal with Matt.

00:29:59.000 Matt voted against the most conservative ability to protect our border, secure our border.

00:30:06.000 He's more interested in securing TV interviews than doing something.

00:30:09.000 He wanted to push us into a shutdown.

00:30:12.000 Even threatening his own district with all the military people there who would not be paid only because he wants to take this motion.

00:30:19.000 So be it.

00:30:20.000 Bring it on.

00:30:20.000 Let's get over with it and let's start governing.

00:30:24.000 Again, McCarthy's not wrong about this.

00:30:26.000 One of the big problems here is, again, Matt Gaetz is not the only member of Congress in the Republican Party.

00:30:30.000 There are a bunch of Congress members who are in purple districts.

00:30:33.000 Do you want them to lose their seats, Matt Gaetz?

00:30:34.000 Apparently he doesn't care.

00:30:36.000 Because here is the thing.

00:30:37.000 Matt Gaetz can vote against these budget bills as much as he wants.

00:30:39.000 He's not losing his seat.

00:30:40.000 He's in a very red district.

00:30:41.000 But if you are, for example, Representative Mike Lawler from New York's 17th.

00:30:46.000 You're going to easily lose your seat, which means the House majority is gone.

00:30:49.000 And when the House majority is gone, what exactly is the check on Democrats doing,

00:30:52.000 whatever the hell that they want?

00:30:54.000 Here's Mike Lawler talking about this.

00:30:56.000 If they vote with Matt Gaetz, and Gaetz only needs to have a handful of Republicans

00:31:03.000 and he can remove Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

00:31:07.000 So what's your message to Democrats about whether or not to go along with that?

00:31:13.000 Ultimately, Democrats are going to make a decision for themselves.

00:31:18.000 I think it is destructive to the country to put forth this motion to vacate.

00:31:24.000 We have a lot of work to do.

00:31:25.000 The American people elected a House Republican majority to serve as a check and balance on the Biden agenda and the administration's reckless spending.

00:31:35.000 The only way to do that is to complete our appropriations work.

00:31:39.000 Hey, he's not wrong about this.

00:31:41.000 Because again, the easy tactical decision for people who are in very red areas is always take the hard line.

00:31:46.000 And then there is the overall job of Kevin McCarthy to make sure that he retains his majority and does the most conservative thing he can.

00:31:52.000 And listen, I don't think McCarthy walks on water.

00:31:54.000 I think McCarthy makes mistakes.

00:31:55.000 I think that he's done things that I wouldn't do sometimes.

00:31:58.000 Do I think that what Matt Gaetz did here makes any sense?

00:32:00.000 It's because of Matt Gaetz that the original better bill that the Republicans were going to pass got scuttled.

00:32:05.000 Meanwhile, the 2024 presidential race is heating up.

00:32:07.000 We'll get to that momentarily first.

00:32:09.000 We got a wonderful lady who works over here named Fabi. 1.00

00:32:12.000 Fabi does my makeup every morning.

00:32:14.000 She's a delight.

00:32:15.000 We love Fabi.

00:32:16.000 Also, we're all a little scared of Fabi.

00:32:18.000 Fabi is the kind of person who, if you cross her, might commit an actual killing. 0.97

00:32:23.000 And so, here's the thing.

00:32:25.000 There might come a point.

00:32:26.000 It's not today.

00:32:27.000 It's not tomorrow.

00:32:28.000 Where we feel so threatened by Fabby, I mean physically threatened by Fabby, that we have to look to ZipRecruiter in order to replace Fabby.

00:32:34.000 That'll be a very sad day.

00:32:35.000 But ZipRecruiter also makes sure that Fabby stays in line and doesn't actually murder any of the myriad people who annoy her. 1.00

00:32:41.000 Because she knows that we might go to ZipRecruiter.

00:32:44.000 So, ZipRecruiter makes our hiring process a lot faster and easier.

00:32:47.000 ZipRecruiter's powerful technology works for you to identify people whose skills and experience match your job.

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00:32:58.000 In fact, over 3.8 million businesses have come to ZipRecruiter for their hiring needs.

00:33:02.000 Let ZipRecruiter make your job easier. 0.77

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00:33:07.000 Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash dailywire to try ZipRecruiter for free.

00:33:10.000 Again, that is ZipRecruiter.com slash D-A-I-L-Y-W-I-R-E.

00:33:16.000 Again, it's places like ZipRecruiter that we originally found, Fabby, so you should go check them out right now.

00:33:20.000 Also, back in March...

00:33:22.000 My good friend launched the highly successful Jeremy's Chocolate Bars, hilariously labeled He-Him and She-Her, only one of which has nuts, which you should know, obviously.

00:33:30.000 The campaign was a huge hit.

00:33:31.000 It sold out in a matter of days.

00:33:32.000 People kept trying to order them.

00:33:33.000 We grew our inventory.

00:33:35.000 We also sold those out.

00:33:36.000 Well, now, just in time for Halloween, we are proud to announce the all-new microaggression-sized chocolate bars, because the truth is even sweeter when shared.

00:33:42.000 Fight back against the wolf corporations who think werewolves can be mummies.

00:33:45.000 Go to Jeremy'sChocolate.com.

00:33:47.000 Order your chocolate today.

00:33:48.000 Okay, meanwhile, the 2024 race continues to be Fascinating in a wide variety of ways.

00:33:53.000 On the Democratic side of the aisle, Joe Biden continues to be incredibly weak.

00:33:57.000 His entire campaign pitch is not going to be the economic side because Americans hate his economic plans.

00:34:02.000 Can't be immigration. 1.00

00:34:03.000 Americans hate his immigration plans.

00:34:04.000 Can't be crime.

00:34:05.000 Americans don't like that.

00:34:06.000 Can't really be foreign policy since Americans don't like that all that much.

00:34:09.000 It's going to be, you guessed it, Democracy is dying like me.

00:34:14.000 In any case, this is Joe Biden's entire campaign pitch.

00:34:17.000 He is, every time I see him, it doesn't matter, each individual clip on the show, he looks markedly older between the clips.

00:34:24.000 Like the aging process, he is aging like that dude at the end of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.

00:34:30.000 Like he drank the wrong cup.

00:34:32.000 He chose poorly.

00:34:35.000 Here is Joe Biden talking about democracy dying.

00:34:40.000 That's why I think that I want to increase the focus on the fundamentals here.

00:34:48.000 That democracy, literally our democracy, is at stake.

00:34:52.000 And it's by altering the institutional structures that protect it.

00:34:58.000 And I think that we're in real trouble.

00:35:03.000 Um, well, that again is only going to fly if Donald Trump, number one, is the nominee.

00:35:07.000 Number two, if he makes that the centerpiece of his campaign.

00:35:09.000 Now, both of those things could very well happen.

00:35:11.000 In fact, I'd say there's like an 80% shot that both of those things happen, that Trump is the nominee.

00:35:16.000 And that as the nominee, the centerpiece of his campaign is Trump.

00:35:19.000 Because Trump can't avoid talking about Trump.

00:35:21.000 However, there is now another confound.

00:35:23.000 So RFK Jr.

00:35:24.000 is now talking about running as an independent, which of course he is.

00:35:26.000 Because why wouldn't he?

00:35:28.000 He's not going to get the time of day in the Democratic primaries.

00:35:30.000 They're not going to allow him to run in a broad majority of Democratic primaries.

00:35:33.000 He's not going to actively be on the ballot in many of these places.

00:35:38.000 And so now, apparently, he is going to drop his bid to challenge Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination and instead mount a third-party campaign for the presidency.

00:35:47.000 This is according to a report from Mediaite.

00:35:50.000 A Kennedy campaign insider says Bobby feels the DNC is changing the rules to exclude his candidacy so an independent run is the only way to go.

00:35:58.000 So, how much of the vote will he draw?

00:36:00.000 This is an open question.

00:36:02.000 He is currently polling about 15% in the national surveys.

00:36:06.000 There's no actual good poll that shows Trump-Biden-Kennedy as a three-person race.

00:36:11.000 However, what the polls do show is that Republicans view Kennedy more warmly than Democrats do.

00:36:16.000 So, there's a poll from Quinnipiac University, for example, that shows that Republicans like Kennedy 48 to 18.

00:36:21.000 18% unfavorable, 48% favorable.

00:36:23.000 Meanwhile, for Democrats, the Quinnipiac poll shows 14% favorable, 57% unfavorable.

00:36:30.000 So, are there going to be a lot of Republican voters who actually shift away from the Republican ticket and vote for Kennedy as a third-party option?

00:36:37.000 Or are more Democrats likely to do so?

00:36:39.000 You can make the case either way.

00:36:40.000 I actually think that he's probably likely, in the end, to draw more Democrat votes.

00:36:43.000 Why?

00:36:44.000 Because many of the same people who like Kennedy in the Republican Party really like Donald Trump.

00:36:48.000 It's not the anti-Trump Republicans who like RFK Jr.

00:36:52.000 There is virtually no crossover in that Kamala Harris special Venn diagram.

00:36:56.000 That Venn diagram does not include a lot in the middle.

00:36:58.000 The people who hate Donald Trump but love R.F.K.

00:37:00.000 Jr.

00:37:01.000 Very, very small group inside the Republican Party.

00:37:03.000 However, the group of people that really don't like Joe Biden and the Democratic Party and the people who like R.F.K.

00:37:07.000 Jr.

00:37:08.000 and the Democratic Party, that actually is a pretty sizable group.

00:37:10.000 So, is he going to draw more from Republicans, more from Democrats?

00:37:13.000 My guess is, in the end, he will draw more from Democrats.

00:37:15.000 Is that enough to put Donald Trump over the top?

00:37:18.000 Theoretically, it could be.

00:37:19.000 This is why you see so much fear on the Democratic side of the aisle over a no-labels run or Cornel West or something.

00:37:24.000 They're afraid that Cornel West might draw just enough of the black vote to hurt Joe Biden.

00:37:28.000 What about like a five-candidate race, in which you have a no-labels candidate like, say, a Joe Manchin, and you have a Cornel West candidacy, which is specifically targeting the black community and some woke whites, and then you have an RFK Jr.

00:37:39.000 candidacy, which is basically the Bernie Sanders vote?

00:37:43.000 What then?

00:37:44.000 Well, all of this could chip away at Joe Biden's lead.

00:37:47.000 That is presumably one of the reasons why Republicans are pretty positive about RFK Jr.

00:37:50.000 They think that maybe he's going to thwart Joe Biden's reelect efforts.

00:37:53.000 So that is sort of a fascinating dynamic to throw into the middle of the campaign.

00:37:57.000 Meanwhile, On the Republican side of the aisle, the two mainstream candidates who are opposing Trump, because all the other candidates on the stage are there for bleeps and giggles, basically.

00:38:09.000 Vivek Ramaswamy, as I've said before, is running for Senate in Ohio, or he's running for a position in Trump's cabinet, or he's running for a podcast.

00:38:15.000 Tim Scott is there, no one knows why.

00:38:18.000 Doug Burgum, no one knows why.

00:38:19.000 Chris Christie, because he hates life.

00:38:22.000 Mike Pence because he wants to shore up his legacy.

00:38:24.000 But the only other two candidates there who are serious candidates are Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis.

00:38:29.000 Both of them had interesting weekends over the weekend.

00:38:31.000 So Ron DeSantis went on Bill Maher's show and he actually did what he should have done like three months ago.

00:38:37.000 It's an interview where he was actually able to push back against some leftist tropes.

00:38:41.000 He's able to have a few viral moments.

00:38:42.000 So he was asked by Bill Maher, you know, in the last election cycle, you backed a bunch of candidates who denied that Joe Biden won the last election.

00:38:48.000 Why did you do that?

00:38:49.000 And here is DeSantis' excellent answer.

00:38:53.000 But you campaigned for election deniers in 2022.

00:38:58.000 This I do not forgive.

00:39:01.000 To quote the Godfather.

00:39:02.000 I mean, Carrie Lake, who said, Biden is an illegitimate president.

00:39:09.000 Trump didn't?

00:39:09.000 Well, now she's attacking me, so maybe I did make a mistake there, because she's out there saying, she's trying to say that we mandated vax in Florida, when we did the opposite.

00:39:18.000 We protected people even from private mandates, so that may have been... But Trump lost the election, right?

00:39:23.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:39:24.000 Okay.

00:39:24.000 So why did you campaign for people?

00:39:26.000 Because I wanted to see Republicans win key races.

00:39:29.000 That's not a deal-breaker issue for you?

00:39:31.000 That's not democracy?

00:39:32.000 Okay, well let's go back to 2016.

00:39:35.000 Your friends in Hollywood were cutting ads telling the Electoral College to vote against Trump in the Electoral College because it was stolen.

00:39:42.000 They said Russia stole the election.

00:39:45.000 For years they said that.

00:39:46.000 So don't act like this is like a unique thing in modern history.

00:39:49.000 Hey, he's right about that.

00:39:51.000 And by the way, he's getting applause from Bill Maher's crowd, which is a typically more to the left crowd.

00:39:56.000 So that was a good moment for him.

00:39:58.000 Also, Maher, he's been clear about this.

00:40:00.000 To Bill's credit, again, I know Bill.

00:40:02.000 I'm friendly with Bill.

00:40:03.000 I like him.

00:40:04.000 He said to DeSantis, you did handle COVID better than pretty much anybody.

00:40:08.000 You keep wanting to get back to that.

00:40:10.000 And I don't blame you because you're right.

00:40:11.000 We're on the same page there.

00:40:13.000 And I think it's unfair what they did to you because you did handle it better.

00:40:18.000 You did handle it better.

00:40:19.000 You were right.

00:40:20.000 You were like, let's target the people, protect the people who are most vulnerable, and everybody else can go on with their lives a little better.

00:40:28.000 You opened schools sooner.

00:40:30.000 And a lot of the stuff that's come in, the information we have after now, we've had a few years to look at it, you were more right.

00:40:37.000 And they won't give you credit for that.

00:40:38.000 It's not about credit for me, though.

00:40:40.000 It's not about credit for me.

00:40:41.000 It's about them admitting that they were wrong.

00:40:44.000 Because they are setting us up.

00:40:46.000 If this happened again, they would repeat the same playbook all over again.

00:40:51.000 And if we don't have accountability, that's what's going to happen.

00:40:53.000 So I'll bring accountability so it never happens in our country again.

00:40:57.000 Okay, again, this is the stuff that DeSantis should have been doing months ago.

00:41:00.000 Maybe it's too late, maybe it's not.

00:41:01.000 Okay, so DeSantis is starting to, you know, actually, I think, turn it on a little bit in the late stages of the campaign.

00:41:08.000 He did a speech in California in which he went directly at Trump the way he should have all along.

00:41:11.000 He was speaking at the California GOP convention, and he said, listen, Donald Trump always talks about turning Florida red, and that's true. 0.98

00:41:18.000 I just wish that he hadn't done some of the other stuff, like turn other states blue.

00:41:22.000 One of my residents was here earlier saying that he turned Florida red.

00:41:27.000 All I will say is Ronald Reagan made the point, there's no limit to what you can do when you don't care who gets the credit.

00:41:35.000 I just wish if he was the one that turned Florida red that he wouldn't have torn Georgia and Arizona blue because that's not been good for us at all.

00:41:43.000 He's exactly right about this.

00:41:45.000 And the case that DeSantis should have been making all along is Donald Trump won an election in 2016, and he has done nothing but lose since then.

00:41:51.000 He's lost Georgia Senate races.

00:41:52.000 He's lost a presidential election to Joe Biden.

00:41:55.000 And guess what?

00:41:55.000 Winning is winning, and losing is losing, and he's lost a lot.

00:41:57.000 Okay, so DeSantis seems to at least be finding some sea legs in this campaign, even though we are now in the later stages of the campaign.

00:42:04.000 Meanwhile, Nikki Haley is also starting to get some traction.

00:42:08.000 First of all, it would be of great benefit if the race would pair down to those three. 0.90

00:42:11.000 If it paired down to those three, we could get some actual data.

00:42:13.000 It would be kind of interesting.

00:42:14.000 Right now, there are too many other candidates drawing 4%, 5%, 2% who are sticking around and sucking up money and attention for no apparent reason.

00:42:20.000 So, over the weekend, Donald Trump decided that he was going to go after Nikki Haley by calling her a bird brain.

00:42:28.000 Again, he has these nicknames for everybody.

00:42:29.000 I've never been a fan of this stuff.

00:42:32.000 First of all, it's a very, very limited group of nicknames.

00:42:35.000 It's not like he has tons of them.

00:42:36.000 They're not super creative.

00:42:38.000 In fact, they are so non-creative that he's now calling Joe Biden Crooked Joe after Crooked Hillary.

00:42:43.000 Now she's beautiful, Hillary. 0.99

00:42:44.000 She's not crooked.

00:42:45.000 She's beautiful.

00:42:47.000 Joe Biden.

00:42:48.000 Joe Biden.

00:42:49.000 They call him Joe.

00:42:50.000 Crooked Joe.

00:42:53.000 All right, okay. 0.93

00:42:55.000 Well now, he's calling Nikki Haley birdbrain.

00:42:58.000 Quote, MAGA or I will never go for birdbrain Nikki Haley. 0.96

00:43:01.000 No loyalty, plenty of lies. 0.63

00:43:03.000 Okay, this loyalty. 1.00

00:43:05.000 Nothing drives me crazier than the absolute stupidity of a man who is unbelievably disloyal to extraordinary numbers of people. 1.00

00:43:12.000 Including, by the way, January 6th protesters who are in jail because of him. 1.00

00:43:15.000 He did not pay their legal bills.

00:43:16.000 He did not intervene in any way.

00:43:18.000 Those are his biggest fans.

00:43:20.000 And Donald Trump suggesting loyalty when he has crapped on pretty much everybody who's ever worked for him, as like his great test, makes me a little annoyed.

00:43:31.000 A little annoyed. 0.98

00:43:32.000 Just because it's ridiculous. 0.93

00:43:34.000 You want to say that Nikki Haley shouldn't run because she's a bad candidate? 1.00

00:43:36.000 Sure.

00:43:37.000 You want to say that Nikki Haley has no business running because she was in your administration and you're running? 0.99

00:43:41.000 And the fact is that if she was willing to serve you in that administration and thought it was a good administration, what'd she do in there?

00:43:46.000 Okay, I get it.

00:43:47.000 But loyalty?

00:43:48.000 Like, loyalty?

00:43:49.000 Donald Trump calling on people for loyalty is just, like, beyond.

00:43:53.000 I don't understand.

00:43:53.000 In any case, he tweets, Maga or I will never go for birdbrain Nikki Haley.

00:43:58.000 No loyalty. 0.66

00:43:58.000 Plenty of lies. 0.66

00:44:01.000 He says, her words mean nothing.

00:44:02.000 She even came to Mar-a-Lago with her family.

00:44:04.000 Anyway, Haley doesn't have the talent or temperament to do the job. 1.00

00:44:06.000 Again, he's the one who made her the UN ambassador, so there's that.

00:44:09.000 And gave her cabinet-level status. 0.98

00:44:12.000 Well then, his campaign, and this is typical of the way that the Trump campaign works, in other words, amusing, but incredibly ridiculous and impure. 0.92

00:44:23.000 He sent a birdcage to Nikki Haley's door in Des Moines, Iowa. 0.96

00:44:28.000 It says, from Trump campaign, it's a birdcage with some birdseed because he called her birdbrain at Nikki Haley.

00:44:32.000 So first of all, if we were going to test pure IQs, Nikki versus Trump, I just got to tell you, I don't think Trump wins that.

00:44:39.000 I really don't.

00:44:43.000 Donald Trump has a lot of flattering ideas about his own intelligence.

00:44:47.000 He's great at a great many things.

00:44:48.000 Unlike a pure IQ test, does that dude score two standard deviations above the American average?

00:44:53.000 I don't know.

00:44:54.000 In any case, his campaign sends her a birdcage, because this is the way that we campaign in America now, like fifth grade school children. 0.76

00:45:00.000 It's been true since 2015, and it really is, again, a point of annoyance.

00:45:04.000 I know some people find this endlessly entertaining, I know.

00:45:06.000 And I know that they'll find it endlessly entertaining when Donald Trump as a candidate sends a wheelchair to Joe Biden's front door.

00:45:11.000 And it'll be really funny.

00:45:12.000 And I'll laugh too.

00:45:13.000 And it ain't gonna win him any additional votes.

00:45:16.000 So anyway, he sent that to Nikki Haley.

00:45:18.000 And the way the Trump campaign works is that Nikki Haley then tweets that out. 1.00

00:45:23.000 Because after a day of campaigning, this is the message waiting for me outside my hotel room. 0.97

00:45:26.000 Hashtag pretty pathetic try again. 0.94

00:45:27.000 Hashtag you just made my case for me. 0.97

00:45:29.000 And then all the replies are, all the replies from the Trump crowd are, this is Jussie Smollett.

00:45:37.000 This is fake.

00:45:38.000 It's not real.

00:45:39.000 It's not true.

00:45:41.000 It didn't happen this way.

00:45:42.000 What is this nonsense?

00:45:43.000 It's all bull... Okay, there's only one problem with that. 0.90

00:45:46.000 There's only one problem with that.

00:45:48.000 Trump's campaign literally sent the picture to Mark Caputo to tweet out, So, it went from, as with every Trump narrative, it went from, he definitely didn't do that, to, I mean, how dare you?

00:45:59.000 You're making that up, too.

00:46:00.000 He did do it and it was a joke.

00:46:01.000 Pretty funny, huh, huh?

00:46:02.000 It's like, okay, guys, pick one.

00:46:03.000 Seriously, pick one.

00:46:04.000 It's just, like, the gaslighting is so strong, and I get that it's all prankster bullcrap and it's all memery and all the rest of this, but at a certain point, shouldn't...

00:46:13.000 From Congress to the presidency, shouldn't everybody grow up a little bit?

00:46:17.000 Like, just a little. 0.97

00:46:17.000 Like, grow the f*** up a little bit. 0.97

00:46:20.000 Come on. 0.96

00:46:21.000 I'm not just talking about Trump. 0.98

00:46:22.000 I'm talking about Biden, who acts like a child.

00:46:24.000 I'm talking about Lauren Boebert at Beetlejuice.

00:46:26.000 I'm talking about Matt Gaetz challenging Kevin McCarthy on the basis of, what, scuttling a better deal for conservatives?

00:46:34.000 I'm talking about Jamal Bowman pulling the fire alarm or AOC doing Instagrams of herself putting her face in ice water while she jabbers about democratic socialism. 0.54

00:46:43.000 Why is our class of politicos a group of five-year-olds?

00:46:46.000 I don't understand.

00:46:48.000 Maybe I do.

00:46:49.000 In the end, I guess it's the voters' fault.

00:46:51.000 My ire today runs strong.

00:46:53.000 My kids got me up at 5.45 in the morning and annoyed me, and they are less annoying than our political class.

00:46:58.000 In other news, Dianne Feinstein died over the weekend.

00:47:01.000 Dianne Feinstein was, of course, incredibly elderly. 0.69

00:47:06.000 She died at a ripe old age, having served in Congress for several years longer than she was fully sentient.

00:47:12.000 She was 90 years old.

00:47:15.000 And she was given the traditional send-off of the media, which was pathological worship of her record.

00:47:22.000 They termed her a centrist, which is very weird since she had basically a 100% voting record with Joe Biden.

00:47:27.000 I struggle to see what exactly about her record was centrist in any way.

00:47:30.000 She was a far-left liberal person.

00:47:33.000 She is, in my book, good in terms of politics. 0.97

00:47:38.000 She did one good thing, and that was this amazing clip of Dianne Feinstein.

00:47:42.000 It's still one of my favorite political clips of all time.

00:47:44.000 A bunch of environmentalist children arrive at her office to chide her about her environmental record, and she's like, your children get out.

00:47:51.000 We're trying to ask you to vote yes on the Green New Deal.

00:47:56.000 Okay, I'll tell you what.

00:47:59.000 We have our own Green New Deal.

00:48:01.000 Some scientists have said that we have 12 years to turn this around.

00:48:07.000 Well, it's not going to get turned around in 10 years.

00:48:10.000 What we can do... Senator, if this doesn't get turned around in 10 years, you're looking at the faces of the people who are going to be living with you.

00:48:17.000 The government is supposed to be for the people and by the people and You know what's interesting about this group?

00:48:25.000 I've been doing this for 30 years.

00:48:28.000 I know what I'm doing.

00:48:29.000 You come in here and you say it has to be my way or the highway.

00:48:35.000 I don't respond to that.

00:48:37.000 I've gotten elected.

00:48:39.000 I just ran.

00:48:40.000 I was elected by almost a million vote plurality.

00:48:45.000 And I know what I'm doing.

00:48:48.000 Wreck the children! 1.00

00:48:49.000 Do it! 0.98

00:48:50.000 Yes.

00:48:51.000 Love it.

00:48:52.000 That is awesome.

00:48:54.000 So, yeah.

00:48:55.000 Fond farewell to Dianne Feinstein on that score.

00:48:58.000 And again, best wishes to her family.

00:48:59.000 Disagreed with her on everything politically, but she did dedicate three decades of her life to serving in the United States Senate. 0.94

00:49:05.000 Nancy Pelosi says she left on her own terms.

00:49:07.000 Again, that is a weird way to say that she should have left the Senate several years ago when she was no longer mentally functional, which is obviously true.

00:49:14.000 Here's Nancy Pelosi.

00:49:17.000 Yesterday you accompanied Senator Dianne Feinstein on her final journey home to San Francisco aboard the military plane.

00:49:22.000 It must have been a difficult journey.

00:49:24.000 What was going through your mind during the flight?

00:49:29.000 Well, I was with her daughter, and see, with Diane, it's obviously official, it's political, and it's very personal.

00:49:39.000 This is a woman who, she left on her own terms. 0.94

00:49:42.000 You saw how she answered Larry Craig, but she did that any number of times when colleagues or others tried to minimize her standing on an issue.

00:49:54.000 She and I were not always on the same place on the spectrum of politics, but we all cared about our country.

00:50:00.000 Again, when Nancy Pelosi says stuff like that, I start to vomit a little bit.

00:50:05.000 When we all cared about our country, Nancy Pelosi is as far left as it's possible to be.

00:50:09.000 Her behavior in office has been egregious on multiple occasions, but

00:50:12.000 again, when somebody passes away and they've done a lot of public service, then they deserve some respect for that.

00:50:17.000 Now, on to the next controversy, which is Gavin Newsom.

00:50:20.000 So Gavin Newsom has to fill her seat. 0.96

00:50:21.000 This means that this is the second Senate seat that he has had to fill.

00:50:24.000 The first one was Kamala Harris when she was, for no reason at all, except that she's a black woman, appointed Vice President of the United States by Joe Biden.

00:50:32.000 And she was then replaced by Alex Padilla.

00:50:36.000 Who no one had ever heard of.

00:50:37.000 And now, after Dianne Feinstein has died, Governor Gavin Newsom is getting pressure to fill that seat with a black woman. 0.85

00:50:42.000 Because obviously, if Kamala Harris is replaced by a Latino man, this means that the next seat has to be replaced by a black woman. 1.00

00:50:48.000 This is how we do staffing in Democratic administrations.

00:50:51.000 Now, there's a problem.

00:50:52.000 He doesn't like Barbara Lee.

00:50:53.000 So Barbara Lee Who is the prominent black congressperson running for the seat. 1.00

00:50:58.000 She obviously wanted to basically just inherit the seat. 1.00

00:51:01.000 And Gavin Newsom didn't want to intervene in that because he has Adam Schiff running for that office.

00:51:05.000 Nancy Pelosi wants Adam Schiff in that office. 0.99

00:51:07.000 There are a bunch of other candidates who are running.

00:51:09.000 So instead, he has decided to choose off the board.

00:51:11.000 He's going off the board and selecting a person named LaFonza Butler to the seat.

00:51:15.000 Now, who the hell is LaFonza Butler?

00:51:17.000 LaFonza Butler is a lesbian democratic strategist and advisor to Kamala Harris's 2020 presidential campaign. 1.00

00:51:24.000 In which she was wildly successful by the way.

00:51:26.000 Kamala Harris was, she must have been such an amazing campaign advisor that Kamala Harris had to drop out before California. 1.00

00:51:30.000 She was such a good campaign advisor.

00:51:33.000 She is the only black woman serving in the U.S.

00:51:35.000 Senate according to the AP and the first openly LGBTQ person to represent California in the chamber.

00:51:41.000 She leads Emily's list.

00:51:42.000 So all she does is abortion. 1.00

00:51:44.000 She's also a former labor leader with SEIU 2015.

00:51:47.000 So, I mean, her wild left-wing credentials are well in order. 0.99

00:51:50.000 She's a lesbian black woman who leads an organization devoted to abortion and is a former labor leader with the SEIU. 0.90

00:51:57.000 She also happens to not be from California, so there's that. 0.73

00:52:00.000 In her biography, on the EMILY's List website, it says she's from Maryland.

00:52:03.000 She owns a residence in Maryland.

00:52:04.000 She's from Maryland.

00:52:05.000 So congratulations to Maryland on getting a third senator, I suppose.

00:52:09.000 The reason Gavin Newsom did this, obviously, he checks the box that says black woman.

00:52:12.000 He also doesn't endorse Barbara Lee, so he doesn't have to piss off Adam Schiff and his crowd.

00:52:17.000 So clever pick by Gavin Newsom, who definitely is not running in 2024, guys.

00:52:21.000 He's definitely not running or hoping that Joe Biden will simply keel over and open things up.

00:52:26.000 So, again, clever political move by Gavin Newsom, but demonstrative, once again, of the fact that the way to get ahead inside the Democratic Party is to have some pretty excellent intersectional credentials.

00:52:37.000 Okay, time for some things that I like and then some things that I hate.

00:52:40.000 So, things that I like today.

00:52:42.000 I have to say that it is amusing to watch Democrats F around and find out when it comes to immigration.

00:52:48.000 So, Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, the state's being inundated with illegal immigrants who are being shipped from the southern border because, turns out, a lot of people who cross the southern border would like to go to New York.

00:52:58.000 She's like, well, you know what might be a solution would be to restrict migration.

00:53:01.000 Oh, you don't say, Kathy!

00:53:03.000 Here we go.

00:53:04.000 It can be done.

00:53:05.000 This can be done in a bipartisan way, comprehensive immigration form.

00:53:10.000 What specifically do you want?

00:53:13.000 Well, we want them to have a limit on who can come across the border.

00:53:17.000 It is too open right now.

00:53:19.000 People coming from all over the world are finding their way through, simply saying they need asylum, and the majority of them seem to be ending up in the streets of New York, and that is a real problem for New York City.

00:53:31.000 125,000 newly arrived individuals, and we are being taxed.

00:53:36.000 Now, we are always so proud of the fact that New York Has the Statue of Liberty in our harbor.

00:53:41.000 We are one of the most diverse places on earth because of our welcoming nature and it's in our DNA to welcome immigrants.

00:53:48.000 But there has to be some limits in place and Congress has to put more controls at the border and not in this budget threat, shutdown threat.

00:53:58.000 Talk about eliminating positions for Border Patrol when we actually need to double or quadruple those numbers.

00:54:03.000 So get back to work and do your jobs.

00:54:06.000 So yeah, there is great irony to all the Democrats who are claiming, what does it say on the Statue of Liberty?

00:54:11.000 Look at the Statue of Liberty, what does it say?

00:54:13.000 Well, it's in New York and apparently you guys can't read, so that's exciting news.

00:54:16.000 The New York Times has an entire piece today titled, Why Can't We Stop Unauthorized Immigration?

00:54:21.000 Because it works!

00:54:22.000 Apparently it's amazing.

00:54:24.000 According to the New York Times, responding to the sense of crisis in New York and around the nation, the Department of Homeland Security recently announced it would grant temporary protected status to about 472,000 Venezuelans Allowing them 18 months to live and work in the United States.

00:54:36.000 This measure may help New York because many of the migrants there have traveled to the state from Venezuela.

00:54:40.000 But as Eric Adams pointed out on the Upper West Side, New York now also shelters migrants from all over the globe, including Ecuador, Eastern Europe, and West Africa.

00:54:48.000 So the Biden administration's decision on temporary protected status is at best a partial and fleeting solution.

00:54:53.000 The variations in policy between administrations have had almost no effect on the number of migrants trying to enter the United States through the southern border.

00:55:00.000 So why exactly is this happening?

00:55:01.000 Well, because, says the New York Times, everybody is very mobile.

00:55:05.000 Also, our labor markets require low-cost labor, and American consumers benefit from the low-cost labor, which, by the way, if the New York Times thought about this for two seconds, they might think, hey, maybe the unions that we're constantly backing are actually a problem for the cost of labor in the United States.

00:55:21.000 Legal immigration today is close to impossible for most people, so a lot of people are trying to get through the southern border, and that's why.

00:55:28.000 Okay, well, number one, that doesn't answer why exactly we shouldn't shut the border on a moral level.

00:55:32.000 But also, it does raise the question, if what you are saying is that the reason illegal immigration is mandatory is because we need lower labor costs, maybe you should stop backing inflationary public policy that jacks up labor costs, from union policy, to monetary and fiscal policy, to welfare programs that allow for low pay in the private sector, but that are then subsidized by the taxpayer.

00:55:52.000 Maybe those things.

00:55:54.000 No?

00:55:54.000 Nothing?

00:55:55.000 Bueller?

00:55:56.000 Well, I guess then you're just going to have to deal with the fallout.

00:55:59.000 Alrighty, guys, the rest of the show continues right now.

00:56:00.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:56:01.000 We'll be getting into Kerry Washington, the actress. 0.86

00:56:03.000 She has a new book out and she has some fascinating things to say.

00:56:06.000 Become a member.

00:56:07.000 Use code Shapiro.

00:56:07.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 02, 2023

Idiot Congressman Pulls Fire Alarm

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