The Ben Shapiro Show - Republican Debate Week Begins!

00:00:00.000 Well, we finally reached it.

00:00:01.000 It is debate week on Wednesday this week.

00:00:04.000 There will be a Republican debate.

00:00:06.000 Will the frontrunner be part of that Republican debate?

00:00:07.000 Absolutely not.

00:00:09.000 Donald Trump's like, no, not interested.

00:00:11.000 I'm leading by 80,000 points.

00:00:12.000 I don't need to be part of the debate.

00:00:14.000 And frankly, I totally get it.

00:00:15.000 I get it.

00:00:15.000 He did the same thing in 2016 after the Megyn Kelly debate where he didn't like the questions he was asked.

00:00:20.000 He simply left.

00:00:21.000 The next debate, he just absconded.

00:00:22.000 He was like, I'm not going to be part of this.

00:00:24.000 It didn't hurt him in any way, shape, or form.

00:00:26.000 On a logical level, it makes perfect sense for him not to take part in the Republican debate.

00:00:30.000 On a sort of principled level, he certainly should because there are serious questions to be asked about whether he should be the nominee or not.

00:00:35.000 This is true for anybody who's running for the nomination.

00:00:37.000 Joe Biden should be debating Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for sure.

00:00:40.000 And people who are voting for Trump in the primaries should remember this tactic because I promise you, promise you, promise you, one year from now, When Joe Biden is the nominee, if Donald Trump is the nominee, Joe Biden will not debate Donald Trump.

00:00:51.000 Get ready for it.

00:00:52.000 It ain't gonna happen.

00:00:53.000 Joe Biden will make any excuse.

00:00:54.000 He's not gonna get on a stage with him.

00:00:55.000 And Donald Trump's people will say, well, he's afraid.

00:00:57.000 And at that point, every Democrat and every member of the media will come back and say, well, Donald Trump didn't debate any of the Republicans.

00:01:02.000 Why exactly should Joe Biden debate Donald Trump?

00:01:05.000 Biden's excuse will be something about Trump being an insurrectionary, or Trump being a criminal indictee, or whatever it is.

00:01:11.000 And the media will side with Joe Biden, and there will be no debate.

00:01:14.000 So if you are nominating Donald Trump because you think he's going to debate Joe Biden, just get ready, Joe Biden is not going to debate Donald Trump.

00:01:18.000 But, put that aside, there's a perfectly logical reason for Donald Trump not to debate the rest of the Republican field.

00:01:23.000 Namely, he is leading them by leaps and bounds.

00:01:26.000 There's a brand new CBS poll, and what it shows is Trump way out in front, at 62% of the vote.

00:01:34.000 62% of the vote for Donald Trump.

00:01:36.000 That is a massive number for Donald Trump.

00:01:38.000 Now, one of the theories about Trump had been that he was going to hover around in the 30s, maybe in the 40s.

00:01:42.000 If he was lucky, he would break 50.

00:01:44.000 Him at 62% is not challengeable.

00:01:46.000 Because what that means at 62%, obviously, is that no consolidation of the field is likely to matter.

00:01:51.000 Now, it's obviously super early.

00:01:53.000 A lot can happen between now and January, including possible actual court time for the former president of the United States.

00:02:00.000 However, a huge percentage of Trump's base is very locked in on Donald Trump, which man,

00:02:07.000 you buy the ticket, you're going to take the ride.

00:02:09.000 Whatever it's going to be, it's going to be.

00:02:11.000 I'm just going to say every tautology I know right now, because the reality is that everyone

00:02:15.000 knows Donald Trump's flaws as a candidate.

00:02:16.000 Every single person in the United States has an opinion on Donald Trump.

00:02:19.000 Donald Trump is baked into the cake.

00:02:22.000 You're taking an awful big bet, Vader.

00:02:24.000 This had better work.

00:02:25.000 I mean, if Donald Trump is the nominee, you're running directly against four separate indictments that are coming down in the first half of next year.

00:02:32.000 You're running directly against the generalized American perception that Donald Trump was not a good actor between November 4th of 2020 and January 6th of 2021.

00:02:43.000 That's just what it is.

00:02:44.000 Okay, if you look at the polling on the general election data right now, general election data says that Donald Trump is competitive with Joe Biden, but Donald Trump is not breaking 45, 46% in any poll.

00:02:53.000 Those are the upper end polls for him in the general election cycle.

00:02:55.000 Now, you may think that's going to change because the economy is going to collapse.

00:02:58.000 You may think that's going to change because Joe Biden has health problems.

00:03:01.000 You may think that's going to change because of all of the Hunter Biden of it.

00:03:03.000 All of that may well happen.

00:03:05.000 Right?

00:03:05.000 Whoever is the nominee of a major American party has a shot at becoming president of the United States, as we learned in 2016, when the New York Times had Donald Trump as a 1% possibility of becoming president.

00:03:14.000 And then, by the end of the night, on election night, he was the president of the United States.

00:03:18.000 So, if he is the nominee, sure, there's a good shot he could become president.

00:03:21.000 By good, I mean like, if you're trying to ballpark this thing out, a 1 in 3 shot of him being president of the United States because he lost all the states he would need to win next time.

00:03:29.000 He would need to win Georgia.

00:03:30.000 He would need to win Arizona.

00:03:31.000 That would not even be sufficient.

00:03:32.000 He would then have to win one of the following three.

00:03:34.000 Wisconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania, right?

00:03:37.000 And right now, in the state polling, he is losing in all of those places, right?

00:03:41.000 The only place where he may be competitive among those states right now is Georgia.

00:03:46.000 That is largely because of the presence of Brian Kemp in the state of Georgia, who remains a popular figure.

00:03:51.000 But there are going to be a lot of states that are up for play in 2024 if Donald Trump is the nominee.

00:03:56.000 And it's not just the ones I mentioned.

00:03:57.000 North Carolina is going to be up for play.

00:03:59.000 I know a lot of people are sleeping on Texas.

00:04:00.000 I don't want to be alarmist here, but Ted Cruz is going to run a rough race in the Senate in Texas, especially because Greg Abbott, who is a popular governor of Texas, is not going to be top of the ballot.

00:04:10.000 Last time Cruz ran, you have to remember that Greg Abbott was also running.

00:04:14.000 Greg Abbott was a popular governor, this is in 2018, and Ted Cruz ended up winning over Beto O'Rourke by a couple hundred thousand votes out of about eight million votes cast.

00:04:23.000 Well, that race could be really, really tight this time because Greg Abbott is not at the top of the ticket, and that could be a real problem for Donald Trump, yes, believe it or not, in Texas.

00:04:30.000 That's not necessarily going to happen, but do Democrats see that as a state that is in play if Donald Trump is on the ballot?

00:04:35.000 They do.

00:04:36.000 So, again, Donald Trump, right now, leading in the Republican field by leaps and bounds.

00:04:42.000 Also, in terms of a general election, If you are, that is at best a 50-50 bet.

00:04:48.000 Now, is it possible that that's better than any of the other Republicans?

00:04:52.000 I tend to doubt it, but certainly it's possible.

00:04:55.000 Anything is possible at this point, but do I think, in my heart of hearts, that Donald Trump is as likely to win the presidency if he is the nominee as pretty much any of the other Republican candidates who don't have the same baked-in negatives as Donald Trump?

00:05:07.000 I think that Trump has some very, very big problems that face him.

00:05:11.000 So you can hope that Joe Biden is just really, really bad and that anyone can sneak in, but that's not really an argument for Trump.

00:05:16.000 That's an argument that pretty much anybody can sneak in if Joe Biden is the candidate, which requires you to ask the question as to whether then Trump should be the nominee.

00:05:24.000 Anyway, none of this matters in terms of the actual data today.

00:05:27.000 The actual data today, whatever I say, Donald Trump is winning the nomination by leaps and bounds.

00:05:32.000 Again, the CBS poll has him up over the nearest competitor.

00:05:36.000 By 46 points.

00:05:38.000 By 46 points.

00:05:40.000 And again, that is not because it was split in the field.

00:05:42.000 That is because he is at 62% of the vote.

00:05:45.000 So, the CBS poll going into the debate week.

00:05:49.000 It's pretty fascinating, because it shows how the Republican electorate is thinking about Donald Trump.

00:05:52.000 We'll get to that in just one moment.

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00:06:59.000 Okay, so back to the CBS poll.

00:07:02.000 Voters who were likely GOP primary voters were asked, which concerns you more about the latest Trump indictments?

00:07:08.000 Whether it's politically motivated, whether Trump tried to overturn the presidential election, or both.

00:07:13.000 77% say the indictment is politically motivated, which of course is true. 0.98

00:07:17.000 As far as top reasons for considering Trump, 99% Among those who are or might be considering voting for Trump, 99% say things were better under Trump, which is true.

00:07:28.000 95% fights for people like me, 76% know him better than other candidates, and 74% always been a supporter.

00:07:33.000 Can you remember?

00:07:35.000 That is like 74% of people who say they've always been a supporter of Trump

00:07:39.000 who are in that 62%, which is still above 50% or just below 50% by the calculation.

00:07:45.000 As far as whether you're supporting Trump because of his legal indictments,

00:07:52.000 73% of Trump's voters, 73% say that you are voting for him because you are showing support

00:07:57.000 for him during the legal indictments.

00:08:00.000 That is what the CBS polling says now.

00:08:02.000 I have.

00:08:03.000 a pretty serious sort of intellectual problem with this, which is you don't nominate a candidate

00:08:09.000 because you wish to show support for them on an ancillary issue. You nominate a candidate

00:08:12.000 because you wish for them to win. So over the weekend I asked people like, let's assume for

00:08:16.000 a second that these two things are in conflict. Supporting Donald Trump in terms of giving your

00:08:19.000 money to him and your nomination to him and winning the general election.

00:08:24.000 Which one is more important?

00:08:25.000 Like supporting him in the trials by giving him the nomination?

00:08:27.000 Or winning the election if those two things are in opposition?

00:08:30.000 And virtually everybody said that they were very much interested in winning the election.

00:08:34.000 But what's gonna have to happen for people to actually realize that is for people to actually start thinking of those two things in opposition.

00:08:40.000 It may be too early for that because again, the polling numbers for Joe Biden are so low at this point that Trump looks competitive even with the indictments.

00:08:47.000 Meanwhile, this is pretty amazing.

00:08:49.000 Among those who say that honesty is very important in the GOP nomination, 61% say That the most honest candidate, the candidate who they choose, if honesty is a top priority for them, 61% say Trump, 17% say DeSantis.

00:09:06.000 Now, I understand that when people answer this question, they're not using truth to mean truth.

00:09:11.000 They're using truth as a proxy for says the things he feels like saying at any given moment.

00:09:15.000 They're using truth as a proxy for authenticity, which again, I have an intellectual problem with.

00:09:19.000 Truth is not authenticity.

00:09:20.000 I know an awful lot of authentic people who lie on the regular.

00:09:24.000 I know an awful lot of authentic people who are really quite terrible.

00:09:26.000 Because authenticity is not a moral quality.

00:09:29.000 Authenticity is you having no actual brain-to-mouth filter.

00:09:32.000 It turns out that many of the most considerate, best people you know are inauthentic in the sense that if you consider authenticity to be whatever your instinct is that day, then you actually have to sit there and be like, okay, I'm not going to be authentic when I tell my wife she looks fat in that dress. 0.98

00:09:46.000 That'd be a stupid thing to do. 1.00

00:09:48.000 Or when I tell my neighbor that he's a jerk. 1.00

00:09:52.000 Would it make you more authentic to say that? 1.00

00:09:53.000 Sure!

00:09:54.000 You'd be like Jim Carrey in Liar Liar, and that would make you authentic.

00:09:57.000 Would it make you, like, particularly a good person?

00:09:59.000 Would it make you somebody who speaks the truth?

00:10:02.000 Very often, the thing that you say that's authentic is not true.

00:10:07.000 Because you're defending yourself.

00:10:09.000 My seven-year-old son, constantly, when he gets in trouble, he, very authentically, will tell me that it is not his fault, and it is 100% his fault.

00:10:16.000 This sort of stuff happens all the time with kids.

00:10:18.000 However, Again, my opinion on this doesn't matter, the GOP voters' opinion matters.

00:10:23.000 61% of all GOP voters in the primary say that Donald Trump is their candidate if honesty is very important to them.

00:10:32.000 Not only that, among Trump voters, 71% of Trump voters say, they were given options as to what they feel, they were given a bunch of sources, and they were asked, okay, of these sources, who do you trust most to tell you what is true?

00:10:48.000 This is a pretty amazing stat. 0.99

00:10:50.000 So Trump voters were asses. 0.99

00:10:52.000 Of those Trump voters, 42% said they trust their religious leaders to tell them true things. 0.99

00:10:56.000 Which is, like, astonishing.

00:10:57.000 That's an astonishingly low number.

00:11:00.000 42% trust their religious leaders to tell them true things.

00:11:02.000 56% say conservative media figures.

00:11:05.000 63% say friends and family.

00:11:08.000 And 71% say Trump.

00:11:11.000 Which means that of Trump voters, they actually trust Donald Trump to say true things to them.

00:11:17.000 More than they trust their friends and family, conservative media figures, or their own religious leaders.

00:11:22.000 Well, I mean, bottom line is that on a utilitarian level, you can't break that stranglehold.

00:11:29.000 How exactly do you break that stranglehold?

00:11:30.000 How do you say that Donald Trump is not telling you the truth when he is not telling you the truth when you trust Trump more than you trust the person who's saying that Trump is not telling you the truth?

00:11:36.000 There's no way to break that stranglehold, per se.

00:11:40.000 Which is why, really, the only attack line that ever was going to get any traction with regard to a huge percentage of primary voters was the Donald Trump is not the most likely candidate to win this election.

00:11:52.000 Which, again, I think that's true, but Donald Trump is saying the opposite, and a lot of these people trust Donald Trump to say the true thing.

00:11:59.000 So when Donald Trump says, I'm going to win, and I'm winning big in all the polls, and there are no polls showing him winning big against Joe Biden, doesn't matter.

00:12:05.000 They trust him more than they trust the polls.

00:12:06.000 They trust him more than they trust friends and family.

00:12:09.000 Donald Trump has forged a connection with the people who support him stronger than any political figure of my lifetime.

00:12:16.000 That is just a fact.

00:12:18.000 Whether I like it or not.

00:12:19.000 Whether you like it or not.

00:12:21.000 And that connection means that it doesn't matter what the facts are or what the data are or any of the rest of this.

00:12:28.000 It means that if he says that he is going to win, people trust him that he's going to win.

00:12:32.000 If he said that he did win, people trust him that he did win.

00:12:35.000 If he says the polls show that he's winning by leaps and bounds, people trust.

00:12:37.000 He can shift his position on a dime and people still trust him because he has become a source of all of enormous truth.

00:12:44.000 Again, more than religious leaders and friends and family for a lot of Republican voters.

00:12:48.000 Now, with all of that said, there are a few downsides in this poll for Donald Trump.

00:12:53.000 50% of people in this poll, likely GOP primary voters, say that the campaign has been too much about Trump.

00:13:00.000 31% say about the right amount.

00:13:02.000 19% say not enough about Trump.

00:13:04.000 So it's split about 50-50.

00:13:05.000 Too much about Trump, not enough about Trump.

00:13:08.000 As far as who people think would beat Biden, again, these are the stats that start to border on what I think is the unfactual.

00:13:18.000 61% of Republican voters say that Donald Trump is the candidate most likely to beat Joe Biden.

00:13:23.000 61%.

00:13:24.000 35% say DeSantis, 20% Scott, 18% Vivek, 14% Haley, 14% Pence.

00:13:26.000 As far as DeSantis, would he beat Biden?

00:13:27.000 got 18% Vivek, 14% Haley, 14% Pence.

00:13:31.000 As far as DeSantis, would he be Biden?

00:13:35.000 Right now, only 35% of Republican voters say that DeSantis would definitely be Biden,

00:13:42.000 as opposed to 50% in June.

00:13:43.000 47% say that he might, and 18% say that he'd be a long shot.

00:13:48.000 So one of the things that is happening here is also that Again, that generalized perception that the best candidate to beat Biden would be Trump is being bolstered by two separate perceptions.

00:14:01.000 One is in DeSantis' control and one is not.

00:14:03.000 One is that Joe Biden is so weak in the polling that there's a perception that anyone, including Trump, can beat him.

00:14:08.000 And the other is that DeSantis himself has not run any good campaigns at this point.

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00:15:17.000 Okay, so.

00:15:18.000 All of this brings this to the debate itself.

00:15:21.000 As you say, Donald Trump, right now, he's got a lock on two-thirds of the Republican base, or at least half of the Republican base.

00:15:26.000 And, you know, again, any consolidation of the field right now does not look sufficient to overcome it.

00:15:32.000 This is why he's not going to participate in the debate and is going to undermine the debate itself, right?

00:15:36.000 He's doing a pre-taped interview with Tucker Carlson, which makes perfect sense.

00:15:40.000 It allows him to slap directly against Fox News the way that going on Tucker does, since Fox News fired Tucker.

00:15:46.000 And meanwhile, he'll get big numbers on Twitter now.

00:15:49.000 Those numbers are not comparable to actual cable news numbers.

00:15:52.000 Numbers on Twitter, if you hover over a tweet for more than a second or two, it counts as a view.

00:15:56.000 But those will be people who engage at a very high level with that.

00:16:00.000 And it doesn't matter, he doesn't have to out-compete it.

00:16:02.000 He just has to degrade the debate itself.

00:16:04.000 And by the way, he'll be the subject of the debate anyway.

00:16:07.000 No matter what happens, the guy who's leading by 40 points not being on the stage, A lot of questions are going to be about Trump in that debate.

00:16:13.000 And Ronna Romney McDaniel, understanding that very likely Trump is the nominee, she's basically acquiescing to all of his requests about the debate, even while he's undercutting the debate.

00:16:22.000 So she's kind of begging him to be part of the debate.

00:16:25.000 Of course, he's not going to do that, but she's then allowing all of his surrogates into the spin room to spin for him. 0.86

00:16:29.000 She's allowing Kerry Lake and Matt Gaetz and and Byron Donald and all these people who are like Trump's surrogates in the room.

00:16:36.000 Their man is ditching the debate and she Who has been, I gotta say, the most incompetent RNC director of my lifetime. 1.00

00:16:42.000 The only one who's a challenger is Michael Steele.

00:16:44.000 She's the... I mean, it's insane that this lady's retained her job. 1.00

00:16:47.000 I said this when she was up for the re-elect for RNC.

00:16:52.000 Full disclosure, I'm friendly with Harmeet Dhillon.

00:16:53.000 She represented us with regard to our case against the federal government to stop the OSHA VAX mandate under Joe Biden. 0.93

00:17:00.000 I said at the time, I don't understand how you get your ass kicked in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022 and you keep your job. 0.99

00:17:07.000 Which speaks to, in general, the state of the Republican Party, which has basically become a non-profit for losers. 0.98

00:17:13.000 It's a bunch of people who can't win an election, and then they're like, we couldn't win the election because of this extraneous factor, give us more money.

00:17:19.000 And feel bad for us.

00:17:20.000 How this lady has retained her job is beyond me. 0.93

00:17:22.000 She's running a party That has lost several elections running has underperformed in all the elections where it should be overperforming is running up into a 2024 election cycle where Republicans should retake the Senate and now are very easily on the verge of continuing to lose the Senate and maybe the presidency again.

00:17:40.000 And she's holding a debate among Republican candidates sponsored by the Republican Party and basically declaring her own party irrelevant. 0.99

00:17:46.000 Because her role is irrelevant. 0.75

00:17:48.000 Well, what exactly does the RNC stand for if the guy says, screw you and your debate, I'm going on Tucker. 0.98

00:17:53.000 And she's like, well, why don't you bring all your surrogates in here, in the spin room, so they can rip all the candidates on stage that your candidate didn't have the balls to come and actually speak to. 1.00

00:18:01.000 Here's Ronna Romney McDaniel. 0.69

00:18:04.000 So let's take a look at the lineup there.

00:18:06.000 I think that President Trump will not be there on the debate night.

00:18:10.000 What are your thoughts on that?

00:18:11.000 And who did make the debate stage?

00:18:13.000 Well, I'm still holding out hope that President Trump will come.

00:18:16.000 I think it's so important that the American people hear from all the candidates.

00:18:21.000 But there's a lot of candidates that have qualified.

00:18:23.000 We're at seven right now that have officially qualified with the small dollar donations, with the polling threshold and the pledge.

00:18:30.000 And then we've got some that are on the cusp.

00:18:32.000 So we're going to be looking at polls the next few days.

00:18:35.000 There are three or four that are waiting for one percent and one more national poll to make that debate stage.

00:18:41.000 OK, so that is exciting stuff.

00:18:43.000 So she's she's obviously not going to get Trump to participate.

00:18:46.000 You imagine the punishment would be, OK, well, your surrogates can't be in the room ripping on the other candidates. 0.97

00:18:49.000 Nope.

00:18:50.000 Nope.

00:18:52.000 I mean, I don't even know what to say about Romney McDaniel, who, by the way, remember, the reason she originally ended up in this position is because she was related to Mitt Romney.

00:19:00.000 Donald Trump didn't like Mitt Romney, so she literally dropped Romney from her name.

00:19:05.000 That's pretty wild.

00:19:07.000 Pretty wild.

00:19:09.000 OK, meanwhile, the DeSantis campaign obviously has been running really rough in the launch with Elon Musk.

00:19:17.000 I think that DeSantis thought when he jumped into the race, he was going to be seen as Trump without all of the baggage.

00:19:26.000 And instead, he is sort of seen as Trump without the charm because the baggage on Trump doesn't wear.

00:19:32.000 I mean, the reality is the Republican base, the more baggage you pile on Trump, the more the Republican base sees Trump as some heroic ox who can actually hold all the baggage, right?

00:19:41.000 The more stuff you pile on him, the more like, man, that guy's got broad shoulders.

00:19:44.000 Look at all the baggage he can carry.

00:19:46.000 And so DeSantis has been struggling for a line of attack.

00:19:49.000 Again, his original line of attack was electability.

00:19:51.000 The bad poll numbers for Biden combined with the fact that he has not run away in those polls against Biden,

00:19:57.000 basically have taken away the electability argument from him.

00:19:59.000 And so he has to recapitulate his, he has to recast it.

00:20:02.000 And so he's relaunching his campaign again.

00:20:05.000 That started really last week.

00:20:07.000 The original relaunch is now being essentially undercut by both the media and Team Trump.

00:20:12.000 We'll get to that in one second.

00:20:13.000 First, my team knows I need to have my Black Rifle coffee every single morning.

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00:21:18.000 Okay, so...

00:21:20.000 There have been several systemic struggles for the DeSantis campaign.

00:21:23.000 I think they made several core assumptions when they jumped into the race, and none of those have come true.

00:21:27.000 So, core assumption number one, governance matters.

00:21:29.000 Nope!

00:21:30.000 Not one iota.

00:21:30.000 Not in the Republican primaries it don't.

00:21:32.000 And a simple fact of the matter is that Ron DeSantis passing a bill to stop critical race theory in the state of Florida has been treated by Republican primary voters the same as Vivek Ramaswamy saying things about critical race theory.

00:21:44.000 Saying things and doing things in a Republican primary, there is no actual distinction.

00:21:49.000 And it's hard for a lot of people who are in politics to understand, but it is the reality.

00:21:53.000 Because politicians make, I get it, politicians make promises all the time.

00:21:56.000 And so, you tend to believe those promises in a primary, if you have no reason not to believe the promises in a primary.

00:22:03.000 Which is why Donald Trump could make promises in 2016 on all sides of a particular issue, and people are like, okay, well I either trust the guy or I don't trust the guy.

00:22:10.000 DeSantis is like, you should trust me because I did these things in Florida.

00:22:13.000 And the Republican voters are like, well, I mean, but I could trust Vivek.

00:22:17.000 Maybe he'll do those things when he's... Sure, I mean, I have no reason to believe he won't do those things.

00:22:21.000 So, doing things and saying things in a Republican primary turned out to be almost the exact same thing.

00:22:26.000 So DeSantis has focused a lot on governance in Florida, but the governance that he's focused on in the campaign has been all the same stuff that Vivek just says.

00:22:34.000 And so he hasn't actually won any advantage over somebody like Vivek by passing a law banning critical race theory in the classroom over Vivek saying he would do that if he were president of the United States.

00:22:43.000 So that distinction, which I think DeSantis thought was going to be very telling for him, hasn't had any impact on the race.

00:22:49.000 Second, as I mentioned, the electability argument for DeSantis was rooted in the idea that Trump would probably pull low and DeSantis would pull better against Biden, and that hasn't happened.

00:22:58.000 Largely because everyone pulls well against Biden, or at least half-decently against Biden, because Biden's a really crappy president, as we'll get to in just a little while.

00:23:05.000 So that's hurt him.

00:23:06.000 And then on top of that, I think that DeSantis truly believed that because he had some capital in the bank, not just money, but like actual political capital in the bank, that he could then not go into unfriendly areas and reiterate to the American public why he was popular in the first place.

00:23:23.000 So Ron DeSantis is not just popular because of his COVID policy.

00:23:26.000 Ron DeSantis was popular in the state of Florida because the media made him enemy number one, and then he went into their spaces and he wrecked them.

00:23:33.000 DeSantis, as I've said over and over, needs to be doing this.

00:23:35.000 I don't understand for the life of me why he has not thus far.

00:23:38.000 He's basically shielded himself from opposing media.

00:23:42.000 I get it on a personal level, it's not fun to do that sort of stuff, but you know who does opposing media fairly frequently is Vivek.

00:23:49.000 You know who does opposing media fairly frequently, or at least did during the 2016, he doesn't do it now, but during 2016, Donald Trump did opposing media fairly frequently.

00:23:57.000 If you want to show the Republican base that you are a fighter, DeSantis thinks you do that by actually doing things as governor, as I mentioned.

00:24:03.000 Nope.

00:24:05.000 The only way people think that you're a fighter in the Republican base right now is you go on media and you go to a member of the media and you wreck them to their face.

00:24:11.000 That is the way that you show them that you are a fighter.

00:24:13.000 DeSantis has not done this in that campaign so far.

00:24:15.000 So he's not really dropped in the polls.

00:24:16.000 He's stuck still in that 15 to 18 percent range, but he's not bust out in any serious way.

00:24:23.000 OK, so over the weekend, he He basically was lied about.

00:24:30.000 He made a comment while he was being interviewed by Wilwitt that seems to me inarguable in context.

00:24:35.000 In context, I do not think this statement is in any way arguable.

00:24:40.000 It was then immediately taken out of context by pretty much all of his political opponents, which is the way that it works in a campaign, and used as a club to hit him.

00:24:46.000 So here was DeSantis with Wilwitt over the weekend.

00:24:50.000 These guys have records of principle fighting the swamp that are second to none and yet they will be attacked by some of these people and called rhinos.

00:25:00.000 So it's just been totally detached from any type of substance and ultimately a movement can't be about the personality of one individual.

00:25:08.000 The movement has got to be about what are you trying to achieve on behalf of the American people, and that's got to be based in principle.

00:25:16.000 Because if you're not rooted in principle, if all we are is listless vessels that are just supposed to follow whatever happens to come down the pike on truth social every morning, that's not going to be a durable movement.

00:25:29.000 Okay, so, the beginning of this statement, in which he literally calls out people like Elise Stefanik, right?

00:25:34.000 He's talking about left-wing, or people who are left-leaning Republicans, who have allied with Trump and then suddenly become not-RINOs. 0.98

00:25:41.000 And then Chip Roy of Texas, who's very, very conservative, and suddenly becomes a RINO when he supports DeSantis.

00:25:46.000 What DeSantis is saying is that congressional supporters who suddenly become not-RINOs because they support Trump, even though they're left-wing on policy, Or people who simply will do whatever Trump wants on any given day as opposed to, I like Trump for principled reasons.

00:26:00.000 There are a lot of people who do.

00:26:01.000 Or I like what Trump did as president.

00:26:03.000 A lot of people do.

00:26:03.000 That's not what he's talking about.

00:26:04.000 He's talking about people who shift their position on any given day based on what Donald Trump's preferences are.

00:26:09.000 He's saying that any movement that roots itself in follow the leader is not going to be a successful movement.

00:26:15.000 That does not seem particularly arguable to me in that context.

00:26:18.000 So immediately gets taken out of context. 0.96

00:26:20.000 And now the idea is that it's a basket of deplorables moment, like when Hillary Clinton suggested that Trump supporters were a basket of all white supremacists, terrible people, etc.

00:26:29.000 So the suggestion is that what DeSantis was saying there is that everyone who supports Trump is a listless vessel, which is clearly not what he is saying there, right? 0.61

00:26:38.000 In context, he clearly is not.

00:26:39.000 It doesn't matter.

00:26:40.000 You've got the Trump campaign, which again, there's great irony to the fact that Donald Trump can attack anybody from any angle at any time using any tool at his disposal, and everybody just kind of shrugs.

00:26:49.000 DeSantis says something that really is not an insult, and Trump's campaign immediately takes offense.

00:26:56.000 So, MAGA put out a, MAGA Inc.

00:27:00.000 put out a statement saying, So, again, the idea is that he's insulting you.

00:27:03.000 If you support Trump, he's insulting you.

00:27:04.000 That's not what he's saying.

00:27:05.000 That's clearly not what he said.

00:27:06.000 insult to Trump supporters.

00:27:07.000 Ron DeSantis should stop hiding behind spokespeople and address this himself.

00:27:10.000 Every hour that passes further underscores the contempt DeSantis has for the voters who

00:27:13.000 made him governor.

00:27:14.000 Perhaps he's waiting for another membo from Never Back Down to tell him what to do. 0.99

00:27:18.000 So again, the idea is that he's insulting you.

00:27:20.000 If you support Trump, he's insulting you.

00:27:22.000 That's not what he's saying.

00:27:23.000 That's clearly not what he said.

00:27:24.000 We played the clip.

00:27:26.000 Vivek Ramaswamy, in very cynical fashions, did the same thing.

00:27:29.000 Thank you. 0.52

00:27:30.000 He tweeted out, which is, I gotta say, Vivek, that's pretty disgusting.

00:27:39.000 Okay, Ron DeSantis has been the best governor in the country over the last four years. 0.85

00:27:44.000 Suggesting that Ron DeSantis is a listless vessel following a super PAC is patently absurd.

00:27:49.000 It's patently absurd.

00:27:50.000 The idea that candidates will say anything or do anything or switch any position to get ahead with no consequence.

00:27:56.000 That sounds more like a listless vessel kind of talk.

00:28:01.000 But it's a campaign. 0.96

00:28:05.000 Campaigns are ugly.

00:28:06.000 DeSantis camp fired back at all of this.

00:28:08.000 They put out a statement via press secretary Brian Griffin saying,

00:28:13.000 quote, the dishonest media refuses to report the facts.

00:28:15.000 Donald Trump and some congressional endorsers are listless vessels.

00:28:18.000 Why?

00:28:19.000 Because Trump and DC insiders feel he is entitled to your vote.

00:28:21.000 Ron DeSantis believes your trust should be earned and has the vision, plan,

00:28:24.000 and record to beat Joe Biden and reverse the decline of our country.

00:28:26.000 And then he said that's why Ron DeSantis will be showing up Wednesday night to debate,

00:28:30.000 and Donald Trump will not.

00:28:32.000 Hey, well, again, we will see if anybody else, including DeSantis, is able to gain any points during the debate.

00:28:38.000 It seems to me the dynamic of the debate with Trump absent is going to be all about Trump.

00:28:42.000 It seems like everybody's going to train their incoming fire on DeSantis, particularly Chris Christie, who is just a suicide bomber in these debates.

00:28:48.000 He was in 2016 when he committed one of the world's most obvious acts of murder-suicide against Marco Rubio, killed him in a New Hampshire debate, and then proceeded to implode himself.

00:28:58.000 So, yeah, I...

00:29:01.000 A lot of people are looking for something sort of dispositive from this debate.

00:29:04.000 I don't think that that is, uh, I don't think that's probably right.

00:29:07.000 I think that this debate is probably going to be everybody holding their ground, because what ground is there to hold?

00:29:12.000 I mean, they're fighting over 35% of the Republican base at this point.

00:29:14.000 Trump's got the other two-thirds locked up.

00:29:16.000 So, yeah, it's going to be hard to see how anybody breaks loose from that pack, as I suggested last week.

00:29:20.000 I think this debate looks more like a lobster pot than anything else.

00:29:24.000 Or a crab pot.

00:29:25.000 Everybody pulling each other down as they try to escape the pot.

00:29:28.000 Meanwhile, Trump is sitting over there with Tucker Carlson enjoying himself.

00:29:32.000 Now, the other candidates, for what it's worth, are having their own struggles.

00:29:37.000 Everybody's focused on DeSantis' struggles, because he's widely assumed in my polling is the second most prominent candidate in the field, even if he's trailing by 40 points.

00:29:44.000 But the other candidates are having their own troubles.

00:29:46.000 So, Vivek Ramaswamy, for all the talk, is still six, seven percent.

00:29:50.000 That is outperforming for sure.

00:29:51.000 Vivek is very aggressive.

00:29:53.000 He's out on the campaign trail all the time.

00:29:54.000 He goes into opposing media spaces.

00:29:56.000 He's very clever.

00:29:57.000 All of those things are in Vivek's favor.

00:29:59.000 Is he actually going to be the nominee?

00:30:00.000 Almost undoubtedly not.

00:30:02.000 It doesn't matter.

00:30:03.000 He's making a name for himself, which, you know, again, is part of what Republican politics has become for a while, is very often people running for office for ancillary reasons.

00:30:12.000 Meanwhile, Nikki Haley is still running. 0.99

00:30:16.000 She's earning three, four percent of the vote. 0.99

00:30:18.000 She's, at least to her credit, trying to make a case as to why people should move beyond Trump, which I assume that somebody has to make if they don't want Trump to be the nominee.

00:30:26.000 Here's Nikki Haley the other day trying to explain why Trump should not be the nominee.

00:30:30.000 I think that President Trump was the right president at the right time.

00:30:34.000 I agree with so many of his policies.

00:30:37.000 But at the end of the day, we have to win in November.

00:30:42.000 And it is time to put that negativity and drama behind us.

00:30:46.000 We can't keep talking about the past.

00:30:48.000 We have got to talk about how we are going to take America to a new future that is full of peace and law and order and opportunities for our children.

00:30:59.000 That's a case.

00:31:00.000 Is it going to have any weight?

00:31:02.000 I have some doubts.

00:31:03.000 Meanwhile, the person who actually has the strongest case to make against Trump on the merits is Mike Pence, who's vice president, who Donald Trump lied about for three months, suggesting that he had the unilateral power to overturn the 2020 election by denying state-certified results.

00:31:18.000 Pence was asked specifically about whether Trump actually declassified materials that he then, you know, had on his property at Mar-a-Lago over the weekend, and Pence was like, well, I mean, I didn't see any evidence he declassified them.

00:31:30.000 We are learning that Meadows has told investigators that he knew of no such broad declassification order from Donald Trump.

00:31:38.000 What about you?

00:31:39.000 Had you heard anything to suggest that the president had issued an order, even a standing order, declassifying documents like that?

00:31:50.000 Well, first off, the handling of classified materials is enormously serious in the life of the nation.

00:31:57.000 I can't really comment on your reporting, but in my case, I was never made aware of any broad-based effort to declassify documents.

00:32:06.000 There is a process that the White House goes through to declassify materials.

00:32:11.000 I'm aware of that occurring on several occasions over the course of our four years.

00:32:18.000 I don't have any knowledge of any broad-based directive from the president.

00:32:23.000 Okay, again, Teflon Don, none of this is gonna make any difference. The indictments are a reason

00:32:29.000 for his supporters to vote for him, according to CBS News polling. So, again, there are a lot of

00:32:36.000 Republicans in waiting, and there is only one guy who's leading the race by 46 points right now.

00:32:42.000 We'll get to more on Joe Biden on the other side of the ticket, because again, it's Joe Biden's weakness that's really helping Trump.

00:32:47.000 And we'll get to that in just one second.

00:32:49.000 First, we have a wonderful dog.

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00:33:50.000 Also, Are you sick of those wool corporations that drag your values through the mud? 0.96

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00:34:32.000 Okay, meanwhile, we speak about Joe Biden's weakness. 0.75

00:34:34.000 Joe Biden is an unbelievably weak candidate.

00:34:36.000 Chuck Todd and Jonathan Martin, even they, over the weekend, were recognizing that there are massive issues clouding the Biden campaign.

00:34:42.000 Here they were discussing it on Meet the Press.

00:34:44.000 I think Biden has basically got three issues where he's not figured out what to say, okay?

00:34:49.000 One is obviously the questions about Hunter Biden, his son.

00:34:52.000 The other is what to say about the investigations into Donald Trump.

00:34:55.000 And the third is about his age.

00:34:57.000 Those are three massive issues that are sort of clouding his reelection campaign, and he's not figured out what to say about it.

00:35:04.000 That, of course, is true. 0.83

00:35:05.000 And even other members of the media are noticing that Hunter Biden and Joe Biden are liars.

00:35:09.000 So, for example, Jake Tapper on CNN, he was like, you remember that time when Joe Biden said that Hunter did not receive Chinese money?

00:35:14.000 That was not true.

00:35:14.000 Tesla wrote, Hunter Biden reported nearly $2.4 million in income in 2017 and $2.2 million in income in 2018, most of which came from Chinese or Ukrainian interests.

00:35:26.000 And this directly goes against what Joe Biden said in the debate in 2020 with Donald Trump.

00:35:32.000 Take a listen.

00:35:35.000 My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China.

00:35:41.000 None of that is true.

00:35:43.000 He made a fortune in Ukraine, in China, in Moscow, and various other places.

00:35:47.000 That is simply not true.

00:35:49.000 So it's from two different debates, but, I mean, Trump was right.

00:35:53.000 I mean, he did make a fortune from China, and Joe Biden was wrong. 0.93

00:35:59.000 Now normally you would call that Joe Biden being a vicious liar. 0.93

00:36:02.000 He is a penny anti-criminal. 0.95

00:36:03.000 He has been a penny anti-criminal his entire political career.

00:36:07.000 Like his entire career is just littered with him obtaining goodies for members of his family.

00:36:11.000 We're talking about everybody ranging Herman's sister, to his brothers Frank and Jim, to his sons

00:36:16.000 Bo and Hunter.

00:36:16.000 Everyone around Joe Biden has become richer because Joe Biden was in the United States Senate.

00:36:20.000 There's just no question about this.

00:36:22.000 Well, now it seems that things may get ugly for Joe, not because of the stuff that he did for

00:36:26.000 Hunter, but because of the one time he couldn't pull it off for Hunter.

00:36:29.000 According to Politico, Hunter Biden's lawyer is now threatening to put Joe Biden on the stand.

00:36:35.000 It was Halloween of 2022 and Hunter Biden's lawyer, Chris Clark, didn't sound happy.

00:36:40.000 Just three weeks earlier, news had leaked that federal agents believed they had enough evidence to charge his client with illegally buying a gun as a drug user.

00:36:45.000 The leak was illegal, the lawyer wrote to the U.S.

00:36:47.000 attorney overseeing the probe.

00:36:48.000 The prosecution, he argued, would be seen as purely political.

00:36:51.000 It might even violate the Second Amendment.

00:36:52.000 Then he issued a warning.

00:36:53.000 If the Justice Department charged the president's son, his lawyers would put the president on the witness stand.

00:36:59.000 President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial, Clark wrote in a 32-page letter reviewed by Politico.

00:37:05.000 That letter, along with more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden's legal team and prosecutors, sheds new light on the fraught negotiations that nearly produced a broad plea deal.

00:37:15.000 That deal would have resolved Biden's most pressing legal issues, the gun purchase and his failure to pay taxes for several years.

00:37:19.000 And it also could have helped insulate Biden from future prosecution by a Republican-led DOJ.

00:37:25.000 The documents show how the deal collapsed, a sudden turnabout that occurred after Republicans bashed it and a judge raised questions about it.

00:37:31.000 The collapse renewed the prospect Biden will head to trial as his father ramps up his 2024 election bid.

00:37:36.000 So what exactly happened here?

00:37:38.000 Well, apparently the documents provide a detailed behind-the-scenes look at how the two sides came to the brink of a plea deal.

00:37:43.000 It was a sweetheart deal, no question.

00:37:45.000 It blew up when the judge saw the sweetheart deal and said, I've never seen anything remotely like this.

00:37:48.000 It was very obvious that David Weiss and the DOJ were cramming down a sweetheart deal.

00:37:54.000 Hunter Biden was going to take that sweetheart deal, and they were doing all of this in order to protect Joe Biden from having to take the stand or be involved.

00:38:00.000 But it was Joe Biden's DOJ who was overseeing all of this, obviously.

00:38:04.000 According to the documents, By April 26, 2022.

00:38:09.000 As Hunter Biden's lawyers convened with prosecutors, they had one big concern.

00:38:12.000 Taxes.

00:38:13.000 Specifically, whether prosecutors were going to charge him with failing to lawfully pay those taxes from 2014 to 2019.

00:38:18.000 Charges related to anything else didn't seem remotely imminent.

00:38:21.000 Speaking to lawyers from the DOJ, Biden's attorneys opened their argument with Trump.

00:38:25.000 In light of Trump's ceaseless demands for an investigation of Hunter, charging the younger Biden with tax crimes would be devastating to the reputation of the DOJ, according to Hunter's lawyers.

00:38:32.000 It would look like the department had acquiesced to Trump's political pressure campaign.

00:38:36.000 So, the argument that Hunter's lawyers made to the DOJ, which the DOJ then took up, remember, this is also under Donald Trump, was, if you intervene right now and you actually prosecute Hunter, it might hurt Joe, and that would look bad for Trump, which is an insane reason not to bring charges.

00:38:50.000 Biden's lawyers argued the political pressure was itself a compelling reason not to bring any charges.

00:38:55.000 Later in 2022, the DOJ confirmed to Biden's lawyers their client could also face federal charges for a gun crime.

00:39:02.000 Clark argued the same political pressure meant bringing gun charges would be scandalous.

00:39:05.000 On October 31, 2022, he wrote directly to David Weiss, the U.S.

00:39:09.000 Attorney for Delaware, overseeing the probe.

00:39:11.000 Weiss had been appointed by Trump.

00:39:12.000 He'd been allowed to stay on during Biden's administration to continue the investigation.

00:39:15.000 Merrick Garland, the AG, had pledged to give Weiss full independence.

00:39:19.000 But he wasn't given full independence.

00:39:20.000 He had to work with other DAs across the country to charge in various jurisdictions because he didn't have special counsel status.

00:39:26.000 Clark argued in his letter to Weiss that charging Hunter Biden with a gun crime would torpedo public trust in the DOJ.

00:39:33.000 The document included color photos of two former heads of Trump's DOJ, Matt Whitaker and Bill Barr, talking about Biden business deals on cable news.

00:39:41.000 Then Clark invoked another controversial federal investigation, he said, was seen by the public as a political hatchet job, the failed prosecution of prominent Democratic lawyer Michael Sussman.

00:39:49.000 Sussman, of course, was involved in the Steele dossier and all the rest of it.

00:39:54.000 Clark laid out what could have been seen as a promise, a warning, or some very zealous lawyering, he said.

00:39:58.000 Joe Biden would undoubtedly be a witness at trial because of leaks about the probe.

00:40:02.000 He wrote that just a few weeks before sending the letter there had been two back-to-back leaks related to Hunter Biden and the gun issue.

00:40:07.000 Clark said the leaks prompted the president to address his son's legal woes the next day on CNN.

00:40:11.000 And he then described it in a nearly unthinkable scenario, actually calling Joe Biden as a witness.

00:40:17.000 And at that point, the DOJ basically said, fine, let's do a sweetheart plea deal. 0.96

00:40:22.000 Which is incredible.

00:40:22.000 So basically, Hunter Biden's lawyers pressured the Biden DOJ into giving him a sweetheart deal with the threat that Joe Biden might have to testify for the defense.

00:40:31.000 Totally insane.

00:40:32.000 Then the whistleblowers came forward, they said, oh yeah, by the way, this was a sweetheart deal.

00:40:35.000 And they prevented us from investigating fully.

00:40:38.000 And that is when, only then, after that, and after the collapse of the plea deal, that is when the DOJ decided to make David Weiss a special counsel to investigate presumably partially himself.

00:40:49.000 By the way, worth noting here, who exactly is David Weiss?

00:40:53.000 Well, it turns out that David Weiss worked for years with Beau Biden because he's from Delaware.

00:40:59.000 Delaware is a very small state.

00:41:00.000 Everybody knows each other.

00:41:01.000 Weiss worked with Beau to hash out prosecution strategies.

00:41:06.000 Although Democrats point to Weiss's appointment by Donald Trump as evidence of his independence, the full story of his career is more nuanced.

00:41:11.000 He spent two years as acting U.S.

00:41:12.000 attorney under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, and then remained as top deputy for the remainder of their term.

00:41:18.000 So the notion that it was like Trump's decision to appoint Weiss, and he could have fired him presumably, but very often what happens, you think the president knew who David Weiss was?

00:41:26.000 Of course not.

00:41:27.000 He got a recommendation from people in Delaware, David Weiss is a good guy, so he just reappointed him.

00:41:31.000 The White House declined to comment, noting that Weiss is conducting an independent investigation, presumably into himself, considering the fact that Weiss is the person who negotiated the sweetheart deal in the first place.

00:41:42.000 This is going to get very, very ugly very quickly for Hunter, for Joe, for everybody else involved.

00:41:48.000 Meanwhile, Joe Biden continues to be the world's most terrible president.

00:41:51.000 Over a thousand people are still missing two weeks after the wildfires in Maui.

00:41:56.000 That includes presumably hundreds of children.

00:41:59.000 We have no idea exactly how many people have died.

00:42:03.000 The good news is that Joe Biden went west for his second vacation of the month, which is really important.

00:42:10.000 They arrived in Nevada late Friday for more rest and relaxation.

00:42:13.000 They're renting a private home on Lake Tahoe.

00:42:15.000 He flew there from Camp David, where he hosted a summit Friday with the leaders of South Korea and Japan.

00:42:19.000 That home belongs to Tom Steyer and Kat Taylor.

00:42:22.000 You remember Steyer as the very, very ultra-wealthy Democratic donor who ran for president in 2020 and got zero votes.

00:42:28.000 The Bidens will then halt their vacation for one day on Monday to visit Maui.

00:42:31.000 They'll meet with survivors, first responders, and local officials while surveying the damage.

00:42:35.000 This is shortly after he said there was no comment on the number of dead in Maui.

00:42:40.000 He vacationed earlier this month in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where he went on bike rides, visited beaches, and went for a date night with the First Lady to see Oppenheimer.

00:42:48.000 So, the good news is the old man is having himself a really nice summer. 0.99

00:42:51.000 The bad news is, of course, that if this were Donald Trump doing all of this in the middle of the Maui wildfire, then everybody would have lost their damn mind. 0.99

00:42:58.000 Everybody. 0.98

00:42:59.000 But, obviously, he's Joe Biden, so he gets away with it.

00:43:04.000 According to the Washington Post, ahead of Maui visit, Biden's governmental and personal response scrutinized.

00:43:08.000 Well, you think?

00:43:10.000 By whom?

00:43:10.000 Maybe you should just, instead of reporting it as like a third party, well, you know, it is being, maybe you should be doing the scrutiny.

00:43:17.000 More than 120 hours passed between when Joe Biden first spoke publicly about the devastating Maui fires on August 10th and his next substantive remarks about the tragedy the following week.

00:43:26.000 During that five-day stretch of presidential reticence, the full scope of the crisis in Hawaii came into clear view, says the Washington Post.

00:43:32.000 Behind the scenes, aides say, Biden was leading a robust, by-the-book federal response.

00:43:36.000 Oh yes, behind the scenes, aides say.

00:43:40.000 Weird, because he was saying no comment the entire time.

00:43:43.000 Very, very weird.

00:43:45.000 Meanwhile, FEMA, their spokesperson was out there saying, you know what, we're not in charge, the state is.

00:43:49.000 Which, by the way, is true, but that didn't cut it when a Republican was president.

00:43:53.000 Maui County has opened a distribution center at a shopping center just across the street.

00:43:59.000 FEMA is working closely with state emergency management and Maui County emergency management to make sure that those locations and shelters Don't run out of supplies.

00:44:10.000 So FEMA's not in charge, the state is in charge, Maui County is executing the emergency management response, and FEMA is coordinating across the entire federal government, bringing all federal resources to bear to help meet the needs that we hear about from the state.

00:44:26.000 Okay, so yeah, we trust you guys.

00:44:29.000 You're doing an amazing, amazing job.

00:44:30.000 Meanwhile, Rhonda Sanchez correctly pointed out that Joe Biden saying no comment would be a national scandal if you were a Republican.

00:44:37.000 You know, you have these horrible fires in Hawaii.

00:44:40.000 And my wife and I actually, we did our honeymoon in Maui way back in the day.

00:44:44.000 And so it's a great, great area.

00:44:46.000 Just utter devastation.

00:44:48.000 And Biden, what is he doing?

00:44:50.000 He ends up on the beach.

00:44:52.000 And then he's asked about it and he says, oh, no comment.

00:44:55.000 Now, look, if a Republican had tried to do that, What do you think the media would do?

00:45:00.000 They would go crazy.

00:45:02.000 In fact, they would blame the Republican for the fires happening in the first place.

00:45:07.000 We all know that that's the truth.

00:45:11.000 Okay, well that obviously is true.

00:45:12.000 Who is to blame, by the way?

00:45:13.000 Well, according to the New York Post, access to water should be predicated on conversations about equity, according to the Hawaii official under fire for delaying access to water during the Maui wildfires.

00:45:22.000 M. Kaleo Manuel, former deputy director of the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, waited for more than five hours to release water during the wildfires that devastated Maui, according to the reports.

00:45:30.000 Manuel, in a livestream debate hosted by the University of Hawaii last year, described water as a sacred god.

00:45:35.000 He said, let water connect us and not divide us.

00:45:37.000 We can share it, but it requires true conversations about equity.

00:45:39.000 How do we coexist with the resources we have?

00:45:41.000 He's a former Obama Foundation leader.

00:45:43.000 So that's exciting stuff there from the equity crowd.

00:45:46.000 Excellent job in handling the wildfires over there.

00:45:49.000 Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom is declaring a state of emergency as Hurricane Hillary approaches California.

00:45:53.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:45:55.000 You know that Hurricane Hillary will not be visiting Wisconsin or Michigan.

00:45:59.000 So that is exciting stuff.

00:46:01.000 Meanwhile, apparently there's an earthquake overnight in California as well.

00:46:05.000 You know, a lot of people I know and love in Southern California, that is a little bit of scary stuff.

00:46:09.000 Palm Springs is largely underwater at this point.

00:46:12.000 Rain records have been smashed.

00:46:13.000 There's a 5.1 magnitude earthquake that rocked Ojai at the same exact time.

00:46:19.000 We haven't seen the damage numbers there yet.

00:46:21.000 So 25 million people right now are under flood warnings.

00:46:25.000 That's the real fear in California is that California is just not prepared for flood in any way shape or form.

00:46:30.000 Every time it rained in Southern California, I lived there for 35 years.

00:46:33.000 Every time it rained in Southern California, people had no idea what to do.

00:46:35.000 We're talking about like mild rain.

00:46:36.000 Heavy rain in Southern California is a full-scale disaster area.

00:46:40.000 So obviously we'll see how Gavin Newsom handles that on sort of the political level.

00:46:43.000 Meanwhile, nationally, Joe Biden, we've been talking about doing a really crappy job.

00:46:48.000 Well, the fact is that what we're about to watch is going to get a lot worse.

00:46:51.000 So China, its economy, as I mentioned last week, is going to drag down the rest of the world economy. 0.62

00:46:57.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, for decades, China powered its economy by investing in factories, skyscrapers, and roads.

00:47:01.000 The model sparked an extraordinary period of growth that lifted China out of poverty and turned it into a global giant whose export prowess washed across the globe.

00:47:08.000 Now the model is broken.

00:47:09.000 What worked when China was playing catch-up makes less sense now that the country is drowning in debt and running out of things to build.

00:47:13.000 Parts of China are saddled with underused bridges and airports.

00:47:16.000 Millions of apartments are unoccupied.

00:47:17.000 Returns on investment have sharply declined.

00:47:20.000 With private investment weakened, exports flagging, officials say they have little choice but to keep borrowing and building to stimulate their economies.

00:47:25.000 So Keynesianism working beautifully over in China.

00:47:28.000 The reality is that China's subsidization of particular industries is not what made China a world economic power.

00:47:34.000 What made China a world economic power was opening their population to capitalism to even the smallest extent. 0.79

00:47:39.000 The sort of fascist economic model of China, which is that you basically subsidize particular industries and you make those the industries. 0.59

00:47:46.000 You borrow money to make those the industries.

00:47:48.000 That actually ends up failing.

00:47:49.000 I say this because there are a lot of people in America who believe that it won't fail in America.

00:47:52.000 It has failed in America before.

00:47:53.000 It was called the 1960s and 70s in the United States.

00:47:57.000 Economists now believe China is entering a year of much slower growth, made worse by unfavorable demographics and a widening divide with the United States and its allies that is jeopardizing foreign investment and trade as well it should.

00:48:07.000 You should check out our episode 2 over at YouTube for more on this.

00:48:11.000 I talk about the inevitable decline of China.

00:48:13.000 They got a serious problem on their hands demographically, economically speaking.

00:48:17.000 The IMF puts China's GDP growth below 4% in the coming years, less than half of its tally for most of the past four decades.

00:48:23.000 Capital Economics, a London-based research firm, figures China's trend growth has slowed to 3% and will fall to around 2% in 2030.

00:48:30.000 And so they're closing themselves off more from the world economy.

00:48:34.000 Stagnation is about to set in.

00:48:35.000 It's going to have some real dramatic effect on the world economy as well.

00:48:39.000 Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine has completely stalled out.

00:48:42.000 Marcus Walker writing for the Wall Street Journal says Russia's war on Ukraine is in danger of becoming a perfracted struggle that lasts several more years.

00:48:48.000 The reason isn't just that frontline combat is a slow-moving slog, but that none of the main actors have political goals that are both clear and attainable.

00:48:54.000 Wait, who said this?

00:48:55.000 Who said this like a year ago?

00:48:56.000 Who said that after a couple months of war that either there needed to be a negotiation where everybody was looking for an off-ramp or all of the goals were misaligned?

00:49:03.000 That Russia was not going to give up Crimea and the Donbass?

00:49:06.000 That Ukraine had been told by the West that they could win back every inch of that and that Zelensky was going to lead the negotiations and these two goals were Incompatible in the extreme.

00:49:13.000 And so this was likely to just continue forever.

00:49:16.000 Like for a very, very, very, very, very long time.

00:49:18.000 And the only way this is going to end is for the West to actually play the role of bad guy.

00:49:21.000 Go to Putin and say, you're going to get part of the Donbass, you're going to retain Crimea.

00:49:24.000 Go to Zelensky and say, listen, that's the deal.

00:49:26.000 And if you don't like it, tough.

00:49:28.000 Zelensky gets to go back to his people and say, hey, guys, I wanted the whole thing.

00:49:32.000 The West wouldn't let me have it.

00:49:33.000 So he gets to retain his status with the Ukrainian people.

00:49:36.000 The Russians get to save some face and the war ends.

00:49:39.000 Otherwise, they're just going to continue.

00:49:41.000 Ukraine's Central War aim, restoring its territorial integrity, is the clearest, but appears a distant prospect given the limits of Western support.

00:49:47.000 Again, territorial integrity, like post-2022, is not territorial integrity post-2014.

00:49:53.000 As under Barack Obama, the Crimea was seized by the Russians and nobody did a damn thing about it. 0.79

00:50:01.000 Russian President Vladimir Putin's declared aims are the most elastic, ranging from ambitious imperial schemes to more limited land grabs and shifting with Russia's military fortunes.

00:50:09.000 Well, that means that there's actual play in the joints there, but The fact that there has been no actual strategy here from the Biden administration is part of the problem.

00:50:17.000 I've been saying this for a year.

00:50:19.000 Again, there's no shock here.

00:50:20.000 They literally said, we want Ukraine to win.

00:50:21.000 And then they definitely did not define winning.

00:50:23.000 And they said, we will do endless support.

00:50:25.000 And they did not define endless because it's not true.

00:50:28.000 And then they're like, oh yeah, and by the way, we'll let Zelensky lead the negotiation.

00:50:30.000 I mean, you literally created a formula for endless war and then you're surprised when it arrives.

00:50:34.000 It's totally amazing to me. 0.94

00:50:35.000 Again, Joe Biden, a terrible, terrible president. 0.73

00:50:37.000 Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate. 0.78

00:50:40.000 So, things that I like.

00:50:42.000 I spent some time over the weekend reading a great book by a guy named Daniel Boorstein.

00:50:46.000 Boorstein was a rather famous historian.

00:50:49.000 Later in his life, he made a pretty famous turn toward political conservatism.

00:50:54.000 He started off as somebody who was sort of on the Communist Party side.

00:50:59.000 And by the end of his career, he was more on the conservative side of the political aisle.

00:51:04.000 He actually ended up, I believe, being given... He serves as the 12th Librarian of Congress under Ford, Carter, and President Reagan.

00:51:13.000 He has a great book called The Discoverers, a history of man's search to know his world and himself.

00:51:17.000 It really is sort of a fascinating take on history.

00:51:18.000 It's sort of a synthesis history in which He tries to cover as much ground as humanly possible.

00:51:22.000 I enjoy these as opposed to sort of granular level histories.

00:51:25.000 So the book starts, for example, with a history of how man perceives time.

00:51:30.000 Like we don't think very much about the fact that our days are dictated by the clock.

00:51:34.000 They're dictated by our watch.

00:51:35.000 But until about 1300, nobody even thought of 24 hours in a day.

00:51:39.000 You measured hours by hours of daylight.

00:51:43.000 Nobody actually had a working wristwatch.

00:51:46.000 Wristwatches only became popular in the West And all over the world, early 20th century, there were pocket watches.

00:51:53.000 Those really were only made available and popular in the 17th, 18th centuries.

00:51:57.000 So you're talking about most of human history.

00:52:01.000 Basically, it was either light or it was dark.

00:52:03.000 But now that human beings created time, that means that our days are governed by hours, minutes, and seconds.

00:52:10.000 It's that sort of stuff.

00:52:11.000 It covers all of that.

00:52:11.000 It covers exploration.

00:52:12.000 It covers religious history.

00:52:14.000 Really a good book.

00:52:15.000 Again, all about how human beings have transformed their perception of the world around them and then their world around them.

00:52:21.000 He's written a lot of great books.

00:52:22.000 He also wrote a three-part series on American history that's really worth reading.

00:52:28.000 So his stuff is, he's a terrific historian and his stuff is really worth the read.

00:52:33.000 This book is called The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstein.

00:52:35.000 Okay, time for some things that I hate.

00:52:40.000 So naturally, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, she is going on the socialist sympathy tour,

00:52:45.000 according to Mary Anastasia O'Grady, writing for the Wall Street Journal.

00:52:49.000 Since transnational criminal organizations are ravaging Latin America, economic growth in much 1.00

00:52:53.000 of the region is shaky. Corruption remains a perennial problem. Just when it looks as if

00:52:55.000 things couldn't get any worse, AOC went on a South American socialist sympathy tour.

00:52:59.000 For Americans, it's not what the congressman took to the, the congresswoman took to the region

00:53:04.000 that's disturbing, it's what you might bring back.

00:53:06.000 She said, we have a lot to learn from Brazil, Colombia, and Chile.

00:53:10.000 She went with 10 other congressional Democrats and staffers, including Senator Bernie Sanders' chief of staff.

00:53:15.000 So, Brazil is a disaster area right now, obviously.

00:53:19.000 Everybody is ignoring Lula da Silva's crackdown on the opposition.

00:53:24.000 The Supreme Court is going after free speech.

00:53:27.000 Meanwhile, they met with leftist politicians to offer their support for collectivist causes in the name of non-intervention.

00:53:33.000 In Chile, she's going after quote-unquote extractive U.S.

00:53:36.000 policies, which means copper mining, which is the engine of all of Chileans' economic growth for decades.

00:53:43.000 Meanwhile, they are going there and ripping on American Cold War policies, which, by the way, the most anti-capitalist countries in South America also happen to be the poorest countries in South America, like Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, where communism is actually taking hold.

00:53:57.000 In Brazil, the entourage met with foreign policy advisor, Chulula, and they discussed the climate.

00:54:04.000 The fact that, you know, Bernie Sanders is considered a wise old man of the Democratic Party after spending years standing for socialists, like actual socialists, is totally crazy.

00:54:11.000 That's why whenever he says, oh yeah, all I want is the Nordic model, I'm like, okay, then why were you so warm to, you know, Nicolas Maduro and Hugo Chavez, I noticed.

00:54:19.000 AOC, same sort of nonsense.

00:54:21.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show continues right now.

00:54:23.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:54:24.000 We'll be joined by Jerry Dunleavy and James Hassan, co-authors of the new book, Kabul, the untold story of Biden's fiasco and the American warriors who fought to the end.

00:54:31.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:54:32.000 Use code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 21, 2023

Republican Debate Week Begins!

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