The Ben Shapiro Show

00:00:00.000 So last night was really crappy for Republicans in Virginia.

00:00:02.000 We will give you the entire analysis from beginning to end without myth or bias.

00:00:07.000 Plus, President Trump heads to South Korea, and we will look at a little bit of Bibble Talk.

00:00:12.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:13.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:20.000 So, as you can tell, I was crying so hard last night that the snot has not yet stopped flowing.

00:00:24.000 I have a horrible cold that my children keep giving me.

00:00:27.000 One of the wonderful things about children is that they are delightful.

00:00:29.000 One of the horrible things is that they constantly get you sick.

00:00:31.000 They're just giant balls of germs.

00:00:32.000 In any case, we will soldier through with the bravery of Spartan warriors.

00:00:37.000 But before we get to any of what happened in Virginia last night, first, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at Tracker.

00:00:43.000 So, we have a routine in my house.

00:00:44.000 It goes like this.

00:00:45.000 It's time to leave.

00:00:46.000 I need my wallet.

00:00:47.000 I need my keys.

00:00:48.000 I need my phone.

00:00:49.000 I have none of these things.

00:00:50.000 So, we spend the next three hours looking for all of those things, by which time it's time to put my children to bed, and then we don't have to leave the house at all.

00:00:56.000 It's not as delightful as it sounds.

00:00:58.000 It would be really nice if I knew where all of those things were.

00:01:00.000 Fortunately, I now have Tracker, so this has now been reduced.

00:01:03.000 What Tracker does is a coin-sized device, you can stick it on your keychain, you can stick it...

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00:01:15.000 You lost your phone, and you even turned your ringer off on your phone.

00:01:18.000 It overrides the ring off on your phone, and now your phone will actually ring.

00:01:22.000 So you can find your phone, even if it's turned off in terms of the ringer.

00:01:25.000 The same thing is true of your keys.

00:01:27.000 From your phone, you can locate your keys or your wallet.

00:01:29.000 That's what Tracker is for.

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00:01:36.000 Again, Tracker makes a great gift, especially during the holiday season.

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00:01:59.000 Okay, so last night, Republicans got their asses kicked in Virginia.

00:02:02.000 And that really is not an overstatement.

00:02:05.000 Ed Gillespie ends up losing by almost 10 points in Virginia.

00:02:08.000 Going into the election, it was assumed that Gillespie was gaining.

00:02:11.000 Everyone on Morning Joe, you know, your great political analyst on Morning Joe, had suggested that Gillespie was definitely going to win, universally.

00:02:17.000 I was asked by Andrew Klavan, who I thought was going to win, I informed him I no longer bet on elections after 2016.

00:02:23.000 But if I had to lean, I would have been leaning toward Northam, the Democrat in Virginia.

00:02:27.000 It wasn't just Northern winning, it was Northern winning big.

00:02:30.000 And it wasn't just Northern winning, it was Democrats down the ballot winning in enormous numbers.

00:02:35.000 So, Republicans going into this particular election cycle had, I believe, 66 seats in the state legislature.

00:02:42.000 They finished last night with 47.

00:02:43.000 So they just got shellacked all the way across the board.

00:02:46.000 And it wasn't just Republicans in Virginia.

00:02:48.000 Democrats picked up a couple of seats in Georgia.

00:02:51.000 Excuse me, in the state legislature there, in the state legislature, those seats were so red that Democrats had not run in those districts for the last election cycle.

00:03:00.000 They ran this time, they ran this time, and they won.

00:03:03.000 Okay, not just that, the governorship of New Jersey has lost that, you can predict it, but the Washington state legislature turns from Republican to Democrat with the loss of a legislative seat in Washington.

00:03:12.000 What this means is that Democrats are outperforming the polls.

00:03:15.000 It means that Democrats are showing up in bigger numbers than Republicans were assuming that they were going to.

00:03:19.000 There are a bunch of Democrats, including radical Democrats, elected across Virginia last night, including the first transgender delegate to the Virginia House of Burgesses in the history of Virginia.

00:03:29.000 Obviously, this is the second transgender delegate, I believe, ever to any legislative body.

00:03:35.000 I think the first one was in 1992.

00:03:37.000 He was actually a Republican in Atlanta.

00:03:41.000 But in any case,

00:03:42.000 The Democrats are celebrating this as some sort of massive victory.

00:03:45.000 So, we're going to analyze this from a couple different angles, because there are a couple of different narratives that are now taking effect.

00:03:51.000 One is that this was just inevitable.

00:03:54.000 Okay, Virginia's been moving blue, particularly northern Virginia, near Washington DC.

00:03:57.000 Everyone who was in Washington DC working

00:04:00.000 We're good to go.

00:04:19.000 On the bottom, you can see the 2016 Clinton-Trump map.

00:04:23.000 Hillary won the state by about 5 percentage points.

00:04:25.000 She won it 50-45.

00:04:25.000 Northern won the state by 54-45.

00:04:28.000 And then you see the top map.

00:04:30.000 The top map is last night.

00:04:32.000 And you do see a couple of big transition points.

00:04:35.000 The first one you see is if you look at the bottom right-hand corner, facing it anyway, of the map.

00:04:41.000 What you will see is Virginia Beach, right?

00:04:43.000 Virginia Beach was red in 2016, now it is blue.

00:04:46.000 So, Trump had won that.

00:04:47.000 He lost it last night.

00:04:49.000 You also see some of the blue areas becoming bluer.

00:04:51.000 The red area is becoming lighter shades of red.

00:04:54.000 So, the entire state is moving toward the left, and it has been for quite a while.

00:04:59.000 The 2016 map, between 2013 and 2017, Virginia moved steadily Democratic, certainly since 2009 when Bob McDonald won by 17 points in the gubernatorial race.

00:05:09.000 The state has moved dramatically.

00:05:11.000 To the left.

00:05:12.000 It's also important to mention that the gubernatorial loss is not unprecedented.

00:05:15.000 So, Trump is the fifth president in a row to have his party lose both the Virginia and the New Jersey gubernatorial races in his first year in office.

00:05:24.000 So, he lost this year to Northam and a guy named Murphy in New Jersey.

00:05:29.000 In 2009, McDonnell won and Christie won.

00:05:31.000 They were both Republicans after Obama was elected in 2001.

00:05:34.000 Warner and McGreevy won in the various states.

00:05:37.000 Republicans have not been winning in Virginia for quite a while.

00:05:39.000 McDonnell is the only major victory in Virginia, but the state legislature has been heavily red for quite a while.

00:05:45.000 It no longer is.

00:05:46.000 Okay, so this is sort of the extent of the analysis that a lot of people who are pro-Trump want to do.

00:05:52.000 The extent of the analysis is the state was already moving red, what are you whining about?

00:05:55.000 Trump lost the state by five, so last night Gillespie lost by nine, so Trump is better than Gillespie, so what's the big deal?

00:06:01.000 The state was already moving in the wrong direction, what are you whining about?

00:06:04.000 I think this is far too simplistic because

00:06:07.000 Again, off-year elections are bad for presidents.

00:06:10.000 They are bad for the president of the incumbent party.

00:06:13.000 And that means that Republicans are likely to be in trouble in the House.

00:06:17.000 So the average loss in House elections for the last 50, 60 years in off-year elections has been around 25 seats.

00:06:23.000 Republicans have a 23-seat majority in the House of Representatives right now.

00:06:27.000 So if just the average swing happens, Republicans lose the House of Representatives.

00:06:30.000 But we were told that Trump was going to win like no other.

00:06:34.000 Winning, winning, winning, winning, right?

00:06:35.000 So that's a bit of an excuse.

00:06:37.000 But, let's take it at face value.

00:06:39.000 The question isn't whether Republicans lose 22 seats, the question is whether Republicans lose 30 or 35 seats.

00:06:44.000 And what we saw last night in Virginia was a wave, and that's a combination of factors, in my opinion.

00:06:48.000 That is, yes, places like Virginia moving to the left.

00:06:51.000 But, more importantly, it is a very unpopular president.

00:06:55.000 Remember, Trump is unpopular right now, and he has 3 to 4 percent economic growth every quarter.

00:06:59.000 If the bottom falls out on the economy at any point here, that dude's gonna be in the 20s faster than you can say anything.

00:07:04.000 I mean, they could really fall apart very quickly here.

00:07:07.000 Unpopular president.

00:07:09.000 Off your election.

00:07:10.000 Motivated Democratic base.

00:07:12.000 The Democratic base is motivated for two reasons.

00:07:14.000 One, they despise President Trump.

00:07:15.000 And without Trump on the ballot, a bunch of Republicans didn't show up.

00:07:19.000 And two, Republicans also didn't show up because Hillary Clinton wasn't on the ballot.

00:07:23.000 The big difference between 2016 and 2017 is not Trump on the ballot, it's Hillary Clinton not being on the ballot.

00:07:28.000 Hillary Clinton not being on the ballot was a major boon to Democrats.

00:07:31.000 There's a solid case to be made that Democrats minus Hillary is greater than GOP plus Trump.

00:07:37.000 In other words, the Democrats gained more by not having Hillary on the ticket than the Republicans gained by having Trump around, especially in Northern Virginia, where the Republicans just got wiped out.

00:07:45.000 In Loudoun County, which is the D.C.

00:07:47.000 exurbs, in 2014, Ida Gillespie, who ran for Senate in 2014 in Virginia, also ran for governor last night in Virginia.

00:07:54.000 In 2014, Gillespie won Loudoun County by 456 votes.

00:07:58.000 Yesterday, he lost it by 24,000 votes.

00:08:01.000 24,000 votes.

00:08:02.000 That is a massive shift.

00:08:04.000 And one of the reasons for that shift is that suburban people did not like President Trump.

00:08:08.000 There were exit polls yesterday showing from ABC News that the people who said they voted because of the president voted 2-1 against Gillespie.

00:08:15.000 So there's a big move against Trump here, and that does have an effect.

00:08:19.000 So an unpopular president, a candidate who's trying to run a Trumpian campaign when he's not really a Trumpian, the fact that the Democrats are jazzed up about 2018 in a way Republicans are not.

00:08:30.000 Republicans haven't done anything with the legislative power they have.

00:08:34.000 Also, it is quite possible, and this is the contention that I have been making for literally a year since the election, literally one year, because today is the day after the election.

00:08:43.000 The case that I have been making is that Hillary Clinton

00:08:46.000 We're good to go.

00:08:59.000 I don't know.

00:09:17.000 Trump wins the state.

00:09:18.000 Bush loses the state.

00:09:19.000 Why?

00:09:19.000 Because people showed up to vote for John Kerry who didn't show up to vote for Hillary Clinton.

00:09:23.000 It's that simple.

00:09:24.000 Well, that's what you're seeing now.

00:09:25.000 Democrats did not vote in the last election cycle for two reasons.

00:09:28.000 One, they thought Hillary was going to win in a walk.

00:09:30.000 That's what the polls were saying.

00:09:32.000 The New York Times was saying a 99% chance that Hillary Clinton was going to be president of the United States on the morning of the election cycle.

00:09:39.000 That's what they were saying all the way up until the evening.

00:09:41.000 A 99% chance that she was going to be the next president of the United States.

00:09:47.000 And so people didn't show up to vote because they figured she's going to win anyway.

00:09:50.000 What does it matter if I go to show up to vote?

00:09:51.000 And two, Hillary's the most off-putting candidate in the history of American politics.

00:09:55.000 No one wanted to get out and vote for her.

00:09:57.000 She's not on the ballot anymore.

00:09:58.000 You know who's still on the ballot?

00:09:59.000 Trump.

00:10:00.000 So now, you get what the Democrats thought it was going to be.

00:10:02.000 There was a big argument in 2016.

00:10:04.000 Is this election about Trump or is it about Hillary?

00:10:07.000 You've got to pick one.

00:10:08.000 Is it about Trump or Hillary?

00:10:10.000 I said the entire election cycle is about Hillary Clinton.

00:10:12.000 Hillary was bouncing around in the polls.

00:10:13.000 She was going everywhere from 50 to 40.

00:10:15.000 Where was she going to end up?

00:10:16.000 That was the big question.

00:10:17.000 Trump was very steady between 40 and 45.

00:10:20.000 Always.

00:10:21.000 Right?

00:10:21.000 And he was usually between 43 and 45.

00:10:23.000 And I figured, okay, 45% is not enough to win.

00:10:25.000 Turns out it is.

00:10:26.000 But bottom line is that now you get the referendum on Trump.

00:10:29.000 The referendum on Hillary is that everyone thought she was terrible.

00:10:32.000 The referendum on Trump, now that no one else is on the ballot, is that Trump is not popular, okay?

00:10:38.000 And that does have a pretty major impact.

00:10:40.000 Now, what the Democrats are doing is they're trying to translate this over into a national campaign.

00:10:46.000 They're basically running Hillaryism without Hillary.

00:10:48.000 One of the things that's fascinating is that a lot of people were saying last night, what you saw was Trumpism without Trump.

00:10:52.000 I'm gonna explain why that's not true in a second, and why what you're actually seeing right now is Hillaryism without Hillary in just a second.

00:10:58.000 First, I want to say thank you to our sponsors over at the U.S.

00:11:00.000 Concealed Carry Association.

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00:11:12.000 Very cool.

00:11:12.000 Tuesday the 14th.

00:11:14.000 I don't think so.

00:11:30.000 We're good to go!

00:12:00.000 Okay, so, there was a lot of talk last night about Trump, and we'll get to Trump in just a second.

00:12:05.000 But what we actually saw was Hillaryism on the ballot without Hillary.

00:12:08.000 So, you had a bunch of candidates who ran campaigns very similar to Hillary Clinton's, but they weren't as nasty and off-putting as Hillary Clinton.

00:12:14.000 Ralph Northam ran a pretty nasty low-down campaign accusing Ed Gillespie of racism and bigotry.

00:12:21.000 He had a Latino Victory Caucus put out that ad that I showed you, what I think is the worst ad in American political history, showing a Gillespie truck trying to run down minority children.

00:12:28.000 And then,

00:12:29.000 Northam had the gall to go out there and say that Virginia rejected hatred and bigotry.

00:12:32.000 Here's Ralph Northam, the new governor of the state of Virginia.

00:12:36.000 Today, Virginians have answered and have spoken.

00:12:41.000 Virginia has told us to end the divisiveness, that we will not condone hatred and bigotry, and to end the politics that have torn this country apart.

00:12:58.000 I want to let you know that in Virginia, it's going to take a doctor to heal our differences.

00:13:07.000 He, of course, is a doctor, so that means that... Okay, so, in any case, this is sheer nonsense, the idea that they rejected hatred and bigotry, that if Ed Gillespie had won, then people in Confederate flag trucks would be running down children.

00:13:18.000 And then they say that they're uniting?

00:13:20.000 Then they say they're uniting?

00:13:21.000 He's running Hillary's campaign, right?

00:13:22.000 This is what Hillary said about deplorables.

00:13:24.000 He's running Hillary's campaign in an off-year election, and he's doing it without Hillary's face.

00:13:29.000 And this makes a big difference.

00:13:30.000 It demonstrates how unpopular Hillary Clinton was.

00:13:33.000 Same thing was happening over in New Jersey.

00:13:35.000 The guy named Phil Murphy is the new governor over in New Jersey replacing Chris Christie when Christie's term is up and he's doing the same thing.

00:13:41.000 We have a new unity, right?

00:13:43.000 Again, this is Hillaryism without Hillary.

00:13:45.000 Tonight we declare the days of division are over.

00:13:49.000 We will move forward together.

00:13:52.000 This is exactly who we are, New Jersey.

00:13:55.000 We have each other's backs.

00:13:57.000 To believe in each of us is to believe in all of us.

00:14:02.000 Okay, so again, they're going to do this whole unity routine running the Hillary campaign without Hillary Clinton, and they can win on that.

00:14:09.000 Okay, it's not the Republicans' agenda was radically, you know, greenlit over the past eight years.

00:14:14.000 It was that they're running against Barack Obama.

00:14:16.000 Well, now Democrats get to run against Donald Trump, and they get to do so without Hillary Clinton's face at the head of their ticket.

00:14:21.000 That makes a very, very large difference.

00:14:23.000 So, one of the questions that's being asked is basically, did Gillespie fight hard enough?

00:14:27.000 So, in defense of Trump, what I'm saying here is that Trump's unpopularity definitely hurts people down ballot, that it drives Democrats to the polls in a way it doesn't drive Republicans to the polls, that Trump's approval rating is historically awful.

00:14:40.000 Again, that ABC News exit polling showed, quote, voters by a 2-1 margin said they were casting their ballot to show opposition to Trump rather than support for him.

00:14:47.000 In New Jersey, that margin was 3-1.

00:14:50.000 People may thrill to Trump's cultural warfare on the right, but it also drives a bunch of people on the left to the polls.

00:14:55.000 You know, so this is the case that I'm making, that some of this has to do with Trump, not all of it has to do with Trump, but some of it does.

00:15:00.000 A lot of people on the Trump side are saying, no, no, no, no, no.

00:15:03.000 The reason that Gillespie lost is because he wasn't Trumpkin enough.

00:15:06.000 Right, this is always, if your theory is that Trump is God, King, Emperor, then everything bad that happens, there's a new hypothesis that's been created, okay?

00:15:13.000 The hypothesis that's been created is that when someone wins, it's because they were warm to Trump, and when someone loses, it's because they weren't warm enough to Trump.

00:15:21.000 It's never about the reality, because Gillespie basically ran a very Trumpian campaign.

00:15:27.000 He didn't openly campaign with Trump.

00:15:28.000 If he had openly campaigned with Trump, he would have lost worse in the DC excerpts up in Northern Virginia.

00:15:33.000 He won exactly the same percentage that Trump won in the state.

00:15:36.000 The difference is that Democrats showed up to vote for Democrats this time, and so Gillespie won 45%, so did Trump.

00:15:42.000 Bottom line is, Gillespie ends up losing by 10, Trump ends up losing by 5.

00:15:45.000 That's because all the Democrats showed up to vote.

00:15:47.000 In fact, by polls, 41% of people who voted yesterday in Virginia were Democrats.

00:15:51.000 Only 31% said they were Republicans.

00:15:54.000 So, what the Trumpian people have been saying is, well, Gillespie lost because he didn't fight hard enough.

00:15:58.000 If he'd only had a little more Trump in him, then he would have won.

00:16:01.000 And to support this, they say, look, look at the Democrats.

00:16:04.000 They're calling him a racist and a bigot, and Gillespie didn't fight back hard enough on that.

00:16:07.000 They point to people like Terry McAuliffe, the current governor of the state of Virginia who definitely wants to run for president.

00:16:13.000 Here's McAuliffe ripping into Gillespie.

00:16:16.000 I'm predicting we're going to win all three statewides.

00:16:18.000 A bunch of House of Delegates.

00:16:19.000 It's been a great race.

00:16:20.000 Ralph Northam is going to be the next governor.

00:16:22.000 Everybody is happy in the state, as you just say.

00:16:24.000 We're a safe state.

00:16:25.000 A record amount of economic investment.

00:16:28.000 And Ed Gillespie has run really a racist, bigoted campaign.

00:16:31.000 Horrible ads.

00:16:32.000 Donald Trump today is now doing robocalls.

00:16:35.000 Donald Trump's at 31% in Virginia.

00:16:37.000 We're going to reject that.

00:16:39.000 And we are going to move forward as a Commonwealth, and Ralph is going to be the next governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

00:16:43.000 Okay, so McCullough's saying that he ran a racist, bigoted campaign.

00:16:45.000 What he's talking about is Gillespie ran an ad saying that Ralph Northam backed Sanctuary Cities, and he linked that to MS-13.

00:16:51.000 Okay, that's not a racist ad.

00:16:52.000 That's a typical political ad.

00:16:54.000 Gillespie, when people say Gillespie is a milquetoast, that he's an establishment guy, what they really mean is that he's not Trumpian in the way that he fights back.

00:17:00.000 I would like him to be a bit more Trumpian in the way that he fights back, by the way.

00:17:03.000 Here's Gillespie, for example, saying last night that Ralph Northam is a good man.

00:17:06.000 Yeah, a good man who called him a racist and a bigot.

00:17:08.000 As I said throughout the course of this campaign, Governor-elect Northam is a good man and I appreciate his service to our country and our Commonwealth and I wish him nothing but the best success as our 73rd Governor and told him that if I could be helpful to him in making our Commonwealth better,

00:17:32.000 So there are a lot of people who are saying, well, you know, this sort of conciliatory show by Gillespie demonstrates why he lost.

00:17:37.000 I think there is something to that.

00:17:39.000 I think Gillespie should fight back harder.

00:17:40.000 It's one of the things I always appreciated about President Trump, even when I wasn't supporting him.

00:17:43.000 You know, the fact is that I think Trump does fight back.

00:17:46.000 I think he fights back on things that are stupid, and I think he fights back on things that are not stupid.

00:17:50.000 Gillespie did not fight back nearly as hard as he should have on things like that Latino victory ad.

00:17:55.000 But is that why Gillespie lost?

00:17:59.000 It doesn't explain why Republicans got shellacked down ballot.

00:18:01.000 It doesn't explain why they lost two seats in Georgia.

00:18:03.000 It doesn't explain why they lost the Washington State Senate.

00:18:05.000 It doesn't explain why the state of Maine just voted to increase Medicare.

00:18:08.000 It doesn't explain any of those things.

00:18:10.000 So I don't quite buy that.

00:18:11.000 But this is going to be the hypothesis of people defending Trump, is that the reason that Gillespie lost is because he didn't hug Trump hard enough.

00:18:18.000 And this is actually a crucial distinction.

00:18:19.000 This is a crucial question.

00:18:21.000 Should Republican candidates hug Trump really hard, or should they try and distance themselves, or should they try to, like, straddle that line?

00:18:28.000 I think the only thing they can do is try to straddle the line.

00:18:30.000 Because if you hug Trump really hard, you are driving Democrats to the polls.

00:18:33.000 If you do not hug Trump really hard, then Trump could actually crap all over you, which, as you will see, Trump did to Gillespie.

00:18:40.000 Or, the Trump base could decide that they are going to turn on you because you are not supportive enough of Trump.

00:18:45.000 This is the problem with cults of personality, is that if you support Trump so much that you're willing to not go out and vote for a typical Republican because they weren't nice to Trump, then you are undercutting Trump's own ability to govern.

00:18:56.000 It's just foolishness.

00:18:57.000 But, that means that a lot of Republicans are caught between a rock and a hard place.

00:19:00.000 They don't want to hug Trump because if they hug Trump, they lose suburban soccer moms.

00:19:05.000 And if they don't hug Trump, then Trump craps all over them and the base deserts them.

00:19:09.000 This is a serious problem.

00:19:11.000 Laura Ingraham last night, she was suggesting what really should have happened here is Gillespie should have just hugged Trump really hard.

00:19:16.000 And this is going to be the going line that you're going to see more and more.

00:19:20.000 I'm going to discuss Trumpism in just a second, but first, Trump personally, the typical media line is because the entire politics now revolves around Trump, people like Laura Ingraham and even Chris Matthews are saying Gillespie's big mistake is that he didn't hug Trump hard enough.

00:19:34.000 Here's Ingraham.

00:19:35.000 Those big suburban counties around Washington, D.C., just right over there, went even more for Northam than they did for Hillary.

00:19:44.000 But what does that tell you?

00:19:45.000 That tells you a populist conservative like Trump, who has a strong personality and a strong message, did do better.

00:19:52.000 He didn't spend a lot of time campaigning in Virginia, Donald Trump.

00:19:55.000 And Ed Gillespie tried to do this dance that, I'm not going to campaign with Trump, but he'll tweet for me and he'll do a last minute robocall.

00:20:03.000 I think in the end that came off as desperate.

00:20:05.000 Okay, so she's saying that it was too little too late, right?

00:20:08.000 That yeah, he was trying to embrace Trump.

00:20:10.000 Yeah, he was trying to be more like Trump.

00:20:11.000 But it was too desperate, right?

00:20:12.000 He wasn't authentic.

00:20:13.000 It didn't really come off.

00:20:14.000 That was really the big problem here.

00:20:15.000 The reason that Donald Trump did better than Gillespie in the northern suburbs is because Hillary Clinton was on the ballot.

00:20:20.000 It's about Hillary, not about Trump.

00:20:21.000 It's so funny.

00:20:22.000 Whenever it comes to Hillary being a tool to be used,

00:20:25.000 There are a lot of hosts who will use Hillary as a tool when they wish to misdirect from Trump.

00:20:30.000 Okay, this is a case where they are using Trump to misdirect from Hillary.

00:20:33.000 The reality is, Democrats did not show up because of Hillary.

00:20:36.000 End of story.

00:20:37.000 Okay, Chris Matthews, though, saying the same thing.

00:20:39.000 Gillespie pretended to be a Trumpster and he couldn't pull it off, he just wasn't authentic enough.

00:20:42.000 Get up in the morning, come to the show, come on in here, talk about Uncle Gillespie.

00:20:45.000 Who's this guy?

00:20:46.000 Ah!

00:20:46.000 Go!

00:20:47.000 I think Democrats should have a morale boost like they've never had tonight.

00:20:51.000 But they have to say, now we've got to get out there and sell something.

00:20:53.000 We've got to sell something, whether it's a better health care program, a jobs program, or something.

00:20:58.000 I think they've got to be—that's just me talking.

00:21:00.000 I think it's just a good night for the Democrats.

00:21:02.000 I don't want to take any of the joy out of it.

00:21:05.000 They beat the hell out of this guy who pretended to be a Trumpster.

00:21:09.000 Ed Gillespie is a Washington lobbyist.

00:21:11.000 He's way down, knee-deep, or head-deep in the swamp.

00:21:14.000 He's part of the problem Trump ran against.

00:21:17.000 Okay, so now, this is the typical line.

00:21:20.000 Matthews tends to be more populist.

00:21:21.000 So again, Ingram and Matthews both being the case that if Gillespie had been more like Trump, then maybe he would have won.

00:21:27.000 No.

00:21:28.000 No.

00:21:28.000 Okay, that's just, the data do not show this.

00:21:30.000 So, what's the next line of defense for a lot of the people who are advocates of Trump, who want to suggest that what happened in Virginia has nothing to do with Trump?

00:21:36.000 The next line of defense, the first line of defense was, again, there are three lines of defense.

00:21:40.000 Line of defense number one was, Virginia was already moving to the left.

00:21:43.000 True.

00:21:44.000 True.

00:21:45.000 Only goes so far, but true.

00:21:50.000 Very, very dubious.

00:21:51.000 And final line of defense is that Trumpism requires Trump, right?

00:21:57.000 He wasn't Trumpist enough, right?

00:21:59.000 It wasn't just that Gillespie didn't embrace

00:22:01.000 Trump, he didn't embrace Trumpism.

00:22:03.000 He didn't embrace the nationalist populist movement, right?

00:22:06.000 This is the line that Steve Bannon is using now, is he's saying that, like, the way that they ran their headline over Breitbart last night is they said that the swamp thing Gillespie was defeated.

00:22:13.000 Five seconds ago, Bannon was trying to campaign for Gillespie, saying that he was attempting to drain the swamp.

00:22:18.000 So they're flipping on that one as well.

00:22:20.000 So I want to talk a little bit about whether Trumpism even exists in just a second, because you have advocates for Trumpism saying, well, that was the problem.

00:22:27.000 Gillespie just wasn't Trumpist enough.

00:22:29.000 Not that he didn't embrace Trump personally, but also he wasn't populist enough.

00:22:32.000 And then you had people on the left saying, well, this shows that Trumpism has failed.

00:22:36.000 And I'm going to offer a third hypothesis.

00:22:38.000 Trumpism does not exist.

00:22:39.000 Something I've been saying now for well over a year.

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00:23:47.000 So, again, to reiterate, the three hypotheses, right?

00:23:50.000 One was, Virginia's moving left, true.

00:23:52.000 Two was, this doesn't have to do with Trump.

00:23:56.000 It's because Gillespie didn't embrace Trump hard enough.

00:23:59.000 I think that's wrong.

00:23:59.000 This is what Trump was saying himself, by the way.

00:24:01.000 Here's Trump's tweet on this last night.

00:24:03.000 Trump tweeted, this is danger for Republicans, what he tweeted right here.

00:24:06.000 He tweeted,

00:24:17.000 Here's the problem.

00:24:18.000 What you can see from Trump is that Trump now has an interest in not associating himself with the Republicans because if they lose, he loses.

00:24:26.000 So instead what he's going to do is crap all over Republicans and then suggest that if they just embraced him harder, everything would have been fine.

00:24:31.000 He's going to play into this false

00:24:33.000 Unfalsifiable hypothesis that every win is a Trump win and every loss is because you didn't embrace Trump hard enough.

00:24:41.000 So that was hypothesis number two.

00:24:42.000 Finally, hypothesis number three is about Trumpism.

00:24:44.000 Trumpists will say, well, Gillespie didn't just not embrace Trump, he didn't embrace Trumpism.

00:24:49.000 He should have been more populist.

00:24:51.000 That's the line that he should have used is that he should have just

00:24:55.000 Even if he wasn't going to embrace Trump, he had to embrace Trump's program.

00:24:58.000 There are a couple problems with this.

00:24:59.000 One, Trump doesn't have a program.

00:25:00.000 Two, the people who are saying this are wildly inconsistent as to what Trumpism constitutes.

00:25:05.000 Steve Bannon, most prominently, has been trying to pose himself, as I have said, for months now.

00:25:11.000 Well, Trumpism doesn't exist in the absence of Trump.

00:25:18.000 Gillespie tried to do a Trumpist campaign.

00:25:21.000 It failed.

00:25:22.000 So, I think Jake Tapper on CNN goes too far.

00:25:24.000 He says this was a rejection of Trumpism.

00:25:25.000 I don't think that's exactly correct, and I'll explain why.

00:25:28.000 CNN projecting that Ralph Northam, the Democratic Lieutenant Governor, will win.

00:25:32.000 And it has to be seen to a degree, I think, as a rejection of President Trump, who is the strongest prevailing political figure in the country.

00:25:42.000 If you look at who turned out, according to the exit polls, and how often people who supported Trump voted for Gillespie, and how often people who opposed Trump voted for Northam, that is a very strong sign of a rejection of Trump.

00:25:55.000 Okay, so the idea again that Trumpism is being overthrown.

00:25:58.000 This suggests that Trumpism is a thing.

00:25:59.000 Trumpism is not a thing.

00:26:01.000 There's a backlash to Trump personally, but I'm not sure that Trumpism is an actual program.

00:26:05.000 If Republicans want to win, they're going to have to ask President Trump to do better.

00:26:08.000 I don't know why this is controversial in any way.

00:26:11.000 It's not a rip on President Trump to suggest he needs to do better.

00:26:13.000 Brit Hume, who's been very supportive of President Trump, comes out last night.

00:26:16.000 He says, look, it's obvious.

00:26:17.000 Trump's unpopularity hurt Gillespie, clearly.

00:26:19.000 Trump stirs passions.

00:26:21.000 And the people who are for him are passionate, and the people who are against him are passionate.

00:26:25.000 In the state of Virginia, remember, he lost Virginia.

00:26:27.000 It's the only southern state he lost, really.

00:26:29.000 So, you know, you think about that.

00:26:32.000 Virginia really isn't Trump country.

00:26:34.000 And an aroused electorate in Virginia is going to be bad news for a Republican running in the age of Trump.

00:26:39.000 Okay, what this says is that in 2018, Republicans have some very solid systematic disadvantages.

00:26:43.000 They have a serious problem in 2018.

00:26:45.000 Democrats are going to be energized.

00:26:47.000 They're going to show up.

00:26:48.000 The average swing is going to be toward the out party.

00:26:50.000 Plus, Trump is the most energizing candidate Democrats have faced ever.

00:26:54.000 Ever.

00:26:55.000 Okay, so that means that they are going to show up in massive numbers.

00:26:57.000 It could be a wipeout for Republicans, so Republicans had better get on their horse and start recruiting some people.

00:27:01.000 Between 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush picked up some 10 to 12 million American voters.

00:27:06.000 He lost the popular vote by 500,000.

00:27:07.000 He then picked up 10 to 12 million voters, and he only won the election by a couple of million votes.

00:27:12.000 Who is Donald Trump picking up right now?

00:27:14.000 So, I think what this election more than anything else should show in Virginia is that the entire system of thought that we just keep doubling down on the base, the base, the base, the base, the base.

00:27:22.000 He hasn't lost his base yet.

00:27:24.000 As long as he doesn't lose his base, he's fine.

00:27:27.000 Inaccurate.

00:27:28.000 He can keep his base.

00:27:29.000 If the base doesn't grow, Trump's going to lose in 2020 and Republicans are going to get slaughtered in 2018.

00:27:33.000 The base is not big enough.

00:27:36.000 His base is 35-38% of the population.

00:27:39.000 That's it.

00:27:39.000 That is not enough to win a general election.

00:27:41.000 And the Electoral College is not going to save you in congressional elections.

00:27:44.000 It's not even going to save you this time around in a popular election when Hillary Clinton is not on the ballot.

00:27:49.000 So, as much as Republicans love to hate Hillary Clinton, the person they should be most grateful to in 2016 is not Donald Trump, it is Hillary Clinton.

00:27:56.000 They should be grateful to Hillary Clinton for being such a crappy candidate.

00:27:58.000 If Democrats don't make the same mistake in 2020 they made in 2016, and just appoint somebody wildly unpopular with the American public, they have an upper hand.

00:28:07.000 And this is going to require Republicans to do something.

00:28:10.000 Being in power means that you are more responsible.

00:28:12.000 There's more risk and there's more reward.

00:28:14.000 The risk is, if you don't do anything, people are going to assume that you are just a bag of hot wind, and they're going to get angry at you.

00:28:20.000 And if you do do something, you risk that you're going to do the wrong thing.

00:28:24.000 But, it's also an opportunity.

00:28:25.000 It's very high reward.

00:28:26.000 If you can shift the ground, if you can pass popular legislation,

00:28:30.000 You can move people into your column.

00:28:32.000 For a year, Republicans have done nothing in Congress.

00:28:34.000 Again, this is not on Trump.

00:28:35.000 Republicans have done nothing in Congress.

00:28:37.000 The backlash against the Republican Party is strong because of Trump, because of Republicans, because of the system, because Democrats are pissed off they didn't win in 2016.

00:28:44.000 None of this bodes well for 2018.

00:28:45.000 And if Republicans take the wrong lessons here, if the lesson they take is, Oh, Trump is fine.

00:28:50.000 Everything's cool.

00:28:51.000 It's just Virginia.

00:28:53.000 Heed the warnings, okay?

00:28:54.000 Heed the warnings.

00:28:55.000 Because if you don't, a shellacking is coming.

00:28:58.000 And then I guess we'll play this game where we blame NeverTrump and we blame, you know, people who weren't fully Trumpy enough.

00:29:04.000 It's just, if that's the game that we're going to play, then we are again not, we are not involved in the realm of reality.

00:29:10.000 I'm seeing

00:29:12.000 I'm seeing those talking points already.

00:29:13.000 This idea that never Trump is to blame for what happened in Virginia.

00:29:16.000 Again, there's no evidence of that whatsoever.

00:29:18.000 The never Trump movement is like three people.

00:29:20.000 It was never a movement.

00:29:22.000 Just because you didn't vote for Trump didn't mean that you were against Gillespie winning.

00:29:24.000 Okay?

00:29:25.000 Not everybody's Evan McMillan.

00:29:26.000 I wanted Ed Gillespie to win.

00:29:27.000 I wanted Republicans to retain power.

00:29:29.000 I think it's important that they do.

00:29:30.000 It's really terrible what happened last night in Virginia.

00:29:32.000 Trump must do better.

00:29:34.000 He must do better.

00:29:35.000 Republicans must do better.

00:29:36.000 I don't see why any of this is even mildly controversial.

00:29:38.000 Okay.

00:29:40.000 So, meanwhile, President Trump is over in South Korea and he is speaking about North Korea at length.

00:29:45.000 He's talking about China and he's talking about Russia.

00:29:47.000 And here he was suggesting that it was time to isolate North Korea and directly posing a challenge to China and Russia.

00:29:54.000 All responsible nations must join forces to isolate the brutal regime of North Korea, to deny it and any form, any form of it,

00:30:07.000 You cannot support, you cannot supply, you cannot accept.

00:30:12.000 We call on every nation, including China and Russia, to fully implement UN Security Council resolutions, downgrade diplomatic relations with the regime, and sever all ties of trade and technology.

00:30:30.000 Okay, so what Trump is doing here is the right thing.

00:30:32.000 And this is the point, okay?

00:30:33.000 When you're President of the United States, you have a capacity to win people over.

00:30:36.000 And Trump is actually on the road to doing that if he could just shut his mouth and stick to script.

00:30:42.000 And when Trump does that, he's doing fine.

00:30:43.000 This is why a lot of people who love Trump

00:30:46.000 are angry when I comment on what Trump comments on.

00:30:48.000 They say, well, why are you engaging with that?

00:30:49.000 Just look at what he's doing, right?

00:30:50.000 He's cut regulations.

00:30:51.000 He's not spending as much.

00:30:53.000 He's not growing the federal government as fast.

00:30:55.000 On foreign policy, he's attempting to work with the military.

00:30:57.000 All of that is true.

00:30:59.000 What makes him unpopular is not this stuff.

00:31:01.000 It's the crap that he tweets about Ed Gillespie, right?

00:31:04.000 It's the Charlottesville comments.

00:31:05.000 That's the stuff that makes him unpopular, not his actual policies.

00:31:08.000 Here he was again yesterday talking about North Korea in what I think is language that most Americans agree with.

00:31:14.000 This is a very different administration than the United States has had in the past.

00:31:22.000 Today, I hope I speak not only for our countries.

00:31:27.000 But for all civilized nations, when I say to the North, do not underestimate us and do not try us.

00:31:38.000 We will defend our common security, our shared prosperity, and our sacred liberty.

00:31:46.000 We did not choose to draw here on this peninsula.

00:31:54.000 Okay, so again, all of this is stuff that Trump can do just fine.

00:31:57.000 But he's going to need to cut out all of the ancillary stuff because that's what makes him unpopular.

00:32:02.000 I don't want to be the dead horse here, but if the takeaway from Virginia is that we should all just blithely go about our business, then we are making exactly the same mistake Democrats made in 2009 when they assumed that all of the backlash to Obama was just a bunch of talk.

00:32:13.000 Remember, if Republicans just got shellacked in Virginia with 3% growth for the last two quarters, with the economy doing well, with us relatively secure in foreign policy, what's going to happen if something goes wrong?

00:32:25.000 It could be a disaster.

00:32:25.000 It's already a D plus 11 congressional generic ballot.

00:32:28.000 And what happens if they win the House?

00:32:30.000 Let's say that they win the House.

00:32:31.000 They'll move to impeach Trump, presumably.

00:32:33.000 But if they don't move to impeach Trump...

00:32:35.000 Then you could see them sweep.

00:32:38.000 I think if they move to impeach Trump, it'll get out of the Trump base.

00:32:40.000 But if they don't move to impeach Trump, then they could win back the Senate in 2020 and the presidency in 2020.

00:32:45.000 There's the outside possibility they win back the Senate this year or next year.

00:32:49.000 If they do that, you can kiss goodbye to the Supreme Court.

00:32:51.000 Because at that point, they'll just stymie whoever Trump appoints to the Supreme Court.

00:32:55.000 The whole thing is, it does matter.

00:32:57.000 Politics does matter.

00:32:58.000 Elections do matter.

00:32:59.000 What happened in Virginia last night, it's either going to be seen as a data point or part of a trend.

00:33:03.000 I think it's part of a trend, not just a data point.

00:33:05.000 Okay, so before I go any further...

00:33:07.000 And I want to read you a column from the New York Times that I think is quite ridiculous in a second.

00:33:12.000 But before I go any further, I want to say thank you to one of our new sponsors, Tripping.com.

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00:34:21.000 And as I say, every time my wife and kids and I travel, we have to do a vacation rental.

00:34:24.000 Tripping.com slash Shapiro is the service that we use.

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00:34:29.000 Okay, so.

00:34:32.000 There is, you know, with all of this said, I think the Democrats still have the capacity to lose if they focus on intersectionality, if they continue to focus on their social justice warrioring.

00:34:42.000 So, you know, there's this idea, this is how you got Trump.

00:34:45.000 That continues to apply.

00:34:46.000 It's not that that went away last night in Virginia.

00:34:48.000 So, Democrats have to be very careful.

00:34:50.000 The campaign the Democrats ran in Virginia was actually a moderate Hillary-esque campaign, not a full Bernie Sanders-esque campaign, and not a full-on intersectional campaign.

00:34:57.000 Northam did it a little bit, but he really campaigned more as moderate than anything else.

00:35:03.000 He looked more like Joe Biden than anything else.

00:35:06.000 And what you're seeing from the left is them tearing themselves open.

00:35:10.000 So while Republicans are tearing themselves open about Trump, the left is tearing themselves open about what is their centering ideology.

00:35:17.000 And maybe Trump can help bring them together around that.

00:35:19.000 I mean, Obama brought Republicans together around anti-Obamaism, and there were some significant breaches in the Republican platform, for sure.

00:35:26.000 But if Democrats continue to embrace the intersectional theory that they have been embracing thus far, then that could lead to a Trump victory and to a Republican resurgence.

00:35:35.000 Because culture wars do drive this.

00:35:37.000 Culture wars do make a difference with regard to how people vote.

00:35:41.000 So, you know, Democrats could still blow this.

00:35:43.000 I'll talk a little bit more about how Democrats can blow this, and I'll show you an instance of Democrats seeking to blow it in just a second.

00:35:49.000 But for all of that, you're going to have to go and subscribe over at dailywire.com.

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00:35:59.000 And if you subscribe, you definitely want to be sure to tune in

00:36:04.000 To watch our next episode of The Conversation happening next Tuesday, November 14th at 5 p.m.

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00:37:05.000 Okay, time for some things I like and some things that I hate.

00:37:08.000 So, things that I like.

00:37:10.000 I have been watching Stranger Things Season 2, and normally I don't see things I like on specific seasons of shows, but since this is such a big phenomenon, the new Stranger Things season is quite good.

00:37:20.000 I'm through eight episodes.

00:37:21.000 I'm not through the last two episodes yet, and it is...

00:37:25.000 Oh, I have one left?

00:37:26.000 It's nine episodes?

00:37:27.000 Okay, fine.

00:37:27.000 So I'm close to the end of this thing, and it is very good.

00:37:30.000 I think it's better than season one in a lot of ways.

00:37:32.000 I'm gonna have to do a full season two recap at a certain point on Facebook Live, where I give my criticisms.

00:37:38.000 I have particular criticisms of one Nancy, but we will discuss that another time.

00:37:43.000 Here is the preview for Stranger Things season two.

00:37:45.000 We gotta do this?

00:37:46.000 Let's engage.

00:38:01.000 That's never good.

00:38:12.000 Hey guys, do you see the...

00:38:27.000 Whenever you hear that rising noise, that's always bad in a preview.

00:38:30.000 So in any case, it is less... I would say it's kind of less scary in some ways than season one.

00:38:36.000 Season one, I think, is a scarier season because you haven't seen any of these things before.

00:38:40.000 This season is a lot less scary, but it's also faster paced.

00:38:44.000 So it moves a lot faster.

00:38:45.000 The pacing in episode one particularly is much better.

00:38:49.000 And I do find it weird that there's so many people who are nostalgic for an era they never lived through.

00:38:53.000 I was born in the year that this show takes place.

00:38:55.000 It takes place in 1984, and I'm sort of nostalgic for it, but that's because the 80s and 90s are basically one long continuation, but there are a lot of people who are nostalgic for this who are kids.

00:39:04.000 You got 17-year-old kids who love Stranger Things because they're nostalgic for it.

00:39:07.000 What that shows you is how much pop culture is invested in our perception of the past, because what you're really nostalgic for is not the 1984.

00:39:14.000 What you're really nostalgic for is E.T.

00:39:17.000 What you're really nostalgic for is movies that were made about this period, because the movies were better in 1984 than they are today.

00:39:22.000 It's just the reality of the situation.

00:39:24.000 So, you know, it is fun to watch.

00:39:26.000 It is well-written.

00:39:28.000 I'll be very disappointed if in season three they start with the social justice warrior ring.

00:39:32.000 There are some rumors to that effect, that they're gonna make one of the kids gay because they have to do that.

00:39:36.000 That would be really irritating because, come on, not everything has to be about the sexuality of the characters or this kind of nonsense.

00:39:41.000 But in any case, the season is well worth the watch, so check it out.

00:39:46.000 Okay, time for a quick thing that I hate.

00:39:49.000 So...

00:39:50.000 I was talking about how the Democrats can lose.

00:39:52.000 One of the ways the Democrats can lose is if they suggest that their brand is tied up with radical leftism.

00:40:01.000 Right now, Trump won by being the default not Hillary, right?

00:40:04.000 He was more than that, obviously, but that's probably why he was unpopular.

00:40:07.000 Hillary was so terrible that Trump won by being not Hillary, right?

00:40:10.000 That was his entire campaign was not Hillary, right?

00:40:12.000 He would say this.

00:40:13.000 Democrats now

00:40:15.000 can win if they say, we're not Trump.

00:40:18.000 But instead of doing that, they feel the necessity to go out and make fools of themselves to demonstrate how passionate they are about the cause.

00:40:23.000 So Ted Lieu, who represents a district over here in Los Angeles, his opponent's a guy named Dr. Kenneth Wright, whom I have endorsed for Congress.

00:40:31.000 Ted Lieu said that he, here's what happened.

00:40:35.000 There was this moment of silence for the victims of the Texas shooting.

00:40:37.000 Ted Lieu walked out of the moment of silence.

00:40:40.000 Okay, and here's what he had to say.

00:40:41.000 Well still, a moment of silence.

00:40:43.000 Some people might say you even politicized that.

00:40:46.000 I view it as doing my job to highlight this issue because you don't want Congress to just do moments of silences every time a mass shooting happens.

00:40:57.000 You want us to take action to try to prevent this shooting from happening in the first place.

00:41:02.000 Okay, so the idea that he's going to walk out on a funeral basically, that he's going to walk out on a moment of silence in order to demonstrate that he wants legislation on gun control is just absurd.

00:41:10.000 I tweeted him yesterday and he didn't have any very good responses on this.

00:41:13.000 I tweeted him repeatedly saying, so have you walked out on funerals to go work in a soup kitchen or do you like wait to finish the funeral and then go to the soup kitchen?

00:41:20.000 Or why are you grandstanding about these victims but you won't grandstand about other victims?

00:41:24.000 Are they less valuable to you than these victims?

00:41:28.000 Again, this is all grandstanding.

00:41:29.000 The more Democrats grandstand, the more they're going to lose.

00:41:31.000 But if they keep their mouths shut and they just wait for the Republicans to make mistakes, that seems the way our politics works right now.

00:41:37.000 You just wait for your opponent to make a mistake and then capitalize.

00:41:41.000 Democrats should be in good shape if they do that, but fortunately for Republicans, there is always the question as to whether Democrats can keep their mouths shut on any of this stuff.

00:41:48.000 Okay, time for a brief Bible talk.

00:41:51.000 I've been kind of going through the stories almost at random in the Bible.

00:41:54.000 I'm going through them sort of in chronological order, but giving a little bit more in-depth than I have over the past couple of years.

00:41:58.000 So, the next story in the Bible that I think is interesting, after the Cain and Abel story, is the story of Noah.

00:42:06.000 So, the description of Noah in the Bible is that he's a good man in his time, right?

00:42:09.000 That he walked with God and he was a good man in his time.

00:42:11.000 So, there's been a big debate in Jewish theological circles about what it means to be a good man in your time.

00:42:15.000 Why does it say in his time?

00:42:17.000 Right?

00:42:17.000 In whose else time would he be a good man?

00:42:19.000 So there are two ways to read this.

00:42:20.000 One is that Noah was a good man even for his time, meaning he was living in a really corrupt, awful time.

00:42:26.000 And so the fact that he was good in that time demonstrates how great he was.

00:42:29.000 The other way to read that is to say he was only good for that time.

00:42:31.000 Like, if he lived today, he wouldn't be that great.

00:42:34.000 And a lot of that depends on what you think of his tactics.

00:42:36.000 So what's fascinating about Noah is that Noah doesn't spend a minute trying to recruit other people to fix their ways or build arcs of their own or anything, right?

00:42:45.000 God says, build an arc, I'm destroying the world.

00:42:47.000 Noah doesn't argue with him.

00:42:48.000 Noam says, okay.

00:42:49.000 Fine.

00:42:50.000 Cool with me.

00:42:51.000 Starts building a giant ark.

00:42:52.000 Right?

00:42:52.000 That's the idea here.

00:42:53.000 Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

00:42:55.000 This mirrors a debate that happens in religious communities all over the place.

00:42:58.000 Religious communities have to make a very interesting decision.

00:43:01.000 The decision is, do you cloister yourself and your children in an attempt to protect them?

00:43:05.000 Do you try to prevent them from seeing news of the outside world?

00:43:08.000 Do you try to build a bubble for them so that they're not affected by the diseases of the outside world?

00:43:13.000 Or do you teach them to go out and engage?

00:43:14.000 There is danger to engaging.

00:43:16.000 If you engage, you may lose some people.

00:43:18.000 If you engage, some people may walk away from your faith and your spirituality.

00:43:21.000 Some people may be seduced by the dark side, so to speak.

00:43:24.000 Or do you build a bubble and try to protect your kids?

00:43:27.000 And I think the answer is supposed to be some of both, and it is time dependent.

00:43:30.000 Right?

00:43:30.000 You have to pick your spot.

00:43:31.000 So I don't think the answer is always the same.

00:43:33.000 You know, when I was a kid, there was a kid who lived next door.

00:43:36.000 And the kid was really trouble.

00:43:37.000 I mean, a really troubled kid.

00:43:39.000 And my mom had a certain perspective on this kid.

00:43:41.000 She thought, well, Ben's a good kid.

00:43:42.000 The kid next door is not a great kid.

00:43:43.000 If Ben hangs out with this kid, then Ben will make the other kid better.

00:43:46.000 Right?

00:43:46.000 The other kid will be better.

00:43:47.000 And my dad's perspective was, if Ben hangs out with this other kid, this other kid could make Ben worse.

00:43:52.000 Now, this all came to the forefront, it came to a culmination when I was about maybe three or four years old, probably three, and this other kid convinced me to hide in the bushes a couple of doors down from my parents' house and not to answer when my parents called me.

00:44:06.000 And so my parents actually ended up calling the police because they didn't know where I'd gone.

00:44:08.000 They thought maybe I'd been kidnapped or something.

00:44:10.000 And when I came out, my parents said, you're not allowed to play with that kid ever again.

00:44:14.000 There are situations where you do have to protect yourself from outside forces.

00:44:17.000 And then there are situations where you have to reach out.

00:44:19.000 Right now is a situation where conservatives have to reach out.

00:44:22.000 Not just because the country is on the brink, but also because they have the opportunity to do so.

00:44:26.000 And this is sort of the case I've been making about President Trump and about Republicans.

00:44:29.000 Don't hunker down in your Trumpist bunker.

00:44:31.000 Don't hunker down in your conservative bunker.

00:44:33.000 Go out and win converts.

00:44:35.000 Don't just yell at people.

00:44:37.000 Don't just yell MAGA MAGA.

00:44:39.000 Don't just talk about the base.

00:44:40.000 Figure out how you're going to win new people over.

00:44:42.000 Because if you don't do that, the Democrats are going to drive out their base at higher rates than we turn out our base in 2018, 2020.

00:44:46.000 It's going to be a serious problem for Republicans.

00:44:49.000 Okay.

00:44:50.000 We'll be back here tomorrow with more deconstruction.

00:44:52.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:44:53.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

The Democratic Tsunami, Or Just Another Ripple? | Ep. 413

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