The Ben Shapiro Show - Trump WRECKS The Field In Iowa

00:00:00.000 Donald Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee.

00:00:02.000 I know it's early, I know it's the day after the Iowa caucuses, but let's face facts here, folks.

00:00:07.000 Donald Trump is so far out ahead of the rest of the field that no one else has a plausible shot at the nomination that was confirmed last night in the Iowa caucuses when Donald Trump broke 50% and none of the other candidates was able to break 22%.

00:00:22.000 That is an insurmountable lead for Donald Trump in these primaries.

00:00:25.000 So, last night, the Iowa caucuses opened at 7 p.m.

00:00:29.000 local time, and by 7.30, every major outlet was calling the Iowa caucuses for Donald Trump.

00:00:35.000 Now, it's pretty controversial.

00:00:37.000 It's controversial because there were still people who not only hadn't voted, they hadn't even started the speech-making process the way the caucuses work on the Republican side, is that people show up in these local locations, and all various candidates have their surrogates who come and make speeches, and then everybody votes.

00:00:50.000 The reason that all of these outlets were able to make this call so early is because, of course, the polling data in terms of entrance polling showed Trump so far out ahead that there was no plausible challenger.

00:01:00.000 Not a lot of questions as to whether these outlets should have done that because, after all, Literally zero votes had been counted at the point at which all of these projections were made.

00:01:09.000 And there was a lot of question from the DeSantis camp and from the Haley camp about whether that affected what was going on inside the actual caucus halls.

00:01:16.000 That there were people who were checking their phones, seeing that Fox News, for example, had called the race and simply decided, okay, well, I'm here anyway.

00:01:22.000 I may as well just vote for the guy who won.

00:01:23.000 I may as well vote for Trump.

00:01:25.000 Here's what it sounded like when all of these various outlets called the race extremely early.

00:01:30.000 CNN projects that Donald Trump will win the Iowa caucuses.

00:01:34.000 CNN can make this projection based on his overwhelming lead in our entrance poll of Iowa caucus goers and some initial votes that are coming in.

00:01:42.000 The former president pulling off a huge early victory in his bid to return to the White House.

00:01:47.000 I'm going to interrupt myself because NBC News can now project at this hour At 8.33 p.m.

00:01:55.000 7.33 Central Time, 8.33 in the East Coast, 7.33 Central Time, that former President Donald J. Trump will be the projected winner in the Iowa caucuses for the 2024 presidential election.

00:02:10.000 So based on the first results and our Fox News voter analysis, the Fox News Decision Desk can now project that former President Donald Trump will win the Iowa caucuses.

00:02:20.000 He will take the lion's share of the state's 40 delegates.

00:02:24.000 This result really solidifies his place as the current frontrunner for the nomination.

00:02:29.000 Now again, many of the other candidates were crying foul at this point, not because Trump wasn't going to win, he was, but because they said that this may have shifted the margin of victory.

00:02:36.000 The Associated Press, for example, has a policy that they will not call the winner of a race before all the polls in a jurisdiction are scheduled to close.

00:02:43.000 Pretty much all of them called, not only before the polls were scheduled to close, but before some of the polls had even opened.

00:02:49.000 Was that going to change the trajectory or the shape of this race?

00:02:52.000 I have very serious doubts that that is the case.

00:02:55.000 The final results in Iowa, again, Donald Trump 51%, followed by Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, the guy I would have voted for in the primaries, at 21%, followed by former South Carolina Governor and U.N.

00:03:06.000 Ambassador Nikki Haley at 19%.

00:03:07.000 So maybe it would have shifted things at the margins, a couple of percentage points either way.

00:03:12.000 It was not going to detract from Donald Trump's massive blowout victory.

00:03:16.000 The reason for Donald Trump's massive blowout victory It's pretty simple.

00:03:20.000 Republican voters see Donald Trump as the incumbent.

00:03:22.000 It is that simple.

00:03:23.000 He's being treated as the incumbent, and he performed like an incumbent would in an Iowa caucus.

00:03:27.000 If Joe Biden were actually running in an Iowa caucus this year, if there were some sort of caucus process in Iowa this year, you would expect that Joe Biden would receive somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the vote, and that a couple challengers might peel off 10 percent here and there.

00:03:41.000 That is essentially how the polls have been playing for Donald Trump in Iowa, basically since July of this year.

00:03:49.000 The truth is that whatever vulnerability Donald Trump had as a candidate, it began in January of 2023 and it ended by basically March of 2023.

00:03:59.000 In January 2023, Donald Trump was widely perceived by the Republican base as a person who caused Republicans to lose.

00:04:05.000 Because the 2022 elections went really poorly.

00:04:07.000 And so what you saw is that if you go all the way back to the beginning of the year, what you see is that Donald Trump had an advantage over Ron DeSantis, but not much of one nationally speaking.

00:04:17.000 DeSantis was perceived as a winner because he had a blowout victory here in Florida, and Donald Trump was perceived as a person who caused other candidates to lose because he had had a bunch of Senate candidates who lost going all the way back to 2020 when he promoted the loss of two separate Republican senators in Georgia.

00:04:32.000 But DeSantis didn't jump in fast enough.

00:04:35.000 No one redefined Trump as a loser.

00:04:37.000 And so what Trump did, smart politics, he kept claiming that he was the actual winner of the 2020 election.

00:04:44.000 By exit polling in, Republicans believe him.

00:04:46.000 The people who voted in the Iowa caucuses, 70% believe that he actually won the 2020 election.

00:04:51.000 Whether or not that is true, they believe that.

00:04:53.000 And if you're that voter, and you think he won twice, why would you not vote for him?

00:04:57.000 The chief argument against Donald Trump all along was electability.

00:05:00.000 It was never character, because if character had mattered, then it would have mattered a lot earlier.

00:05:04.000 And it wasn't performance, because most Republicans, by and large, were fairly happy with Donald Trump's policy performance as President of the United States, despite the fact that the 2020 year was really bad for Donald Trump.

00:05:14.000 The real knock on Trump was that he was not electable.

00:05:19.000 Which means that there are two assets that Donald Trump had.

00:05:22.000 One was that people in the Republican Party still really love Donald Trump.

00:05:25.000 That's just the simple fact of the matter.

00:05:27.000 He has an enormous amount of loyalty among Republican voters.

00:05:30.000 People personally like him.

00:05:31.000 What the exit and entrance polls show is that people who believe that The candidate caring about people like them matters.

00:05:38.000 They voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.

00:05:40.000 That is number one.

00:05:41.000 Number two, Donald Trump is extremely lucky in his opponents. 1.00

00:05:45.000 Joe Biden is a dead man. 0.70

00:05:47.000 I mean, I don't mean that he's like physically dead, although he kind of is. 1.00

00:05:50.000 I mean that Joe Biden is a terrible president.

00:05:53.000 who happens to be running at 33% in the approval ratings, and that means that anyone, including sliced bread, looks electable against Joe Biden.

00:06:01.000 So the entire argument that was being made by Donald Trump's opponents that he was unelectable, which was probably true in January of 2023, is no longer true in January of 2024, when Donald Trump, in nearly every poll, is leading Joe Biden.

00:06:12.000 The electability argument completely disappeared, and with that argument went most of the opposition to Donald Trump in the Republican Party.

00:06:19.000 So Donald Trump was basically in control of the Iowa caucuses by the polling data, By essentially June.

00:06:26.000 If you look all the way back at the beginnings of polling in the Iowa caucuses, you're looking at May of 2023.

00:06:30.000 That's about when DeSantis entered the race.

00:06:32.000 And that was DeSantis' high watermark in Iowa.

00:06:34.000 He was at 28% and Trump was at 40%.

00:06:36.000 And DeSantis then proceeded to drop About 10%, from about 30% all the way down to about 20% in the final tally here.

00:06:44.000 Trump, for his part, rose from about 40% to about 50%, and that was baked into the cake as early as July.

00:06:51.000 As mid-July, Donald Trump was already up 30 points on the field, and that's where he ended up in this race.

00:06:57.000 Nikki Haley picked up some of the support that early on might have been going to some of the other candidates, the Chris Christies of the world, for example, and she consolidated enough support to finish a close third to Ron DeSantis in Iowa.

00:07:10.000 But again, they are so far behind that none of that really matters.

00:07:14.000 We'll get to more on this in just one moment.

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00:08:14.000 And so now the question becomes, what comes next?

00:08:17.000 What happens next in the primaries?

00:08:18.000 Well, if you look at the New Hampshire Republican primary, which is the next one up, DeSantis has effectively no support in New Hampshire.

00:08:24.000 It is not his state.

00:08:26.000 It's a very moderate state.

00:08:27.000 Tends to be kind of Mitt Romney-esque kind of state with a libertarian bent, which is why Ron Paul tended to outperform over in New Hampshire, historically speaking.

00:08:36.000 Right now in the RealPolitics polling average, Donald Trump has 43.5%, Nikki Haley is at 29.3%, Chris Christie, who only recently dropped out of the race, was polling 11, 12%.

00:08:45.000 DeSantis was down at seven.

00:08:47.000 And Ramaswamy was down at five.

00:08:50.000 So as we'll discuss in a second, Ramaswamy is now out officially.

00:08:52.000 I mean, he was effectively out a few weeks ago because again, his polling data were not sufficient to keep him going in the race.

00:08:58.000 But Ramaswamy officially dropped out last night.

00:09:01.000 So his 5% will go to Trump, you would imagine, which brings Trump up to 48.5%.

00:09:05.000 DeSantis' percentage is probably going to remain stable.

00:09:08.000 Maybe it drops a little bit.

00:09:10.000 So maybe that boosts Trump above 50% and then Christie's percentage points are going to go to Haley. 0.94

00:09:13.000 So you'd imagine that Haley is going to be about 40% and Trump is going to be up around 50%.

00:09:17.000 That would be my predicted final result in New Hampshire, especially given the blowout victory for Donald Trump here.

00:09:22.000 Well, if Trump wins Iowa and he wins New Hampshire, he's not losing a primary the rest of the season.

00:09:26.000 And we are now done.

00:09:28.000 And everybody can kind of feel it.

00:09:30.000 Nikki Haley, if she had really wanted to have a serious challenge here, needed to come in second here.

00:09:35.000 By coming in third to DeSantis, her momentum was somewhat blunted.

00:09:40.000 DeSantis for his part is not formally dropping out at this point.

00:09:44.000 DeSantis is not dropping out because presumably he is thinking that maybe something wild happens in New Hampshire.

00:09:51.000 Perhaps something strange happens in South Carolina.

00:09:53.000 Perhaps there's a health problem with Donald Trump or something and he is still sort of the nearest competitor in terms of people who are still in the race who mirror Donald Trump's policy preferences.

00:10:03.000 That may or may not be true.

00:10:05.000 Bottom line here is, again, I don't see the math.

00:10:08.000 There is no math for anyone else to win this nomination except for Donald Trump.

00:10:11.000 Now, it's worth exploring here what exactly happened in Iowa and the breakdown of the demographics in Iowa.

00:10:18.000 Number one, no one voted.

00:10:19.000 Again, this was basically treated like an incumbent election.

00:10:22.000 In 2016, there were about 180,000 people who voted in the Iowa caucuses.

00:10:26.000 Last night, 110,000 people participated.

00:10:29.000 That is really, really low.

00:10:30.000 That's a very low number.

00:10:31.000 Why?

00:10:32.000 Because everybody basically assumed that Donald Trump was going to win.

00:10:35.000 And that's... they were right, obviously.

00:10:37.000 As the Wall Street Journal says, in the end, there was only one lane to victory in Iowa and Donald Trump had it all to himself.

00:10:42.000 The candidates challenging the former president had hoped to find enough dissatisfaction with him to build their own voter coalition.

00:10:47.000 Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, had shown signs in polling of consolidating college-educated Republicans, such as those in the suburbs or college towns of Iowa, as well as voters less committed to conservative causes.

00:10:57.000 Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, had moved aggressively to win voters who fear a liberal takeover of schools, businesses, and academia, but Trump carried those groups, winning some handily.

00:11:05.000 He won 32% of college graduates to Nikki Haley's 30%.

00:11:09.000 He dominated among those without a four-year college degree.

00:11:12.000 Look at the Wall Street Journal exit polling and what you find is that among those with a college degree, Donald Trump won 35%, Nikki Haley won 31%, and DeRon DeSantis won 22%.

00:11:21.000 Among those with no college degree, Donald Trump won 63% of the vote, compared to 13% for both Haley and DeSantis.

00:11:28.000 This, of course, has been Trump's pitch since 2016, is this sort of idea of a broad, working-class coalition that was going to vote Republican.

00:11:36.000 And a lot of people have tried to create an economic Philosophy about why that is.

00:11:41.000 I think that has much less to do with economics and much more to do with the fact that Donald Trump, of all the candidates in American history, really does not look down on blue-collar working people.

00:11:52.000 The Democratic Party does.

00:11:53.000 This is why they've embraced the intersectional ideology and Donald Trump rejects that wholesale and he tends to talk like a blue-collar working guy even though he clearly is not.

00:12:01.000 And that translates.

00:12:03.000 Among urban voters, Donald Trump won 54%.

00:12:05.000 Suburban voters, which would be where Nikki Haley would do the best, he won 37%, compared with Nikki Haley's 27%.

00:12:10.000 And in small towns, rural areas, he dominated again, 59%.

00:12:14.000 59% of people, by the way, who said that Trump's rule in January 6th is illegal, voted for Nikki Haley, but that is not a lot of people.

00:12:25.000 Very few people in the Republican coalition actually believe that.

00:12:29.000 And again, these are mirrored, those results from the Wall Street Journal are mirrored in the Washington Post entrance polls.

00:12:36.000 Donald Trump dominated pretty much every group.

00:12:37.000 There's only one group that Donald Trump didn't actually win, and that was voters 17 through 29.

00:12:41.000 That's about 9% of voters in Iowa.

00:12:43.000 Among that group, Ron DeSantis actually won that group. 30%.

00:12:47.000 Again, mirroring what happened in 2016.

00:12:48.000 In 2016, you'll recall that Ted Cruz actually outperformed among young Republicans.

00:12:52.000 It was older, boomer Republicans who tended to vote very heavily for Donald Trump.

00:12:56.000 That was mirrored last night in the results, although Donald Trump did sweep every age group outside of the 17 to 29s.

00:13:01.000 17 to 29, Donald Trump actually finished third.

00:13:04.000 It went to Santas, 30.

00:13:05.000 Haley, 25.

00:13:06.000 Trump, 22.

00:13:06.000 Ramaswamy, 21.

00:13:09.000 But among every other age group he dominated, particularly those who are above the age of 65, 58% of people above the age of 55 supported Donald Trump.

00:13:20.000 Only 16% supported Ron DeSantis.

00:13:24.000 21% supported Nikki Haley.

00:13:25.000 And again, when it comes to the educational breakdown, 67% of people who had some college or less voted for Donald Trump.

00:13:33.000 Among college graduates, though, he also won 37 to 28 over Nikki Haley, 26% for Ron DeSantis.

00:13:40.000 So, yeah, this is a sweeping victory for Donald Trump.

00:13:45.000 And as you move forward to New Hampshire, it is hard to see exactly how anyone else has a serious shot at the Republican nomination.

00:13:51.000 We'll get some more on this in just one second.

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00:14:55.000 All right, so last night, Donald Trump comes out triumphantly.

00:14:57.000 He's obviously much more relaxed.

00:14:59.000 He wanted to surpass 50%.

00:15:00.000 It was a very clear priority for him because that was considered a dominant victory.

00:15:04.000 So those couple of last percentage points make a bit of a perceptual difference.

00:15:07.000 Now, realistically speaking, if he won 48 to 21 or something, that's still a dominant victory.

00:15:13.000 51 looks more dominant because it means that he got a sheer majority of the votes in Iowa, meaning no one could have taken him.

00:15:19.000 Here is Donald Trump ironically congratulating some of his opponents by being passive-aggressive.

00:15:26.000 I want to thank you very much.

00:15:27.000 I want to congratulate Ron and Nikki for having a good time together.

00:15:34.000 We're all having a good time together.

00:15:37.000 And I think they both actually did very well.

00:15:40.000 I really do.

00:15:40.000 I think they both did very well.

00:15:42.000 We don't even know what the outcome of second place is.

00:15:46.000 And I see Gary Lake.

00:15:48.000 Congratulations, Gary.

00:15:49.000 Very good.

00:15:51.000 I spotted her, I have to announce, because she's terrific. 0.55

00:15:54.000 Gonna be a senator, a great senator, I predict, right?

00:15:58.000 Gonna be a great senator.

00:16:00.000 And I also want to congratulate Vivek, because he did a hell of a job.

00:16:07.000 He came from zero, and he's got a big percent, probably 8%, almost 8%, and that's an amazing job.

00:16:15.000 They all did.

00:16:16.000 They're all very smart, very smart people, very capable people.

00:16:20.000 Now, this is the speech of a man who knows he's won the nomination.

00:16:23.000 If Donald Trump actually thought that any of these other candidates were a threat to him, do you think he'd be speaking about them in that way?

00:16:30.000 Vivek dropped out of the campaign.

00:16:32.000 Now, factually speaking, as I say, he should have dropped out of the campaign earlier.

00:16:36.000 And that's basically what Trump said to him.

00:16:39.000 So here's Vivek last night dropping out of the campaign and endorsing Donald Trump.

00:16:43.000 And I wanted to make a couple of announcements tonight to get the business out of the way.

00:16:48.000 And then I want to tell you where we're going.

00:16:51.000 As of this moment, we are going to suspend this presidential campaign.

00:16:57.000 And this is going to have to be, there is no path for me to be the next president absent things that we don't want to see happen in this country.

00:17:09.000 And I think that I am very worried for our country.

00:17:14.000 I think we are skating on thin ice as a nation.

00:17:18.000 We have done everything in our part to make and done.

00:17:22.000 Every one of us in this room has done our part to save this country.

00:17:26.000 And I am so proud of every one of you who have lifted us up.

00:17:30.000 But we're a campaign founded on the truth.

00:17:31.000 And so that's why we've made that decision today.

00:17:35.000 And I'm also making the decision that this has to be an America first candidate in that White House.

00:17:42.000 As I've said since the beginning, there are two America first candidates in this race.

00:17:47.000 And earlier tonight, I called Donald Trump to tell him that I congratulated him on his victory.

00:17:54.000 And now going forward, he will have my full endorsement for the presidency.

00:17:59.000 And I think we're going to do the right thing for this country.

00:18:02.000 Again, unsurprising news.

00:18:03.000 And Vivek doing the right thing.

00:18:04.000 Obviously, he has no chance in the race.

00:18:06.000 There's no reason for him to stay in.

00:18:08.000 So, good on Vivek for not sticking around just for kind of the attention seeking of it.

00:18:13.000 Meanwhile, the other two candidates, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, are technically still in the race.

00:18:18.000 DeSantis is trying to take solace in the fact that he beat out Nikki Haley in Iowa.

00:18:24.000 Now, just to be completely fair, Again, Ron DeSantis, phenomenal governor of Florida, a person I would have voted for were I a voter in the Iowa caucuses.

00:18:32.000 But when your expectations are, I just beat Nikki Haley.

00:18:37.000 That is a very lowered expectation from where Ron DeSantis' expectations were when he entered the race and went to Iowa and visited all 99 counties.

00:18:45.000 Ron DeSantis, again, does not have a shot in New Hampshire.

00:18:47.000 He's not even going to try in New Hampshire.

00:18:48.000 Presumably he's going to move his campaign to South Carolina, but I don't see a path forward for Ron DeSantis that is a very serious path forward, just electorally speaking.

00:18:56.000 And again, this is from somebody who's a big supporter of Ron DeSantis ideologically.

00:19:00.000 Here is Ron DeSantis saying that he's still in, although realistically speaking, again, Donald Trump just blew away the field in Iowa.

00:19:10.000 We love you too.

00:19:11.000 They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us.

00:19:14.000 They spent almost $50 million attacking us.

00:19:19.000 No one's faced that much all the way just through Iowa.

00:19:23.000 The media was against us.

00:19:25.000 They were writing our obituary months ago.

00:19:31.000 They even called the election before people even got a chance to vote.

00:19:38.000 But they were just so excited about the fact that they were predicting that we wouldn't be able to get our ticket punched here out of Iowa.

00:19:49.000 But I can tell you, because of your support, in spite of all of that that they threw at us, everyone against us, we've got our ticket punched out of Iowa!

00:20:02.000 Okay, now again, ticket punched out of Iowa, that is a fairly low bar for a presidential candidate.

00:20:07.000 I mean, and again, it just shows you exactly how much of a lead Trump has.

00:20:11.000 If you say a candidate has his ticket punched out of Iowa, like, I would expect that your campaign, if it's a durable campaign, would have its ticket punched out of Iowa.

00:20:19.000 So the standards have been completely lowered.

00:20:21.000 Same thing with regard to Nikki Haley.

00:20:23.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:21:36.000 Okay, so Nikki Haley, who finishes a close third. 0.99

00:21:39.000 She's beat out by Rhonda Sands by a couple thousand votes for third place. 1.00

00:21:42.000 She's trying to claim that she has Nikki-mentum going forward into New Hampshire. 0.70

00:21:46.000 Again, very hard to see her winning a victory in New Hampshire, even with all of the anti-Trump support consolidating.

00:21:51.000 Trump has the numbers in New Hampshire to win a sheer majority in New Hampshire again.

00:21:55.000 I mean, assume that the vague support is going to go directly to Trump.

00:21:58.000 Assume that some of DeSantis' support is going to bleed over to Trump.

00:22:02.000 And he's above 50 percent pretty easily.

00:22:04.000 So again, Nikki Haley is claiming that this is now a two person race.

00:22:08.000 Let's be frank about this.

00:22:09.000 This is now a one person race. 0.87

00:22:10.000 Again, people are going to say that I'm early on this, but I'm sorry, this is what the numbers

00:22:15.000 say.

00:22:16.000 This is what the numbers are.

00:22:17.000 But here is Nikki Haley.

00:22:20.000 I can safely say tonight I will make this Republican primary a two person race.

00:22:31.000 I mean, again, let's be real about this.

00:22:33.000 This is not a two-person race.

00:22:34.000 Donald Trump is way the hell ahead of everybody.

00:22:37.000 I was going to hold my judgment on that until we saw some actual results from some actual caucuses.

00:22:42.000 But even if Nikki Haley were to pull a close second in New Hampshire, hell, even if Nikki Haley were to win New Hampshire, it is hard to see her going down south to South Carolina and then somehow pulling a miracle out and beating Trump.

00:22:52.000 That's really the only path that Nikki Haley has forward.

00:22:56.000 So just giving you the pure honest analysis here, Donald Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024.

00:23:00.000 And maybe this is always how it's going to be.

00:23:02.000 Again, if Republicans saw him as an incumbent president, which many Republicans see him as, that meant he was going to win.

00:23:08.000 Not just that.

00:23:10.000 There's a principle in drama and fiction writing called Chekhov's gun, named after the writer Anton Chekhov.

00:23:16.000 So Chekhov famously suggested that if you put a gun over the mantle in the first act of a play, by the end of act two, that gun has to be fired.

00:23:23.000 You don't put the gun over the mantle unless the gun is going to be fired.

00:23:29.000 And I've said this to my business partner, Jeremy Boring, many, many times.

00:23:32.000 Chekhov's guns principle is not actually an imperative.

00:23:37.000 It's descriptive, meaning that is how the human brain works.

00:23:40.000 That is how people act.

00:23:41.000 They act as though if the thing is there, it is going to be used.

00:23:44.000 The idea that there was going to be a 2024 election absent Donald Trump, that Donald Trump was not going to be a part of this story in what is now Season 9 of Trump.

00:23:54.000 I mean, his name's the show, right?

00:23:55.000 I mean, we're all living in the Trump show since 2015.

00:23:57.000 It's now 2024.

00:23:59.000 Season 9 of Trump got greenlit.

00:24:01.000 And it got greenlit during, like, season 6.

00:24:04.000 So the fact that Donald Trump has stuck around this long, it is an amazing, durable story.

00:24:08.000 I mean, it's the most amazing political comeback story, in a sense, since Richard Nixon, right?

00:24:12.000 Richard Nixon ran as vice president with Dwight Eisenhower.

00:24:17.000 And then in 1960, he ran for president.

00:24:18.000 He lost very narrowly to JFK.

00:24:20.000 And then he went out into the wilderness.

00:24:21.000 And then he came back in 1968 and he won a sweeping victory against Hubert Humphrey.

00:24:25.000 That looked a lot closer than it actually was in the end.

00:24:28.000 This is that.

00:24:30.000 I mean, this is what that looks like.

00:24:32.000 The fact that Donald Trump won in 2016, lost fairly narrowly in the Electoral College in 2020, and now has come back and has stuck around, he really never went away, in 2024 is, just on any level, an amazing story.

00:24:45.000 And the American people do love an amazing story, and they kind of want to see the end of this movie.

00:24:48.000 They want to see the end of what is the end of the Trump movie.

00:24:50.000 How does season nine of Trump end?

00:24:53.000 Right?

00:24:53.000 That is, I think, what's in a lot of Americans' mind.

00:24:55.000 Right, left, and center.

00:24:57.000 And the story gets a lot less interesting when Trump isn't a part of it.

00:25:00.000 You can start to see the consolidation of the Republican field already, right?

00:25:05.000 Nikki Haley, who's the person who would have the clearest alternative path if there were such a path that I don't think actually exists.

00:25:12.000 Even she was asked about, would you support Donald Trump over Joe Biden?

00:25:15.000 I mean, like, yes.

00:25:15.000 And she's like, of course.

00:25:17.000 The coming home effect inside the Republican Party is on.

00:25:19.000 Everybody is going to flow behind Trump.

00:25:21.000 Yeah, that's the way this is going to go.

00:25:24.000 But you support that view, if it isn't you, it doesn't work out, and it's Donald Trump, that they're gonna go elsewhere?

00:25:30.000 I mean, look, I would take Donald Trump over Joe Biden any day of the week, but I'm gonna make sure we don't have that option.

00:25:37.000 Everything we've done to get to this point.

00:25:39.000 I mean, keep in mind, people have been saying things for months.

00:25:42.000 Back when we were, there were 14 in the race and we were 2%.

00:25:45.000 Now we are solid second in Iowa, second in New Hampshire, second in South Carolina.

00:25:50.000 We got one more fella to catch up to and we're gonna get it done. 0.89

00:25:53.000 Meanwhile, Kim Reynolds, who endorsed Ron DeSantis, she was asked about Trump as the nominee, and she said, yeah, despite the fact that Trump says mean things about me, I mean, Joe Biden's on the other side, of course I'll support him.

00:26:04.000 If it comes down to Donald Trump as the nominee, I'll support him.

00:26:08.000 I'll support whoever our nominee is.

00:26:10.000 Do you share that view?

00:26:12.000 Does the governor, Governor DeSantis, share that view?

00:26:15.000 Well, you'll have to ask Governor DeSantis that, but I've made it clear that I will.

00:26:17.000 I'm a Republican and, you know, all of the candidates running are going to be better than what we have.

00:26:21.000 And after all the stuff he's said about you?

00:26:22.000 Yeah, well, because, you know, we've got to put, we've got to win.

00:26:25.000 I mean, we're a resilient people.

00:26:27.000 This country is in trouble.

00:26:28.000 Look at the Southern Florida.

00:26:29.000 I talked to a lot of people at that diner, Governor, and said, no, this isn't worth it.

00:26:32.000 To go to Trump?

00:26:34.000 No.

00:26:35.000 Yeah, well, I mean, people are going to make... I just think, too, when you look at the direction of the country, I mean, I believe it's going to be wrong.

00:26:40.000 So I believe ours is our best shot.

00:26:42.000 But if it weren't Trump and Biden, you, the governor of Iowa, a very popular governor, would go.

00:26:45.000 Yes, I'm on record saying that and consistently saying that.

00:26:48.000 I'm a Republican, and we need to not... we need to make sure that we don't re-elect President Biden for another four years.

00:26:54.000 Okay, so, with all eyes turning toward the general this early, the question becomes, what are the strategic and tactical factors in play in Trump versus Biden?

00:27:04.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

00:27:05.000 First, we all have that one weird neighbor.

00:27:08.000 You know, the guy who has a rusty car with a tarp over it, and he hasn't started in like 15 years, and it's on his lawn.

00:27:12.000 Or the one that just so happens to be outside every time you're in a rush to get somewhere, and then insists on talking to you about, like, their flowers or their dog.

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00:28:13.000 So when we look at the polling right now, Trump versus Biden, Trump in the betting averages is way ahead of Joe Biden at this point.

00:28:21.000 When it comes to general election matchups, right now, Trump has about a 1.1 percentage point lead against Joe Biden.

00:28:28.000 With regard to the RealClearPolitics poll average.

00:28:33.000 He is ahead, according to Rasmussen Reports, by 8.

00:28:36.000 He's ahead, according to CBS News, by 2.

00:28:39.000 And these are all in the CBS News poll is within the margin of error.

00:28:43.000 Erasmuson is way outside the margin of error.

00:28:45.000 Economist YouGov has them tied at 43.

00:28:46.000 Reuters Ipsos has them tied at 48.

00:28:49.000 Morning Consult has Biden at 43 and Trump at 42.

00:28:52.000 So at the very least, this is a dead heat or Trump is ahead.

00:28:56.000 That is where things stand.

00:28:57.000 And when you look at the state by state, When you look at the state-by-state polling data, what you see is that Donald Trump is incredibly competitive in all of these states.

00:29:04.000 The latest polling out of Michigan has Donald Trump up, in the RealClearPolitics polling average, 5.3%, including a poll from the Detroit News with Trump up 8.

00:29:12.000 If Trump wins Michigan, he's going to win the election.

00:29:14.000 In Pennsylvania, it's basically dead even.

00:29:17.000 And, by the way, one of the reasons it's dead even is because Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor, is posing as a moderate.

00:29:21.000 Same thing with John Fetterman, the senator.

00:29:23.000 But, if the mood of the country is pro-Trump, he's gonna win Pennsylvania.

00:29:28.000 If you take a look at Wisconsin, the polls there are tied, but the latest one from Bloomberg Morning Consult has Trump up four in Wisconsin.

00:29:36.000 And if you take a look at some of the other battleground states that Trump lost last time, he's way ahead.

00:29:40.000 If you look at Arizona, he is ahead very solidly.

00:29:42.000 If you look at Georgia, he's ahead very solidly.

00:29:45.000 So the polling factor, Trump is ahead.

00:29:48.000 When you look at the actual factors in the campaign, Trump is also ahead.

00:29:52.000 Why?

00:29:52.000 Joe Biden can't talk.

00:29:53.000 The fact that Joe Biden can't talk, the fact that Joe Biden is going to run a basement campaign while he is president is a serious problem for him.

00:30:00.000 Running the basement campaign when the other guy is president is actually the right strategy because you want the focus on the other guy.

00:30:07.000 Ironically, Donald Trump is likely to run what will amount to a basement campaign.

00:30:11.000 Because there will be no debate.

00:30:12.000 Biden is not going to debate Trump.

00:30:13.000 It's not going to happen for everybody who's like hot and bothered about that.

00:30:17.000 It ain't going to happen.

00:30:17.000 Biden is not getting on stage with Donald Trump.

00:30:20.000 Beyond that, Donald Trump did something, ironically, I was thinking about this yesterday.

00:30:24.000 I visited the White House in January of 2018, and I was talking with a very, very high-ranking member of the White House staff, of Trump's staff, and they said, what should we do?

00:30:33.000 And I said, you should build a fake Twitter app, and you should put it on Trump's phone, and it should let Trump tweet into the app, and he would get back a bunch of warm messages, and he would be super happy on the inside, and no one else would ever see what exactly he was tweeting.

00:30:47.000 And then ironically, this actually happened.

00:30:49.000 He got banned from Twitter and he created TruthSocial and he's still on TruthSocial and his exposure on TruthSocial is like one one thousandth of what it would be if he were on X right now.

00:30:58.000 So ironically, he actually is doing the thing that is likely to make him successful by accident.

00:31:03.000 Donald Trump is going to go out there.

00:31:04.000 He's going to do rallies.

00:31:05.000 He'll do occasional interviews.

00:31:07.000 And meanwhile, the center of focus right now will be on the President of the United States.

00:31:12.000 It's very difficult to avoid being the center of focus.

00:31:15.000 And all the indictment talk, I know there's a lot of talk about the indictments coming this year, but many of the factors have already shifted in those indictments.

00:31:21.000 So, for example, In the Fannie Willis Rico case in Georgia.

00:31:25.000 The story there is shifting because allegedly Fannie Willis was basically using that case to pay her boyfriend so they could take cruises around the world together.

00:31:34.000 She may end up in jail, allegedly, over what she was doing in that case. 0.99

00:31:39.000 The Alvin Bragg case in Manhattan.

00:31:41.000 That looks like that is going nowhere fast.

00:31:43.000 Even if Trump were to be convicted in that case, no one is going to think that that is a legitimate case.

00:31:46.000 The Jack Smith case in Washington, D.C.

00:31:49.000 Is that even going to come to trial before the election?

00:31:52.000 Or the Florida classified documents case.

00:31:53.000 Is that going to come to trial?

00:31:55.000 Democrats, people who are using legal maneuvering against Trump to get him off the ballot.

00:31:59.000 I am not sure that that actually is hurting Trump because they went overkill.

00:32:03.000 If it were one, let's say it were only the Jack Smith Washington, D.C.

00:32:06.000 charges, all focus would be on that trial.

00:32:08.000 The problem is when you use a shotgun legal approach with Trump, it looks like an overwhelming tsunami legal assault on Trump, which it is.

00:32:15.000 Is any of that going to hurt Donald Trump or is it all baked into the cake at this point?

00:32:18.000 Meanwhile, you got a president who literally cannot talk.

00:32:20.000 Here was Joe Biden yesterday.

00:32:21.000 He's holding up a bag of apples and smiling weirdly.

00:32:28.000 I mean, honestly, you'd feel bad for the guy.

00:32:31.000 He's just not with it.

00:32:33.000 He's asking somebody, how old are you?

00:32:34.000 And she's 11.

00:32:36.000 He says, wow.

00:32:37.000 Wow.

00:32:40.000 God, just grandpa at the grocery.

00:32:41.000 I mean, oh my goodness.

00:32:43.000 I mean, he can barely move.

00:32:44.000 I mean, it's just, it's, he, this is what it is.

00:32:49.000 Okay.

00:32:50.000 Joe Biden is not, when you talk about him as a candidate, I mean, that guy should not have a license to drive.

00:32:56.000 That's where we are in this race right now.

00:32:59.000 And meanwhile, his backup, Kamala Harris, is somehow even worse at this.

00:33:02.000 Here was Kamala Harris yesterday trying to gin up enthusiasm. 1.00

00:33:05.000 I mean, I swear to God, she may be the first AI human.

00:33:13.000 She's absolutely an inhabitant of the uncanny valley.

00:33:17.000 She has set up housing in the uncanny valley with electricity and plumbing.

00:33:21.000 Because she's like, if she were to ever become president of the United States, they wouldn't need to build an animatronic of her at Walt Disney's Hall of Presidents.

00:33:29.000 They would just import her.

00:33:32.000 Here she is yesterday. 0.98

00:33:33.000 Oh, my God.

00:33:35.000 She's unwatchable.

00:33:38.000 I see our college students up there.

00:33:43.000 And let me just tell you, I love Gen Z. I don't know.

00:33:50.000 So, okay.

00:33:51.000 For the older adult, this is going to be a humbling thing I'm about to share with you.

00:33:56.000 If someone is 18 years old today, they were born in 2005.

00:34:00.000 in 2005. Wow. Wow.

00:34:08.000 So yeah, this is this is your vice presidential candidate who will be president, by the way, because Joe Biden is not going to last another four years in this office.

00:34:16.000 All this is leaving people who oppose Trump with very few options.

00:34:20.000 And that's why things are likely to get very scary and spicy this year on pretty much every front.

00:34:26.000 Well, folks, this year is going to be one for the history books.

00:34:28.000 No one can actually predict what's going to happen.

00:34:31.000 I mean, there will be an election this year.

00:34:32.000 Somebody's going to win, but could be actual war, full-blown war in China, in the Middle East.

00:34:37.000 Don't miss out on a minute of the coverage from the voices you can trust.

00:34:40.000 Download the free DailyWirePlus app right now.

00:34:42.000 Keep up with all the latest, get all the shows, up-to-the-minute news coverage, and a whole host of entertainment.

00:34:46.000 When you need a little break, don't wait.

00:34:47.000 Download DailyWirePlus right now.

00:34:49.000 Okay, meanwhile...

00:34:50.000 So with Donald Trump as the presumptive 2024 nominee and Joe Biden ailing and Kamala Harris being the backup, whoo, is that a stinker of a decision by Joe Biden?

00:34:59.000 The panic has set in on the Democratic side of the aisle, like full scale panic.

00:35:02.000 And this, by the way, is also an ally of Trump, because the more you keep telling us, That Trump is Mussolini, that he's Hitler, that the world's going to end if he's elected president. 0.99

00:35:11.000 The more everybody looks at you like you're crazy, because you are. 0.99

00:35:14.000 Here is the thing. 0.98

00:35:15.000 No matter what you think of Donald Trump, the notion that Donald Trump is in the same league as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini is an absurdity.

00:35:21.000 He was already president once.

00:35:22.000 And you know what happened?

00:35:23.000 Some tax cuts, some Supreme Court appointments, pretty good foreign policy, a good economy, some bad governance during COVID. 0.85

00:35:30.000 And then he said a bunch of dumb stuff between November 4th and January 6th.

00:35:33.000 And a few hundred people walked into the Capitol building, some of whom were riding, some of whom just walked in, and then within three hours, they were cleared, and then he wasn't president anymore.

00:35:40.000 That's the story!

00:35:41.000 Does that sound like Mussolini or Hitler to you?

00:35:43.000 Was that the march on Rome?

00:35:45.000 Was that Hitler's Reichstag fire?

00:35:47.000 Like, what, what, what, where is the comp?

00:35:49.000 I need the comp in order to really understand the claim that you are making.

00:35:53.000 By the way, a point that I've been making recently to some of my Democratic friends who are saying that, well, if Donald Trump were to win, it would end democracy, there'd be no more elections.

00:36:01.000 Quick point for you.

00:36:02.000 Point of order.

00:36:03.000 Donald Trump will have served two terms at that point.

00:36:05.000 He will no longer be eligible for president.

00:36:07.000 He will not be allowed to be on ballots across the United States.

00:36:10.000 So actually, if you want Donald Trump not to screw with the elections anymore, and you think he's really going to screw with the elections, you ought to vote for Donald Trump.

00:36:16.000 And then he'll be in for another term, and then he'll be done.

00:36:19.000 And then he'll go around talking about how he won three terms as president and all the rest of it.

00:36:22.000 In any case, Rachel Maddow is leading it off.

00:36:24.000 They're turning it up to Spinal Tap 11.

00:36:25.000 Guys, here's the thing.

00:36:27.000 When you keep turning the volume all the way up, everyone goes deaf.

00:36:30.000 And you spent nine years with the volume at Spinal Tap 11.

00:36:35.000 No one has cochlea anymore.

00:36:37.000 We can't hear you because you went nuts too many times too often.

00:36:41.000 Big picture takeaway from that, and I don't mean to be, again, too dark as you said on this, but it is not, if we are worried about the rise of authoritarianism in this country, we are worried about potential rise of fascism in this country.

00:36:54.000 We're worried about our democracy falling to an authoritarian and potentially fascist form of government.

00:37:00.000 The leader who is trying to do that is part of that equation.

00:37:04.000 But people wanting that is a much bigger part of that equation.

00:37:08.000 And the American electorate is made up of two major parties.

00:37:12.000 One of those parties has been flirting with extremism on the ultra-right for a very long

00:37:17.000 time.

00:37:18.000 They've brought them in in a way that they haven't been central to Republican electoral

00:37:21.000 politics ever before.

00:37:23.000 And I know because I've been studying this.

00:37:25.000 But once you have radicalized one major party so that those are the preferences of the people

00:37:29.000 who adhere to your party, the leader is interchangeable.

00:37:33.000 And yes, Trumpism is sometimes what we call it.

00:37:35.000 MAGA movement is probably a better way to do it. 0.57

00:37:37.000 But there is an authoritarian movement inside Republican politics that isn't being bamboozled

00:37:43.000 by Trump.

00:37:44.000 They are pushing Trump to get more and more extreme.

00:37:47.000 Because the more extreme things he says, the more they adhere to him.

00:37:51.000 And that is coming from a very large proportion of the American right that adheres to the Republican Party.

00:37:57.000 And that's why this is a Republican Party problem more than it is the problem of one man and his leader.

00:38:03.000 By the way, notice what she's doing here. 0.98

00:38:04.000 She's not saying that Donald Trump is a fascist.

00:38:06.000 She's saying you're a fascist if you voted for Donald Trump or would vote for Donald Trump against Joe Biden.

00:38:10.000 Because, let's say for example, an analogy that I've been using recently with regard to Donald Trump.

00:38:15.000 The checks and balances of the office prevent him from doing many of the things that maybe he even has an inclination to do.

00:38:20.000 The checks and the balances have been working actually less well with Joe Biden.

00:38:24.000 Donald Trump surrounded himself with professionals.

00:38:26.000 Those professionals very often told him, don't do this thing, it's illegal.

00:38:30.000 That happened a lot during Donald Trump's administration.

00:38:33.000 Joe Biden does illegal things on the regular and his people are like, okay, I'll do it.

00:38:37.000 So when you assess the presidential candidates, one of the things that we all do, we all do this, is we assume that there is a filter.

00:38:44.000 That filter is the filter of governance reality.

00:38:47.000 It's like a coffee filter.

00:38:49.000 So you pour the water on the coffee grounds, and the filter prevents the actual coffee grounds from getting in your coffee.

00:38:55.000 A lot of the stuff that Trump says is the coffee grounds.

00:38:59.000 And a lot of the worse stuff doesn't get through the coffee filter.

00:39:02.000 With Joe Biden, the grains are too small.

00:39:03.000 They're too fine.

00:39:04.000 They get right through the coffee filter.

00:39:06.000 And so what you get on the other end is actually worse coffee with Joe Biden than you would with Donald Trump.

00:39:11.000 That is the case to be made.

00:39:12.000 But the Democrats are already turning it up to, it's not just Trump, it's everyone.

00:39:15.000 If you vote for Trump against Joe Biden, it's because you're an authoritarian wannabe.

00:39:19.000 You want the federal government weaponized against you.

00:39:22.000 Now, part of the problem here is that the only candidate in this race who has actively weaponized the federal government against its citizens is Joe Biden.

00:39:30.000 It is Joe Biden who tried to use the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, an administrative agency, to cram down a vaccine on 80 million people.

00:39:39.000 And we here at The Daily Wire, we sued him to stop that from happening.

00:39:43.000 It is Joe Biden who has suggested he can unilaterally not enforce immigration law, change all of our immigration laws, and let 5, 6, 7 million people into the country illegally.

00:39:53.000 That's Joe Biden who's doing that.

00:39:55.000 So all of your talk of Donald Trump being a threat to the country, we can all see what's happening here.

00:40:00.000 We can all see it.

00:40:01.000 It's not just Rachel Maddow, it's of course Joy Reid on that same terrible panel.

00:40:05.000 I mean, MSNBC, the level of ideological diversity there ranging all the way from Jen Psaki on the right to Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid on the left is pretty astonishing.

00:40:14.000 And I think to the point that you made, Steph, I mean, it's the elephant in the room.

00:40:18.000 She's still a brown lady. 1.00

00:40:20.000 That's got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant and which accepts the notion that you can say immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country.

00:40:30.000 She's getting, you know, birthered by Donald Trump.

00:40:34.000 And I don't care how much the Democrats like her, which will ramp up a lot, the better she does in New Hampshire. 1.00

00:40:39.000 So it's still a challenge.

00:40:40.000 I don't see how she becomes the nominee of that party with Donald Trump still around.

00:40:46.000 I can't picture it happening.

00:40:47.000 Maybe it could happen.

00:40:48.000 Ron DeSantis's only argument for staying in it is he's the white guy that he can still make the appeal

00:40:53.000 to white Americans.

00:40:54.000 Again, it's just amazing to watch the left talk about how all of the voters for Donald Trump

00:40:58.000 are actually just racist against Nikki Haley. 0.95

00:41:00.000 By the way, if Nikki Haley were the nominee, they'd be saying all the same crap about Nikki Haley 0.97

00:41:03.000 because this is what they do.

00:41:04.000 Meanwhile, David French, again, somebody I consider a friend,

00:41:06.000 but David is so wildly off the reservation on this particular, so David is now calling.

00:41:13.000 I know he's anti-Trump, he's been anti-Trump since 2016, and then he remained anti-Trump,

00:41:16.000 But now he writes for The New York Times being anti-Trump.

00:41:19.000 He literally put out a piece yesterday, as Donald Trump was emerging victorious from the Iowa caucuses, called Disqualify Trump or Else.

00:41:27.000 So the idea here would be that the only way to save America is to literally take Donald Trump off the ballot in 2024.

00:41:35.000 You want actual armed conflict?

00:41:37.000 That's a great way to bring actual armed conflict, is to kick Donald Trump off the ballot entirely.

00:41:43.000 According to David French, Okay, I have a question.

00:41:45.000 How?

00:41:45.000 Literally how?

00:41:45.000 Trump off the ballot would send shockwaves through the American body politic.

00:41:48.000 But why would anyone believe that it's inherently less destabilizing if Trump runs?

00:41:51.000 We already know what he does when he loses.

00:41:53.000 For him, counting the votes is only the beginning of the battle.

00:41:55.000 If he loses, he'll challenge the results, conspire to overturn the election, and incite

00:41:58.000 political violence.

00:41:59.000 Okay, I have a question.

00:42:00.000 How?

00:42:01.000 Literally how?

00:42:02.000 He was president last time and he still couldn't do it.

00:42:05.000 Where are going to be the mechanisms for which Donald Trump is going to be able to do that?

00:42:09.000 How is that going to happen?

00:42:10.000 Like, I want people at some point, they say wild things like there will be an armed uprising.

00:42:14.000 Okay, like, I just want to know.

00:42:16.000 Spell it out, like step by step.

00:42:18.000 How do we get from point A to point B or are we just saying things now?

00:42:22.000 He says if he wins, you have an insurrectionist in command of the most powerful military in the world who's hellbent on seeking vengeance on his political enemies.

00:42:28.000 Does anything at all sound stabilizing about that?

00:42:30.000 Again, you think that Donald Trump is going to... I understand everybody is very hot about Donald Trump's gonna prosecute you.

00:42:35.000 No, he's not.

00:42:36.000 I'm just telling you right now, he's not going to.

00:42:37.000 Okay, like, if he does, let's put it this way, I'll be extremely shocked because he said the same thing about Hillary Clinton and then he didn't.

00:42:43.000 You know what's gonna happen if he wins?

00:42:45.000 He's gonna be super happy and he's gonna be in the White House all day doing what he did before, tweeting and let his aides make good policy.

00:42:49.000 That's what's actually gonna happen.

00:42:52.000 But David French is now making the case that we need to take Trump off the ballot to save the republic.

00:42:56.000 You want to get Trump elected, there's pretty much no better way to do it than say stuff like this.

00:42:59.000 Again, the reason the panic is setting in is because Joe Biden's policy is becoming clear to everyone.

00:43:04.000 Here is the biggest problem, by the way, for the world.

00:43:06.000 My prediction.

00:43:07.000 I said it yesterday.

00:43:08.000 I'm going to continue saying it.

00:43:09.000 If we get to June, July, August, and Donald Trump is up in the polls, the chances that China blockades Taiwan are extremely high.

00:43:15.000 They go from like 30% today to probably 60%.

00:43:19.000 Why?

00:43:19.000 Because they do not want Donald Trump to be president when they blockade Taiwan.

00:43:22.000 They figure that Joe Biden, if there's a blockade of Taiwan, will pressure Taiwan to make some sort of deal with China to stop the conflict and give them some sophisticated microchips in order to prevent him from losing the reelect effort.

00:43:34.000 See, in an election year, the incumbent president is very susceptible to foreign conflict.

00:43:38.000 This is why in 2012, you'll recall, in an act of collusion with the Russians, you'll remember that Barack Obama actually sat with Dmitry Medvedev, who was then the president of Russia.

00:43:48.000 He was sort of a stand-in.

00:43:49.000 He was a cutout for Vladimir Putin.

00:43:50.000 And he said, tell Vladimir I'll have more flexibility after the election.

00:43:53.000 In other words, please don't do anything bad that would hurt my reelect hopes.

00:43:57.000 And then I will help you guys after the election, which I did when Russia actually took control of both Syria as well as Crimea.

00:44:04.000 But the same thing is very much available this year for America's enemies.

00:44:09.000 This is a year to go, man.

00:44:11.000 This is a year to put pressure on Joe Biden.

00:44:13.000 This is a year where if you can create conflict, you believe that Joe Biden will simply give you a cookie to make you go away.

00:44:19.000 That's true for China. 0.95

00:44:20.000 It's true for Iran. 1.00

00:44:22.000 So remember, over the weekend, the United States, as well as some of its allies, launched a series of missile attacks on the Houthis in Yemen.

00:44:32.000 And when I say the Houthis, I mean some empty buildings that the Houthis run and own. 1.00

00:44:36.000 But they gave like a week of warnings so nobody was actually there.

00:44:38.000 A grand total of I think six Houthis killed in this massively expensive airstrike by the Americans and our allies.

00:44:45.000 Did that put off the Houthis?

00:44:47.000 Of course it didn't put off the Houthis. 0.80

00:44:48.000 Why would it?

00:44:49.000 All the Houthis have to do is survive and poke at the United States to claim victory. 0.75

00:44:52.000 See, this is the bizarre math of the Middle East. 0.97

00:44:54.000 The United States, Israel, Western countries are expected to completely devastate the opposition.

00:45:00.000 Completely devastate them.

00:45:02.000 And all the bad guys have to do is pop their head up after the entire city is laid waste and go, I'm still alive, you didn't get me, huh?

00:45:07.000 So that's what the Houthis are doing right now.

00:45:10.000 So according to The Guardian, the Iran-backed Houthi militia group has continued to attack commercial shipping, hitting an American-owned cargo ship with a ballistic missile in defiance of a wave of US and UK strikes on Yemen.

00:45:20.000 The strike against the Marshall Islands-flagged Gibraltar Eagle container ship representing a widening of the theater of war beyond the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

00:45:28.000 The strike hit the cargo hold of the ship.

00:45:29.000 While it's thought to have caused no major damage, it will add to fears that UK and US strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen have not degraded the Houthis' abilities to threaten commercial shipping.

00:45:39.000 Qatar became the latest major user of cargo ships to announce it will not send liquid gas through the Red Sea for the foreseeable future.

00:45:45.000 So everything's going to get more expensive.

00:45:47.000 And the hope on the part of these Houthi groups and the Iranians is that the United States will then pressure Israel into stopping the destruction of Hamas in order to reopen the shipping lanes, that basically they will concede to the ragtag pirates. 0.99

00:46:00.000 And Joe Biden may well do that, because again, Joe Biden is of the weird opinion that in the Middle East, concessions get you what you want.

00:46:07.000 In reality, in the Middle East, concessions generally get you killed.

00:46:12.000 And that is what is likely to happen over there.

00:46:13.000 CENTCOM put out a statement on this yesterday.

00:46:16.000 Yesterday they said, quote, on January 15th at approximately 4pm SANA'A time, which is

00:46:19.000 Yemen, Iranian-backed Houthi militants fired an anti-ship ballistic missile from Houthi-controlled

00:46:23.000 areas of Yemen and struck the Gibraltar Eagle, a Marshall Islands-flagged, U.S.-owned and

00:46:27.000 operated container ship.

00:46:28.000 The ship has reported no injuries or significant damage and is continuing its journey.

00:46:31.000 Earlier in the day, at approximately 2 p.m., U.S.

00:46:33.000 forces detected an anti-ship ballistic missile fired toward the southern Red Sea commercial shipping lanes.

00:46:38.000 The missile failed in flight and impacted on land in Yemen.

00:46:40.000 There were no injuries or damage reported.

00:46:43.000 Meanwhile, the Iranians upping their game. 1.00

00:46:45.000 They struck an area near what they claimed was a U.S.

00:46:49.000 base in Iraq, in Erbil.

00:46:52.000 According to ABC News, several explosions were reported near the U.S.

00:46:54.000 consulate in Erbil, Iraq.

00:46:56.000 The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps directly took responsibility for the attacks.

00:47:00.000 They said they were targeting the, quote, headquarter of spies and anti-Iranian terrorist gatherings in parts of the region.

00:47:06.000 The Kurdistan Regional Security Council said four people were killed and six injured in the attack.

00:47:11.000 So, again, this is Iran directly taking a hand in Iraq.

00:47:14.000 Not a shock.

00:47:15.000 They've been active in Iraq for a very long time.

00:47:16.000 time here's some video of what that looked like.

00:47:23.000 So you can see the missiles hitting over there.

00:47:33.000 Yeah.

00:47:34.000 So, Iran, by the way, ended up attacking civilians as well.

00:47:38.000 The Iranian ballistic missile strike actually killed a prominent businessman in Iraqi Kurdistan, according to Forbes.

00:47:44.000 The target was not, as initially speculated, the large U.S.

00:47:46.000 consulate over there, or the American truce base in Erbil International Airport.

00:47:50.000 Instead, they actually decided they were going to hit a well-known local businessman, killing him and members of his family.

00:47:57.000 They claimed responsibility for the attack to the Iranians directly, as well as a simultaneous strike on Syria.

00:48:04.000 They struck the house of a Kurdish businessmen named Pesra Diyazayi, the owner of the autonomous region's Falcon Group, which is responsible for major projects such as the Empire World, which is a central business district known for high-rise apartment buildings.

00:48:17.000 So basically, they're using what's going on in the Middle East as an excuse to hit some of their enemies in Kurdistan, essentially.

00:48:24.000 So are things getting less crazy in the Middle East?

00:48:27.000 No, because it turns out that when the United States leaves a vacuum, Iran tends to fill that vacuum. 0.80

00:48:32.000 Meanwhile, Hamas continues along its merry way.

00:48:35.000 So last night, Hamas fired 50 separate rockets into Israel proper.

00:48:40.000 Again, this war has been going on for over 100 days.

00:48:43.000 And they're still firing rockets from the center of the Gaza Strip.

00:48:46.000 So while people are telling Israel to, you know, leave the Hamasniks alone, leave the poor Hamas, they're still firing rockets at civilians in Israel. 0.80

00:48:53.000 No sovereign state would be able to allow this.

00:48:55.000 So here is some of the video of what it looked like.

00:49:00.000 You can see, there we go, the Iron Dome is shooting down a bunch of these.

00:49:03.000 Israel allows some of those rockets to strike open areas.

00:49:11.000 Okay, would any state worth its salt allow its citizens to have to live like this?

00:49:15.000 At all?

00:49:16.000 Of course not.

00:49:17.000 So when Biden and the administration are putting pressure on Israel to stop what they're doing in Hamasistan, the Gaza Strip, they're out of their minds.

00:49:24.000 Meanwhile, Hamas literally released a clip yesterday of a female hostage talking about other hostages who had been killed.

00:49:31.000 And they made it like a perverse evil game show because this is what Hamas is. 0.98

00:49:34.000 They're a perverse evil group.

00:49:36.000 They took this female hostage and then they put out a tweet with pictures of two other hostages saying, are they dead or alive?

00:49:41.000 We will reveal the answer tomorrow. 0.94

00:49:42.000 This is how sick these people are.

00:49:46.000 Here's what that video looked like.

00:49:47.000 It's a question mark for those who can't see.

00:49:53.000 And it shows a picture of three hostages.

00:49:57.000 And the question is, what do you think?

00:49:59.000 Are they dead or are they alive?

00:50:02.000 One. 1.00

00:50:03.000 Option one, all killed. 1.00

00:50:04.000 This is like, it's so evil. 1.00

00:50:07.000 Option two, some killed, some injured.

00:50:10.000 Option three, still alive.

00:50:12.000 And the answer is the female is, um, alive. 0.65

00:50:15.000 And says, tonight we will inform you of their fate.

00:50:16.000 I mean, these are... Just the worst people in the entire world.

00:50:20.000 The worst people in the entire... And they're treating it like a bizarre YouTube video. 0.68

00:50:24.000 And meanwhile, the West is like, well, Israel is committing a genocide. 1.00

00:50:27.000 It's just, it's pathetic on its face. 0.97

00:50:29.000 Again, the only, the only currency in the Middle East is in fact the currency of sheer power. 0.87

00:50:35.000 And if Israel does not reestablish deterrence via the use of power in the Gaza Strip, that is going to be very harmful, not only for Israel, but for American interests in the Middle East.

00:50:42.000 I mean, it already is, considering that Houthis aren't even being deterred by, you know, F-22 strikes.

00:50:49.000 Complicit!

00:50:49.000 Meanwhile, the pro-Comas protesters in the West continue to do their merry work.

00:50:52.000 Given the fact that they are cancer, I can see why they were protesting an anti-cancer center.

00:50:56.000 They literally did this.

00:50:58.000 So they were marching in New York and they marched past Sloan Kettering,

00:51:01.000 which is a cancer treatment center.

00:51:04.000 And they started protesting the cancer treatment center, which makes sense.

00:51:07.000 Again, people who are an ideological cancer protesting against a cancer center

00:51:12.000 makes some level of sense, actually.

00:51:15.000 It's complicit that we will continue to march on a resolution.

00:51:20.000 Literally, they are standing outside Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

00:51:23.000 and protesting the hospital.

00:51:25.000 We talk about another complicit institution!

00:51:29.000 Oh, Sloan Kettering is complicit.

00:51:30.000 Sloan Kettering Center!

00:51:35.000 Make sure they hear you, they're in the windows.

00:51:38.000 Make sure they hear you, they're in the windows.

00:51:39.000 Oh, you mean the cancer patients?

00:51:42.000 You mean the families of the cancer patients?

00:51:44.000 Those are the people who need to be heard?

00:51:45.000 By the pro-chemosnics?

00:51:48.000 This is why when you hear Rachel Maddow... Shame on you! 0.99

00:51:50.000 Shame on you! 1.00

00:51:51.000 You have cancer! 1.00

00:51:51.000 Shame on you! 1.00

00:51:53.000 Unbelievable.

00:51:54.000 This, by the way, is why when you hear Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid talk about the extremism of the Republican Party.

00:51:59.000 Guys, these are yours.

00:52:01.000 The people who are protesting for Hamas, those are your people.

00:52:05.000 That's your crowd.

00:52:06.000 Maybe that's just one reason why a lot of Republicans are like, fine, give us Trump.

00:52:11.000 Alrighty, coming up, we'll get into what is still the worst failure of the Biden administration.

00:52:17.000 A story out of Afghanistan.

00:52:18.000 How are things going over there?

00:52:20.000 Well, it turns out that when you abandon the country and all of our military equipment to some of the worst people on earth, things are bad.

00:52:25.000 We'll get into that.

00:52:25.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:52:27.000 Use code Shapiro.

00:52:27.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 16, 2024

Trump WRECKS The Field In Iowa

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