The Ben Shapiro Show - UH-OH: Warning Signs for Republicans?

00:00:00.000 Today on the show, we're going to go through Republican weaknesses leading into 2026.

00:00:04.000 What do Republicans need to do to reverse the results of this week politically? 0.99

00:00:08.000 We will also be getting to Sidney Sweeney and that amazing interview that you recently did.

00:00:13.000 And we will also be getting to the government shutdown.

00:00:15.000 Will it continue?

00:00:16.000 When will it end?

00:00:17.000 First, Friendly Fire returns Wednesday night, November 19th at 7 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire Plus.

00:00:21.000 What exactly is Friendly Fire?

00:00:23.000 Well, we are glad you asked.

00:00:24.000 It's the show where Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Clavin, and I get together to disagree for the entire internet to watch and comment on in real time.

00:00:30.000 This time, we're world premiering the official trailer for the Penn Dragon cycle, The Rise of the Merlin.

00:00:35.000 You've seen the teaser.

00:00:36.000 Now get ready for the trailer that's going to blow you away.

00:00:38.000 It's all happening on Friendly Fire, Wednesday, November 19th, at 7 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire Plus.

00:00:44.000 Well, folks, there are some lessons that must be learned by Republicans from the elections of this week.

00:00:49.000 The reality is, as I talked about a couple of days ago, the elections this week weren't just obviously in Virginia or in New Jersey or in New York City.

00:00:58.000 Actually, Republicans did pretty poorly across the board.

00:01:00.000 There's a point being made by Matt Cottonetti, now of the Wall Street Journal.

00:01:03.000 He says the off-year Democratic wave flooded Republican safe harbors.

00:01:06.000 Democrats flipped at least 13 seats in Virginia's House of Delegates.

00:01:10.000 They plan to use their governing trifecta, control of the governor's mansion and both legislative chambers, to redraw the state's congressional map in their own favor.

00:01:17.000 New Jersey Democrats now enjoy their largest assembly majority in 52 years.

00:01:20.000 Georgia Democrats won two seats on the Public Service Commission.

00:01:23.000 That's the state's utility board.

00:01:24.000 No Democrat has won even a single race there since 2007.

00:01:28.000 So that is 18 years ago.

00:01:31.000 One of the reasons for that is because the electricity prices have been spiking and have continued to kind of softly go up during President Trump's term.

00:01:40.000 This obviously should be a warning sign for Republicans.

00:01:44.000 And when you look at the 2026 election, the importance of Republicans retaining the House.

00:01:48.000 The Senate, it looks like Republicans are in fairly decent shape to retain.

00:01:51.000 In order for Democrats to actually take the Senate in the next election cycle, they would have to flip a rather unlikely seat, like say Iowa.

00:01:59.000 But in Congress, where Republicans basically have zero margin at this point, Democrats do not need to flip very many seats in order to take the House.

00:02:09.000 So there are approximately, according to Cook's political report, 16 toss-up seats.

00:02:14.000 Those toss-up seats, right now, 10 of those are held by Republicans.

00:02:18.000 So that's not great for Republicans.

00:02:21.000 When you look at another eight that lean Republican and 10 that lean Democrat, you're talking about kind of a total possible variance of 34 seats.

00:02:31.000 Now, Republicans would have to do really, really poorly to lose all of those.

00:02:35.000 But again, they don't have to lose many of those to lose control of the House.

00:02:38.000 If they lose control of the House, all you're going to get all day long are hearings and investigations and impeachments.

00:02:44.000 And we know that all of this is the case.

00:02:46.000 And we also know that it wouldn't solely be due to anything that President Trump is doing.

00:02:50.000 Midterm elections almost always go the direction of the party that is out of power.

00:02:56.000 Since World War II, according to Newsweek, the president's party has lost an average of 26 House seats and three to four Senate seats in midterms.

00:03:04.000 When the president's approval rating is below 50%, the losses tend to be more severe.

00:03:09.000 Presidents with a sub-50% job approval have seen their parties lose an average of 37 House seats, as opposed to when the president is popular, where they lose about 14 seats on average.

00:03:20.000 So, again, Republican enthusiasm seems to not be nearly as high as it is when President Trump is on the ballot, obviously.

00:03:27.000 And a sinking economy, or at least an economy that doesn't feel as though it is soaring, is having significant downstream impact.

00:03:36.000 There are audiences that President Trump brought in who are beginning to move against President Trump.

00:03:43.000 One of those is Latino audiences.

00:03:46.000 Latino voters, which went very heavily toward President Trump in the last election cycle, seem to be bleeding away.

00:03:53.000 In New Jersey and in Virginia, Latinos backed the Democrats by huge margins.

00:03:59.000 According to the Washington Post, exit polls showed Democrats regaining strength with Latinos.

00:04:04.000 That's not because Democrats are doing an extraordinary job.

00:04:07.000 It's because presumably there has been so much focus on the immigration crackdowns.

00:04:11.000 It's one thing to shut the border.

00:04:12.000 It's another thing if there's stuff all over your TV about Abuela being taken out and then deported.

00:04:19.000 Now, again, I think that all of that media coverage has been pretty terrible, overblown, inaccurate.

00:04:25.000 But just speaking politically, obviously, this is not redounding to the benefit of Republicans among Latinos at the very least.

00:04:32.000 But the real issue here is the economy.

00:04:34.000 And we all know that the real issue here is the economy.

00:04:37.000 Every exit poll from this week, every single one, said the economy was the number one issue.

00:04:43.000 And the reality is that our economy is on some shaky footing, not only because of the continued government shutdown, which will end, but because of a generalized feeling that the economic growth that we are currently seeing is not a broad-based economic growth.

00:04:55.000 That when we are looking at the stock market, for example, the vast majority of stock market gains, nearly all of them, in fact, have accrued to the top seven companies in the market, all of which seem to be focused on tech and AI.

00:05:06.000 Industries where jobs are being created, but not industries where the vast majority of people are holding jobs.

00:05:13.000 They're not really service industries, which is where the vast bulk of American jobs are.

00:05:18.000 The tech industry is really important, but if it's the entirety of your economic growth, you got a bit of a problem.

00:05:23.000 And the reason that that is happening is because investors don't know where to put their money.

00:05:28.000 That is due to tariffs.

00:05:29.000 It is due to bizarre regulations.

00:05:33.000 It is due to a generalized feeling of too much government involvement in private industry.

00:05:38.000 It turns out the more the government is involved in the economy, the more investors are likely to try and discern where the government at hand is likely to come down next and then place their money there.

00:05:48.000 And that is a major problem.

00:05:51.000 This is something that Republicans very much should be considering as they head into the next year.

00:05:56.000 So, for example, there haven't been any Bureau of Labor statistics data put out about job loss over the course of the last couple of months, but there are some private services that actually do put out numbers.

00:06:09.000 ADP, a payroll processing firm, according to the New York Times, reported that employment at private companies fell in September, but rebounded modestly in October.

00:06:16.000 An alternative measure from Revealia Labs, a labor market data firm, showed the opposite.

00:06:21.000 Data from LinkedIn, Bank of America, and other sources paint a similarly mixed picture.

00:06:26.000 The bottom line is that the trend line seems to be going down when it comes to private sector employment.

00:06:32.000 It hasn't changed dramatically since the summer.

00:06:35.000 Employers are apparently not adding many jobs, but they've avoided resorting to widespread layoffs.

00:06:40.000 So again, everybody is sort of holding steady, which is why it does feel as though the economy is on the edge.

00:06:47.000 We've already seen that some major companies are planning mass layoffs, that'd be Amazon, UPS, IBM.

00:06:53.000 Altogether, according to the New York Times, companies announced more than 150,000 job cuts in October, nearly triple the number in the same month a year earlier.

00:07:03.000 Now, again, maybe that's wrong.

00:07:05.000 Maybe the data come in and it turns out that things are going fine.

00:07:08.000 But what the polls are showing is that people are deeply worried about the state of the economy.

00:07:13.000 And earlier this week, and really since the beginning of this week, there's been a relatively significant decline in the Dow Jones industrial average.

00:07:21.000 There's a rather large sell-off on Tuesday.

00:07:26.000 One of the things that's been happening in the market is because nobody knows where to put their money.

00:07:29.000 They don't know how to invest in industries.

00:07:31.000 Typically, if you're going to buy a stock, instead of thinking of stocks as though you're at the casino, you're supposed to buy a piece of a company that you like because you think it's a good company and it is likely to succeed into the future.

00:07:41.000 That is not the way a lot of people are treating the stock market right now.

00:07:44.000 They're treating the stock market the way they are treating crypto.

00:07:46.000 If you're going to buy crypto, you should buy crypto as a hedge against inflation, for example, which is why I myself own some Bitcoin and some Ethereum, but nothing else.

00:07:55.000 If you're treating crypto as a get-rich-quick scheme, if you're treating the stock market as a way of making a quick buck, that is not a solid way to treat your stock trading, your stock portfolio.

00:08:07.000 Just a general piece of financial advice.

00:08:09.000 But that is how people are treating things right now because people are looking around.

00:08:13.000 Things are more expensive.

00:08:15.000 All of the inflationary money blown in during the last days of the Trump administration and then the entirety of the Biden administration is still in people's pockets.

00:08:24.000 They don't know what to do with it.

00:08:25.000 Now, the Federal Reserve is lowering those interest rates again in an attempt to create more liquidity, which, again, I've always found this strange.

00:08:31.000 We do not have a dearth of liquidity in the United States right now.

00:08:35.000 We don't.

00:08:36.000 We have a dearth of opportunities for where to put the liquidity because nobody knows what to do next.

00:08:42.000 It feels like the market is doing fine, but it's also kind of paralyzed.

00:08:48.000 And that's the problem.

00:08:50.000 As James McIntosh of the Wall Street Journal points out, the more speculative an asset, the harder it fell on Tuesday.

00:08:55.000 Big tech and artificial intelligence, penny shares, retail investor favorites, and crypto all dropped together.

00:09:01.000 Gold fell too, failing in its role as a haven asset after attracting lots of new buyers with a big rise earlier this year.

00:09:07.000 It's notable that for many of the most speculative assets, the sell-off started last month, but until Tuesday, it hadn't drawn in the country's biggest companies.

00:09:15.000 All right, coming up, we'll get into the media deciding that it's very, very bad for Elon Musk to be compensated by his own shareholders.

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00:11:35.000 So there are drops, for example, from Palantir, which I think is a good stock, but it plummeted 8% despite better than expected quarterly results.

00:11:42.000 The Magnificent 7 big tech stocks fell 2.2% compared with a drop of less than 1% for the rest of the SP 500.

00:11:49.000 Tesla fell the most.

00:11:52.000 And it is because of the stock market valuations, which are, again, wildly out of whack with the earnings of these companies.

00:12:00.000 That is why you end up with a $1 trillion package for Elon Musk.

00:12:03.000 That is why.

00:12:04.000 So, one of the yardsticks that I look at when I'm determining whether I think stocks are overvalued is the PE ratio, that is the price to earnings ratio in a stock.

00:12:13.000 And typically, when you're looking at price to earnings ratio, you want to look for a low price to earnings ratio, means that a stock might be undervalued.

00:12:19.000 If you have really, really high, that means you expect the stock to just explode.

00:12:22.000 Well, right now, the current PE ratios at the top of the market are pretty much insane, like totally crazy.

00:12:29.000 According to our friends over at Comet, my sponsors at Comet, a new web browser, Buy Perplexity, the current PE ratios for the Magnificent 7 as of November 2025 include Apple at 36.

00:12:42.000 Again, Benjamin Graham suggested 16 to 18, 36, Microsoft at 34, NVIDIA at 53, Amazon at 34, Alphabet at 30.

00:12:53.000 According to Comet, those figures reflect each company's trailing 12-month PE ratio as of the first week of November 2025.

00:13:01.000 Tesla has the highest valuation by far, which is presumably why stockholders are desperate to keep Elon Musk there.

00:13:08.000 So, for example, right at the moment, the price to earnings ratio on Tesla is 307.

00:13:17.000 That is a big bet that a lot of people are making on Tesla.

00:13:20.000 And again, I love Tesla.

00:13:21.000 I think it's a great company.

00:13:22.000 I own a Tesla.

00:13:24.000 I think Elon is a genius.

00:13:25.000 Also, a PE ratio of 307 is unthinkable.

00:13:31.000 Benjamin Graham, who's sort of the financial forebear of Warren Buffett and his ideological mentor when it came to markets, he said that a typical PE ratio that was in safe zone was 16 to 18.

00:13:43.000 307.

00:13:45.000 307 is what we are talking about for Tesla, which feels, you know, a little wild to me, frankly.

00:13:54.000 NVIDIA, their PE ratio right now is 54.

00:14:00.000 That's very high.

00:14:00.000 Now, NVIDIA, of course, has huge earnings because companies are spending enormous amounts of money on their chips.

00:14:07.000 But if that peters out, do people really think that the stock is going to end up earning out 53 times the earnings?

00:14:14.000 I mean, serious question.

00:14:16.000 If you take a look at Alphabet, the PE ratio on Alphabet right now is significantly better.

00:14:23.000 Okay, that is 28, which is closer to reality.

00:14:27.000 And fundamentals trading to me is always a safer bet than this sort of speculative trading.

00:14:31.000 But the problem is that everybody doesn't know where to put their money.

00:14:34.000 They want to make a quick buck.

00:14:36.000 They're looking at the market.

00:14:37.000 They're feeling like, okay, instead of investing in stocks that pay dividends, for example, stocks that have a nice steady cash flow, stocks that are a solid business with growth potential that is steady but isn't exponential.

00:14:50.000 Instead, they're like, okay, you know what?

00:14:51.000 I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and one of the Mag 7.

00:14:55.000 And this is precisely why Tesla had no choice but to give a gigantic pay package to Elon Musk.

00:15:01.000 So people are pointing out, they're saying, oh my gosh, in this time of economic hardship for so many people, why is Elon Musk getting a trillion-dollar pay package?

00:15:07.000 Well, the answer, of course, is that it isn't cash.

00:15:09.000 He's not being given a trillion dollars in cash.

00:15:12.000 He's being given stock and incentives.

00:15:14.000 And the reason for that is because if he were not, if Musk were to break with Tesla, I think it's a fair assumption the stock would collapse and everybody at the board knows it.

00:15:23.000 According to the New York Times, Tesla shareholders on Thursday approved a plan that could make Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire.

00:15:31.000 Now, again, the New York Times is contrasting this with the tax the rich candidacy of Zorhan Mamdani.

00:15:38.000 Okay, the market rationale for why Elon Musk is getting that pay package is because the shareholders, meaning the people who actually own the company, believe he is worth that.

00:15:48.000 They believe that without Elon Musk's brain driving the next creative steps for Tesla, the stock is going to collapse into oblivion.

00:15:56.000 If you were to take the Tesla stock right now and you were to bring its price down to a 20 PE ratio, price to earnings ratio, then you'd have to divide the stock price by a factor of 15.

00:16:09.000 And so, what they're figuring is you're buying the future with Tesla.

00:16:12.000 That's what the stock is.

00:16:13.000 If you lose the future because you lose Musk and it just turns into a car company with some AI capacity, then you got a major, major problem.

00:16:20.000 That has nothing to do with quote-unquote taxing the rich.

00:16:24.000 Taxing Elon Musk is not going to fix the real issues with the market.

00:16:28.000 The real issue with the market right now is that the middle bulk of the market is not being invested in.

00:16:34.000 And one of the reasons that it's not being invested in is sure, there are hungry speculators with too much cash in their pocket, thanks to the free reign of free money for a very long time.

00:16:43.000 But also, there's tremendous uncertainty if you're in a service industry or manufacturing industry about the tariff.

00:16:48.000 That does make a gigantic difference.

00:16:51.000 There's no question that people are confused and discombobulated by the day-to-day action of the administration.

00:16:57.000 As I've been saying for literally the entirety of the Trump administration, if the administration pursued lower taxes, lower regulation, free trade agreements with everybody around China, the economy would be in better shape.

00:17:12.000 Because the conditions that you need to succeed as a mid-level to smaller company are conditions that allow for the fullest freedom of action in the labor markets, in the export markets, in the input markets.

00:17:24.000 That's what you actually need.

00:17:26.000 And so to this, this sort of economic policy where we keep sticking fingers in the pie is not going to make anyone quiescent and it's not going to produce more jobs.

00:17:35.000 But that has nothing to do with Elon.

00:17:37.000 And the attempt to kind of pin this on Elon and Tesla seems to me merely some class envy directed at Elon.

00:17:43.000 Now, again, from a sort of generalized perspective, would I buy Tesla stock at its current price?

00:17:48.000 I would not on a personal level because that PE ratio is adaw back to me and I like to trade based on fundamentals.

00:17:54.000 But the idea that somehow Elon Musk getting a big pay package is a justification of Zorhan Mamdani's socialism is totally crazy.

00:18:02.000 These two things are utterly unrelated.

00:18:04.000 Zorhan Mamdani's answer would be take away all the money of Elon Musk, prevent those kinds of deals, watch the stock of Tesla Crater and all the stockholders go down.

00:18:14.000 Presumably that would somehow be better in some way.

00:18:17.000 Remember, that pay package is dependent on people voluntarily engaging in transactions with Tesla and buying their stock, allowing for the issuance of new stock.

00:18:24.000 That's where that money is coming from.

00:18:27.000 The New York Times tries to admit this, you know, on paragraph eight, because that's what they do.

00:18:30.000 They're going to fib by omission and then later they buy it back.

00:18:34.000 These are vastly different arenas, to be sure, but that split-screen reality speaks to a larger divide in American business and politics.

00:18:40.000 On one side are billionaires like Mr. Musk and their many supporters, including President Trump, who see the financial success of a small group of executives as something to be celebrated and emulated.

00:18:48.000 On the other are progressives like Mr. Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, who are calling for something more akin to the social welfare systems of Western Europe.

00:18:55.000 I love how the New York Times keeps trying to pretend that he's just a Norwegian Mamdani. 0.84

00:18:59.000 He literally said he hates capitalism.

00:19:01.000 The DSA wants him to full-on nationalize housing in New York.

00:19:08.000 His proposals involving, for example, gigantic rent freezes or government-run grocery stores, that is not just the social welfare system in Western Europe.

00:19:19.000 But this is going to be the line.

00:19:20.000 The line for Democrats going forward is going to be: if the economy collapses, this is why I've been saying for literally months.

00:19:26.000 I'm not saying anything new here.

00:19:27.000 If the economy goes down, it's an existential danger to the Republican Party, meaning to the country.

00:19:33.000 Because the next step by a lot of people is going to be swiveling over and saying, we need more government.

00:19:39.000 We need more centralized power.

00:19:41.000 Now, the thing I'm saying is that it's the centralization of economic power in the White House, yes, even under President Trump, that has been preventing more growth for the middle class, more wage growth, more business innovation.

00:19:55.000 And if the president would take his hands off the football, that would actually be a better thing than the sort of tariff in and out that we've been playing for a while here.

00:20:04.000 That the attempts to force the Federal Reserve, for example, to lower the interest rates, to inject more liquidity into the system.

00:20:10.000 I've been against that pretty consistently because to me, the proper interest rate in a functioning economy should be zero.

00:20:18.000 My money should be worth precisely what it was worth yesterday.

00:20:21.000 You shouldn't just be able to degrade my savings by 2% every single year at the whim of a centralized bureaucrat.

00:20:27.000 But I'll tell you what's not going to be a political winner.

00:20:29.000 So the president yesterday denied that prices are going up.

00:20:31.000 Now, listen, to be fair to President Trump, if you take a look at how they rose during Joe Biden's term in office, of course, was way higher.

00:20:38.000 But there comes a point in a presidency, every presidency, where you can no longer say it's better than the last guy.

00:20:44.000 You have to deal with the fact that inflation is still too high at nearly 3%, that people still feel like they're paying too much for groceries.

00:20:51.000 And not only that, they feel very uneasy about their jobs.

00:20:54.000 Because one of the amazing things, of course, about the gigantic investments being made at the upper end of the market in AI is that I think a lot of people, quite correctly, are worried about the job dislocations that will almost certainly occur as a result of AI growth.

00:21:08.000 So you're going to have this weird situation in which the stock market continues to rise as productivity continues to rise, but jobs are going to decrease because in the initial term, before new jobs are found for everybody in new industries and creative endeavors, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs.

00:21:22.000 Well, here's the president denying that the prices are going up.

00:21:25.000 Again, I don't think that, I don't blame him, but I don't think it's a winning political pitch.

00:21:31.000 So I don't want to hear about the affordability because right now we're much less.

00:21:36.000 If you look at energy, we're getting close to $2 a gallon gasoline.

00:21:40.000 With Biden, it was $4.50, $5.

00:21:43.000 Another thing, inflation.

00:21:45.000 We had the worst inflation in the history of our country.

00:21:48.000 Now we have virtually no inflation at all.

00:21:50.000 It sounded a very low number and a very normal number. 0.99

00:21:54.000 So the affordability is much better with the Republicans.

00:21:57.000 The only problem is the Republicans don't talk about it.

00:22:00.000 And Republicans should start talking about it and use their heads because we have great numbers.

00:22:08.000 Well, again, I agree with much of what he is saying, but it's not going to be a sort of winning electoral proposal.

00:22:15.000 Democrats are just going to campaign on the fact that people don't feel great about the economy.

00:22:19.000 Now, ironically, one of the things that could help the Trump presidency is if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs.

00:22:24.000 If the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs, the economy is going to rip because a lot of investors who've been sitting on the sidelines are going to suddenly feel secure that their inputs are not going to be increased, jacked up randomly by 30%, 40%, 50%, depending on where they're getting their products from.

00:22:40.000 And they're not going to fear as much that export markets are going to disappear.

00:22:45.000 So it actually could be a blessing in disguise if the Supreme Court smacks down the tariffs.

00:22:50.000 Coming up, are President Trump's tariffs actually inhibiting the growth of the economy?

00:22:54.000 And if so, could there be sort of a blessing in disguise if the Supreme Court strikes them down first?

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00:25:19.000 As the Wall Street Journal points out, the Trump administration has misused executive authority here.

00:25:26.000 They have.

00:25:27.000 The power of the person belongs to Congress.

00:25:29.000 Tariffs are, in fact, taxes on Americans.

00:25:32.000 But again, beyond the legal, it would be better for the country if we had lower tariffs.

00:25:40.000 Now, I understand that this is very near and dear to the president's heart.

00:25:42.000 I get it.

00:25:42.000 And I understand his feeling that we have been screwed in past trade negotiations.

00:25:46.000 I don't even disagree with that.

00:25:47.000 But the answer to that is to negotiate better deals with countries, not to put blanket tariffs on allies that we need.

00:25:55.000 Is this going to be the precursor of change?

00:25:59.000 I don't know.

00:26:00.000 Here's the head of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett.

00:26:04.000 He says our agenda will not be slowed.

00:26:07.000 But the thing I want everybody to listen to right now from this White House is that they are not going to slow down our agenda.

00:26:14.000 They are not going to upend our agenda.

00:26:16.000 That we're working every day so that when the government gets open, we can basically fire hose new policies at the Senate and get everything that we can possibly think of accomplished this year if they open the government.

00:26:27.000 So President Trump, they're trying to slow down President Trump's agenda, but they're not going to be able to do it.

00:26:32.000 They need to give up that thought and put the American people first. 0.59

00:26:37.000 Okay, so again, if what we're talking about here are more tariffs or more interventions, I understand that President Trump likes the headline of some firm telling him they're going to invest $10 billion in the United States and build a factory.

00:26:48.000 I've yet to see that money actually delivered and actually build the factory.

00:26:52.000 Joe Biden used to say the same kind of stuff, of course.

00:26:53.000 He used to say, We're going to take tax dollars and we're going to chip sack.

00:26:57.000 And by tomorrow morning, you're going to see one bajillion, bajillion million jobs and chipmay. 0.87

00:27:06.000 And you know what?

00:27:07.000 That never materialized.

00:27:08.000 So you might get a bit of a sugar high from an announcement, a sort of corporatist announcement, where the United States government has taken a stake in X company.

00:27:17.000 But the conditions that lead to long-term economic prosperity, particularly in times of change, are conditions that allow for innovation, investment, adjustment on the fly.

00:27:29.000 Let the free market work.

00:27:31.000 Let it work.

00:27:32.000 That is my recommendation.

00:27:34.000 Now, meanwhile, the government shutdown continues apace.

00:27:37.000 The Senate is apparently exploring some sort of plan in order to end the government shutdown.

00:27:43.000 The Wall Street Journal reports that Senate Majority Leader Thune told Senate Republicans on Thursday they should expect to vote on a new proposal today, aiming to end the government shutdown, according to people familiar with the plan.

00:27:53.000 Democrats say that they are not sold on the emerging package.

00:27:56.000 Some say they would need their core demand of extending Obamacare subsidies to be part of any legislation.

00:28:02.000 The plan to vote on a revised proposal comes as the impact of the shutdown continues to grow.

00:28:06.000 Obviously, government workers, many of them, are not being paid.

00:28:08.000 Low-income families are seeing cuts in SNAP.

00:28:12.000 Airlines are cutting flights because of the FAA.

00:28:17.000 The new proposal would apparently combine a short-term spending measure with a package of three full-year funding bills covering the legislative branch, agriculture, and military construction and veterans' affairs.

00:28:27.000 It was unclear whether the interim measure would keep the government open through mid-December or January.

00:28:32.000 Democrats, of course, have been saying they only want more Obamacare, more Obamacare subsidies.

00:28:37.000 They want to reverse the one big, beautiful bill on Obamacare.

00:28:41.000 Republicans are acknowledging something else.

00:28:45.000 Senator Thune said the Democrats are walking back or slow walking this, that they're the ones who are really holding this back.

00:28:53.000 Apparently, one of the elements that's under consideration by the Senate, and again, this is Republicans making concessions right now.

00:28:58.000 The Republicans said clean CR.

00:29:01.000 Democrats said no, no, no, no, no, and started screaming like babies.

00:29:05.000 And we've now been in a government shutdown for well over a month.

00:29:09.000 Well, Republicans now have a choice, which is, I think, a politically smart one.

00:29:13.000 They're going to make some targeted concessions to Democrats, and then Democrats can either take it or leave it, because then it's Republicans who are showing movement, not Democrats.

00:29:22.000 One element under discussion includes a proposal to stop or even roll back some of the firings the White House initiated at the start of the shutdown.

00:29:32.000 It'll be interesting to see whether Democrats cave at all on all of this.

00:29:37.000 Senate Democrats are divided, apparently.

00:29:40.000 According to the Washington Post, the deal that Thune is proposing could appeal to about a dozen Senate Democrats, or at least it was poised to do so.

00:29:49.000 And then Democrats did really well in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City.

00:29:54.000 And now Democrats are saying this shutdown stuff is great for us.

00:29:57.000 Maybe we should just continue it.

00:30:00.000 Most of the party is currently expected to reject the proposal, leaving it short of the 60 votes it would need.

00:30:04.000 So, by the way, for those who are saying what Democrats are doing here is not political, it is eminently political and they're admitting it.

00:30:10.000 Senator Chris Murphy, who's one of the far-left senators, he says, quote, Tuesday was a watershed moment.

00:30:16.000 The country, first and foremost, was making a referendum on Donald Trump's corruption and his mishandling of the economy, but they were also making a statement about this fight.

00:30:24.000 Well, the statement they're making is that they want the shutdown to end.

00:30:28.000 And they think that as a punishment to President Trump, Trump will make concessions and then Democrats will end the shutdown.

00:30:33.000 If what Democrats take away from that is we must continue the shutdown under all circumstances, I'm not sure how that's going to play because it will, in fact, change the game if Republicans make concessions and Democrats refuse to move one iota, one inch.

00:30:51.000 And now, you know, the Republicans have been trying to minimize the cost of this thing.

00:30:54.000 They really have.

00:30:55.000 So, for example, when Barack Obama was president and there was a government shutdown over Obamacare, he shut down things like open-air World War II memorials in an attempt to make people feel the pain.

00:31:05.000 He shut down national parks to make people feel the pain.

00:31:07.000 The Republicans are not doing that.

00:31:09.000 Republicans have been trying to minimize the damage while being in compliance with the law.

00:31:14.000 Now, bizarrely, yesterday, a judge ordered the Trump administration to continue to pay SNAP benefits.

00:31:20.000 The problem is that's actually illegal.

00:31:22.000 The case that was made by the Trump, the Trump administration would be perfectly happy continuing to pay out SNAP benefits because, again, the idea here is that Republicans don't want to leverage people.

00:31:34.000 Republicans are not interested in using food stamps as a way of harming Americans, thus to get the other side to cave.

00:31:42.000 They understand they're the party in power, but they actually are not supposed to just empty emergency funds from SNAP because the government refuses to go into session and pass the CR.

00:31:53.000 Well, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to release full funding for November food stamps by Friday.

00:32:00.000 That oral order came as many, many Americans, 42 million Americans have lost access to some benefits under SNAP.

00:32:06.000 U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell, who is, of course, an Obama appointee, no surprise, said, quote, last week, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation's history.

00:32:15.000 This is a problem that could have or should have been avoided.

00:32:18.000 The government knew there would be a long delay in paying SNAP benefits and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer.

00:32:25.000 Well, I mean, I'm just, yes, it's true that it should have been avoided with a clean CR.

00:32:30.000 I'm not sure how that means that you get to unilaterally change the law.

00:32:36.000 Again, this bizarre notion that a single judge can force the opening of the law and the misuse of the law this way is strange.

00:32:43.000 The Vice President J. Vance slapped back at the ruling.

00:32:47.000 It's an absurd ruling because you have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the midst of a Democratic government shutdown, which what we'd like to do is for the Democrats to open up the government.

00:32:58.000 Of course, then we can fund SNAP and we can also do a lot of other good things for the American people.

00:33:03.000 But in the midst of a shutdown, we can't have a federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation.

00:33:09.000 We're trying to keep as much turned on.

00:33:12.000 We're trying to keep as much going as possible.

00:33:14.000 The president and the entire administration are working on that, but we're not going to do it under the orders of a federal judge.

00:33:21.000 We're going to do it according to what we think we have to do to comply with the law, of course, but also to actually make the government work for people in the midst of the Democratic government shutdown.

00:33:32.000 If they would like to end this, we would be welcome, we would welcome working with them to end this government shutdown, and then we wouldn't have to triage what we're going to fund and what we're not going to fund.

00:33:45.000 Okay, now, again, I think that he is absolutely correct in his assessment of the situation.

00:33:49.000 But, you know, it's a good thing that Republicans have really good friends, you know, people who are fighting the left, people really, really fighting the left, like, for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene who has spent zero time fighting the left, but instead is making the rounds in order to go after President Trump, Speaker Johnson, you know, continuing to undermine the party and receive these strange new respect.

00:34:08.000 So do to a woman who once famously posted about Jewish space lasers. 0.94

00:34:14.000 Here we go.

00:34:16.000 Actually, I'm doing exactly what I've done the entire time.

00:34:19.000 I ran for Congress in 2020 criticizing Republicans and Democrats equally.

00:34:24.000 And one of my campaign lines was I'll go to Washington and hold Republicans accountable.

00:34:30.000 And that's exactly what I'm trying to do right now is to hold the Republican Party accountable to work for the American people on the promises that they made.

00:34:40.000 I'm one of those Americans that feels disenfranchised by my government.

00:34:45.000 And I feel that our government has failed the American people on both sides of the aisle.

00:34:53.000 Okay, so thanks.

00:34:56.000 That's super, duper helpful.

00:34:57.000 But at least you're getting your moment in the sun.

00:35:00.000 Again, the rumor is that she wants to run for president. 1.00

00:35:02.000 Good luck with that.

00:35:03.000 Congresswoman Green, who would be completely obscure if it were not for President Trump, the president who she is currently attacking incessantly.

00:35:10.000 All righty, coming up, who is the leader of the Democratic Party?

00:35:13.000 Democrats have legitimately no idea.

00:35:16.000 First, let's talk about something that actually matters, honoring American veterans on Veterans Day.

00:35:20.000 Legacy Box has been with the Ben Shapiro show for years.

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00:35:35.000 Here's where it gets personal: if there's a veteran in your family, head on over to get.dailywire.com/slash legacy box or click the link in the show notes.

00:35:43.000 But even if you don't have a veteran in your life, you still have a legacy worth preserving.

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00:36:27.000 That's legacybox.com/slash Shapiro.

00:36:30.000 Also, here's the reality: over 90% of Americans are not getting enough dietary fiber.

00:36:34.000 Most of us aren't hitting that recommended variety of fruits and veggies either.

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00:37:33.000 Well, meanwhile, Democrats are struggling on their side of the aisle too.

00:37:36.000 They don't know who their leader is.

00:37:38.000 According to Politico, Democrats still don't have a leader to guide them out of the wilderness.

00:37:42.000 So they did a poll conducted by Public First in the closing weeks of the election, and they found a complete lack of consensus among 2024 Kamala Harris voters on the question of who do you consider to be the leader of the Democratic Party?

00:37:56.000 And the number one answer is don't know.

00:37:58.000 21% don't know.

00:37:59.000 16% still Kamala Harris.

00:38:01.000 So that is not real.

00:38:03.000 Okay.

00:38:03.000 No, no one actually believes Kamala Harris is the leader of the Democratic Party.

00:38:07.000 That just add that 16% also don't know.

00:38:09.000 So you're 37% don't know.

00:38:11.000 And then you also have to add another 11%, nobody.

00:38:15.000 So now you're talking about 48% don't know Kamala Harris, which is don't know, and nobody.

00:38:21.000 So at least half their Democratic Party has no idea who the leader of the Democratic Party is.

00:38:26.000 About 8% say Akeem Jeffries.

00:38:28.000 About 7.5% say Chuck Schumer.

00:38:31.000 About 7.5 say Barack Obama.

00:38:34.000 The only person who is running for president who's on this list is Gavin Newsom, who's clocking in at 6.2%.

00:38:42.000 Bernie is at 2%.

00:38:45.000 Donald Trump is at 0.8%, which is hilarious.

00:38:48.000 AOC is at 1%.

00:38:50.000 So Democrats are fragmented.

00:38:53.000 According to Lauren Harper Pope, Democratic strategist, she says the party is divided factionally and ideologically.

00:38:59.000 I couldn't tell you who the leader of the Democratic Party is either, and I work in Democratic politics.

00:39:03.000 Now, that's actually not a terrible place for the Democrats to be in one sense.

00:39:07.000 Once they appoint a leader, that leader becomes the sort of chief of the opposition, and all Republican fire can focus on them.

00:39:14.000 So if you say it's Mamdani, they're in trouble. 0.95

00:39:16.000 If you say it's Spanberger, they're in trouble.

00:39:18.000 So, the best thing for them to do probably is for them to maintain a sort of confused status about the future, which is why it's, as a Republican, encouraging that one of the dumbest people in American politics, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who also, for some reason, seems to want to run for president based on the fact that he's a human existing in time, I suppose.

00:39:39.000 He says that the future of the party is Momdani.

00:39:42.000 I think the future of the party is Zoran and Abigail and Mikey, right?

00:39:48.000 The future of the party is that we're a Big Tent party.

00:39:54.000 Okay, so that Big Tent is going to have to decide what exactly they are.

00:40:00.000 What exactly are they going to be?

00:40:02.000 And the answer is quite unclear at this point in time.

00:40:05.000 The answer is unclear for the Democrats.

00:40:07.000 He says the future is Zoran and also Abigail.

00:40:09.000 And it's a point I've been making about the right, and it's also true of the left.

00:40:13.000 If you let the nuts run your party, you're opening the door to defeat, even when you seem on the verge of victory.

00:40:19.000 Democrats could make a large-scale mistake by embracing Momdaniism. 0.99

00:40:24.000 Because how crazy is Zorhan Mamdaniism? 0.95

00:40:26.000 The Democrat socialists of America have now put out a demand sheet articulating the organization's demands for Mamdani.

00:40:34.000 Those demands include divest city pension funds from Israeli bonds and securities, withdraw city funds from banks that lend money to Israel or do business in Israel, end city contracts with companies that do business with Israel, operate city-run grocery stores free from Israeli products, investigate real estate agents hosting illegal sales of stolen lands in the West Bank, evict weapons manufacturers and transporters from the New York City metropolitan area, divest CUNY endowment and reinstate wrongly fired professors,

00:41:01.000 dismantle Eric Adams' New York City Israel Economic Council, remove nonprofit status from any charity that raises funds for the IDF and NYPD training with Israel, and arrest Benjamin Atanyahu and any active IDF soldier for war crimes.

00:41:15.000 That is their list, which is psychotic.

00:41:20.000 Every single one of their policies is about Israel.

00:41:23.000 That's their list of demands.

00:41:24.000 Their list of demands is not about free busing.

00:41:27.000 Their list of demands is not about affordable housing.

00:41:31.000 Their list of demands is just Jews. 1.00

00:41:34.000 It's just Israel. 0.88

00:41:35.000 The obsession is real and insane.

00:41:38.000 And if Democrats decide to side with this sort of stuff, then good luck.

00:41:44.000 Now, again, one of the things that I've seen, and you've seen this sort of, again, horseshoe around, is people who are claiming, well, you know, the thing that distinguished Zorn Mamdani from everyone else on the stage is that he said in a debate, I've heard this now from Anna Kasparian.

00:41:55.000 I know that Tucker has said something similar, is that what distinguished Mamdani, the reason he won is because he said, I don't care what's happening in the Middle East.

00:42:01.000 I only care what's happening here.

00:42:03.000 Has ever a more gaslighting statement been made than that?

00:42:06.000 What absolute nonsense.

00:42:08.000 Zorhan Mamdani is the most Israel-obsessed candidate in America.

00:42:13.000 His entire political career was built on hatred of Israel.

00:42:16.000 It's why he was a students for justice in Palestine activist.

00:42:20.000 So Democrats, you know, I guess that you break it, you bought it.

00:42:22.000 And I suppose you can enjoy the people with whom you have chosen to ride.

00:42:26.000 We'll see how it works out for you.

00:42:29.000 Meanwhile, the old guard in the Democratic Party is fading away.

00:42:32.000 Nancy Pelosi, who was, I'm old enough to remember, the most left-wing member of the Democratic caucus and then became the speaker, and now she has been supplanted by people even further to her left, announced that she will not seek re-election.

00:42:46.000 I will not be seeking reelection to Congress.

00:42:50.000 With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative.

00:42:55.000 As we go forward, my message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power.

00:43:03.000 We have made history.

00:43:05.000 We have made progress.

00:43:07.000 We have always led the way.

00:43:09.000 And now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy.

00:43:18.000 I think what I like most about that video is the visiting angels music underneath it.

00:43:22.000 I mean, I feel like it's age-appropriate for sure.

00:43:24.000 But, you know, with her going, one of the things that I think is funny, you're seeing Republicans, some people online saying, we pushed her out.

00:43:32.000 Dude, she's been in Congress since before John F. Kennedy was born.

00:43:38.000 Okay, like that lady has been in Congress since Charles Sumner was being caned on the floor of the Senate. 0.66

00:43:44.000 She served in Congress as John Quincy Adams.

00:43:46.000 Like, you didn't push her out.

00:43:47.000 She left.

00:43:48.000 Okay.

00:43:48.000 Can you just be real about that?

00:43:49.000 But if there is a message to this in Democrats, that the old guard Democrats are in fact being supplanted by their crazies.

00:43:56.000 And we'll see if that works out for them.

00:43:57.000 I do not think that it will.

00:43:59.000 The thing that scares me, of course, is that American politics is a reactionary game.

00:44:03.000 Again, if the economy goes south, then the progressive nutjobs could actually win. 0.95

00:44:08.000 But is this a smart move for Democrats?

00:44:10.000 I think not.

00:44:11.000 Well, someone else signed in in the chat about Nancy Pelosi.

00:44:15.000 Marjorie Taylor Green's Democrat apology tour continues.

00:44:19.000 She was on CNN yesterday praising Nancy Pelosi, a person she once said was a traitor and guilty of treason.

00:44:25.000 She's now praising Nancy Pelosi while ripping into Mike Johnson. 0.66

00:44:28.000 What a great Republican she is, truly.

00:44:31.000 However, I will praise Nancy Pelosi.

00:44:33.000 She had an incredible career for her party. 0.99

00:44:40.000 Yes, things are going well.

00:44:42.000 Okay, meanwhile, in actual good news, New York has a candidate for governor on the Republican side, a very strong candidate.

00:44:48.000 In fact, Elise Stefanik, congresswoman from New York.

00:44:52.000 She has now announced that she will be running for governor.

00:44:55.000 Here was her campaign launch.

00:44:58.000 As a working mom, congresswoman, and fighter, Elise knows families need more help, and she'll make New York affordable. 0.98

00:45:05.000 That's why she authored and passed the largest middle-class tax cut in New York's history, letting working families keep more of their hard-earned money. 1.00

00:45:14.000 Elise will reduce your energy utility and grocery bills. 1.00

00:45:18.000 She fought woke insanity in our schools, stood proudly with law enforcement, championed small businesses, and will never back down from fighting for New York families. 0.99

00:45:29.000 With everything on the line, we need someone who will deliver results and make New York affordable and safe for families and small businesses to not just survive, but thrive.

00:45:41.000 Elise Stefanik will clean up Kathy Hochul's catastrophe and restore New York's greatness. 0.78

00:45:49.000 Elise Stefanik for governor. 0.66

00:45:51.000 It's time to save New York.

00:45:56.000 Yeah, well, that's a good ad.

00:45:57.000 And Elise Stefanik is a very strong candidate.

00:45:59.000 Kathy Hochul put out her own ad attacking Stefanik.

00:46:01.000 She didn't really attack the congresswoman as much as she attacked President Trump. 0.90

00:46:06.000 Meet Elise Stefanik.

00:46:09.000 The greatest president in the history of our country, President Donald J. Trump.

00:46:13.000 She's Donald Trump's top ally in Congress.

00:46:16.000 I'm proud to be one of his top allies on Capitol Hill.

00:46:19.000 This goes back to fighting against the witch hunt impeachment.

00:46:22.000 It goes back to being the first member of Congress who endorsed him.

00:46:25.000 Now Elise Stefanik is running for governor of New York to do what she's always done. 1.00

00:46:30.000 Put Trump first.

00:46:32.000 She is phenomenal. 1.00

00:46:33.000 She's a friend of mine.

00:46:34.000 Phenomenal at putting Trump ahead of you.

00:46:37.000 Like when she proudly cast the deciding vote to pass Trump's agenda that rips healthcare away from 1.5 million New Yorkers. 0.99

00:46:45.000 She's doing me a big favor.

00:46:47.000 Stefanik put five rural hospitals in her district on the chopping block just to keep Trump happy.

00:46:53.000 And I've been proud to be President Trump's top ally in Congress.

00:46:57.000 She voted to greenlight Trump's tariffs, too, even though they're hurting New York farmers and jacking up costs on everything from groceries to coffee to building and owning a home.

00:47:08.000 And when the Trump administration tried to cut $187 million in counterterrorism funds from New York, Elise Stefanik didn't raise a finger or say a word.

00:47:18.000 And New Yorkers noticed.

00:47:20.000 Elise Stefanik.

00:47:27.000 Elise Stefanik, she'll always put Donald Trump ahead of you.

00:47:35.000 So we'll see if that works.

00:47:36.000 We'll see if that works for her.

00:47:38.000 Just saying Trump over and over and over and over.

00:47:40.000 Maybe it will, because obviously New York's a very blue state, but I don't know.

00:47:43.000 I think that New Yorkers might fear a Kathy Hochul, Zorhan Mamdani, governing duo than they do, you know, Elise Stefanik at the head of the New York governor's mansion.

00:47:56.000 I think it'll be fascinating to find out.

00:47:58.000 Joining us on the line is Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who, of course, launched her campaign today.

00:48:03.000 The polls show her essentially in a dead heat, maybe even slightly ahead of the current governor, Kathy Hochul, who is deeply unpopular in the state of New York.

00:48:10.000 Congresswoman, thanks so much for taking the time and joining the show.

00:48:13.000 Great to be with you, Ben.

00:48:14.000 People are following this race very closely. 0.83

00:48:18.000 So let's talk about why you're jumping into the gubernatorial race.

00:48:21.000 Obviously, New York has been a blue state in terms of the governorship for quite a while.

00:48:26.000 What makes you think things are going to change?

00:48:29.000 Well, look at what just happened in New York City, Ben.

00:48:31.000 The world was watching and they elected a radical anti-Semite, defund the police, tax hiking, abolish private property socialist who I call communist, Kami Mom Dami.

00:48:41.000 And Kathy Hochul bent the knee. 1.00

00:48:43.000 She endorsed him.

00:48:44.000 And he just slightly got above 50%.

00:48:47.000 And traditionally in New York, which is outnumbered from Democrat to Republican seven to one, traditionally the Democrat nominee gets in the 70s.

00:48:54.000 He did not.

00:48:55.000 And nearly half New Yorkers opposed him.

00:48:57.000 So they know that this reeling off a cliff is going to be a disaster for New York State.

00:49:03.000 I also am running because the top issues for New York families are making New York affordable and safe.

00:49:08.000 Kathy Hochl has made New York the most unaffordable state in the nation. 0.50

00:49:12.000 We have the highest taxes, the highest energy prices, utility prices, grocery prices, rent.

00:49:17.000 The list goes on.

00:49:18.000 And we also have a crime crisis where you have failed bail reform, where under Kathy Hochl's failed leadership, they release violent criminals onto the streets who literally have killed New Yorkers.

00:49:29.000 So those are the top issues.

00:49:31.000 And I'll tell you, it's been 20 years next year since we've had a Republican governor.

00:49:35.000 It is time.

00:49:36.000 And this coalition will be not just Republicans and Independents, but Democrats as well who are fed up with the direction far left that is happening in New York.

00:49:46.000 So Congresswoman, obviously you look at New York.

00:49:48.000 New York, as we say, has traditionally been Democratic.

00:49:51.000 And that means that Kathy Hochul has decided she's going to run her reelection campaign on the basis of President Trump.

00:49:56.000 Obviously, she's going to try and just say President Trump's name over and over and over in the hopes that because you have been in Congress a supporter of President Trump, this is somehow going to push her over the finish line as a piece of sort of anti-Trump backlash.

00:50:08.000 What do you make of that line of attack and how do you plan to talk about that?

00:50:13.000 Well, first of all, it's Kathy Hochl who's on the ballot and we're going to hold her accountable for her record.

00:50:18.000 And the reality is, let's dig into the facts.

00:50:20.000 Kathy Hochl is an accidental governor.

00:50:22.000 This is not someone who ran through when she first was governor a primary.

00:50:26.000 She was elevated because Cuomo stepped down.

00:50:28.000 She was a lieutenant governor, a do-nothing lieutenant governor, and a weak lieutenant governor. 1.00

00:50:32.000 Cuomo knew that.

00:50:33.000 That's why he selected her.

00:50:35.000 And when she ran in 2022, she didn't really, she was unknown.

00:50:38.000 Now she's known for her incompetency, for her weakness, and for this failed record. 1.00

00:50:43.000 When it comes to her votes, she won 3.1 million votes in New York.

00:50:47.000 President Trump actually won close to 3.4 million votes in New York State.

00:50:52.000 So this is about turnout.

00:50:54.000 It's about turning out lower propensity voters.

00:50:57.000 We believe, I know that I've done that in my district.

00:50:59.000 We have the highest turnout of any congressional district in New York State, and we're going to have to do that across New York.

00:51:04.000 But you can feel the energy and enthusiasm.

00:51:06.000 Meanwhile, Hochul can't triangulate between the radical far-left socialist and maintaining her middle, which she has lost and it's never coming back.

00:51:16.000 So obviously, as you say, that that is a major issue for Kathy Hochul because right now, Zarn Mamdani has proclaimed that he has these massive plans for New York City.

00:51:23.000 A huge number of them are reliant on the state of New York, the state legislature, and the governor actually signing off on incredibly large tax increases in the state.

00:51:32.000 And it's unclear at this point whether Hochul is going to go for that.

00:51:34.000 And so she's sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place.

00:51:36.000 If she attempts to raise taxes dramatically on people living in the state of New York, already one of the most overtaxed states in the country, then there will be a bit of a rebellion. 1.00

00:51:44.000 If she does not, then presumably the progressive left is going to be deeply upset with her and maybe try to eat her alive.

00:51:49.000 That is an unenviable political position for her. 0.95

00:51:53.000 Well, Ben, you're exactly right in your political assessment, but let's be clear: Kathy Hochul has already raised taxes on New Yorkers. 0.99

00:51:58.000 She is the reason why we have the highest taxes in the entire nation. 0.99

00:52:02.000 And it took less than 24 hours for Zora Momdami's supporters to heckle her, to tax the rich, tax the rich, to run her off the stage, for her to change her position and say she's now open to raising taxes. 1.00

00:52:14.000 She will be forced by a Democrat-run state senate, Democrat-run state assembly with Mom Dami and the DSA, the Democrat Socialists on the march, to bend the knee. 1.00

00:52:24.000 At every opportunity, Kathy Hochul bends the knee. 0.98

00:52:27.000 She is controlled by the radical far left by Mamdani, and she will do that in the case of raising taxes. 0.68

00:52:33.000 This was the situation with her endorsement of Mom Dami.

00:52:35.000 She didn't intend to.

00:52:36.000 She said she wasn't planning on endorsing, and then she did.

00:52:39.000 Because of her bad polling, she's well under 50% among Democrat voters in New York State.

00:52:46.000 So when you look right now at the polling data, obviously there have been some variant polls that suggest she's ahead.

00:52:51.000 There's one poll that suggests that you are actually ahead in this race.

00:52:54.000 But the biggest factor here is the fact that she has never been a popular governor or even a gubernatorial candidate.

00:53:00.000 In the last election cycle, in which Kathy Hochul ran against Lee Zeldin, who, of course, is now the head of the EPA.

00:53:06.000 She only won in the state of New York by something like five and a half points. 0.98

00:53:10.000 And that was, in fact, an off-year election, just like this one will be.

00:53:14.000 What do you make of the fact that it is an off-year election?

00:53:16.000 Obviously, Republicans tend to turn out significantly more during presidential election years.

00:53:20.000 Is that going to be a hindrance or is it just going to be an opportunity for you to reach out to independents and moderate Democrats who may be put off by the radicalism of the current Democratic Party?

00:53:28.000 I think it's both, Ben.

00:53:30.000 We're very focused on turning out those lower propensity voters.

00:53:33.000 As I pointed out before, we've worked on this in my district.

00:53:36.000 We have the highest voter turnout of any congressional district in New York State.

00:53:39.000 People are looking for a leader and a reason to get out and vote.

00:53:42.000 And saving New York State, I mean, this is dire.

00:53:44.000 This is dire for families.

00:53:46.000 And that's only exacerbated when you look at the New York City mayor's race.

00:53:50.000 People do not want Kathy Hochul.

00:53:52.000 She failed as governor. 0.87

00:53:53.000 And these non, you know, traditionally wouldn't be necessarily part of the Republican coalition, they're now coming on board.

00:54:00.000 My phone's been ringing off the hook from Democrats who either voted for Hochul or supported Hochul financially in terms of donations and bundling.

00:54:08.000 They are coming on board our team because she's left them far behind.

00:54:11.000 So we view it as an opportunity to broaden the tent, reach out to new communities and run up the score to save New York State once and for all.

00:54:22.000 Well, that is Elise Stefanik.

00:54:24.000 She's a congresswoman from New York. 0.61

00:54:25.000 Hopefully she'll be the next governor of New York as well. 0.99

00:54:27.000 Congressman, thanks so much for the time and congrats on the run.

00:54:30.000 If people want to support your campaign, what's the best way to do so?

00:54:33.000 EliseForgovernor.com.

00:54:34.000 They can follow me on social media at Elise Stefanik.

00:54:38.000 Well, again, thank you so much and good luck.

00:54:41.000 All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now.

00:54:43.000 We will be getting into the amazing Sidney Sweeney's interview.

00:54:48.000 She did an interview with some crazy Hollywood press lady and it really went poorly for that lady. 0.99

00:54:54.000 Remember, in order to watch you have to be a member, if you're not a member, become member, use code Shapiro.

00:54:57.000 Check out for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 07, 2025

UH-OH: Warning Signs for Republicans?

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