The Ben Shapiro Show - What The FTX? | Ep. 1610

00:00:00.000 By a razor-thin margin, Democrats keep control of the Senate while the House remains up for grabs, Democrats prepare for a possible post-Biden era, and a crypto-billionaire and top Democratic donor melts down.

00:00:10.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

00:00:10.000 This is The Ben Shapiro Show.

00:00:12.000 The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.

00:00:19.000 Protect your online privacy today at expressvpn.com slash Ben.

00:00:22.000 We'll get to all the news in just one moment.

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00:01:23.000 Also, with everything going on in the world right now, the election is over, but we're already just getting revved up for 2024.

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00:02:29.000 The Republican wave not only did not happen in the Senate, Republicans have now lost control of the Senate.

00:02:36.000 Just terrible news all the way around.

00:02:37.000 Adam Laxalt went down to a very, very narrow defeat in Nevada.

00:02:41.000 Now, there are a lot of questions people are asking about the vote counting process over in Nevada because it just seems Just seems and again, I have no evidence to this effect, but I see why people are suspicious because it seems like every Republican with a large lead a week before the election result is announced suddenly has that lead chipped away over the course of like a full week.

00:02:59.000 This is why you have to have verified and good voting procedures.

00:03:01.000 Florida somehow is able as the third largest state in America to count all of its votes night of.

00:03:07.000 But Nevada was still counting votes as of the Sunday after the election, like five, six days later.

00:03:11.000 None of this is any good.

00:03:12.000 Blacks, however, the race has been called.

00:03:15.000 He lost to Catherine Cortez at Masto, which means the Democrats now maintain control of the Senate with Blake Masters lost in Arizona to Mark Kelly.

00:03:22.000 And that means that the Herschel Walker runoff over in Georgia is merely for control of a 50th vote.

00:03:27.000 It is not for control of the actual Senate at this point, which means Chuck Schumer remains the majority leader.

00:03:34.000 The media, of course, were in a state of full-scale celebration over the weekend.

00:03:38.000 MSNBC, CNN, they were beside themselves with happiness.

00:03:41.000 Here's what it sounded like.

00:03:42.000 CNN now projects that Democrats will keep control of the United States Senate, holding on to the majority they narrowly, nearly won two years ago.

00:03:53.000 This is an extraordinary victory for the Democrats as the battle for control of the House continues to play out.

00:03:59.000 We are making this call because we can now project That Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Basto will win re-election in Nevada.

00:04:08.000 Democrats will maintain their majority in the United States Senate.

00:04:12.000 And as Neil was saying earlier, this is very good news for the Biden administration.

00:04:16.000 Oh, a huge win.

00:04:16.000 And I think one of the things when we take a long view of this is that this may be the moment that we discover that Donald Trump is not a kingmaker any longer.

00:04:27.000 This is it.

00:04:28.000 His candidates did not do well.

00:04:31.000 His election denial was not a big issue in this campaign.

00:04:36.000 And I think that Republicans are going to have to do an awful lot of soul-searching about whether they actually ran on issues that were geared to them.

00:04:47.000 The Democrats have retained control of the United States Senate.

00:04:51.000 This is a remarkable conversation to be having.

00:04:55.000 They have not only defied expectations, they have defied history.

00:04:59.000 Man, I mean, orgasmic joy over on MSNBC and CNN over the Democrats maintaining control of the Senate, as you would expect since they are an adjunct of the Democratic Party.

00:05:08.000 But one of the fascinating dynamics that's now broken out is how many members of the media are trying to keep Donald Trump front and center of the conversation in terms of 2024, mainly because they love him and he makes them so much money.

00:05:19.000 So you have all the people who have made a living off of Donald Trump being the center of the political, like Mary Trump.

00:05:23.000 No one ever heard of Mary Trump.

00:05:24.000 Now people have heard of Mary Trump.

00:05:25.000 So Mary Trump is out there being like, probably Trump will be the nominee in 2024, right?

00:05:29.000 You see all these Democrats out there.

00:05:30.000 DeSantis is even worse than Trump.

00:05:31.000 Maybe we should go with Trump.

00:05:33.000 It's fascinating to watch the political dynamics that break out after a situation like this, in which all the people who supposedly hate Donald Trump the most are also trying to elevate him to the center of the conversation in order to make him the nominee.

00:05:44.000 This is one of the things that Democrats and members of the left-wing media are certainly doing.

00:05:49.000 On the Democratic side of the aisle, they've decided, as predicted, that the basic message takeaway from them retaining the Senate is not going to be that they dodged a bullet here.

00:05:58.000 Not that they were somehow able to basically pull an inside straight by running against a bunch of bad candidates in a bunch of swing states, ranging from Don Baldick in New Hampshire, to Blake Masters in Arizona, to Adam Laxalt in Nevada, to Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, who was also dragged down by Doug Mastroianno, running at the top of the Pennsylvania ticket, to Herschel Walker in Georgia.

00:06:16.000 All of these are really, really weak candidates.

00:06:19.000 In a year in which Republicans were supposed to have wind at their back instead of Democrats taking this is like, man, we really, really dodged one here.

00:06:26.000 Instead, they're taking it as we must double down.

00:06:28.000 We will never stop.

00:06:28.000 Never stop.

00:06:29.000 Never stopping.

00:06:30.000 So Anita Dunn, advisor to the president of the United States, Joe Biden is going to keep doubling down and doubling down and like, as I said last week. 0.97

00:06:38.000 First party to learn the correct lessons of the election, which is that people just want sane legislation.

00:06:43.000 People just want not crazy people in the government.

00:06:46.000 First party to recognize that wins.

00:06:48.000 But apparently Democrats are not going to take that message away.

00:06:50.000 They're just going to keep doubling down here.

00:06:53.000 When you look at these polls, let me put up a graphic here from the exit poll where more people said that Biden's policies are mostly hurting the country than helping the country.

00:07:02.000 Do you really believe this is a messaging problem?

00:07:05.000 As the president traveled the country, and I had the opportunity to travel with him in that final week, you didn't go to a congressional district or state where the Democrats weren't running on some aspect of the president's agenda, whether it was lowering prescription drug prices or the inflation Reduction Act clean energy provisions, which obviously young voters in particular are very excited about.

00:07:28.000 Making corporations pay their fair share, finally, the richest, wealthiest corporations in this country having to pay a minimum tax.

00:07:34.000 That's what Democratic candidates were running on.

00:07:37.000 Now the reality is that a lot of communities across the country haven't felt the effects on this yet because it takes a little time to implement these things.

00:07:47.000 They're retconning this thing because what they are actually running on, and it's been clear that they're running on this all along, is the end of democracy stuff.

00:07:53.000 And we mocked that because we said, you know, that's not what most Americans are concerned with.

00:07:56.000 But it turns out that the candidates who people felt uncomfortable with did particularly poorly on the Republican side of the aisle than the candidates who were able to escape the democracy is a threat routine.

00:08:07.000 Those candidates actually Did really, really well on the Republican side of the aisle.

00:08:12.000 Any Republican who's perceived as responsible and not a quote-unquote threat to democracy did fine.

00:08:16.000 Mike DeWine won by 20 points, upward of 20 points in Ohio.

00:08:19.000 Ron DeSantis won by upward of 19 points in Florida.

00:08:22.000 Greg Abbott over in Texas, blew out Beto O'Rourke.

00:08:25.000 These races where Republicans were perceived as the responsible party, Republicans did great.

00:08:30.000 It was all of the other races where Republicans were perceived as maybe part of the Democracy is a threat notion.

00:08:37.000 That's where the Republicans did particularly poorly.

00:08:39.000 But Democrats are not taking this, again, as a mandate to just not be crazy.

00:08:43.000 They're taking this as a mandate to be as crazy as they want to be, which is why you have Elizabeth Warren out there now promoting the idea that Democrats need to double and triple and quadruple down on all of this. 0.99

00:08:54.000 Elizabeth Warren has a piece in the New York Times today titled Democrats just held the Senate.

00:08:57.000 Here's what we do next.

00:08:58.000 I mean, what you should next should do next is never listen to Elizabeth Warren again, because it's Elizabeth Warren's modern monetary theory policies that have driven America into a ditch in terms of inflation, but not according to Elizabeth Warren.

00:09:09.000 According to Elizabeth Warren, her agenda, the Bernie Sanders agenda, it is wildly popular with Americans.

00:09:13.000 Again, everyone taking the wrong message away from the election.

00:09:16.000 According to the New York Times, says Elizabeth Warren, President Biden presided over the best midterm elections for a party in the White House in 20 years, despite Washington insiders predicting Democrats would be wiped out.

00:09:26.000 This electoral success belongs to Mr. Biden.

00:09:28.000 So it's not about Trump.

00:09:29.000 It's not about Trump picking bad candidates or Trump not funding those candidates or Trump sending out emails in the last days of the election asking for people to fundraise for the candidates in which there was like an 80-20 or 90-10 split in favor of Trump's super PAC versus the direct candidate spending.

00:09:42.000 But she says no, it's not about any of that.

00:09:43.000 It's about Biden.

00:09:44.000 The magic man of Biden.

00:09:45.000 Biden is amazing at this.

00:09:46.000 Who ignored ivory tower economists and out of touch pundits claiming that bold action to help families was bad politics.

00:09:51.000 Instead, Mr. Biden delivered significant economic progress for working people.

00:09:55.000 Voters rewarded Democrats for protecting the lives and livelihoods of struggling families in a pandemic Modernizing infrastructure, not just talking about it, allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, capping insulin costs for older Americans, making tax dodging corporations pay up on billions in profit, lowering carbon emissions and reducing utility bills and canceling student debt for over 40 million Americans.

00:10:14.000 So she says that Democrats are doing amazing and they should do even more.

00:10:18.000 Probably they should reverse the Trump tax cuts.

00:10:20.000 They should probably subsidize housing and child care. 0.95

00:10:25.000 They should pass a codification of Roe. 0.96

00:10:27.000 Just keep going.

00:10:29.000 Go as hard as you possibly can.

00:10:34.000 The unfinished business of the Biden agenda and the way to help families and win elections is to continue doing all of this stuff.

00:10:39.000 The 2022 midterms prove Democrats can beat Republican extremism.

00:10:42.000 Instead of capitulating to election deniers, we should keep fighting for working families because when we fight for working people, we win.

00:10:48.000 So this is going to be their takeaway, which of course provides Republicans an opportunity in 2024.

00:10:53.000 But first, Republicans are going to have to figure out exactly who takes over the ship.

00:10:58.000 Right now, there are a lot of questions about leadership in the Republican Party.

00:11:01.000 That is true in the Senate.

00:11:02.000 It is true in the House.

00:11:03.000 It is true at the presidential level.

00:11:05.000 So in the Senate, there are some rather large voices who are saying that Mitch McConnell, his position as Senate minority leader, should be up for question.

00:11:13.000 Now, I think you can actually have a lot of questions about Mitch McConnell's handling of the majority leader position.

00:11:17.000 The truth is that as a minority leader, he's been pretty good.

00:11:19.000 As a minority leader, Mitch McConnell's job is to obstruct the worst aspect of the Biden agenda.

00:11:24.000 And Mitch McConnell has done as much of that as he can in a filibuster-proof way.

00:11:32.000 He's attempted to stop Joe Biden's most excessive spending items.

00:11:36.000 He can't do that with reconciliation.

00:11:38.000 But for example, Mitch McConnell is the guy who obstructed the nomination Of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court under Barack Obama.

00:11:46.000 Mitch McConnell as much as Donald Trump is responsible for there being a bunch of conservatives who are now on the Supreme Court of the United States.

00:11:51.000 McConnell in a position of obstruction is actually quite good.

00:11:54.000 Just tactically speaking.

00:11:56.000 McConnell in a position of leadership as a majority leader is another question.

00:11:59.000 Because, again, you actually should have somebody who's a visionary who's capable of bringing together large swaths of people across the spectrum in order to get things done in the Senate.

00:12:08.000 I'm not sure that McConnell is that, but as a tactical maneuvering politician in order to stop things from going on, McConnell actually has historically been very good at this.

00:12:14.000 However, a lot of folks in the Senate are now seeing this as their opening.

00:12:16.000 The problem is the two most prominent Republicans who are running for the position of minority leader are Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott.

00:12:22.000 Rick Scott, who is the senator from Florida, Chair of the Senate GOP's campaign arm.

00:12:26.000 This is a problem.

00:12:27.000 Mitch McConnell is the guy who was the chair of the Senate Leadership Fund.

00:12:30.000 He poured some $240 million into elections in various states.

00:12:34.000 He's been hit for not putting enough money into Blake Masters in Arizona.

00:12:37.000 He did, however, put a ton of money into Nevada, which was lost.

00:12:41.000 He put a ton of money into Pennsylvania, which was lost.

00:12:44.000 The bottom line is I don't think there's a question of really spending money so much as it was bad candidate selection.

00:12:50.000 Rick Scott, who's the head of the Senate Spending Fund, essentially.

00:12:55.000 He was the person who was allocating money from the Senate funding campaigns.

00:13:01.000 He also did extraordinarily poorly.

00:13:03.000 So, the top candidates at the top of the Senate for the Republicans are nothing to write home about.

00:13:09.000 Apparently, they're going to have a Senate fight anyway. 0.65

00:13:12.000 Now, that is likely to roll out a little bit this week.

00:13:15.000 My guess is that McConnell keeps control.

00:13:17.000 A lot of folks, ranging from Marco Rubio to Ted Cruz to Mike Lee, they've suggested that, at the very least, the Senate election in Georgia should happen before there's some sort of vote on the Senate leadership, which makes some sense.

00:13:27.000 I mean, you want the senator from Georgia, Patricia Walker, to have a vote on that particular matter.

00:13:32.000 With that said, do I think that the leadership at the top of the Senate is going to be the main issue going forward?

00:13:38.000 I don't.

00:13:39.000 There are a lot of people who are critical of McConnell.

00:13:41.000 Basically, the fight against McConnell for a lot of people has turned into a proxy fight in favor of Trump.

00:13:45.000 One of the things that's happening here is, who do we blame for what just happened in the Senate?

00:13:48.000 A lot of people are looking at candidate quality and the fact that Donald Trump spent almost zero dollars on the candidates that he chose.

00:13:54.000 And then many of the candidates that he chose, the candidates who are the most Trumpy, did very poorly last week.

00:13:59.000 And a lot of people who are anti-Trump are siding with McConnell.

00:14:03.000 And my question is, so why not both?

00:14:06.000 Maybe everybody is bad at their jobs.

00:14:09.000 McConnell's allies have said that Trump's endorsed Senate candidates were poor fundraisers, according to the Wall Street Journal, and had to be propped up by outside spending.

00:14:15.000 Trump himself was blaming McConnell, saying that he spent money in the wrong places, which again is sort of a weird critique from Trump, who spent almost no money on the candidates that he helped select.

00:14:24.000 Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist who previously served as Chief of Staff for McConnell, pointed a finger at Rick Scott, who ran the National Republican Senatorial Committee, accusing him of making errors in strategy, fundraising, and of failing to communicate with colleagues.

00:14:35.000 Because Scott had rolled out, for example, before the Senate elections, a plan in which he talked about how every spending bill would have to be sunsetted after five years, including Medicare and Social Security.

00:14:44.000 Democrats picked up on that.

00:14:45.000 They also picked up on the fact that he had suggested, I think, in principle, correctly, That everybody in the United States should have to pay some income tax so you have some skin in the game.

00:14:53.000 That's not a horrible idea.

00:14:55.000 It just is not one that's going to play well electorally.

00:14:58.000 Scott said McConnell failed to lay out for voters a coherent plan for how Republicans would govern if they had the majority.

00:15:02.000 Scott said the leadership in the Republican Senate says, no, you cannot have a plan.

00:15:05.000 We're just going to run against how bad the Democrats are.

00:15:07.000 And actually, they then cave in to the Democrats.

00:15:10.000 Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, who's an advisor to former President Trump, he says, Well, actually, again, the reality here is that it's not that the Senate lacked an agenda.

00:15:24.000 Senators always lack an agenda. 0.76

00:15:26.000 And what exactly is the Senate agenda for the Democrats right now?

00:15:28.000 There's a big argument going on between, say, the Elizabeth Warren crowd and the Kyrsten Sinema crowd. 0.99

00:15:32.000 Those are not the same crowd.

00:15:34.000 Senators all want to run for president is one of the rules of the Senate.

00:15:37.000 And so the idea that you're going to have a unified sort of message coming out of the Senate, it would be great to have that, right?

00:15:43.000 I would love to see that in a Senate majority leader, but it's very unlikely you're going to get it.

00:15:46.000 The real problem, again, for the Republicans was the candidates lost.

00:15:49.000 Not that they didn't have a particularly unified agenda on what they were going to do if they regained control.

00:15:53.000 The answer was obstruct Joe Biden's agenda was really the answer.

00:15:56.000 Meanwhile, control of the House remains on knife edge as well.

00:15:59.000 It is very likely Republicans will maintain control of the House at this point, but it's going to be extremely narrow.

00:16:05.000 There are a couple of uncalled races that are left.

00:16:08.000 It is predicted that Republicans are going to end up with either 219 or 220 seats in the House of Representatives, which is a dramatic fail.

00:16:16.000 They started off with 212 going into this year's election.

00:16:18.000 Picking up eight seats was not on anybody's radar.

00:16:20.000 People were thinking at least 15, maybe 20, maybe 40.

00:16:25.000 The idea of eight seats, that is not a good number.

00:16:28.000 And when you have a majority that's that narrow, there are Republicans in purple seats who can be peeled off, right?

00:16:33.000 If you're an upstate New York Hudson Valley seat, can you be peeled off to support particular Democratic spending bills?

00:16:38.000 Maybe.

00:16:39.000 Maybe it makes for a very difficult, not particularly functional majority.

00:16:44.000 Well, this has some effect on how Speaker Nominee McCarthy, right?

00:16:49.000 Kevin McCarthy, who's the house minority leader.

00:16:50.000 He wants to be speaker of the house.

00:16:52.000 He's been stumping to be speaker of the house for years.

00:16:55.000 I spoke at a house Republican leadership conference a couple of years ago, and I said, if you guys somehow don't maintain majority in the house, y'all deserve to be fired.

00:17:02.000 Well, they narrowly avoided that, but not by much.

00:17:05.000 And so McCarthy right now has the strongest base inside the Republican congressional caucus.

00:17:12.000 With that said, it does take a majority straight up of the House to elect the Speaker.

00:17:16.000 That's the way the Speaker gets elected.

00:17:17.000 It's not as though a majority of Republicans then figure out who the Speaker is and then that becomes the Speaker, the way that it sort of happens with the Prime Minister in Britain.

00:17:22.000 That's not the way that it works here.

00:17:24.000 The way that it works is that the Republican Party has to basically unify around one candidate and make that guy Speaker.

00:17:30.000 And when you only have a majority of a couple of seats, all it takes is like four or five Republicans peeling off and saying, listen, I'm not supporting McCarthy under any circumstances to prevent him from becoming Speaker of the House.

00:17:39.000 So this could turn into a very, very ugly fight for Republicans.

00:17:42.000 The big problem for the Republicans in the House is who exactly is going to be up for that position?

00:17:47.000 And who exactly is going to go up against McCarthy?

00:17:48.000 Who is the visionary in the House who is going to lead things forward?

00:17:52.000 And it's hard to think of a candidate who, number one, wants to go up for it.

00:17:55.000 Scalise doesn't want it.

00:17:56.000 For example, Steve Scalise from Louisiana.

00:17:57.000 He's not interested.

00:17:58.000 He likes his position as the possible House Majority Whip.

00:18:00.000 There have been some other names that have been floated out of town.

00:18:04.000 Emmer has been floated.

00:18:04.000 Yeah, I don't think any of these guys really are gonna go up against McCarthy.

00:18:08.000 So, sort of like McConnell, who exactly replaces him?

00:18:11.000 John Thune?

00:18:12.000 In the House for the Republicans, who exactly is going to replace McCarthy?

00:18:15.000 Until there's an alternative, very difficult to see the Republicans mobilizing around anybody else.

00:18:20.000 John Carl, over at ABC News, he suggests that McCarthy is not a lock for the Speaker of the House.

00:18:27.000 That is going to be a brutal fight.

00:18:29.000 Well, he's going to have to make some concessions to, for example, the Freedom Caucus, that's for sure.

00:18:32.000 Here's John Carl.

00:18:34.000 Very hard for Kevin McCarthy to govern.

00:18:36.000 Yeah, two points.

00:18:37.000 First of all, McCarthy is not a lock on the Speaker anymore.

00:18:41.000 A 3-, 4-, or 5-seat majority.

00:18:43.000 There are, by my count, at least 8 to 10 Republicans who are adamant that they will not support Kevin McCarthy for Speaker.

00:18:51.000 That said, there is no alternative right now.

00:18:53.000 But remember, you need 218 votes to be elected Speaker of the House, and he does not have that.

00:18:59.000 This is going to be a long, brutal process when they come together and make that vote.

00:19:04.000 Okay, meanwhile, on the Democratic side of the aisle, they're all ecstatic.

00:19:07.000 Nancy Pelosi said she's not going anywhere, despite the fact that she's 123 years old.

00:19:11.000 So here is Nancy Pelosi triumphantly announcing that she was going to remain in her role, presumably as minority leader, but not by much.

00:19:19.000 Another way to look at it, as somebody who's covered you for a long time, is that maybe you're emboldened and you feel more of a responsibility to stay.

00:19:28.000 Which is it?

00:19:28.000 So my decision will again be rooted in what the wishes of my family and the wishes of my caucus, but none of it will be very much considered until we see what the outcome of all of this is.

00:19:43.000 And there are all kinds of ways to exert influence.

00:19:46.000 It's just the speaker has awesome power, but I will always have influence.

00:19:52.000 OK, again, she's basically I mean, see how happy she is.

00:19:56.000 She's going to walk away from this thing fairly clean.

00:19:59.000 Now, again, the main message for Republicans is you need to move away from Election 2020.

00:20:04.000 That is the biggest message from this election.

00:20:07.000 It was like a targeted strike by the American voter.

00:20:09.000 If you look at the popular vote, Republicans out-polled Democrats by about 5% in the popular vote and picked up eight seats in the House and lost a seat in the Senate.

00:20:17.000 It's the most likely possible outcome here.

00:20:19.000 Hey, that is not a result anybody saw coming.

00:20:20.000 If you had told me before the election, Republicans win by 5% in the generic ballot, I'd be like, wow, that's a sweep.

00:20:25.000 They do amazing.

00:20:26.000 But it turns out that Republicans turned out in heavy red districts.

00:20:30.000 It turns out that redistricting meant that Republicans turned out there.

00:20:32.000 It turns out there was under turnout in a lot of urban districts for Democrats because they just figured that they were going to win anyway.

00:20:37.000 And in the districts that were purple, independents showed up to vote for the Democrats.

00:20:41.000 And that was the big deciding factor here.

00:20:43.000 And you can see it on the map.

00:20:44.000 You can see who lost and who won.

00:20:45.000 You can see it within states.

00:20:47.000 The more closely you were tied to election 2020, the worse you did.

00:20:51.000 This is not just a generalized take.

00:20:54.000 This is a specific take.

00:20:55.000 This is true within state.

00:20:58.000 We'll get to more on this in just one moment.

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00:23:00.000 Take a look at New Hampshire.

00:23:01.000 Krista Nuno wins, going away in New Hampshire.

00:23:04.000 Meanwhile, Don Balda, who's closely tied to election 2020 and suggesting the election was not fair and all of this, he just gets cream in New Hampshire.

00:23:10.000 Put aside whatever you think of the election 2020.

00:23:12.000 Whatever you think, whether you think it was fraudulent, whether you think it was stolen, that doesn't matter.

00:23:16.000 The question here is whether that is a particularly compelling message to the American people if you wish to win back power and stop the left-wing agenda.

00:23:23.000 Just from an efficacious point of view. 0.99

00:23:26.000 Is this a smart thing or is this a stupid thing? 1.00

00:23:29.000 Take a look at Nevada. 0.99

00:23:30.000 Say Adam Laxalt, who didn't really run on election 2020, but was endorsed by President Trump because he had made intimations about how he was unhappy with election 2020.

00:23:37.000 He loses in Nevada.

00:23:40.000 Meanwhile, Sisolak, who's the Republican for governor in Nevada, wins.

00:23:44.000 You can see this gap nearly everywhere.

00:23:47.000 Nearly everywhere.

00:23:48.000 The more closely you are tied with the election 2020 agenda, the more Joe Biden's message sort of resonated.

00:23:54.000 The more you were seen as a person who couldn't be trusted with power.

00:23:57.000 This was particularly true when it came to Secretary of State races all over the country.

00:24:02.000 According to the New York Times, every person, they call them election deniers, but every person who suggested that the 2020 election was stolen, who sought to become the top election official in a critical battleground state, lost at the polls this year as voters roundly rejected partisans who promised to restrict voting and overhaul the electoral process.

00:24:18.000 Every single one.

00:24:19.000 That was true in Nevada.

00:24:19.000 It was true in Arizona.

00:24:22.000 It was true in Arizona, New Mexico, Michigan.

00:24:27.000 The only candidate for Secretary of State position endorsed by Trump was Diego Morales, a Republican in Deep Red, Indiana.

00:24:33.000 That's literally the only one.

00:24:36.000 You can see this all over the map.

00:24:37.000 Where exactly did Republicans pick up seats in the House?

00:24:39.000 They picked them up, if you look at the map, in New York.

00:24:42.000 All the Republicans they picked up in New York are what you would call moderate Republicans, many of whom were openly dissociated from Trump.

00:24:47.000 They're all in the Hudson River Valley.

00:24:49.000 The same thing is happening over in Florida.

00:24:51.000 They picked up some seats in Florida, not because they were associated with Trump, but because they were associated with DeSantis.

00:24:57.000 The bottom line here is that moving forward, people liked the Republican agenda, they just didn't like the Republican candidates.

00:25:02.000 And people didn't like the Democratic agenda, but they liked the candidates better than they liked the Republican candidates.

00:25:10.000 So what does this mean for Democrats?

00:25:11.000 Well, these strategically smart Democrats going into 2024 are now basically getting behind Biden.

00:25:16.000 They recognize that what Biden is, no matter what else you say about the guy, he is not perceived as a radical.

00:25:21.000 No matter how radical he is, no matter the policies he puts in place, if there is any magic at all left in the decaying husk of Joe Biden, the magic is that he is perceived as a moderate despite the fact that he is actually a radical.

00:25:34.000 Despite the fact he has pursued radical policies.

00:25:36.000 And so the Democrats are smarter, like, okay, we got to keep this guy front and center.

00:25:39.000 Because the minute that the mask is off, people don't like the candidate anymore.

00:25:43.000 Maybe we'll find some other substitute candidate who is also perceived as moderate, but kind of unlikely because Joe Biden is perceived as particularly non-threatening to the American people, even though he's kind of threatening to the American people.

00:25:52.000 So this is why Nancy Pelosi came out and immediately endorsed Joe Biden for president in 2024.

00:25:57.000 And this will be a very important election, very dispositive of the direction our country will go in.

00:26:04.000 So do you think President Biden should run again?

00:26:07.000 Yes, I do.

00:26:09.000 President Biden has been a great president for our country.

00:26:12.000 He has accomplished so much.

00:26:15.000 10 million jobs, over 10 million jobs under his leadership, working with the private sector, of course.

00:26:22.000 He has just done so many things that are so great.

00:26:27.000 We need a lot more show to talk about.

00:26:32.000 Okay, so it's not really about they love everything that Joe Biden has done.

00:26:35.000 It's really that Joe Biden is the repository of all anti-Trump sentiment in America, and he is perceived as a dead person.

00:26:40.000 So for the same reason he won in 2020, he also did well in 2022, which is to say he was not running against the Republican policy positions.

00:26:47.000 He was running against Donald Trump, right?

00:26:49.000 He made that very, very clear throughout the election cycle.

00:26:51.000 It was very obvious.

00:26:52.000 Now, this does not stop the more passionate Democrats from doing what they always do, which is get very excited about the possibility of somebody more radical.

00:26:59.000 So SNL over the weekend, they were speculating that Biden might die.

00:27:03.000 They actually do want to move past Biden because, again, as much as Biden was successful, and he was, I mean, credit where credit is due, the old man lying in the basement routine worked for him again.

00:27:13.000 Democrats want to move away from that.

00:27:14.000 The hardcore in the media, they're already proposing that he be moved aside, which again, strategically doesn't make any sense to me because who the hell is going to come after him?

00:27:22.000 Here was SNL speculating about the death of Joe Biden.

00:27:23.000 You weren't allowed to do this three weeks ago.

00:27:25.000 Now you are.

00:27:25.000 President Biden said that he plans to run again in 2024, but won't make a final decision until early next year because it's like his doctor told them, I wouldn't plan too far ahead.

00:27:39.000 Okay, so they're already joking.

00:27:41.000 They're allowed to joke about this now.

00:27:42.000 Meanwhile, EJ Dionne over at the Washington Post, he is writing openly about the possibility that Joe Biden goes away.

00:27:50.000 He has a piece called Forget DeSantis.

00:27:53.000 Whitmer and Shapiro are defining the future.

00:27:55.000 He's talking about Gretchen Whitmer over in Michigan and Josh Shapiro over in Pennsylvania.

00:28:00.000 He says in large parts of the nation, voters formed what Representative Tim Ryan called an exhausted majority desperate to move on to the problem-solving.

00:28:06.000 Ryan, alas, lost his Senate race to J.D.

00:28:07.000 Vance in Ohio, but two nearby Democratic victors on Tuesday effectively carried this banner and stand as the antithesis of DeSantis-ism, meaning that every gushing story about DeSantis should be balanced by pieces about Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Governor-elect Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.

00:28:21.000 Like DeSantis, both Democrats won landslides in states Trump carried in 2016.

00:28:25.000 There's a bit of a difference.

00:28:26.000 One is that Gretchen Whitmer did not win in nearly as much of a landslide as DeSantis, and she is in a much bluer state than DeSantis.

00:28:33.000 I mean, when she won her last election, she won fairly solidly.

00:28:35.000 DeSantis won by 30,000 votes, and he transformed that into a 20-point victory.

00:28:39.000 Gretchen Whitmer, I believe, beat Tudor Dixon by about 11 points, and that was after she'd won her last race by, like, five. 0.64

00:28:44.000 Meanwhile, Josh Shapiro was running against Doug Mastriano, a crazy person.

00:28:49.000 Okay, so that was not exactly a huge victory.

00:28:51.000 Like, everyone expected Josh Shapiro to win that race going away.

00:28:55.000 But they're the future, and so they're already trying to think beyond.

00:29:00.000 The bottom line here is they're thinking beyond Biden.

00:29:02.000 They're tired of Biden. 0.99

00:29:03.000 EJ Dionne says, Whitmer stayed true to the very practical agenda she ran on four years ago, highlighted by her sassy back-to-basics slogans, fix the damn rose. 1.00

00:29:10.000 She raised that battle cry again in her victory speech while renewing pledges to restore safe drinking water and to improve health care and education.

00:29:16.000 And now, again, one of the reasons that Gretchen Whitmer won big over Tudor Dixon is because the Michigan Republican Party went deep into the election 2020 stuff, which is why they no longer have pretty much any say in the governance in Michigan.

00:29:30.000 The Democrats did really well across the board in Michigan, including in the state legislature.

00:29:35.000 Meanwhile, Josh Shapiro is being championed by the left as a magical, magical figure.

00:29:40.000 He was asked already about running for president of the United States, despite the fact that he's been governor for less than zero amount of time, since he actually hasn't been sworn in yet.

00:29:48.000 OK, so I know you haven't even begun your term.

00:29:51.000 You were just elected, but you know your name is already being mentioned in some circles as a potential future presidential contender.

00:29:59.000 Do you have any ambition to be the first Jewish president of the United States?

00:30:05.000 No.

00:30:06.000 Dana, I have an ambition to get a little bit of sleep, to reintroduce myself to my kids, and then to serve the good people of Pennsylvania as their governor.

00:30:15.000 That is all I'm focused on, and that's all I want to do.

00:30:19.000 Okay, so they're already speculating about Joshua, and the reason is because he gave one viral speech, basically, right near the end of his campaign.

00:30:25.000 He gave a speech in which he basically shouted a bunch of bumper sticker slogans, and this sort of stuff really gets people jazzed in the Democratic circles.

00:30:33.000 That's not how we do things in this Commonwealth or in this country.

00:30:38.000 And that is not freedom.

00:30:42.000 You know, this guy loves to talk a good game about freedom, right?

00:30:46.000 Let me tell you something.

00:30:48.000 It's not freedom to tell women what they're allowed to do with their bodies.

00:30:51.000 That's not freedom.

00:30:56.000 It's not freedom to tell our children what books they're allowed to read.

00:31:00.000 It's not freedom when he gets to decide who you're allowed to marry.

00:31:11.000 I say love is love.

00:31:12.000 I mean, again, bumper sticker slogans.

00:31:16.000 Very exciting to Democrats.

00:31:17.000 This speech is what makes this guy so compelling.

00:31:20.000 OK, sure.

00:31:20.000 Meanwhile, Gretchen Whitmer, she was out there lying and saying during her campaign that she won by focusing on getting kids back to school.

00:31:25.000 No, she really, really, really did not.

00:31:28.000 Here is Gretchen Whitmer over the weekend.

00:31:30.000 What takeaways do you have for National Democrats about your win in Michigan?

00:31:35.000 Well, I can tell you, we stayed focused on the fundamentals, right?

00:31:38.000 Whether it's fixing the dam roads, or making sure our kids are getting back on track after an incredible disruption in their learning.

00:31:44.000 Or just simply solving problems and being honest with the people.

00:31:48.000 You know, a governor Can't fix global inflation. 0.58

00:31:50.000 But what we can do is take actions to keep more money in people's pockets.

00:31:55.000 Protect our right to make our own decisions about our bodies.

00:31:57.000 And all of this was squarely front and center for a lot of Michigan voters, and I suspect that's probably true for voters across the country.

00:32:06.000 Again, now we're getting the moderate version of Gretchen Whitmer trying to substitute herself for Joe Biden. 1.00

00:32:11.000 But here's my mind.

00:32:12.000 Democrats believe, again, they're taking the wrong message away, that they need to double down.

00:32:15.000 So the question for Democrats, are you going to double down or are you going to move along a more moderate path and appear sane to the public in terms of policy?

00:32:22.000 And the question for Republicans is, are you going to double down or are you going to appear more sane and follow candidates who actually are capable of winning right now?

00:32:30.000 And yes, this does raise questions about 2024.

00:32:32.000 I mean, Donald Trump is spending the weekend attacking Winsome Sears.

00:32:35.000 Remember Winsome Sears?

00:32:36.000 She was lieutenant governor of Virginia elect.

00:32:38.000 Remember, she was elected with Glenn Youngkin, a black woman, military background.

00:32:42.000 And you remember that she was a heroine to the Republicans.

00:32:46.000 Well, she came out over the weekend.

00:32:47.000 She's like, I don't think that Donald Trump is capable of leading the Republican Party, given his record in the last several election cycles, starting 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022.

00:32:56.000 And Donald Trump then immediately came out and attacked Winsome Sears.

00:32:59.000 Like, who is he not attacking at this point?

00:33:01.000 And much of the attacks, by the way, are completely randomly unprovoked.

00:33:09.000 I mean, at least you can suggest that the Winsome Sears response by Trump was a response.

00:33:14.000 But he's been attacking, like, Glenn Youngkin.

00:33:16.000 DeSantis hasn't said a word about him.

00:33:19.000 The question for Republicans is, do you wish to win, or do you wish to feel good about yourself?

00:33:22.000 And this is really the question for the Republican Party, more broadly speaking.

00:33:26.000 It's the base of the Republican Party that's going to choose the direction of the Republican Party.

00:33:29.000 The Republican Party is a vehicle.

00:33:30.000 It is not, in fact, a leadership group.

00:33:32.000 The Republican Party, like any other political party, is supposed to be a vehicle designed for winning elections.

00:33:37.000 What political parties used to do is help weed out the bad candidates so that the party, which would only continue to exist if it won, could win elections.

00:33:44.000 But now, for some odd reason, The party has been seen by the American people, by their bases, this is true for the Democrats and the Republicans, has been seen as the thought leaders.

00:33:56.000 Instead of the party just being seen as a vehicle for winning elections, now it's like, well, the party has to define itself in terms of making me feel good.

00:34:02.000 That's not what a party is designed to do.

00:34:04.000 And so what this does require is a bit of leadership.

00:34:07.000 In terms of the Republican Party, it requires leadership at the top levels to actually say that this party is about winning elections.

00:34:12.000 It's not about pleasing people.

00:34:14.000 It's not about pandering.

00:34:16.000 It's about winning elections.

00:34:17.000 And the same thing is true at the Democratic Party level.

00:34:19.000 The Democrats are better than the Republicans are at it.

00:34:20.000 That's why you didn't hear one word about defund the police two years after Democrats ran on defund the police in 2020.

00:34:27.000 But if the Republicans don't get the message, they'll lose.

00:34:28.000 And if Democrats keep doubling down on the radicalism, they will lose as well.

00:34:32.000 All right, in just a second, I want to get into the meltdown over at FTX, because this is a fascinating story, a really fascinating story.

00:34:39.000 And it has a lot to say about the collusion between some of the Democrats' favored donors and actual legislators and regulators about regulatory capture.

00:34:49.000 It's a really interesting story.

00:34:50.000 We'll get to that in a moment.

00:34:51.000 First, it is very, very important to have a will.

00:34:53.000 This is just like baseline human responsibility.

00:34:55.000 God forbid something happens to you, you need to know how your assets are going to be disposed of, who's going to take care of your kids. 0.99

00:35:01.000 It's dark stuff to think about, but once you have a will done, you'll feel so much more secure.

00:35:04.000 That's why my wife and I have a will.

00:35:06.000 A will is about protecting your legacy, protecting finances, ensuring medical decisions are honored when you're unable to see them through, deciding who will take responsibility.

00:35:13.000 For your kids, a will might be the only opportunity you have to direct important family heirlooms, financial investments, and responsibilities to the best people in your life, whatever your circumstance.

00:35:21.000 It's never a bad idea to have a will in place, which is why you need Epic Will.

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00:35:36.000 Take five minutes today, Go to epicwill.com.

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00:35:52.000 Also.

00:35:53.000 Last week, we released a brand new episode of The Search.

00:35:55.000 In it, I sit down with newly re-elected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Dr. Jordan B. Peterson in Tel Aviv.

00:36:01.000 It's a fascinating, riveting conversation I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:36:04.000 This episode is available exclusively at DailyWire+.

00:36:06.000 If you're not yet a member, head on over to dailywire.com slash ben to join us.

00:36:09.000 That's dailywire.com slash ben today.

00:36:12.000 Meanwhile, over on the surface, what just happened at FTX looks like another Wolf of Wall Street type scenario with a person taking advantage of capitalistic excesses in order to grab a huge chunk of change and party it up with his friends.

00:36:25.000 And there is some of that here.

00:36:26.000 But the story of Sam Bankman Freed and FTX is really a story not just about capitalist excesses, but About corporate excesses.

00:36:34.000 It's about the fact that when there is an impression that government is going to back your play, people are willing to give you enormous sums of money.

00:36:40.000 And how people who are involved in this sort of play spend extraordinary, giant piles of cash on their favorite legislators.

00:36:48.000 Sam Bankman Freed, the way the media is going to play this is that Sam Bankman Freed is a quasi-libertarian who is determined, bound and determined to avoid regulation at all costs.

00:36:56.000 And finally, if we would just regulate these guys, we need to have a hero, a hero, a regulator.

00:36:59.000 Elizabeth Warren to crack down on Sam Bankman Freed.

00:37:01.000 There's only one problem with this particular narrative.

00:37:04.000 Sam Bankman Freed is one of the biggest Democratic donors on the block.

00:37:07.000 He spent $40 million on Democrats in the last election cycle and midterm election cycle.

00:37:11.000 So for those of you who haven't been following this saga, There is a cryptocurrency exchange called FTX.

00:37:18.000 Now, this whole blow up over FTX has been used as a rationale for ripping on crypto generally.

00:37:24.000 Crypto is bad.

00:37:24.000 Bitcoin is bad.

00:37:25.000 If it's a trustless system, then why is it that someone can betray your trust and steal all of your money?

00:37:30.000 The answer is this was not about blockchain.

00:37:32.000 This is about people delegated their actual money to Sam Bankman Freed over at FTX.

00:37:37.000 They didn't keep the money in their wallet.

00:37:38.000 They just kept it over at the FTX exchange.

00:37:41.000 And then essentially it looks like Sam Bankman Freed and company stole the money.

00:37:45.000 So you trusted him, right?

00:37:46.000 That was not about the failures of blockchain.

00:37:48.000 Blockchain worked just fine.

00:37:49.000 That's the same thing as if you put your money in Lehman Brothers and then they just blew it.

00:37:52.000 That's essentially what happened with FTX.

00:37:54.000 Or you put it in Enron and they were just falsifying the accounts and moving the money around.

00:37:58.000 That is what happened here.

00:38:00.000 According to LiveMint.com, cryptocurrency exchange FTX was on the verge of collapse on Friday after a bailout from its rival Binance failed.

00:38:07.000 And finally, Sam Bankman Freed actually declared bankruptcy.

00:38:10.000 So, people lost billions of dollars, about an $8 billion bankruptcy over at FTX.

00:38:15.000 It's a cryptocurrency exchange.

00:38:16.000 It's sort of like the New York Stock Exchange.

00:38:18.000 Except that people actually keep their money at FTX for purposes of trading.

00:38:21.000 In the same way that if you have your money in an E-Trade account, it's not that it's kept in your bank account, then E-Trade draws on the bank account, you actually keep your money.

00:38:27.000 Over at E-Trade and E-Trade can just move those trades around.

00:38:31.000 Same thing with FTX with regard to different types of cryptocurrency.

00:38:35.000 So yeah, you sort of have to have a brief history of FTX because it went from not existing to being worth supposedly $32 billion in about three years.

00:38:43.000 In 2019, Sam Bankman-Fried, who's in his 20s, he's a kid, and ex-Google employee Gary Wang founded FTX, which was the owner and operator of FTX.com cryptocurrency exchange.

00:38:53.000 In August of 2020, FTX acquired the mobile portfolio tracking application Blockfolio for $150 million.

00:38:59.000 In 2021, July, there was a $900 million funding round valuing FTX at $18 billion.

00:39:05.000 And then FTX started getting very public, right?

00:39:08.000 They signed a sponsorship deal with Mercedes.

00:39:11.000 They raised capital at a valuation of $25 billion from a bunch of investors, including a couple of firms over in Singapore.

00:39:18.000 In January of 2022, the U.S.

00:39:20.000 arm of FTX, there's an international arm and a U.S.

00:39:22.000 arm, they said it was valued at $8 billion after raising $400 million in its first funding round from investors, including SoftBank and Temasek, which is, again, a Singaporean firm.

00:39:30.000 And then they raised even more money, and then by June, they were buying the rights to the Miami Heat Arena, to FTX Arena over there, no longer.

00:39:38.000 And then they just kept acquiring assets.

00:39:39.000 Basically, every time it looked like a cryptocurrency exchange was going to go down, an alternative, they would just buy it.

00:39:44.000 So they'd buy up all of these bankrupt companies in an attempt to scale, right?

00:39:48.000 Because then they could say, look at all the assets that we've stocked up.

00:39:51.000 In the same way that WeWork was basically inflated because people just kept buying all sorts of empty apartment buildings and empty workspaces without any sort of intent other than to just leverage, leverage, leverage, buy all the real estate, buy it, buy it, buy it, and then go back to the investors and look how much we own.

00:40:04.000 Same sort of thing with FTX.

00:40:07.000 In August, a U.S.

00:40:08.000 bank regulator ordered FTX to halt false and misleading claims it had made about whether funds of the company were insured by the government.

00:40:13.000 They had already been making claims to people suggesting that your funds were safe.

00:40:16.000 In fact, in their terms and conditions, it also said that if you kept your money in an FTX account, then that money would not be used for other trading.

00:40:24.000 In other words, they wouldn't use like a fractional banking system.

00:40:27.000 When you keep your money at Bank of America, Bank of America has to keep some of that on tap.

00:40:31.000 They're also backed by the Federal Reserve to a certain extent to the size of the account.

00:40:35.000 I think it's $250,000 right now.

00:40:37.000 But they're able to send out all the rest of the money in loans, right?

00:40:40.000 FTX was not supposed to do that.

00:40:42.000 They were supposed to keep the money largely on hand, and instead, it turns out that they were shifting the money.

00:40:46.000 In September, FTX's venture capital fund said they would buy a stake in SkyBridge Capital.

00:40:51.000 In November, and this is when things started to break down, like within two weeks, the entire company just blew apart.

00:40:56.000 Why?

00:40:56.000 Well, there was a crypto news website called Coindesk, and they reported a leaked balance sheet.

00:41:00.000 That showed that Alameda Research, which is Bankman Freed's crypto trading firm, was heavily dependent on FTX's native token, FTT.

00:41:07.000 So basically, there was an associated firm, Alameda Research, which was sort of like a hedge fund.

00:41:11.000 And it turns out that Bankman Freed was taking money from FTX, your exchange, and taking it and putting it into Alameda Research, which was run, as it turns out, by Sam Bankman Freed's girlfriend.

00:41:24.000 And then, that money was being used in Alameda Research to buy back into FTX via their token.

00:41:31.000 Okay, so they were basically using your money to hold up their own stock price.

00:41:34.000 It was essentially what they were doing.

00:41:35.000 They were using your money to hold up the valuation of their own company.

00:41:39.000 Now, as it turns out, one of the companies that had bought a big chunk of FTX was a company called Binance.

00:41:45.000 Binance happens to be the largest crypto exchange in the world.

00:41:48.000 So, FTX was the second largest crypto exchange.

00:41:50.000 Binance was the number one crypto exchange.

00:41:52.000 Binance had bought a big chunk of FTX.

00:41:55.000 And they'd bought, really, a lot of FTT.

00:41:57.000 They'd bought a bunch of FTX's Bitcoin.

00:42:01.000 A bunch of their, a bunch of their cryptocurrency.

00:42:03.000 Well, Binance decided now's an excellent time to basically destroy our competitor.

00:42:07.000 So they sold all of their FTT, right?

00:42:10.000 All of their token in FTX.

00:42:12.000 It collapsed the value of that token and people started to run on FTX essentially.

00:42:17.000 They started saying, cash me out and give me my money.

00:42:20.000 Well, the money didn't exist.

00:42:22.000 Binance had suggested that then, then they did the final thing.

00:42:25.000 Now the final straw was they said, we will come and we will bail out.

00:42:30.000 And that is when Bankman Freed finally admitted that this thing is going to go completely belly up and people are going to lose billions and billions of dollars.

00:42:49.000 And now it is unclear exactly where Sam Bankman Freed is.

00:42:52.000 There's a rumor that he was going to flee to Argentina.

00:42:54.000 He says he is still in the Bahamas.

00:42:58.000 There's speculation over whether he's going to be prosecuted, what laws he broke.

00:43:01.000 It turns out, according to Axios, the terms and conditions from...

00:43:06.000 From the currency exchange, from FTX.

00:43:08.000 The terms and conditions said he wasn't allowed to shift money from FTX formally into Alameda Research, which again, was his girlfriend's hedge fund.

00:43:17.000 So it looks like a prosecution may well be on the way.

00:43:20.000 But the real story of Sam Bankman-Fried is way more interesting than this.

00:43:24.000 Because it's not just another bilking of investors.

00:43:26.000 Instead, it is really about how somebody attempted to bluewash himself.

00:43:31.000 This is a guy who worked hand-in-glove with Democrats in order to structure regulation that benefited him at the expense of his competitors, and then his competitors decided to finish him off because of that.

00:43:42.000 There's a reason the Sam Bankman Freed in his late twenties was appearing on stage in like gym shorts and a t-shirt with Bill Clinton.

00:43:48.000 By the way, good rule of thumb.

00:43:49.000 Anybody on stage with Bill Clinton, sell your stock in that company immediately.

00:43:52.000 If it's Elizabeth Holmes, if it's Sam Bankman Freed, doesn't matter.

00:43:55.000 They appear on stage with Bill Clinton, sell your stock like right now.

00:43:58.000 Alrighty guys, the rest of the show is continuing now.

00:43:59.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:44:00.000 We'll be getting into the rest of the Sam Bankman Freed FTX meltdown.

00:44:04.000 It is a massive political story.

00:44:05.000 Plus Dennis Prager joins us to discuss the rational Bible.

The Ben Shapiro Show - November 14, 2022

What The FTX? | Ep. 1610

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