The Ben Shapiro Show - WHO WON FIGHT NIGHT #1?

00:00:00.000 Whenever there's a big debate, the big question that people have is who won and who lost.

00:00:03.000 But to understand who won and who lost, you first have to discuss what the metrics are for winning and losing.

00:00:08.000 Because you can win a debate, and it can mean very little.

00:00:11.000 Or, you can lose a debate, and it can end your campaign.

00:00:13.000 So, the question for each of the candidates on the stage in last night's first Republican debate was, what is the goal?

00:00:19.000 In order to understand what the goal was for each candidate, and then we can grade them in terms of how they achieved their goals, we can also grade them in terms of what we personally thought of them in terms of truth, honesty, policy.

00:00:29.000 In order to grade them on that basis, we first have to kind of assess the state of the race going into the debate.

00:00:35.000 And to understand where the race was going into the debate, you first have to understand that the Republican Party is not actually a cohesive thing.

00:00:41.000 The conservative movement at this point is not a cohesive movement.

00:00:44.000 There's an anti-left umbrella.

00:00:46.000 Under the anti-left umbrella, there are several groups inside the Republican Party.

00:00:49.000 I've seen people divide these groups six ways.

00:00:51.000 If you're Nate Cohen of the New York Times, I've seen them divided a couple of ways.

00:00:55.000 They're not divided, however, into two groups.

00:00:57.000 One of the core assumptions going into the Republican primaries by a lot of politicos is that there are basically two groups.

00:01:02.000 The pro-Trumps and the anti-Trumps.

00:01:04.000 Maybe three.

00:01:04.000 The pro-Trumps, the anti-Trumps, and the lukewarm Trumps.

00:01:07.000 That's not really accurate.

00:01:09.000 In reality, in this Republican primary, I believe that there are four lanes right now.

00:01:13.000 There are four lanes.

00:01:15.000 And the question is, can you occupy multiple of those lanes and be the top person at multiple of those lanes?

00:01:21.000 You're going to have to do that in order to challenge President Trump, who's running away with the primaries right now by 40 points nationally.

00:01:26.000 And he is winning.

00:01:27.000 Yes, still in Iowa.

00:01:28.000 He's winning in New Hampshire and every other state.

00:01:31.000 So, in order to understand where the race stood and what people were trying to accomplish on the stage last night, we first have to look at where people stand in the race right now.

00:01:38.000 So I put together this chart to sort of explain the various lanes and where the candidates stood before last night's debate.

00:01:44.000 So, there are basically four lanes in this Republican primary.

00:01:48.000 Lane number one are the people who absolutely love President Trump.

00:01:51.000 The Trumpers.

00:01:53.000 That's like 35% of the Republican Party.

00:01:55.000 They love him.

00:01:56.000 It's ride or die.

00:01:57.000 He's their guy.

00:01:58.000 You got 25% of the GOP.

00:02:00.000 That'd be like the traditional GOP base.

00:02:02.000 Like the Reagan conservatives.

00:02:04.000 People who believe in the three-legged stool of conservatism, social conservatism, fiscal conservatism, meaning small government, free trade, and foreign policy hawkishness.

00:02:14.000 That'd be like the traditional GOP.

00:02:16.000 Third group would be the liberal wing.

00:02:18.000 This would be like the never-Trumpers.

00:02:19.000 The Chris Christie wing.

00:02:21.000 And then finally you have the Trump adjacent.

00:02:22.000 These are people like 20% of the party who like Trump, Like, they like him, they liked his policies, they thought he was a good president, but they understand there are serious concerns about his presidential run.

00:02:33.000 Whether it's the indictments, whether it's his bizarre habits on Truth Social, whether it's his commentary, whether it's the toxicity he has with Suburban, whatever it is.

00:02:41.000 These are people who like a lot of what Trump did, who may even like him personally, but they also are not totally sold that Trump is the guy for 2024.

00:02:50.000 That's like 20% of the party.

00:02:53.000 So, let's go through each of these candidates and where they stood going into the debate.

00:02:58.000 Last night's debate.

00:02:59.000 So, Ron DeSantis is currently in second place in the national polling.

00:03:03.000 With the Trumpers, he earns like a B. Okay, so the way that I weighted this sort of stuff is everybody's on an A to F scale.

00:03:09.000 Trump gets an A plus in the Trump category because he's Trump and it's the Trump category.

00:03:12.000 So he gets an A plus.

00:03:13.000 He's the only person who gets an A plus in any category.

00:03:15.000 Okay, but everybody else is on an A to F scale.

00:03:18.000 An A is worth four, a B is worth three, a C is worth two, a D is worth one, and an F is worth zero.

00:03:23.000 And then we weighted it out according to the size of these particular groups.

00:03:25.000 So, Ron DeSantis, among Trumpers, going into the debate, he's at like a B. They like the guy.

00:03:32.000 They think he's fine.

00:03:33.000 He's solid.

00:03:34.000 But he's not Trump.

00:03:35.000 Among traditional GOP types, DeSantis is currently at a B.

00:03:40.000 Among members of the so-called liberal wing, the sort of never Trump side,

00:03:45.000 DeSantis is at like a D.

00:03:47.000 And among the Trump adjacent crowd, he's at like a B.

00:03:49.000 Those are the people who love Trump, but you know, they could see somebody else.

00:03:53.000 Which means that he's at a B in three categories and a D in one other.

00:03:56.000 Vivek Ramaswamy has an A with Trumpers.

00:04:01.000 Now, that is great for him in the sense that, like, the Trump people really, really like him.

00:04:06.000 I mean, a lot for him being vice president or a cabinet secretary, but he ain't gonna beat Trump among the Trumpers.

00:04:11.000 He's got an A among the Trumpers.

00:04:12.000 He's got a D among the traditional GOP because he takes a lot of heterodox positions and seems to shift with the wind based on who's asking him questions, whether it is 9-11 conspiracies or whether it is Ukraine.

00:04:23.000 Or whether it's climate change.

00:04:24.000 You got the liberal wing, which hates Vivek.

00:04:26.000 The never-Trump wing, he's got an F with them.

00:04:28.000 And then among the Trump-adjacent, he's got an A right now.

00:04:31.000 This is where momentum has been flowing from DeSantis to Vivek, is that in the Trump-adjacent wing, the people who like Trump, but they could see somebody else, Vivek has been doing well with those people.

00:04:39.000 He's got an A with those people.

00:04:40.000 That means he's got an A with the Trumpers and the Trump-adjacent, and he's failing with the traditional GOP and the left wing of the party.

00:04:47.000 Mike Pence has an F in two categories, the Trump and the Trump-adjacent.

00:04:50.000 They hate him.

00:04:51.000 And among the traditional GOP, he's got a B because, again, the traditional GOP kind of likes Trump.

00:04:57.000 And so if Trump rips on Pence, he's got a B. And among the never-Trumpers, they actually don't like Pence on policy, but they like that Trump hates him.

00:05:05.000 And so he's got a B with them.

00:05:07.000 Nikki Haley, among those four groups, she's got, like, a D with the Trumpers.

00:05:10.000 They don't like her because she's running against Trump. 1.00

00:05:12.000 Among the traditional GOP, she does well.

00:05:14.000 She's got an A going in, probably.

00:05:16.000 Among the never-Trump wing of the party, she's got a B. They kind of like her.

00:05:21.000 They don't love her, but they kind of like her.

00:05:24.000 And among the Trump adjacent, she has a D. They're also not super fond of Nikki Haley.

00:05:28.000 They think that she is, quote-unquote, a neocon and all the rest of it.

00:05:31.000 Okay, Tim Scott is basically in the race for no reason.

00:05:34.000 Tim Scott, very nice guy.

00:05:37.000 No magnetism, no momentum, no nothing.

00:05:39.000 Among Trumpers, he's a C or a D. Among traditional GOP, he's a C. Liberal wing, he's a C. Trump adjacent, he's a C. Like, basically, we all like Tim.

00:05:47.000 He's fine.

00:05:48.000 Eh.

00:05:49.000 And then Chris Christie, he is an F among Trumpers.

00:05:52.000 He's got a D among the traditional GOP who don't like him because of the way that he treated Barack Obama and all the rest.

00:05:56.000 He's got an F with the Trump adjacent because they hate his guts.

00:05:59.000 And among the number of Trumpers, he's got an A. So he's got like one lane.

00:06:03.000 And then you got Trump.

00:06:04.000 Trump himself, As an A-plus with the Trumpers, he's got an A with the Trump adjacent, and he's got a B with the traditional GOP.

00:06:10.000 It's only the never-Trumpers who hate him.

00:06:11.000 Everybody else either loves the guy or likes the guy to varying degrees.

00:06:16.000 In order for any candidate to defeat Donald Trump, in order for that to happen, The only way that that is going to happen is if they consolidate the other three non-Trump wings of the party.

00:06:29.000 So let's say that you're a candidate and you want to beat Donald Trump.

00:06:31.000 And Donald Trump, right now, has the Trumpers locked up.

00:06:33.000 It's 35% of the party.

00:06:35.000 And you need to get...

00:06:37.000 Let's say in a two-person race, which it is not, which is part of the problem.

00:06:39.000 Let's say you wanted to consolidate.

00:06:41.000 So you figure, okay, 65% of the party is up for grabs.

00:06:45.000 Well, you'd certainly need to pick up the never-Trump wing.

00:06:46.000 That'd be like 20% of the party.

00:06:48.000 And then you'd need to win probably 80% of the traditional GOP.

00:06:52.000 You need to get a lot of those people to believe that Donald Trump is not the guy, which means you need to win them over with sort of traditional GOP positions, record, all the rest.

00:07:02.000 And then you would still have to win half of the Trump adjacent.

00:07:06.000 You'd have to take all of the Never Trump wing, that's 20%.

00:07:09.000 You have to take 20 of the 25% from the traditional GOP and you'd still have to win half of the Trump adjacent.

00:07:13.000 That is a very uphill road.

00:07:14.000 Now the only candidate who is scoring at all among all three of those groups, the only candidates who are scoring at all among those three groups, the Trump adjacent, the liberal wing and the traditional GOP, are Haley and DeSantis.

00:07:26.000 The others are doing well in, like, one of the categories.

00:07:31.000 DeSantis' campaign initially seemed fairly well-positioned for this possible challenge, right?

00:07:35.000 He seemed like he might be getting an A with the traditional GOP.

00:07:38.000 Among NeverTrumpers, he was at, like, a B. And among the Trump-adjacent, he was at, like, an A. So there was a possibility he might have been able to consolidate the anti-Trump forces.

00:07:45.000 That really has not happened, which is why he's been losing momentum.

00:07:49.000 Because right now, he seems like he's the second choice for everybody.

00:07:53.000 Among traditional GOP-ers, He is a B-Rater, as opposed to Nikki Haley, who's like an A. Among the Trump-adjacent, he's at a B, as opposed to Vivek, who's at an A. And among the never-Trump-ling, he ranks behind, right now, Christie and Haley and Pence, probably.

00:08:09.000 So when you look at the initial GPAs of these candidates going into the race, what you see is Donald Trump way out in front with like a 3.3 when you give like a weighted average here.

00:08:17.000 And when you look at Ron DeSantis, he's at, when you give a weighted aggregate rather, you get 3.3 for Trump.

00:08:23.000 When you look at DeSantis, he's at 2.6.

00:08:25.000 Vivek just trailing him at 2.45.

00:08:28.000 You have Nikki Haley at 2.15, you have Scott at 1.65, Pence at 1.35, Christie at 1.05.

00:08:32.000 That doesn't explain the entire dynamic of the race because momentum, as we'll discuss, is really about can you win one of these lanes.

00:08:40.000 One of the ways you generate momentum is by winning one of the lanes and then building on that.

00:08:43.000 So right now, Vivek is doing really well with the Trump adjacent, which is why he's building on that and seems to have momentum.

00:08:48.000 Christie seems to have momentum because he has some momentum with the never-trumpling of the party.

00:08:53.000 Haley had to use this debate to gain momentum. 0.81

00:08:56.000 But this defines where the candidates are.

00:08:57.000 So going into the race, DeSantis basically just wants to hold steady.

00:09:00.000 That's his goal.

00:09:01.000 Hold steady.

00:09:02.000 As we look at that chart, by the way, I'm going to explain in just a second what everybody's goal is going into the debate by looking at that chart.

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00:10:12.000 Okay, so to go back to this chart, in order to understand what everybody's goals for debate number one are.

00:10:19.000 If you look at this chart, what you see, again, DeSantis is in second place, but he's kind of stagnant with all of these groups, right?

00:10:27.000 He's in second place in all of these groups.

00:10:30.000 In three groups, he's got a B, and among the Never Trumpers, he's got a D. His original plan was he was going to score like a B with the Trumpers, and then he was going to score an A with pretty much everybody else.

00:10:40.000 That was gonna be the idea.

00:10:42.000 That has not happened.

00:10:43.000 Right now, because DeSantis was in a slide, his goal for this debate, and because he's in second place, was just to avoid the spotlight, actually.

00:10:50.000 His goal was to live another day.

00:10:52.000 He did not want last night to be a red wedding.

00:10:55.000 The time when he just completely collapsed on the stage.

00:10:58.000 As we'll see, I think that he largely accomplished that.

00:11:01.000 Vivek's goal is to continue to gain attention, to be a lightning rod.

00:11:06.000 That was his goal on the stage.

00:11:08.000 He's doing really well with the Trump adjacent.

00:11:10.000 He knows he's going to do nothing with the Never Trumpers.

00:11:11.000 And he knows he's not going to do anything with traditional GOP, which again is why he's not really running for president.

00:11:15.000 He's running for Donald Trump's vice president or for a cabinet position or for a Senate position.

00:11:21.000 He knows he's not taking it away from Trump.

00:11:22.000 And that wasn't his goal last night.

00:11:24.000 His goal last night was to basically degrade DeSantis with the Trump adjacent by gaining momentum with those people.

00:11:30.000 And he may have accomplished that goal last night.

00:11:32.000 For Mike Pence, Pence really knows that he doesn't have a shot at the presidency, but he feels that he has to run because he has to preserve his legacy as a person who stood up to the predations of Donald Trump between November and January, and as a sort of traditional old-line Republican politician.

00:11:50.000 How'd he do last night?

00:11:51.000 He basically achieved his goal.

00:11:53.000 Nikki Haley, her goal was, I need a lane and I need to actually show some momentum in a lane.

00:11:58.000 Nikki Haley, as we'll see, actually outperformed last night and she actually achieved her goal. 0.83

00:12:04.000 Tim Scott is a quixotic figure.

00:12:06.000 I'm not sure why he's in the race.

00:12:07.000 This is not his moment.

00:12:08.000 I'm not sure he has a moment.

00:12:10.000 He's incredibly soft-spoken.

00:12:11.000 He's not aggressive.

00:12:13.000 He seems like a very nice person, but he does not have any teeth.

00:12:17.000 And so there was no goal for him to achieve.

00:12:19.000 And so he succeeded in not achieving a goal, I suppose.

00:12:22.000 But I feel like Tim Scott is going to be one of the first people out of the race. 1.00

00:12:25.000 And for Chris Christie, the entire goal last night was to, like Vivek, lock down one lane.

00:12:30.000 Lock down that never Trump lane.

00:12:32.000 And I think Christie may have achieved that goal last night.

00:12:34.000 Meanwhile, Trump achieved his goal, which was stay away.

00:12:38.000 Goal achieved.

00:12:38.000 So last night, I think actually everybody kind of achieved their goal,

00:12:41.000 but the effects in terms of momentum are going to be the question.

00:12:46.000 So we're gonna get to that in just one second.

00:12:48.000 The effect, like what actually happened via the momentum in order to explore that question

00:12:52.000 as to who has momentum coming out of the debate.

00:12:54.000 We're gonna have to actually jump into the debate itself.

00:12:59.000 We're gonna get to the fun part.

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00:14:05.000 OK, so as we jump into the actual debate.

00:14:09.000 I'm gonna explain to you how I analyze this debate.

00:14:12.000 So the way that I analyze this particular debate is going to be my own subjective belief, because every debate is like Rashomon, the old Kurosawa film.

00:14:21.000 There's a thousand perspectives on what somebody says.

00:14:23.000 So, Vivek might say something and I might think, man, he is being wildly dishonest.

00:14:28.000 And then there might be people who's like, yeah, but he's punching somebody.

00:14:31.000 So again, every debate is a matter of perspective.

00:14:35.000 I'm going to critique debate participants Through a couple of different prisms that I think should still be important, even if they seem increasingly non-important in everyday political life.

00:14:44.000 Okay, so I'm going to grade them based on like, is what they're saying true?

00:14:49.000 Are they being like a decent person?

00:14:51.000 So one of my grades of decency, generally, is I don't like attacks that are false.

00:14:56.000 I don't like them.

00:14:56.000 I think if you're going to attack somebody, you should attack somebody based on what they have done.

00:15:02.000 I don't think you should just launch specious attacks on people as a general rule.

00:15:05.000 I understand that we live in a very aggressive time, and so a lot of people take aggression on stage, performative aggression, as, well, if he's doing it there, then he'll definitely do it to Joe Biden.

00:15:15.000 Does that make you like a good person?

00:15:16.000 I feel like you could actually, you know, launch well-timed and well-calibrated attacks on people and still take on Joe Biden.

00:15:22.000 Maybe I'm just shooting in the dark here, but that's how I grade people.

00:15:26.000 But again, I understand that my perspective is not the only perspective, which is why as we go on here, I'm going to explain how each lane is grading people in this actual debate.

00:15:37.000 I'm also going to grade people based on their actual policy performance, which means inherent advantage to people who actually have governed a state or done a thing as opposed to just said a thing.

00:15:46.000 Now, again, I'm not sure this matters in a Republican primary anymore.

00:15:49.000 It certainly has not mattered since President Trump.

00:15:52.000 I mean, when President Trump became the nominee, he literally had no governing record.

00:15:55.000 He'd not been in politics at all.

00:15:56.000 So again, I'm using metrics that may be outdated, but again, I get to do it.

00:15:59.000 It's my show.

00:16:00.000 So my metrics are generally, is what they're saying true?

00:16:04.000 Are they being like a decent person?

00:16:06.000 Is what they're saying a reflection of actual policy wins on the ground?

00:16:10.000 So for example, I'm going to grade people better if they do something anti-woke as opposed to just saying something anti-woke.

00:16:16.000 I'm also going to grade people based on the actual policy conservatism of what they are saying.

00:16:20.000 Like, do I think that they're actually right or not?

00:16:23.000 Okay, so that is how I typically grade these things.

00:16:26.000 Now, does that mean that my grades are going to somehow going to be reflective of like the momentum in the race?

00:16:32.000 I think absolutely not.

00:16:33.000 Again, if I were going to place myself on this chart of like Trumpers, traditional GOP, liberal wing, Trump adjacent, I'm somewhere between Trump-adjacent and traditional GOP, probably.

00:16:45.000 I'm certainly not in the never-Trump-Chris Christie liberal wing of the party.

00:16:48.000 And I'm certainly not in the, I will vote for Trump, I walk over broken glass to vote for Trump.

00:16:53.000 I'm like the people who think Trump did a pretty good job overall.

00:16:57.000 I thought that the first three years of his presidency, we got some big policy wins, but I was also very, very uncomfortable, as you all know, with a lot of his rhetoric, many of the things that he said, his habit of tweeting that I think was counterproductive to his own presidency, his activities between November and January of 2021.

00:17:13.000 All that, his behavior since, like, all that stuff makes me uncomfortable with many of the things Trump did, but also warm toward his performance in the first three years of his presidency.

00:17:22.000 Again, I said the first three years, the last year, I think, was rather disastrous on all fronts.

00:17:26.000 I think COVID was a disaster.

00:17:27.000 I think his handling of BLM was really bad.

00:17:29.000 I think that we blew out the budget.

00:17:30.000 Like, there were a lot of problems.

00:17:32.000 Even amongst those problems, there were wins.

00:17:33.000 Like, for example, the Abraham Accords.

00:17:36.000 Again, I want to make my own perspective clear, my own biases clear, so you know how to analyze what I'm saying as well.

00:17:40.000 I'm going to be upfront and honest with you on that sort of stuff.

00:17:42.000 A lot of people won't.

00:17:43.000 So, we're going to go through the debate in detail right now.

00:17:45.000 I do want to thank Fox News.

00:17:47.000 They backed off their position yesterday that they had expressed clearly to us that they were not going to allow shows like ours to actually cover the debate by playing more than three combined minutes of the debate.

00:17:56.000 I was rather livid about it yesterday.

00:17:58.000 Fox News did get in touch with us.

00:17:59.000 They did let us know that it was okay if we played as many clips as we wanted from the debate.

00:18:03.000 It's fair use, actually, but good for them.

00:18:06.000 So we want to give them credit for that.

00:18:08.000 Okay, let's jump into the debate.

00:18:09.000 Okay, so the debate opens and everybody sort of gives their little intro.

00:18:13.000 Ron DeSantis, who is the, going into this, the front runner of the second tier, right?

00:18:18.000 There's only one person in the top tier, right?

00:18:19.000 And that's Trump, who wasn't there.

00:18:21.000 So the person who's in the second tier leading this thing was DeSantis.

00:18:24.000 DeSantis' goal, as I say, was basically emerge alive.

00:18:29.000 So did DeSantis emerge alive?

00:18:31.000 Yeah, I mean, he did that really easily, actually.

00:18:33.000 So here was Ron DeSantis' intro.

00:18:36.000 Joe Biden back to his basement and reverse American decline.

00:18:43.000 And it starts with understanding we must reverse Bidenomics so that middle class families have a chance to succeed again.

00:18:50.000 We cannot succeed as a country if you are working hard and you can't afford groceries, a car, or a new home while Hunter Biden can make hundreds of thousands of dollars on lousy paintings.

00:19:02.000 That is wrong.

00:19:06.000 This is fine, right down the line, solid stuff from Ron DeSantis.

00:19:10.000 And that would describe his performance like last night.

00:19:12.000 I mean, fine, solid, right?

00:19:14.000 Those are adjectives that come to mind.

00:19:16.000 Then when you have Vivek, right?

00:19:18.000 Vivek has momentum because in that Trump adjacent lane, which is not a huge lane, but it's there, he's doing really well.

00:19:24.000 He's outperforming because he's going everywhere.

00:19:25.000 He's saying anything.

00:19:26.000 He's flipping his positions in order to say anything.

00:19:29.000 Here was Vivek's intro and very energetic.

00:19:32.000 As we'll see, he's going to get knocked by Chris Christie for cribbing from Obama.

00:19:36.000 There is something to the idea here that Vivek is a very studied person.

00:19:41.000 I mean, he's a very smart guy.

00:19:43.000 And Vivek basically has taken in political information over the course of the last 15 years, and he is now kind of rechurning it in Vivek form.

00:19:52.000 And so what you get sometimes is lines that come out of Vivek that obviously are from somebody else.

00:19:56.000 So here's Vivek in his intro.

00:19:59.000 So first, let me just address a question that is on everybody's mind at home tonight.

00:20:03.000 Who the heck is this skinny guy with a funny last name and what the heck is he doing in the middle of this debate stage?

00:20:08.000 I'll tell you, I'm not a politician, Brett. 0.89

00:20:10.000 You're right about that.

00:20:11.000 I'm an entrepreneur.

00:20:12.000 My parents came to this country with no money 40 years ago.

00:20:16.000 I have gone on to found multi-billion dollar companies.

00:20:20.000 I did it while marrying my wife, Apoorva, raising our two sons, following our faith in God.

00:20:26.000 That is the American dream.

00:20:28.000 And I am genuinely worried that that American dream will not exist for our two sons and their generation unless we do something about it.

00:20:35.000 And I do think Brett is going to take an outsider, because for a long time we have professional politicians in the Republican Party who have been running from something.

00:20:43.000 Now is our moment to start running to something.

00:20:48.000 Okay, so I look at this sort of stuff, and I think this is really platitudinous, but I also understand that it's very energetic.

00:20:53.000 Right, Vivek was extremely energetic on the stage last night, and he's made for the internet.

00:20:57.000 I mean, he knows how to speak internet.

00:20:59.000 On the internet, the sort of emotive, big hand motions, excitement, He was all energy last night, which made him a lightning rod, as we will see.

00:21:09.000 We'll get to more on this in just one second.

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00:22:13.000 Okay, so DeSantis introduced himself, Vivek introduced himself, and then Nikki Haley introduces herself.

00:22:20.000 And again, I think that Nikki outperformed last night.

00:22:22.000 She was kind of a surprise.

00:22:23.000 Here she was last night. 0.57

00:22:25.000 Well, I don't care about polls.

00:22:27.000 What I care about the fact is that no one is telling the American people the truth.

00:22:31.000 The truth is that Biden didn't do this to us.

00:22:34.000 Our Republicans did this to us, too.

00:22:37.000 When they passed that $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill, they left us with 90 million people on Medicaid, 42 million people on food stamps.

00:22:46.000 No one has told you how to fix it.

00:22:48.000 I'll tell you how to fix it.

00:22:49.000 They need to stop the spending.

00:22:51.000 They need to stop the borrowing.

00:22:53.000 Okay, points for truth here.

00:22:55.000 I understand that the new Republican Party says we should never talk about entitlement programs ever again.

00:22:59.000 Reality.

00:23:00.000 Those entitlement programs are gonna bankrupt us.

00:23:01.000 Those are real.

00:23:02.000 And so when Nikki Haley says that, it may be unpopular, it also happens to be right.

00:23:05.000 So in my book, saying things that are unpopular but true, tends to win you points from me. So Nikki Haley, I think,

00:23:12.000 did well last night. Meanwhile, Mike Pence had a hard task last night. He had to simultaneously brag

00:23:18.000 about his record as part of the Trump-Pence administration, and then, as we'll see, defend his behavior

00:23:22.000 on January 6th. Here was last night.

00:23:24.000 I'm incredibly proud of the record of the Trump-Pence administration.

00:23:28.000 I mean, in four short years, we rebuild our military.

00:23:33.000 We revived our economy.

00:23:35.000 We unleashed American energy.

00:23:37.000 And we appointed three conservatives to the Supreme Court that gave the American people a new beginning for the right to life.

00:23:44.000 Okay, so all of that, as you can see from the crowd, all of that is perfectly fine.

00:23:48.000 Okay, then the real debate broke out.

00:23:51.000 So the real debate was that a lot of people on stage were annoyed with Vivek.

00:23:55.000 The reason a lot of people on stage were annoyed with Vivek, there's a pretty good reason.

00:23:58.000 He's obviously not running for president.

00:23:59.000 I mean, he's not.

00:24:01.000 He's running to replace the guy he says is the best president we'll see of the 21st century.

00:24:06.000 He is running without criticizing that person.

00:24:09.000 He is running by attacking literally everyone else on the stage.

00:24:13.000 And he's saying things very, very confidently that he was saying the opposite of five minutes ago.

00:24:17.000 Now, does any of that really matter in terms of momentum in particular lanes?

00:24:22.000 No.

00:24:22.000 And maybe the way that you grade Vivek is that dude's really aggressive.

00:24:25.000 I get it.

00:24:26.000 I totally understand.

00:24:27.000 He's really energetic.

00:24:29.000 He's magnetic on the screen.

00:24:30.000 I mean, he passes what Roger, the Roger Ailes test.

00:24:33.000 Roger Ailes, when he would watch TV and determine whether somebody was good on TV, the way he would do it is he put on the mute button.

00:24:38.000 And if you watched last night, there's no question that if you turned on the mute button, Vivek was the center of attention.

00:24:43.000 There's just no question about it.

00:24:45.000 He also drew all the fire because all of the people on the stage who've actually spent their life doing politics are annoyed that a 38-year-old guy with no political record and a long history of comments that actually contravene his own comments today is showing up and calling them names.

00:25:00.000 They weren't real fond of that last night.

00:25:02.000 And Vivek played right into it, right?

00:25:03.000 I mean, Vivek really went for it.

00:25:05.000 This is the part where, again, I think there's going to be a gap between some of the stuff that I think about what Vivek said and maybe what the crowd thinks about what Vivek said.

00:25:11.000 So, clip 8.

00:25:13.000 This is the one where Ramaswamy really decides, Vivek really, again, I know Vivek, I like Vivek, I consider myself friends with Vivek.

00:25:20.000 I think these attacks are pretty dishonest.

00:25:22.000 So here is, um, here is Vivek basically just attacking everybody on stage with a hatchet.

00:25:30.000 I just want to respond to Mike for one second, because he invoked me back.

00:25:33.000 Listen, now that everybody's gotten their memorized, pre-prepared slogans out of the way, we can actually have a real discussion now.

00:25:38.000 The reality and the fact of the matter is... Was that one of yours?

00:25:42.000 Not really, Mike, actually.

00:25:43.000 We're just going to have some fun tonight.

00:25:45.000 And the reality is, you have a bunch of people, professional politicians, super PAC puppets, following slogans handed over to them by their 400-page super PACs last week.

00:25:55.000 The real choice we face in this primary is this.

00:25:57.000 Do you want a super PAC puppet, or do you want a patriot who speaks the truth?

00:26:02.000 Do you want incremental reform, which is what you're hearing about, or do you want revolution?

00:26:09.000 Okay, so again, this is the part where my skin starts to, you know, rise a little bit because I don't know what he's talking about.

00:26:15.000 I, honest to God, don't know what he's talking about.

00:26:17.000 When he says, Super PAC puppet, I assume that what he's talking about is the fact that Ron DeSantis' Super PAC accidentally released some sort of debate plan.

00:26:25.000 That's not how Super PACs work.

00:26:27.000 Super PACs don't control the candidate.

00:26:28.000 The question is why the candidate controls the Super PAC.

00:26:31.000 This is like, when he says, everyone else on this stage is a puppet, it's like, well, What?

00:26:39.000 That's so deeply... When I get to the decency point, this is it.

00:26:43.000 Just because people disagree with you and are on the same stage does not mean that they are corrupt or evil.

00:26:46.000 And I don't like that line of attack.

00:26:48.000 On a personal level, I don't like that line.

00:26:50.000 Now, is it an effective line of attack?

00:26:51.000 Sure, it can be an effective line of attack.

00:26:53.000 But it seems to me that if you call somebody corrupt, if you suggest that their super PAC owns them, if you suggest that they are pre-produced while you, you're doing this all spontaneously, which is not true, okay?

00:27:05.000 Let's just be real about this.

00:27:07.000 When Pence says to Vivek right there, is that a pre-planned line?

00:27:10.000 The answer is yes, of course it's a pre-planned line.

00:27:12.000 Like clearly it's a pre-planned line. 1.00

00:27:13.000 If you think that Vivek didn't prep for the debate, you're idiotic. 1.00

00:27:16.000 I mean, like everyone preps for debate. 1.00

00:27:18.000 Of course, because it's a debate in front of a national audience.

00:27:21.000 And he just woke up in the morning, rolled out of bed and is like, I'm going to just figure this thing out on the... Of course not.

00:27:26.000 OK, but in any case.

00:27:28.000 That sort of attack that Vivek launched then prompted everybody to fire on him in response.

00:27:33.000 And so the rest of the night was essentially just Vivek taking an incoming.

00:27:36.000 Now, that's Vivek's idea, right?

00:27:38.000 He wants that.

00:27:38.000 A lot of people coming out of the debate were like, well, he took a lot of incoming fire right there.

00:27:42.000 That must have hurt him.

00:27:43.000 With whom?

00:27:44.000 The question is, with whom?

00:27:46.000 So, he launches this, and then, just to make sure that everybody gets the message that he wants to fight, he does it again.

00:27:52.000 So, clip 10.

00:27:53.000 He then suggests that every single person on the stage is bought and paid for.

00:27:58.000 Let us be honest as Republicans.

00:28:00.000 I'm the only person on the stage who isn't bought and paid for so I can say this.

00:28:04.000 The climate change agenda is a hoax.

00:28:05.000 The climate change agenda is a hoax.

00:28:12.000 He got a little bit of booze from the audience there, but again, everybody on this stage is bought and paid for except for you.

00:28:19.000 It's just, it's so tiresome.

00:28:20.000 It really is.

00:28:21.000 Like, I really disliked it on a moral level.

00:28:23.000 I didn't like it when Trump did it in 2015, 2016.

00:28:24.000 I don't like when Ramaswamy's doing it in 2023.

00:28:27.000 It's just not my bag.

00:28:29.000 It's not my bag.

00:28:29.000 I know there's some people who love this sort of thing.

00:28:31.000 I don't like it.

00:28:32.000 I don't think it's moral to assume that everybody who disagrees with you is doing so because they have been bought and paid for.

00:28:38.000 I think it's ugly.

00:28:40.000 Does it achieve the purpose?

00:28:42.000 Sure.

00:28:42.000 By the way, there are politicians who are bought and paid for.

00:28:45.000 Joe Biden is a politician who, when he was the Senator of Delaware, was bought and paid for by MBNA.

00:28:49.000 Okay, I can name the people who bought and paid for him.

00:28:52.000 Here's my thing.

00:28:52.000 If you're gonna say somebody's bought and paid for, you then have to explain who bought them and paid for them.

00:28:56.000 I'm also confused by this particular line of attack on climate change.

00:28:58.000 Just for a second.

00:29:00.000 Who bought and paid for, like, Ron DeSantis on climate change?

00:29:05.000 Was it the Sierra Club?

00:29:06.000 What the hell is he talking about?

00:29:07.000 If you're gonna pick and, like, the rap on Republicans is that they're supposedly, this is what the left says, bought and paid for by, like, the Kochs to be pro-fracking.

00:29:14.000 And they're being bought and paid for by the oil industry.

00:29:17.000 Who buys and pays for Republicans on climate change? 0.65

00:29:21.000 It is also worth noting here that, like, five months ago, Vivek was asked about climate change, and he said, uh, actually, actually, climate change is man-made.

00:29:31.000 So the rest of the people, but again, this is him trolling.

00:29:34.000 And I understand internet culture because I do it like every day.

00:29:37.000 And this dude is an expert in internet culture.

00:29:39.000 This is the thing.

00:29:40.000 You can admire what he's doing on sort of a political level at the same time that you're looking at this and going like, I'm not sure it is moral to simply suggest without any evidence whatsoever that everyone who disagrees with you is some sort of corrupt tool of the shadowy establishment without defining corruption, tool, or establishment.

00:29:58.000 But as you see, he got what he wanted, which is to be the lightning rod.

00:30:02.000 So Chris Christie, who can't help himself, and if there is a pie to be thrown, Chris Christie will forego even eating it in order to throw it.

00:30:11.000 Christie then went after Vivek.

00:30:13.000 And I will say that Chris Christie does have a particular set of skills.

00:30:16.000 When it comes to wrecking people on stages, that dude eats pizzas and he wrecks people on stage, and he was out of pizza last night.

00:30:25.000 And so his hit on Ramaswami here, Actually is pretty well, well based.

00:30:32.000 I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like Chat GPT standing up here.

00:30:41.000 And the last person in one of these debates, Brett, who stood in the middle of the stage and said, what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here was Barack Obama.

00:30:52.000 And I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing stage tonight.

00:30:58.000 Give me a hug just like you did to Obama.

00:31:00.000 Same time, amateur.

00:31:02.000 OK, so then the big smacks, Christie back.

00:31:04.000 So this this debate I'm up for, right?

00:31:06.000 This kind of smacking I like.

00:31:08.000 So the smack I don't like is where he calls everybody on the stage. 0.70

00:31:11.000 A corrupt icon.

00:31:13.000 The thing I do like is Christie says something true about Ramaswamy.

00:31:16.000 Like this kind of dissing I'm OK with.

00:31:17.000 Here's where Christy says something true about Ramaswamy, which is basically, you sound as though you just took a bunch of slogans, you threw them into a chat GPT, and what came out was Vivek.

00:31:25.000 And then Vivek comes back, and by the way, you are ripping people off, which is true.

00:31:29.000 Okay, when Vivek says, what's a skinny guy with a weird last name doing up here, that is literally a quote from Barack Obama in 2004.

00:31:34.000 That is literally a line from Barack Obama.

00:31:36.000 So he's not wrong.

00:31:38.000 I will say that Christy does have a long institutional memory.

00:31:42.000 And he is a weaponized insult machine.

00:31:43.000 So, that was correct.

00:31:45.000 But I will say Ramaswamy's response is just as correct.

00:31:48.000 Right, which is, if you're going to invoke Barack Obama, it was you who was hugging him coming off the plane during Hurricane Sandy in 2012, and you were helping him out in the national election.

00:31:57.000 So this kind of made him up for it, actually.

00:31:58.000 These fisticuffs, fine.

00:32:00.000 Okay, meanwhile, Tim Scott was trying to calm everybody down.

00:32:04.000 Again, this is why Scott has no juice.

00:32:06.000 If you're the guy in the room who's like, guys, can't we all just be friends?

00:32:10.000 Well, over in the corner, people are just pummeling the crap out of each other.

00:32:13.000 That guy ain't going nowhere.

00:32:14.000 Here was Tim Scott.

00:32:16.000 Are you bought and paid for?

00:32:17.000 I'm sorry?

00:32:18.000 Are you bought and paid for?

00:32:19.000 Absolutely not.

00:32:19.000 I mean, here's what the American people deserve.

00:32:21.000 It's a debate about the issues that affect their lives.

00:32:25.000 Going back and forth and being childish is not helpful to the American people to decide on the next leader of our country.

00:32:32.000 Okay, so.

00:32:34.000 Meh.

00:32:35.000 Me.

00:32:37.000 And that was sort of the reaction to Scott last night.

00:32:39.000 It was like, he kind of disappeared into the wallpaper.

00:32:41.000 He just, he wasn't much of a factor in the debate at all.

00:32:44.000 Okay, in just one second, we'll get to some actual clarifying questions on policy.

00:32:48.000 I know there were a couple of them last night.

00:32:49.000 It wasn't all fisticuffs.

00:32:50.000 We'll get to that momentarily first.

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00:33:53.000 Also, Candace Owens just wrapped the 10-part series, Convicting a Murderer.

00:33:56.000 You're not going to want to miss it.

00:33:57.000 It's one of our most ambitious projects yet.

00:33:59.000 It looks absolutely fascinating.

00:34:00.000 You might think you're familiar with the Stephen Avery case and everything that happened in Manitowoc County.

00:34:04.000 That's especially true if you watch Making a Murderer on Netflix.

00:34:06.000 But it turns out that that Docu-series was, uh, not really super true.

00:34:11.000 Coming soon, Candace is going to blow it up. 1.00

00:34:13.000 I'm excited to present the Convicting a Murderer trailer.

00:34:15.000 Check it out.

00:34:16.000 This is a collect call from... Uh, Steve.

00:34:19.000 An inmate at the Calumet County Jail.

00:34:21.000 The man served 18 years in prison until DNA evidence cleared his name.

00:34:25.000 The Two Rivers man was convicted of sexual assault in 1985, but exonerated with DNA evidence in 2003.

00:34:32.000 So this is the infamous Avery lot.

00:34:36.000 Now, two years later, he again finds himself tied to a police investigation.

00:34:41.000 Accused of murdering Teresa Hallbuck on the Avery property.

00:34:44.000 Stephen Avery's 16-year-old nephew admitted his involvement in the rape and murder of Teresa Hallbuck.

00:34:50.000 The car is discovered just around the bend.

00:34:54.000 It was just this worldwide phenomenon.

00:34:57.000 I think they framed this guy.

00:34:58.000 I think he intended to crush the vehicle, but ran out of time.

00:35:01.000 Avery thinks the 36 million dollar lawsuit he filed is why he's being targeted in this investigation.

00:35:06.000 Netflix made millions of dollars from making a murderer.

00:35:17.000 But the filmmakers left out very important details.

00:35:20.000 Mountains of evidence that you have not yet seen.

00:35:23.000 The blood vial.

00:35:24.000 The most egregious manipulation from the movie.

00:35:26.000 Interrogations.

00:35:27.000 That's when he started beating me because I told him that he's sick.

00:35:31.000 Cell phones.

00:35:32.000 And I saw melted plastic parts of a cell phone.

00:35:34.000 Interviews.

00:35:35.000 Her arms were pinned behind her head.

00:35:36.000 They made Steven Avery look like a victim.

00:35:38.000 You believe your brother's guilty?

00:35:40.000 I don't know if I'm a suspect.

00:35:42.000 I got nothing to hide.

00:35:43.000 I'm getting sick and tired of media deception.

00:35:50.000 deception.

00:35:52.000 Evidence piling up.

00:35:53.000 Why would they omit so many different things?

00:35:55.000 Why are you editing my testimony?

00:35:59.000 I am not going to make the same mistake that the filmmakers did.

00:36:04.000 Rearranging the testimony.

00:36:06.000 They delete a portion of it at the end.

00:36:09.000 How could they claim to care about the truth?

00:36:10.000 They all know that Stephen Avery committed this crime.

00:36:14.000 ♪♪ 911, what is your emergency?

00:36:19.000 The evidence forces me to conclude that you are the most dangerous individual

00:36:24.000 ever to set foot in this courtroom.

00:36:26.000 ♪♪ To get the rest of the story, you have to watch Convicting a Murderer coming to you early September.

00:36:32.000 This 10-part series is exclusive to DailyWire+.

00:36:34.000 Join now at dailywire.com slash subscribe to get 25% off your new annual membership so you can watch Convicting a Murderer when it premieres.

00:36:40.000 Trust me, you're not going to want to miss it.

00:36:41.000 Okay, so the debate continued.

00:36:42.000 There were a couple of issues that came up.

00:36:44.000 So there were a couple of issues that Fox absolutely did not cover.

00:36:46.000 They did not cover, like, the giant gender issue.

00:36:49.000 They didn't cover that, like, at all.

00:36:50.000 They did not cover critical race theory in any real serious way.

00:36:54.000 They kind of touched on immigration, but they made it secondary to things like climate change, which was very odd.

00:36:59.000 But they did get to abortion. 1.00

00:37:01.000 There were some, honest to God, interesting debates about abortion.

00:37:05.000 Doug Burgum, and that's going to be the only mention you hear of Doug Burgum all day today.

00:37:09.000 Doug Burgum, who is the governor of North Dakota, I believe?

00:37:12.000 Yes, North Dakota, Doug Burgum, famous for his eyebrows and being a man named Doug Burgum.

00:37:18.000 He made the bizarre statement that when it comes to abortion law, the 10th Amendment prevails.

00:37:22.000 And a lot of people kind of knocked him around for that.

00:37:25.000 There's an interesting debate, however, between Nikki Haley and Mike Pence, particularly on abortion.

00:37:30.000 Here's Nikki Haley pointing out quite rationally, and I think with an eye toward the general election, that when it comes to national abortion law, you actually have to pass things before you sign them.

00:37:41.000 Let's be honest with the American people and say it will take 60 Senate votes.

00:37:45.000 It will take a majority of the House.

00:37:47.000 So in order to do that, let's find consensus.

00:37:51.000 Can't we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions?

00:37:54.000 Can't we all agree that we should encourage adoptions?

00:37:58.000 Can't we all agree that doctors and nurses who don't believe in abortions shouldn't have to perform them?

00:38:05.000 Again, this is a perfectly fine general election take.

00:38:09.000 Mike Pence took the strongest line with regard to abortion.

00:38:12.000 Here he was last night.

00:38:14.000 After I gave my life to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I opened up the book and I read, Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.

00:38:22.000 And see, I set before you life and death, blessings and curses, now choose life.

00:38:27.000 And I knew from that moment on, the cause of life had to be my cause.

00:38:31.000 And I've been a champion for life in the Congress, a champion for life as governor and as vice president.

00:38:36.000 And to be honest with you, Nikki, you're my friend, but consensus is the opposite of leadership.

00:38:42.000 And that's an interesting sort of debate.

00:38:45.000 Consensus is the opposite of leadership.

00:38:47.000 I don't think it's particularly true.

00:38:48.000 I mean, sometimes consensus is actually built through leadership.

00:38:52.000 However, with that said, it's an interesting and fascinating.

00:38:55.000 It completely went unnoticed, right?

00:38:57.000 The sideshow then continued.

00:39:00.000 What's interesting is then we got into the section of the debate where everybody sort of tried to lock down their positions.

00:39:05.000 So now the first hour of the debate is about establishing your position.

00:39:07.000 The position established by the various candidates in the first hour of the debate was, as we suggest, in their lanes and basically in orientation toward particular goals.

00:39:17.000 For DeSantis, it was maintain your presence, don't lose ground, stay where you are.

00:39:22.000 For Vivek, it was become a lightning rod and own that Trump-adjacent lane that we talked about.

00:39:26.000 For Nikki Haley, it was own the traditional GOP lane. 0.99

00:39:29.000 And that was the dynamic that sort of permeated the rest of the debate.

00:39:33.000 So, for example, Ron DeSantis on crime, his entire campaign, and this is why I give DeSantis additional credit, I don't give people for just saying things, because I live in Florida, I've watched him do it.

00:39:42.000 DeSantis' entire campaign is, you want a thing done, I did it in Florida, maybe I should do it nationally.

00:39:46.000 That's his entire campaign.

00:39:48.000 It may not be enough, because we live in a period where a lot of people don't seem to care what people actually do in terms of governing, when, I mean, people could say, they could just say things, and that would be amazing.

00:39:56.000 Here was Ron DeSantis talking about crime.

00:39:59.000 There's one guy in this entire country that's ever done anything about that.

00:40:04.000 Me.

00:40:05.000 When we had two of these district attorneys in Florida elected with Soros funding who said they wouldn't do their job, I removed them from their posts.

00:40:14.000 They are gone.

00:40:18.000 And as president, As president, we are going to go after all of these people because they are hurting the quality of life and they are victimizing innocent people in every corner of this country and it will stop when I get into office.

00:40:34.000 So again, his entire campaign last night was, I'm the best governor in America, I'll do it nationally.

00:40:38.000 That's fine.

00:40:39.000 Did it mean momentum?

00:40:40.000 As we'll discuss in a second, maybe not.

00:40:41.000 Okay, meanwhile.

00:40:43.000 We got into the most polarizing questions of the night.

00:40:45.000 These all surrounded Trump.

00:40:46.000 And you can very clearly see who's aiming for which lane.

00:40:49.000 And so there was a question that was asked as to who would support Trump even if he ended up being convicted in court.

00:40:54.000 And it was a pretty awkward moment because the only person, Vivek was like, The kid in school who had the answer before anyone else.

00:41:02.000 He's in the front row.

00:41:03.000 I mean, this is sort of Vivek's personality also, because he's a super smart guy.

00:41:06.000 But Vivek's entire personality is basically the kid in Model UN that you might not want to hang out with, but you know that he's a smart guy.

00:41:11.000 So here is Vivek, who like jumps out of his seat, basically runs around the room with his hand up, screaming.

00:41:17.000 Everybody else a little bit slower on the gun here.

00:41:19.000 Here is the question.

00:41:22.000 You all signed a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.

00:41:27.000 If former President Trump is convicted in a court of law, would you still support him as your party's choice?

00:41:34.000 Please raise your hand if you would.

00:41:36.000 And then Vivek just, I'm gonna leave my hand up here all day long.

00:41:50.000 If you go back to that clip, it's actually fascinating to see the order in which people

00:41:55.000 raise their hands.

00:41:56.000 There's something to this.

00:41:58.000 Right?

00:41:58.000 And frankly, I'm kind of shocked that some of the candidates hadn't thought about this question being asked beforehand, because we all know they're going to support Trump if he's the nominee, obviously.

00:42:06.000 Except for Asa Hutchinson, who no one cares about.

00:42:08.000 But if you look at the order the hands go up in, so Vivek, as I say, is like super fast off the gun.

00:42:14.000 Dude is like Wyatt Earp on the trigger here.

00:42:17.000 The next couple of hands that go up are Haley and Scott and Burgum.

00:42:20.000 DeSantis sort of reluctantly raises his hand, so does Pence.

00:42:24.000 And then, and then Christie is kind of shaking his head.

00:42:26.000 So why is Christie shaking his head?

00:42:28.000 Here was Christie locking down the Never Trump lane.

00:42:31.000 Someone's got to stop normalizing this conduct.

00:42:37.000 Okay?

00:42:38.000 Now, and now whether or not Whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of President of the United States.

00:42:54.000 And, you know, this is the great thing about this country.

00:43:05.000 Booing is allowed, but it doesn't change the truth.

00:43:12.000 Let's just speak the truth, okay?

00:43:13.000 that never Trump lane right again there are the four lanes there the Trumpers

00:43:15.000 traditional GOP Trump adjacent never Trumpers that is that is Christie

00:43:19.000 locking down you never Trump lane here's a vague trying to lock down the Trump

00:43:22.000 adjacent lane by being slavishly sycophantic to President Trump right

00:43:26.000 here let's just speak the truth okay President Trump I believe was the best

00:43:31.000 president of the 21st century It's a fact.

00:43:36.000 And Chris Christie, honest to God, your claim that Donald Trump is motivated by vengeance and grievance would be a lot more credible if your entire campaign were not based on vengeance and grievance against one man.

00:43:49.000 And if people at home want to see a bunch of people blindly bashing Donald Trump without an iota of vision for this country, they could just change the channel to MSNBC right now.

00:44:00.000 But I'm not running for president of MSNBC.

00:44:03.000 I am running for president of the United States.

00:44:07.000 Okay, so there's, again, he's locking down that Trump adjacent lane, but he's not running for president, because here's the thing.

00:44:13.000 If you believe that Donald Trump is, like, the greatest president in human history, first of all, I will say, again, Vivek, super smart guy, when he says greatest presidents of the 21st century, that's a real short list, guys.

00:44:23.000 There have only been three of them, okay?

00:44:25.000 And two of them, not so great.

00:44:26.000 It was George W. Bush, followed by Barack Obama, followed by Donald Trump, and then the next one is Biden.

00:44:34.000 So that's an amazing list that you have to top right there.

00:44:37.000 If you are that into Trump, you could not run.

00:44:39.000 I mean, Trump has said he wants the field clear.

00:44:41.000 I've noticed, by the way, that in reaction to this debate and everything else, Trump just praises Ramaswamy, which is Donald Trump.

00:44:47.000 If you see somebody as a threat, you think he praises them.

00:44:48.000 Donald Trump has never praised anyone he has ever perceived as a threat.

00:44:51.000 This is why there are a lot of people in Republican Party politics right now who are like, you're just a stalking horse for that.

00:44:56.000 Like, that's why you're in the race.

00:44:58.000 Does that mean that Vivek isn't going to lock down that Trump adjacent lane?

00:45:00.000 Nope.

00:45:00.000 He could easily lock down that Trump adjacent lane.

00:45:04.000 And, um, you know, he continued to do this.

00:45:06.000 He made a commitment on the stage that day one he would pardon Donald Trump.

00:45:10.000 Then we got to, I think, what was one of the most fascinating exchanges of the debate.

00:45:15.000 And that was the exchange over Ukraine, because this goes to sort of the future of the Republican Party more broadly and where these various lanes stand on foreign policy.

00:45:22.000 And this is a complete Rorschach test, because if you are in the sort of more isolationist wing of the Republican Party, The sort of Tucker Carlson wing on foreign policy.

00:45:31.000 You loved what Vivek had to say. 0.99

00:45:32.000 If you're in the more traditional wing of the Republican Party, you think Vivek got his ass handed to him. 0.60

00:45:35.000 So again, every element here is based on which lane are you a part of. 0.87

00:45:40.000 Okay, then we get to the foreign policy debate.

00:45:42.000 And here, once again, this is Vivek locking down the Trump adjacent vote.

00:45:46.000 People who love Trump on policy but, you know, have some problems maybe with Trump personality-wise.

00:45:51.000 The way he does this is by Being the only person on stage who basically says right away that he would withdraw all military aid to Ukraine.

00:46:01.000 And this turns into a pretty fiery debate.

00:46:04.000 This is why you watch the debates, so you can actually watch spirited conversations about issues.

00:46:07.000 So I actually enjoyed this part of the debate the best.

00:46:08.000 Here was Vivek.

00:46:10.000 And I think that this is disastrous that we are protecting against an invasion across somebody else's border when we should use those same military resources to prevent across the invasion of our own southern border here in the United States of America.

00:46:24.000 We are driving Russia further into China's hands. 0.98

00:46:28.000 The Russia-China alliance is the single greatest threat we face, and I find it offensive That we have professional politicians on the stage that will make a pilgrimage to Kiev to their Pope, Zelensky, without doing the same thing for people in Maui or the south side of Chicago. 0.77

00:46:43.000 And so, although I will say that I don't think that, you know, the sort of anti-Catholic slap there like Pope Zelensky is particularly helpful to Vivek, he's the only one on the stage who's drawing a contrast with regard to Ukraine.

00:46:57.000 And he was forcibly Smacked around by both Mike Pence and Nikki Haley.

00:47:03.000 So here is Mike Pence going after Vivek and Vivek actually striking back with, once again, a quote from Obama.

00:47:08.000 This is why I say that because Vivek is so studied and because he understands what successful politicians have done in the past, sometimes he just ends up cribbing off of them.

00:47:17.000 Vivek, if we do the giveaway that you want to give to Putin to give him his land, it's not going to be too long before he rolls across a NATO border and frankly our men and women of our armed forces are going to have to go and fight him.

00:47:30.000 I want to let the Ukrainians fight and drive Putin and the Russians back out into Russia. 1.00

00:47:37.000 I have a news flash.

00:47:37.000 The USSR does not exist anymore.

00:47:39.000 It fell back in 1990.

00:47:39.000 I have a news flash. The USSR does not exist anymore. It fell back in 1990.

00:47:44.000 The real threat. You're talking about the communists.

00:47:46.000 Right, so that's enough of that.

00:47:48.000 Right there, that's where he quotes Obama, right?

00:47:51.000 That's Obama against Mitt Romney, 2012.

00:47:54.000 The 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back, right?

00:47:57.000 I mean, that's all that is.

00:47:59.000 Then Vivek gets into it with Nikki Haley.

00:48:01.000 And this was Nikki's best moment of the debate, because she made a pretty cogent case as to why the United States ought to be involved in the war in Ukraine.

00:48:09.000 Again, this is a very split question inside the Republican Party, so this is kind of a fascinating part of the debate.

00:48:16.000 The reality is that today, today, Ukraine is not a priority for the United States of America.

00:48:24.000 And I think that the same people who took us into the Iraq War, the same people who took us into the Vietnam War, you cannot end it, you cannot start another no-win war. 0.77

00:48:32.000 And I do not want to get to the point where we're sending our military resources abroad when we could be better using them here at home to protect our own borders, protect the homeland.

00:48:41.000 That will be my top priority in foreign policy.

00:48:46.000 So I do want to get to some other people because everybody, we respect everybody's time here.

00:48:51.000 So, Governor Haley, you did not raise your hand, meaning that you would support more funding for the Ukraine war.

00:48:59.000 You have said of Governor DeSantis that you didn't appreciate it when he initially called it a territorial dispute.

00:49:07.000 Why?

00:49:08.000 First of all, the American president needs to have moral clarity.

00:49:12.000 They need to know the difference between right and wrong.

00:49:14.000 They need to know the difference between good and evil. 0.52

00:49:18.000 When you look at the situation with Russia and Ukraine, here you have a pro-American country that was invaded by a thug.

00:49:24.000 So when you want to talk about what has been given to Ukraine, less than three and a half percent of our defense budget has been given to Ukraine.

00:49:33.000 If you look at the percentages per GDP, 11 of the European countries have given more than the U.S.

00:49:40.000 But what's really important is go back to when China and Russia held hands, shook hands before the Olympics, and named themselves unlimited partners.

00:49:49.000 A win for Russia is a win for China. 0.99

00:49:53.000 We have to know that.

00:49:54.000 Ukraine is the first line of defense for us. 0.81

00:49:57.000 And the problem that Vivek doesn't understand is he wants to hand Ukraine to Russia.

00:50:02.000 He wants to let China eat Taiwan.

00:50:04.000 He wants to go and stop funding Israel.

00:50:07.000 You don't do that to friends.

00:50:09.000 What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends.

00:50:11.000 Ukraine is the front line of defense.

00:50:14.000 Putin has said if Russia, once Russia takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next.

00:50:20.000 That's a world war.

00:50:21.000 We're trying to prevent war. 0.69

00:50:22.000 Look at what Putin did today.

00:50:24.000 He killed Purgosin.

00:50:26.000 When I was at the UN, the Russian ambassador suddenly died. 1.00

00:50:30.000 This guy is a murderer. 0.91

00:50:31.000 and you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country. 1.00

00:50:36.000 Thank you.

00:50:54.000 Okay, let me address that.

00:50:55.000 I'm glad you brought that up.

00:50:56.000 I'm going to address each of those right now.

00:51:03.000 He would make America less safe.

00:51:05.000 Under your watch, you would make America less safe.

00:51:08.000 You have no foreign policy experience and it shows.

00:51:10.000 And you know what?

00:51:11.000 The foreign policy experience that you all have shows in the pointless wars we've gotten into.

00:51:19.000 Okay, so this was Haley's best moment of the debate by far.

00:51:21.000 It was a very weak moment for Vivek.

00:51:23.000 Okay, the reason is his comeback right there, right?

00:51:25.000 Which is, I wish you well on your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon.

00:51:28.000 Again, that appeals to that Trump-adjacent crowd who believes that all American foreign policy is run by the military-industrial complex, perhaps.

00:51:35.000 But that is a really baseless insult.

00:51:38.000 And again, I go back to, if you're going to hit somebody, hit somebody for what they're worth.

00:51:41.000 So when he hits Christie and he says you were hugging Obama, true.

00:51:44.000 If he's gonna hit somebody else on the stage for doing a thing they did, okay.

00:51:48.000 But insulting all of your opponents as tools of the military-industrial complex, that any evidence to that effect is really, really absurd.

00:51:56.000 And Nikki Haley, I think, handled herself really well right there.

00:52:00.000 All right, so the rest of the debate was effectively more of the same.

00:52:03.000 And so this brings us to sort of my personal grades, and then we'll see how people actually did.

00:52:08.000 So let's start with who got the most speaking time.

00:52:10.000 The problem is too many candidates on the stage.

00:52:13.000 Definitely should not have been this many candidates on the stage.

00:52:15.000 So, Burgum and Hutchinson took up 15 minutes of time.

00:52:18.000 They shouldn't have been on the stage.

00:52:20.000 Tim Scott was on stage for eight minutes, but really was absent.

00:52:26.000 So now you're talking about like 23, 24 minutes of time that really was distributed poorly.

00:52:31.000 The real people who should have been on the stage are the top five people in terms of time.

00:52:36.000 Pence, Ramaswamy, Christie, DeSantis, Haley, right?

00:52:38.000 Everybody else in the stage is basically an also-ran at this point.

00:52:43.000 Now, we're ignoring the elephant outside the room, which of course is Trump, which may mean that all these people are also rams, but in terms of who got the most time, Pence got the most time, which makes some sense in that he is the person who has done presidential debates before, like the most of any of these people.

00:52:57.000 Vivek, because he was a lightning rod, got the second most time, followed by Christie.

00:53:02.000 Christie also wanted to do some lightning rod stuff.

00:53:04.000 DeSantis got the fourth amount of time.

00:53:06.000 Haley actually only got 8 minutes and 41 seconds, but she made him count.

00:53:10.000 So, how does that stack up in terms of my personal grades?

00:53:13.000 So, I thought DeSantis was fine.

00:53:15.000 I thought he was solid.

00:53:17.000 I thought that he basically laid out his record.

00:53:19.000 He stayed out of scraps.

00:53:21.000 I think that his answer on Ukraine was a little bit befuddled, but I think other than that, DeSantis did okay, right?

00:53:27.000 It was fine.

00:53:28.000 I would grade him at like a B.

00:53:30.000 I'd give Nikki Haley an A. I think she accomplished her purposes.

00:53:33.000 I think she did so in a very short amount of time.

00:53:34.000 I think she really surpassed expectations for nearly everybody who watched the debate.

00:53:37.000 Even if you don't like Nikki, you have to see that she actually did better than you expected her to do.

00:53:41.000 I'd give Tim Scott a C. He was basically not present for any of this.

00:53:47.000 For Pence, I'd say you'd probably give him a B, but for different reasons than DeSantis.

00:53:52.000 A B because he's just in an unwinnable situation.

00:53:55.000 He stood up for himself, I thought, actually rather well on January 6th.

00:53:59.000 I thought that was worthwhile.

00:54:01.000 He's not going to gain any momentum from it, and we'll get to that in a moment.

00:54:04.000 And as for Christie, I would say that that was like a B Christie performance.

00:54:07.000 In a Christie performance, he's always going to get the punches in, but he doesn't have any of the charm that he once had in like 2011.

00:54:15.000 So now he's just a punching machine.

00:54:17.000 So B is about the best he can do.

00:54:19.000 As for Vivek, Vivek is very hard to grade.

00:54:21.000 Because Vivek is the total Rashomon candidate.

00:54:23.000 You look at Vivek on the stage, and for me, if I'm assessing how he did based on sort of, was he telling the truth?

00:54:30.000 I thought a lot of the time not.

00:54:31.000 Or based on, were his attacks on other candidates rooted in their actual record in what they did?

00:54:37.000 No.

00:54:37.000 Many times.

00:54:39.000 Or if you're basing it on his policy, I think he's wrong on some of his policy prescriptions.

00:54:43.000 I think some of the stuff he says about foreign policy in particular is just not True or within the realm of reality when he says I'll start withdrawing aid from Israel because I'm going to create peace in the Middle East between like Qatar and Oman and Israel like Qatar and Oman are pro-Iran like that that just betrays not a lot of knowledge about the Middle East.

00:55:02.000 And on his record, right?

00:55:03.000 But, but, if you are talking about like the internet culture, if you're talking about the meme culture, if you're talking about who had energy on the stage, if you're talking about the guy who was saying the things nobody else will say, which is one way that we have now learned to gauge politics, is will he say the thing no one else will?

00:55:15.000 Now, I'm of the view, and I've always said this, there's a difference between being politically incorrect and saying the thing that must be said that no one else will say, and just saying the thing no one else will say.

00:55:25.000 But that distinction has been completely obliterated over the course of the last 10 years, where if you just say a thing that is verboten, Then this means that you are brave. 0.97

00:55:34.000 By that metric, Vivek kicked ass. 0.88

00:55:36.000 By that metric, Vivek did great. 0.99

00:55:37.000 And this is what you see reflected.

00:55:39.000 Okay, so let's look at these debate results through that light.

00:55:42.000 Who has momentum coming out of this debate?

00:55:43.000 Because that's really all that matters, right?

00:55:45.000 Three days from now, nobody's going to remember this debate.

00:55:48.000 There's no lasting impact.

00:55:49.000 But did anybody get momentum here?

00:55:53.000 Did anybody get momentum?

00:55:55.000 So, I graded people based on whether they had, like, strong upward momentum in each lane, some upward momentum, same downward momentum, or, like, really downward momentum.

00:56:07.000 So, if you take a look at this chart, let's look at each of these candidates.

00:56:12.000 So, Ron DeSantis, again, his goal here was survive, right?

00:56:15.000 Which, as we, how this debate affects DeSantis is going to be really up to what DeSantis does next.

00:56:21.000 I don't think he lost ground, I don't think he gained ground with any group.

00:56:25.000 He was basically the same with every group going in as he was coming out.

00:56:29.000 Does he have any momentum inside any lane?

00:56:31.000 So one of the, there are two ways that you can gain momentum.

00:56:33.000 There are two ways that you can gain momentum in a presidential race.

00:56:35.000 One is you gain overall momentum, like national momentum, big national momentum,

00:56:39.000 because you're doing great in like multiple groups.

00:56:41.000 And then there is the, do you have momentum inside one lane?

00:56:48.000 This can actually mean a lot.

00:56:49.000 So you could actually not do great in a debate, but if you really lock up a lane, you have momentum in that lane.

00:56:54.000 That lane is now going to start generating some uptick in national numbers.

00:56:57.000 It may not be huge, but it'll be an uptick in national numbers you can build off of that.

00:57:00.000 So lane momentum is something you want coming out of the debate.

00:57:02.000 In at least one of the lanes, you want momentum.

00:57:06.000 DeSantis, does he have any lane momentum?

00:57:09.000 No.

00:57:09.000 Coming out of this debate.

00:57:10.000 Can he build it?

00:57:11.000 Sure.

00:57:11.000 So basically, it's status quo ante for DeSantis.

00:57:14.000 It's as though the debate never happened for DeSantis.

00:57:17.000 For Vivek, Vivek had some momentum among Trumpers.

00:57:21.000 The thing about Vivek is that no one really has momentum among Trumpers because Trump has Trumpers, right?

00:57:26.000 I mean, they're locked up.

00:57:28.000 Among the traditional GOP, I would say that Vivek was kind of the same as before.

00:57:33.000 The traditional GOP, not super fond of it.

00:57:35.000 Maybe he has some negative momentum from it, but certainly he's not picking up ground among sort of the traditional GOP three-legged stool crowd.

00:57:42.000 With the never-Trump wing of the party, he had serious negative momentum, but again, he was never going to win those people anyway.

00:57:48.000 He was aiming for one lane and one lane only, that is that 15% who are Trump-adjacent.

00:57:52.000 He has strong momentum among those people.

00:57:54.000 So that means that his upward boundary, Vivek's upward boundary in this Republican primary is probably about 15%.

00:58:00.000 He's chiseling that away from DeSantis, right?

00:58:03.000 So he achieved his goal, which was strong upward momentum inside that one lane, which credit to him, he achieved that goal and he made himself more of a national name, which was his goal in this race in the first place, because once again, he is not running for president against Donald Trump.

00:58:15.000 The way I know that is because Donald Trump knows he's not running for president against Donald Trump, which is why Donald Trump has not attacked him.

00:58:21.000 Everyone who goes after Trump, who is perceived as a threat to Trump is attacked.

00:58:24.000 There's only one candidate in this race who is a serious candidate, or proceeds as a serious candidate, who has not been attacked by Donald Trump, and that's Vivek.

00:58:33.000 Okay, Mike Pence, he comes away with negative momentum from the Trumpers because, again, Trump doesn't like him.

00:58:39.000 Among the traditional GOP, he came away with a little bit of upward momentum.

00:58:44.000 He came away with some Liberal wing momentum, like some Never Trump momentum a little bit.

00:58:49.000 But does he have like overall lane momentum?

00:58:52.000 Like strong lane momentum?

00:58:54.000 And the way I'm measuring lane momentum is basically, did you have a two in any category, right?

00:58:58.000 Did you have strong momentum in any one lane?

00:59:00.000 Not like minor momentum, like big momentum in any one lane.

00:59:03.000 So no for Pence.

00:59:04.000 He comes away basically the same as he was before.

00:59:07.000 A person who I know, Mike Pence, I think he's an honorable human being.

00:59:11.000 An honorable person who's not going anywhere in this race. 0.65

00:59:13.000 Nikki Haley.

00:59:14.000 She is basically where she was beforehand with Trumpers.

00:59:17.000 In the traditional GOP lane, she has strong momentum.

00:59:20.000 That debate was very good for Nikki Haley among the traditional GOP lane, and she could start locking up some donors. 1.00

00:59:24.000 She could be seen as an alternative to Tim Scott.

00:59:26.000 You could see a lot of people turning away from Scott and moving their money over to Nikki Haley, for example, or turning away from Mike Pence and moving over to Nikki Haley.

00:59:32.000 I would not be surprised if Nikki Haley's campaign starts to move from 2% nationally toward that 7% or 8% nationally.

00:59:40.000 If you look at Tim Scott again, I think he ended up basically where he was beforehand.

00:59:44.000 Everybody kind of likes the guy, but nobody knows why he's here.

00:59:46.000 And as for Chris Christie, he has some lane momentum with the Never Trump wing, which is strong in New Hampshire.

00:59:52.000 So did everybody sort of achieve their goal?

00:59:54.000 The answer is yes.

00:59:56.000 Is this going to make like an overall difference against Trump?

00:59:58.000 The answer is absolutely not.

01:00:00.000 Because when you look at the overall The overall sort of takeaway from the race, Trump still has all the momentum with the people who love Trump.

01:00:10.000 And the Trump adjacent wing, nobody is taking it away from him.

01:00:13.000 In the Trump adjacent wing, if you wished, in order to beat Trump, assume he has 30% locked up, absolutely locked up.

01:00:19.000 And assume there's another 40% that is playable.

01:00:24.000 And right now that's splitting 20% Trump, 20% everybody else.

01:00:27.000 And then there's another Trump wing that's like 20%.

01:00:30.000 So this means that if you're going to stack up how to beat Trump right now, you have to assume Trump has 35% of the vote locked up.

01:00:38.000 Then you have the traditional GOP wing, which is splitting like half with the rest of the party, which means that he's already at 47%.

01:00:46.000 And that's leaving aside the 20% who are Trump-adjacent.

01:00:49.000 So in order to beat Trump, you basically have to win all the never-Trump wing, you have to win all of the Trump-adjacent wing, And you have to split the Trump GOP vote.

01:00:58.000 Or you have to take all of the traditional Trump GOP vote, and you have to take like 5% of the Trump-adjacent wing.

01:01:04.000 Who can consolidate that?

01:01:05.000 You can see why Trump has this very, very solid lead.

01:01:07.000 Who exactly can consolidate that sort of math?

01:01:12.000 Right now, all of these lanes are split.

01:01:15.000 And Trump has a foot in at least three of them.

01:01:18.000 Is there any other candidate who has a foot in three of these lanes?

01:01:22.000 The answer is no.

01:01:24.000 There's not a single candidate who has a foot in three of these lanes, except for DeSantis, which is why DeSantis is still the person who has the best shot of beating Trump in a primary, but he's going to have to show some momentum coming out of this debate.

01:01:36.000 Because the math just doesn't work all that well for anybody who is not named Trump.

01:01:40.000 Meanwhile, Donald Trump assessed this debate in his own way.

01:01:43.000 As you would predict, he's a big fan of Ramaswamy, which demonstrates once again that he is not running against Ramaswamy, nor is Vivek running against him.

01:01:49.000 He at one point tweeted out, this answer gave Vivek a big win in the debate

01:01:53.000 because of a thing called truth.

01:01:54.000 Thank you, Vivek.

01:01:55.000 That would be with regard to Vivek explaining he was the best president of the 21st century.

01:02:00.000 Of course, again, Trump, I think had a pretty good time probably watching the debate.

01:02:07.000 Yeah, he was attacking Chris Christie.

01:02:09.000 He was attacking Nikki Haley a little bit.

01:02:12.000 He went after, for sure, DeSantis.

01:02:14.000 But overall, nothing really happened in the debate that I think shook Trump's lead.

01:02:19.000 Meanwhile, Trump's surrogates were complaining that they were blocked from the spin room, which they should be blocked from the spin room.

01:02:23.000 If your candidate doesn't show up for the debate, you don't get to go to the spin room and then jabber about the other candidates. 0.87

01:02:27.000 It's kind of ridiculous.

01:02:29.000 But here was Don Jr. 0.93

01:02:30.000 complaining about it last night.

01:02:32.000 Right now, trying to ban people from actually having discourse about politics.

01:02:36.000 How un-American.

01:02:37.000 Probably shouldn't surprise any of us, but that's what it is.

01:02:40.000 I've been told by others that I would be able to go in, so they said we were able to go in, then they said they were in now that we're here, and the candidate that... Who said you can't go in the spin room?

01:02:48.000 They're telling me right now, Fox won't let me into the spin room.

01:02:51.000 And that's what the American people should know, this is the kind of network they are.

01:02:53.000 They're telling him, he works for security here, but they're telling him that I'm not allowed to go in there.

01:02:58.000 Well, I mean, if your dad turned up to the debate, you could go.

01:03:01.000 I don't understand.

01:03:06.000 Okay, I'm sorry.

01:03:11.000 This is silliness.

01:03:17.000 This is silliness.

01:03:17.000 If your candidate doesn't show up to the debate, you don't get to put your person in this bedroom.

01:03:22.000 I mean, that seems like fairly fair on every level.

01:03:24.000 Especially because Trump was getting plenty of attention of his own.

01:03:26.000 He did an interview with Tucker Carlson on Twitter.

01:03:29.000 X. Apparently, it has some 200 million views.

01:03:32.000 Now, Worth explaining here that every time you scrolled past the video on Twitter and spent longer than two seconds on it, that counts as a view.

01:03:39.000 So is that equivalent to actually watching a national televised debate?

01:03:43.000 Those views are not in any way equivalent, but those are a big number nonetheless.

01:03:48.000 And Trump, you know, had it easy.

01:03:49.000 Tucker asked him zero hard questions.

01:03:51.000 Tucker did not press him on pretty much anything.

01:03:53.000 We'll get to that in the member block.

01:03:55.000 But if you're not a member, you have to become a member and use code Shapiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - August 24, 2023

WHO WON FIGHT NIGHT #1?

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