The Matt Walsh Show - 2024 VP Debate

00:00:00.000 Hey, this is Matt Walsh, host of The Matt Walsh Show, and you're about to listen to our most

00:00:03.380 recent episode of Backstage with me, Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles, Andrew Klavan, and Jeremy Boring.

00:00:07.640 We break down the vice presidential debate between J.D. Vance and Tim Walsh and answer

00:00:11.220 your questions. This is the last Backstage before election night, so you don't want to miss it.

00:00:15.900 Stay tuned.

00:00:30.000 Well, folks, that ends the vice presidential debate. So here is the immediate takeaway. J.D.

00:00:43.320 Vance delivers one of the great debate performances that we've seen in modern history. Truly a stellar

00:00:47.600 performance from J.D. Vance. And for all the people who believe that he was weird on the left, there

00:00:52.360 was nothing weird about J.D. Vance's performance tonight. He looked not only cool and collected,

00:00:56.900 he looked kind and empathetic. He delivered what I thought was a truly articulate defense of Donald

00:01:01.960 Trump's policy positions. I may not agree with all those policy positions, but he delivered a very

00:01:05.680 articulate defense of them. He presented an incredibly non-threatening face to the sort of

00:01:10.400 Trump-Vance ticket. The goal for Tim Walsh tonight was to make J.D. Vance look weird, was to make the

00:01:15.320 Trump-Vance ticket look dangerous and scary. That's what they were intending to do. And J.D. Vance thwarted

00:01:20.760 that by doing precisely the opposite. He played it cool. He played it low key. He was very friendly to

00:01:25.640 Tim Walsh. At some point, I thought to myself, man, I wish he weren't quite so friendly to Tim

00:01:29.180 Walsh. I wish at some point he would jab Tim Walsh a little bit harder. In fact, there were many times

00:01:33.620 when the two of them would talk about how they were sort of agreeing with one another. But it was a

00:01:36.320 very, very friendly debate from that perspective. That's very good for J.D. Vance, who, again, is trying

00:01:40.940 to demonstrate to the American people that the Trump-Vance ticket is not chaotic. It is not

00:01:45.680 volatile. It is not scary. It's some people that you can trust. Meanwhile, Tim Walsh looked really

00:01:51.300 awkward out there, particularly at the beginning of the debate. I think he picked up some steam

00:01:54.540 later on in the debate when they got to domestic policy issues, on which there seemed to be both

00:01:59.060 sides contending as to who could spend more. But at the very beginning, Tim Walsh was stumbling and

00:02:03.140 bumbling all over himself. He got a few cutaways that were pretty glorious of J.D. Vance giving the

00:02:08.680 Jim Halpert from the office to the camera. I'm like, is this guy really saying what he seems to be saying?

00:02:14.380 Tim Walsh made a couple of gaffes that were particularly egregious. The one that is going to become the viral

00:02:18.460 clip of the night is one where he was asked about the fact that, like everything else in his record,

00:02:22.240 he is fibbed about when he went to Tiananmen Square and where he was during Tiananmen Square.

00:02:27.660 He had said that he was in Hong Kong. That isn't true. He's fibbed about nearly everything. J.D.

00:02:31.600 Vance really didn't call him on a lot of that stuff. He's pretty kind in how he did call him

00:02:35.560 on it. But Walsh looked absolutely like a deer in the headlights to be even asked the question.

00:02:41.040 He started rambling about how he had grown up in a poorer community. And then finally,

00:02:45.660 he sort of stopped and said that he was a knucklehead. And then he stopped again and then suggested

00:02:50.340 that he misspeaks frequently. It was a really bad look for him. And there was a lot of that

00:02:54.740 tonight. He had these sort of awkward cadences, strange pauses. He looked bewildered. A lot of

00:03:00.020 the time, he's kind of writing a lot of notes, a lot. He must have written a book tonight on that

00:03:03.580 podium. He also looked extremely sort of bewildered as to why he was up there. Big eyes, a lot of split

00:03:10.760 screens that didn't look very good for Tim Walsh. At this point, Kamala Harris has to be thinking,

00:03:14.980 why didn't she pick Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania? We all know he was a Jew. She didn't pick

00:03:19.580 Josh Shapiro for that reason. Shapiro certainly would have outperformed Tim Walsh, who delivered

00:03:23.120 what I thought was, at best, a mediocre performance. Probably the only good aspect of the night for

00:03:27.200 Tim Walsh came in that last sort of section where they were talking about January 6th, and Walsh was

00:03:31.280 trying to call J.D. Vance on January 6th. I don't think that means a lot to people. It was also at the

00:03:35.180 very end of the debate. I don't think it scores a lot of points. For J.D. Vance, then, 10 out of 10

00:03:39.600 debate. For Tim Walsh, like a 3 out of 10 debate. For the moderators, 0 out of 10. Again, terrible moderation.

00:03:45.240 These moderators said going in they were not going to do some sort of big fact-checking

00:03:49.540 routine. There was a point during this debate where J.D. Vance suggested correctly that many

00:03:54.220 of the people who are in Springfield, Ohio, are not legal immigrants. And he was talking about how

00:03:59.060 they've been given temporary protective status, which means that they didn't go through a green

00:04:02.160 card process. And the fact-checkers tried to fact-check him and suggested these were all

00:04:06.060 legal immigrants to the United States who were on the way to a green card. And he started correcting

00:04:11.540 them. He said, no, that's not what... And they cut off the mics. So they'd said,

00:04:14.400 we're not going to fact-check you. We're going to let you fact-check each other.

00:04:16.800 Then they jumped into fact-check. Every question was to Tim Walsh some sort of question about Kamala

00:04:22.220 Harris and Tim Walsh and Donald Trump. And then they would go to J.D. Vance. Instead of asking him

00:04:28.280 to respond to what Tim Walsh had said, they would then ask him the single most inappropriate form of

00:04:33.720 the question in an attempt to sort of cudgel him into a corner. So the moderators did quite a terrible job

00:04:38.200 tonight. But J.D. Vance is a pro. He handled it extremely, extremely well. This does a few things for

00:04:42.940 Donald Trump. The thing that it does, number one, for Donald Trump is, again, it quiets fears that

00:04:46.700 this is a very volatile ticket. Number two, for J.D. Vance, it does a lot. J.D. is obviously looking

00:04:50.960 beyond just 2024. He's super young. He's my age. J.D. is 40 years old, which means he's going to be

00:04:56.380 at the center of American politics for years to come. This debate really enshrined that.

00:05:01.340 The one thing that Vance didn't really do tonight, and I was hoping for him to do,

00:05:05.380 was to really cast Kamala Harris and Tim Walsh as radical. I don't think there was enough of that.

00:05:10.840 I do think that Kamala Harris, he banged on her about not getting things done, which, again,

00:05:15.740 is a great approach. It's something that I've been recommending for a really long time.

00:05:18.660 She is the current vice president of the United States. She is the person responsible for everything

00:05:22.300 that is happening right now. And he really focused in on that. But I don't think that he really drew

00:05:26.200 enough contrast as to just how radical Tim Walsh is. I was sort of surprised that J.D. didn't bring up

00:05:31.600 the fact that Tim Walsh had said that socialism is just another name for friendliness. I'm sort of

00:05:35.980 surprised they didn't bring up in more robust fashion Tim Walsh's record on abortion. When he

00:05:41.500 did bring it up, he brought it up almost half apologetically. And that brings me to sort of

00:05:45.060 the final point that I have here, which is that when you listen to J.D. Vance's policies and where

00:05:49.360 the Republican Party now is under Donald Trump, there have been some pretty significant shifts.

00:05:53.920 J.D. Vance is a pro-life guy. His answers on abortion, however, were obvious dodges. I mean,

00:05:58.580 he was obviously attempting not to answer his own positions with regard to abortion. I get that.

00:06:03.440 I get it. He's running for the vice presidency. He has no intention. And Donald Trump has already

00:06:08.260 said he has no intention of signing into law any sort of federal law with regard to abortion. But

00:06:12.960 J.D. could have been much more aggressive in pushing back against Tim Walsh with regard to

00:06:17.120 abortion up until point of birth. He tried to do it, and then he sort of backed off a little bit.

00:06:20.520 His answer was about how much sympathy and empathy he had for people who had had abortions, which is

00:06:24.260 fine if you then go to the next step and you say, but that still does not justify the end of a baby's

00:06:30.560 life in the womb. That is something that I think is sort of non-negotiable for a lot of Republicans

00:06:35.420 and pro-life people, even if they plan on voting as I am for Trump and Vance. I also think that

00:06:41.220 there's a lot of talk about federal spending. J.D. obviously is a much bigger government guy.

00:06:44.900 I think it is fair to say after that particular debate that the era of semi-small government may

00:06:50.520 be over. It's been over for quite a while. I didn't hear a lot of talk about cutting the size and

00:06:54.820 scope of government in that debate. But again, that is really not on J.D. That's really on Donald Trump

00:06:59.340 and the platform that he's proposing. So all in all, a very good night for J.D. Vance. Does it

00:07:03.140 shift the nature of the race in any serious way? I don't think so. I think most people's opinions

00:07:07.120 are set, but it does shift a lot of opinions about J.D. Vance going forward. Great night for

00:07:11.080 J.D. Vance. Good night for the Trump-Vance ticket. Justifies Trump's pick of J.D. Vance in this race

00:07:16.200 and really makes Kamala Harris look like a dunderhead for having picked Tim Walls.

00:07:20.580 Well, there was one big revelation from the debate. Tim Walls is friends with school shooters. I thought

00:07:25.520 that was interesting. Maybe he made friends with them while he was handing out tampons in the

00:07:29.000 boys' bathroom. I don't know. I did want to steal one point from Michael Knowles before he has a

00:07:34.620 chance to reiterate it. Right. You're welcome. Just like I stole your idea for a board game,

00:07:39.520 by the way. Am I racist available? You can do a blank book next. You can come out with cigarettes.

00:07:45.300 I do think that all of the Americans who are not, you know, super clued into politics that have been

00:07:52.120 hearing for weeks now that J.D. Vance is this weird guy were probably mystified watching that and seeing

00:07:57.960 this really cool, calm, collected, eloquent dude totally unrattled up there. The last word you'd

00:08:06.440 use to describe him is weird. Yeah. So as you, now I, in fact, am pointing out. You said it very well,

00:08:12.180 what I said. Right. Yes. Well, it was, I, because I had, I also thought it, but then you said it. So

00:08:16.160 it's both of our points. So in a way, the media set J.D. Vance up for a victory here. And what they did

00:08:22.260 too, I mean, the moderators were so bad. So bad. And what J.D. Vance did so skillfully was one,

00:08:28.360 he treated them like the Haitians treated those cats and dogs. I mean, he absolutely devoured them

00:08:32.820 for dinner, but, but then importantly, he recovered. So instead of allowing them to rattle him,

00:08:38.540 he remained cool, calm, and collected. I totally agree with your point, Ben. There were moments where

00:08:42.820 I, as a rock ribbed Republican and conservative, well, wished that he had punched a little harder,

00:08:47.540 thrown a little red meat. But J.D. Vance knew the occasion. He knew that this debate was not a

00:08:52.700 didactic exercise. He was not there to instruct people on the bioethics of abortion or fertility

00:08:58.600 treatments. He was there to win five to 7% of voters in crucial states. He knew where his weak

00:09:03.900 points are. He knew where his strong points are. I thought he did masterfully in handling those

00:09:08.640 questions in a way that didn't compromise his principles, but, but was reaching out. I mean,

00:09:13.320 everything down to wearing a soft colored tie, you know, it was about appealing to voters,

00:09:18.780 countering the media narrative. I think he succeeded 100%. I think it's interesting to

00:09:22.360 point out the way the moderators were bad because they didn't do to Vance what they did to Trump,

00:09:27.200 which was cut him off and tell, say things that weren't true, basically. What they did was they

00:09:30.920 directed every question to an issue that was of interest to them when that wasn't necessarily the

00:09:36.140 issue, which is, to my point, journals should be completely removed from the debate process.

00:09:40.100 So for instance, when they asked about the storm, they brought it around to climate change. But in

00:09:45.000 fact, those storms have gone down since around 1900. They've dropped. The number of people who've

00:09:50.440 died in climate-related incidents has plummeted. So there's no reason to talk about climate change.

00:09:55.380 And I think that I would like to see Republicans stand up a little bit more to what is being used

00:09:59.640 as another, yet another reason to grow the government. I mean, if we don't start to say these

00:10:04.880 things aren't true, I don't know why people surrender to these lies. They do it because of the press.

00:10:09.420 There was a lot of stuff. Every time Walsh opens his mouth, he lies. I don't think that guy can

00:10:13.740 actually blink without lying. When he talked about Amber Thurman dying because Roe v. Wade was

00:10:19.140 repealed, she died because she took the abortion pill. And then the case was mishandled by the

00:10:23.360 doctors, but not because of the passenger. She didn't go to the hospital when she was supposed

00:10:27.900 to. He didn't go to the hospital when she was supposed to. They didn't do a DNC and all this. But I mean,

00:10:31.340 still, that's a major, major lie. When he said that the number of border crossings have dropped,

00:10:36.680 that's a major, major lie. They've doubled almost, I think. And I think that that kind of thing,

00:10:41.700 that the fact that Tim Walsh gets away with it will be interesting to see over the days ahead,

00:10:46.360 whether that continues to stick. I also, I agree with you guys about J.D. Vance handling himself

00:10:54.980 beautifully. I expected it from him. He's just an articulate, educated guy. He really, I wish I could

00:11:00.620 put sometimes his soul into Donald Trump's body so that Donald Trump had that, you know, that

00:11:04.740 personality and the charisma, but could bring out those kinds of specifics and the calm, cool,

00:11:11.240 collected attacks. I think that you're right that his point was to win over women and to win over

00:11:15.760 people who might think he was a little bit weird. I don't think this is going to make any change

00:11:19.340 whatsoever. I just don't think there was enough in it. I was bored stiff after about 30 minutes.

00:11:23.880 Well, that's actually what's interesting to me about the debate. And I'll say something nice

00:11:26.360 about Tim Walsh too, and though I know it's unpopular to do so. This was a professional

00:11:33.220 debate from competent candidates. Do I think that Tim Walsh did as good a job as J.D. Vance? No.

00:11:39.020 Do I think J.D. Vance was a 10 out of 10? No. I think it was a 9 out of 10 though. I think that he

00:11:43.440 handled himself incredibly well. But this entire debate took me back to a different time in American

00:11:48.980 politics. It took me back to 2012 when Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had their debates and they were

00:11:55.340 incredibly competent, thoughtful, articulate debates. Now, you had problems with the moderators

00:12:01.020 and very famously, Candy Crowley may have cost Mitt Romney the election in one of the debates. But

00:12:06.220 since the 2012 election, we've not seen a debate in this country where you actually heard

00:12:14.000 substantive policy positions being put forth by the candidates who, broadly speaking, had command of

00:12:19.040 the issues, who knew exactly what they were trying to accomplish and accomplished it. I mean,

00:12:23.020 one couldn't help but wish that these two guys were running for president.

00:12:27.480 Well, and to your point, Jeremy, I mean, this is actually, it gets to your point, Ben, about J.D.

00:12:31.600 J.D. is looking forward. He has to be because President Trump could only get one term.

00:12:35.360 Right.

00:12:35.540 He's not the only one looking forward, though. Kamala Harris is a weak candidate. She's never won

00:12:39.500 a single vote in a primary while running for president. And Tim Walsh, by current standards,

00:12:43.780 is a young man too. And he's probably looking ahead as well.

00:12:46.600 By the way, Kamala Harris, can you imagine her in a debate with J.D. Vance? Oh my God. He would just wipe the floor

00:12:51.200 with her. Yes. If Donald Trump hadn't so trounced Joe Biden that Joe Biden literally had to remove

00:12:57.680 himself from the election, we would have gotten J.D. Vance versus Kamala. Oh my God. And it just

00:13:02.260 would have been carnage. Bloodbath. Just absolute carnage. Now, I will say, for Walsh, I do think

00:13:08.060 that the question is what each side was trying to accomplish tonight. So I think one of the things

00:13:12.480 that Vance was trying to accomplish is what you guys are talking about and what I talked about also,

00:13:16.620 because, of course, I'm right. And that is he was trying to look softer to a broader audience.

00:13:20.340 He was trying to soften that image from the sort of hard charging guy who's on stage with people who

00:13:27.240 are sometimes considered fringy to move offline and into sort of the touch grass world. And I think

00:13:31.920 that he succeeded admirably in that. But there was another thing on the table that he really needed

00:13:37.500 to do that I don't think actually got done. And that was create a real perception that the Harris

00:13:42.540 Walls campaign is deeply radical. I don't think you came away from that debate thinking the Harris

00:13:47.040 Walls campaign is deeply radical. I think you came away from that debate thinking that there

00:13:50.880 was a shocking amount of agreement on a stage for between Vance and Walls. They kept saying to each

00:13:55.360 other, I agree with you. I would agree with that except for. And so that was left on the table.

00:13:59.940 In that sense, I think that Walls actually got away with one, meaning that I think that Walls had a

00:14:04.440 dual purpose. His dual purpose was to cast J.D. and Trump as totally out of bounds. You could never vote

00:14:09.620 for them. They're so crazy. And he failed in that. He failed in that. But I think that he did succeed

00:14:14.300 in making himself and Kamala Harris appear to be viable, somewhat center-left candidates as

00:14:19.800 opposed to the radical communist that he probably is. I mean, again, he is a person who literally said

00:14:24.960 just weeks ago that socialism is another form of neighborliness. That's crazy. Like, how does that

00:14:30.320 not come up on the debate stage? And so in that sense, I think that what would that have radically

00:14:33.900 changed the race? Probably not. And so I think that the first rule of a VP debate probably is do no

00:14:38.140 harm. So you can understand why J.D. didn't get too aggressive because he's figuring, okay, if I go

00:14:41.680 overboard, if I punch too hard, there's going to be some backlash. I understand the strategy.

00:14:45.640 However, it depends on how you think the race is going. If you think that Donald Trump is currently

00:14:49.900 winning the race, perfect debate for J.D. All you do is don't make waves, perform really, really well,

00:14:54.220 be really articulate. If you think that Donald Trump is actually down in the polls right now,

00:14:58.020 you got to take a swing because Trump doesn't have another debate coming.

00:15:00.460 I so rarely disagree with you, but I'm going to offer up an alternative viewpoint. And that is this,

00:15:07.320 that I have friends in Hollywood who are to the left of us on every single issue, who voted for

00:15:16.640 Hillary Clinton, who voted for Joe Biden, who are strongly considering voting for Donald Trump in

00:15:23.780 this election. Why? Well, because reality on the ground has asserted itself because the country is

00:15:29.200 markedly worse than it was in 2019. And because they see in Kamala Harris, a sort of vapid disingenuous

00:15:42.480 character who they are afraid will actually be in practice what she appears to be. And because there

00:15:50.500 is that group of people, because of RFK Jr. giving independence an excuse now,

00:15:59.200 or a permission, it's a better word, not an excuse, permission to say that they're pro-Trump.

00:16:03.960 Because Mark Zuckerberg has given people permission to say that Trump was badass when he stood up and

00:16:10.760 said, fight, fight, fight in Butler, Pennsylvania, after he took a bullet through the year. You're

00:16:15.680 seeing this shift where people feel empowered to consider Trump in a way that even in 2016,

00:16:22.020 they didn't, even in 2020, they didn't. But there is one group of people

00:16:25.540 that Donald Trump still has a major problem with, and that is suburban women. He does horribly with

00:16:33.500 them. They see him rightly as being very boorish. They see him rightly as being very crude.

00:16:40.900 I'm not convinced that this, like every other VP debate that we've witnessed in our lifetimes,

00:16:46.020 will mean nothing. I think that it very well could mean something. What it could mean is that J.D.

00:16:50.880 Vance just gave that last holdout group of people permission to vote for Donald Trump. And you don't

00:16:57.360 have to move them seven points. You don't have to move them 20 points. It's a very narrow race.

00:17:02.280 If you make a one, two percent change in that last holdout group of people who are so fundamentally,

00:17:08.860 not fundamentally, but sort of constitutionally opposed to Donald Trump, if you tell them,

00:17:15.020 no, no, no, no, we're reasonable, we're sensible, you can vote for us, you could have an enormous

00:17:19.600 impact in the election. I think that's what J.D. Vance was trying to do. And I think that he

00:17:23.740 probably rightly has concluded people already know they're radical and are already very worried

00:17:30.940 about ascending them, which is why even people in Hollywood are saying out loud that they might

00:17:34.400 vote for Donald Trump. You're right. But there's one work that needs to be done. Maybe he did it.

00:17:38.420 To your point, Jeremy, with Trump, the man is a wrecking ball. And it is probably one of the

00:17:43.160 greatest things about the guy. He's got other great features too, but he's just this wrecking ball

00:17:47.460 that comes in. And J.D. Vance is not a wrecking ball. That's part of why he balances out the

00:17:51.760 ticket. He is a scalpel. And he was surgically trying to carve out that little group that you're

00:17:57.500 talking about. And I think he did it in as much as it has any effect at all in the race. I think

00:18:02.280 he had to be seen. I would have like, I agree with all that. And that's obviously why on the abortion

00:18:07.720 answer, it was killing me that he was taking such an incessantly apologetic tone almost with that.

00:18:13.840 I understand strategically why he did it. And I understand why he wasn't being aggressive. I

00:18:19.340 think that that was actually smart. The man was literally wearing pink.

00:18:22.600 Right. And he did a couple of times. He even absolved Tim Walls. I think on immigration,

00:18:27.520 he said, well, I know that you agree, but I don't think Kamala Harris. No, he doesn't agree

00:18:31.060 on immigration. But what I would have liked to see maybe J.D. Vance do a little bit more is just

00:18:35.320 challenge the premise on some of these questions, which doesn't have to be an aggressive thing,

00:18:38.900 but whether it's climate change. He didn't challenge the premise of like,

00:18:42.460 why are we talking about climate change on this hurricane? It's got nothing to do with it.

00:18:45.460 Abortion didn't challenge the premise. Even the gun violence epidemic didn't challenge the premise.

00:18:51.300 Child care, you know, we're talking about the child care crisis. Well, the child care crisis

00:18:56.080 is a crisis mostly because we have a bunch of people that are having kids and aren't married.

00:19:01.900 And so get married and then have kids and stay married. And the child care crisis

00:19:05.700 mostly goes away. Maybe on that last one, I understand why you didn't want to make that point

00:19:09.300 in this environment. But on a couple of the other ones, I think, and he's obviously a really smart

00:19:13.780 guy. It's like a strategic choice he made to not challenge the premise on some of these things.

00:19:18.620 And I'm not sure if it pays off or not. Well, you know what I really care about? I really care

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00:21:29.220 is sort of amazing about everyone praising JD's performance, and again, I agree. I gave it a 10

00:21:34.200 out of 10, not a 9 out of 10. I think it was strategically brilliant. I think he did an amazing

00:21:37.400 job with it. The agenda that he is pressing in that debate sounds, with the exception of being

00:21:42.940 harsher on the border, like compassionate conservatism from 2000. It does. I mean, hate to break it to

00:21:48.100 you. But every element of that agenda sounds like compassionate conservatism from 2000. What if we

00:21:52.620 do more childcare? What if we restructure the healthcare environment so as to make healthcare

00:21:56.240 easier and more available? What if we do peace through strength? I was informed that Reaganism

00:22:00.580 was dead. I was informed that we were past the age of Ronald Reagan. And yet there I was,

00:22:04.200 sitting there and listening to the exact slogan from the Gipper himself, peace through strength.

00:22:09.820 Despite all of the radical changes that have supposedly broken upon the Republican scene,

00:22:14.040 it turns out that except for some trade policy, perhaps, and the border, again, both of those

00:22:19.340 important things. I agree with one actually on immigration. I kind of disagree on some of the

00:22:22.900 trade policy stuff. Except for that, sounds a lot like kind of the Republican agenda for my entire

00:22:28.680 lifetime. And in fact, the Republican agenda that was actually largely dissociated from in 2010 with

00:22:33.740 the Tea Party. And there's a lot of big government talk. I understand that a lot of this is being done

00:22:37.860 because a lot of it's electioneering. And I understand you want to win. One of the things that Trump did,

00:22:41.680 and it was a smart political move, although it broke my heart as a fiscal conservative,

00:22:45.340 is when he said there would be no restructuring of the entitlements. And basically, anybody who

00:22:49.120 says that, we should just know, okay, Republicans, anybody who says there's no restructuring of the

00:22:52.500 entitlements is lying to you. They're all lying. It's not true. There will be restructuring of the

00:22:55.900 entitlements, or we're going to go bankrupt. There will be either a massive increase in taxes,

00:22:59.580 a massive increase in inflation in order to pay off our national debt that we'll have to use in

00:23:03.100 order to pay off the entitlements, or a massive restructuring of the entitlements. There is no choice.

00:23:06.560 It's just a thing that's going to happen. With that said, they're all lying about it. But, but, you know,

00:23:11.220 again, we've heard so much about the, the make America great again movement and how different

00:23:15.680 it is in a wide variety of ways. But in terms of just actual on the ground policy, it kind of looks

00:23:22.020 a lot, like a lot, like John McCain circa 2008. This is huge, a hugely important point. And you're

00:23:28.460 absolutely right about it. It wasn't true necessarily when Trump started out, except for

00:23:32.520 the entitlements. The entitlements was always the one that stuck in my craw because you're absolutely

00:23:36.140 right. We're going to have to, you're going to have to reform them. But it is something that is

00:23:39.780 true. The great benefit of Donald Trump was he allowed people to use language again as clearly

00:23:46.640 so that we could say the things that we actually mean, that there is a problem in the black community

00:23:50.800 with violence. There is a problem in the Muslim community with violence. The problem of fatherless

00:23:56.780 children is enormous and has more to do with crime than anything else, certainly than racism or anything

00:24:02.100 like that. And one of the things about Trump when he started out was he just said that stuff and it

00:24:07.240 was beautiful. And I think that moment has passed that I think is part of the reason that he's now

00:24:12.320 acceptable, that you can walk down the street in San Francisco, in San Francisco with a Trump hat on

00:24:17.020 and not get, you know, clocked. And I think that this is that moment, the Trump moment has really

00:24:21.980 passed. The thing about it is, is that in Europe, these right wing parties, or as they call them,

00:24:27.980 the far right, which just means right wing conservative parties, they take years to build themselves back

00:24:33.220 up into acceptable parties. They win a seat here, they win 10 seats here, they win 20 seats, and then

00:24:38.920 suddenly you maybe get one of them who takes over. Here you don't do that. It's win or lose and people

00:24:43.880 get frightened. They get especially frightened by the press and they start to back off. It goes back

00:24:48.700 to what you were saying about challenging the premise. I think we don't do it enough. I think

00:24:52.520 when we start to do it, when we get back to the Trumpian version of doing that, we will start to win

00:24:56.920 in a bigger and easier way. It's going to take somebody with a little bit more finesse, I think,

00:25:03.600 than Donald Trump. But there's also an importance to being wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove.

00:25:09.580 In some ways, Ben, I think your point is truer even than you're willing to grant, which is that

00:25:14.080 you're right. There are a lot of resonances to some of the policies of the Bush era. Now, there's some

00:25:18.640 big changes. J.D. and Trump, for that matter, call for more foreign policy restraints, certainly,

00:25:23.280 than we saw during the Bush era. That was a much more Wilsonian policy. I will point out,

00:25:27.300 that was not George W. Bush's campaign in 2000. Correct, correct. He ran against nation building.

00:25:31.640 Isolationist. Of course. But then, even you can consider George H.W. Bush or certainly Ronald

00:25:37.320 Reagan. Ronald Reagan was called bellicose and a war hawk and a cowboy. But of course, he did,

00:25:41.580 in practice, have a relatively restrained foreign policy. And he spoke a lot about free trade,

00:25:45.900 but he also called for tariffs when he felt it was strategically important. And even going further

00:25:50.460 back than that, you know, one thing that's going to stick in the craw of some people tonight is that

00:25:54.800 J.D. Vance appeared to defend parts of Obamacare. Now, not all parts of Obamacare. He actually tried

00:25:59.620 to hit Waltz on the individual mandate, which was the beating heart of Obamacare. But I think he was

00:26:04.020 being clever about this. He was trying to be subtle about it. But it tells you something about politics

00:26:08.520 and conservatism, which is that when people get political wins, they really are wins. And you can't go

00:26:14.320 back in time. The Tea Party ran on fiscal conservatism. We didn't get any of it. It just didn't work.

00:26:18.940 Republicans have been running on fiscal conservatism, at least since Ronald Reagan.

00:26:23.300 And it's never worked. We keep getting deficits. We keep getting big spending.

00:26:26.400 Reagan got screwed over by Tip O'Neill, sure. And the Tea Party was traded out by the leadership.

00:26:30.760 And, you know, you can make a thousand excuses, but it's just that's how the political system works.

00:26:35.100 So when Reagan ran as a Republican, he said, look, I'm an old New Deal Democrat. I didn't leave my

00:26:40.700 party. My party left me. Now, that was a way of spinning his evolution. But he didn't really

00:26:46.220 challenge the New Deal. That was over. The old right used to challenge the New Deal. The new right

00:26:50.540 didn't. We don't really challenge Medicare. We don't really challenge Social Security. And now,

00:26:56.120 as Obamacare has become the system, we can't challenge it in as aggressive a way as we

00:27:01.280 previously did. And so, you know, it's a sad fact of politics.

00:27:04.620 This is what's going to be interesting. Because when MAGA came along, one of the things that was

00:27:07.880 shouted from the rooftops was, what has conservatism ever conserved? What did the

00:27:12.220 movement ever win? You won elections, but then he didn't do anything with that. Now, listen,

00:27:16.780 I'm a big fan of what Donald Trump did in his first term. I think that his foreign policy

00:27:20.000 was excellent. I'm a big fan of his judicial picks. I'm a big fan of his tax cuts. I'm a big

00:27:24.100 fan of his deregulatory policy. But if you're going to make the point that you're making,

00:27:28.140 I think that that does require a more mature view of politics than what is currently spouted and has

00:27:32.960 been spouted for many years in the commentariat, which is the idea that 100% of the loaf is always on

00:27:38.720 the table. And I think that creates a perverse incentive structure, even when it comes to many

00:27:43.340 of the candidates we run for higher office. One of the things that we saw from J.D. Vance is that

00:27:47.140 that is a person on the stage who's willing to take 80% of the loaf or 70 or maybe 60% of the loaf,

00:27:52.080 in some cases, 50% of the loaf, because what he sounded like was a moderate. What he sounded like

00:27:57.080 tonight was somebody who on policy and in persona was quite moderate. In fact, if you compared his

00:28:02.700 performance tonight in the VP debate, which again, I think was extremely articulate to Mike Pence's

00:28:06.700 VP debate performance in 2020, I'll venture to say that Mike Pence was more conservative on the

00:28:11.460 stage than J.D. Vance was tonight on issues like abortion, on issues like spending, on issues like

00:28:16.100 Obamacare. Okay, so what that means is that when we make arguments about the art of the possible and

00:28:21.180 politics being the art of the possible, I think that we should, that everyone in our business should

00:28:25.180 stop being a little disingenuous about this idea that the people you like are 100% gung-ho,

00:28:30.460 going to fix everything tomorrow. That's just the way that it works. I think there are too many people

00:28:33.840 on our industry who lie about this. And then they suggest that when Republicans somehow fail to meet

00:28:37.900 that standard, it's because they're sellouts and they're cucks and all the rest of it. Because by

00:28:41.160 that standard, there are a lot of sellouts and cucks among the people we love.

00:28:44.740 There's a really important lesson here from this that you're making, which is

00:28:48.120 Donald Trump spoke in a more moderate way than Mike Pence, than most Republicans in my lifetime.

00:28:55.260 J.D. Vance tonight spoke in a more moderate way. And yet think about the effect of Donald Trump's

00:28:59.340 presidency. While he downplayed abortion in the 2016 campaign, he downplayed marriage and all the

00:29:04.420 rest of it. Trump is the guy that got the originalists on the court that overruled Roe v.

00:29:08.600 Wade at half-century victory. So there is some wisdom. And the Democrats are really good at this.

00:29:12.800 The Democrats are really good at talking like moderates, moderations of virtue, but then

00:29:17.800 advancing their agenda. And in crucial ways, Trump did that. I trust that J.D. Vance would do that if

00:29:23.800 he found himself in the Oval Office. If he talks a way that is not immoral and not dishonest,

00:29:30.000 but is strategic and tactical and gets you over the finish line and allows a conservative agenda

00:29:35.780 to flourish, I'm all for it. I think this is true. I do think that, you know, it's a game of

00:29:42.060 checkers. The times when you get a triple jump are going to be very rare. You're usually moving one

00:29:46.100 space at a time. And that's always true. And you're absolutely right that it's bad to have a media

00:29:51.020 that is constantly encouraging people to sound extreme. You have to say only they use their

00:29:56.120 Nietzschean willpower. However, however, there are big victories and it would be nice if we would

00:30:03.420 think to conserve them. For instance, you know, the Krauthammer rule that a really, a truly successful

00:30:08.080 president is when the guy after him, even if he's from another party, has to continue his policy. So

00:30:13.440 Reagan was a truly successful president because Clinton basically had to continue his policy. The era of

00:30:19.720 big government is over. And one of the ways he did that was reforming welfare. And when they

00:30:24.800 reformed welfare, we heard this was going to be a disaster. It was one of the most successful

00:30:28.180 policies that came out of the Clinton administration. And Obama just gutted it. We just

00:30:32.520 let him gut it. Nobody celebrated it. Nobody said this is a great thing. He gutted welfare reform. We

00:30:37.200 were right back where we started. I think the thing is, I really do believe that the great society

00:30:42.920 has to be destroyed. And I think you have to do that step by step because so many people are eating off

00:30:47.900 it mostly in the government because it mostly is not doing anything for the people, but it's doing

00:30:52.000 a lot for the government. But you have to start to take that thing apart. Another big victory was

00:30:57.320 the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Yeah. And that's why I, you know, again, I understand all the strategic

00:31:02.020 stuff, but I think there's a strategic mistake being made on the abortion issue. I agree.

00:31:08.080 By Republicans. Totally agree at this. I understand that it's, it is, there are elements of our position

00:31:14.140 as pro-lifers that are unpopular. I get all that. We want to win the women over, suburban women. I

00:31:18.940 understand all that. But the leftist position on abortion is in fact barbaric. It is in fact

00:31:26.460 deranged. It's actually indefensible intellectually. There are so many landmines for the left on this

00:31:34.460 issue that they're able to just like jump over because we don't guide them into it. So, and I've been,

00:31:43.340 I've been waiting for someone to do this and I guess it's not going to happen this cycle, but

00:31:46.520 in one of these debates, sometime I would love for a Republican to just turn to the Democrat

00:31:51.560 and say, okay, what we're really talking about here, this is the fundamental issue here is

00:31:56.700 what is a person? When, when, when is a person, right? Well, maybe it will be. When is a person,

00:32:03.960 a person? So you turn to the Democrat and say, this is what we're talking about. So at what point

00:32:08.460 is the baby in the womb, a person? Can you answer that? And they won't be able to answer

00:32:13.960 it. They're going to say, Obama famously said above my pay grade. Okay. So you can't answer.

00:32:19.780 You don't know when the baby is a person. And yet you're, so you're just saying, well,

00:32:24.280 we don't know, but let's make abortion legal through all stages of pregnancy anyway, which

00:32:30.140 is, so even from your own position, by your own premise, that's analogous to like throwing

00:32:34.620 a hand grenade into a dark room, not knowing if there's a person in there or not. Well,

00:32:38.120 guess what? If you kill a person in there, you're morally responsible for that because

00:32:41.820 even according to you, there might have been. So I understand that the difficulties of maybe

00:32:47.340 articulating some of this in this kind of environment, but we just let them off the

00:32:51.000 hook completely on this stuff and it drives me nuts. And we let them, we let them do this

00:32:55.380 thing with the bad, the hard cases that make bad law. You know, my, my 10 year old was raped

00:32:59.620 by her uncle and all this stuff. You know, the answer to that is okay, fine. But is it

00:33:04.380 okay to abort a child because you want a Capricorn instead of a Scorpio? Is it okay because you

00:33:08.460 want a girl instead of a boy? Is it okay because you have, you did a genetic test and now they

00:33:12.180 can prove that someone's gay. Is it okay to abort them? I want to know the answers to those

00:33:15.920 questions. Those questions are never brought up on a debate stage. See, I agree with you.

00:33:20.000 I don't think we can win the votes that we need, but that doesn't mean we can't win the

00:33:24.920 argument. And J.D. Vance did it in, he talked about part of the partial birth abortion.

00:33:28.620 Right. And again, he kind of, and I thought I was totally off the hook. Right. Yeah. I mean,

00:33:32.520 I'm saying all this, J.D. Vance did a brilliant job. One of the most impressive debate performances

00:33:35.760 I've ever seen. So I don't mean to nitpick, but at the same time, he let walls off the hook. And he

00:33:40.560 said, well, I know we all agree that partial birth abortion is wrong. We don't all agree. Every

00:33:44.760 every mainstream Democrat, in fact, believes in partial birth abortion, which means just so everyone

00:33:49.640 knows that you're killing the baby as it is emerging from the birth canal. I agree. Look, as a,

00:33:54.820 as a pro-lifer, I think J.D. is ardently pro-life, but we're all watching that. We're thinking if

00:33:59.360 this were a pro-life speech, I'd be coming out of my skin. I do think J.D.'s view and the Republican

00:34:04.580 view, and I think it's a correct view, is that this issue in October and November is not going to win

00:34:11.200 any of those votes we have to win. And it's an important, it's to my mind, as important an issue

00:34:16.380 as any there is. But anytime abortion is being talked about, we're losing votes. If you're explaining,

00:34:21.360 you're losing, it's a hard issue. It eludes people who don't have a serious bioethical framework.

00:34:25.860 And so just like the Israel issue is tough for the Dems, for instance, this one is tough for us

00:34:29.900 right now. But we don't have to explain, we can ask. I mean, I love what you just said, Matt, that

00:34:33.920 it isn't, uh, it isn't that we have, man, I lost what you said. I liked it.

00:34:40.900 I'm sure it was, whatever it was, it was right. One thing we can all agree on, I would say,

00:34:44.620 look, we're disagreeing on, but one thing we can all agree on, it's the most annoying part of

00:34:49.680 election season. And I'm not talking about the incessant TV ads. And I'm not talking about

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00:35:01.520 because it's autumn. You know, owning a house is great and all, but one thing I don't enjoy about

00:35:08.320 homeownership is the endless barrage of decay that accompanies all temporal things in this fallen

00:35:13.960 world. And nowhere is that truer than in my gutters. When my gutters can't divert water

00:35:19.540 properly, they send water down my walls and create fissures in my foundation, which could crack and

00:35:26.300 collapse and leave me homeless. If I'm lucky, if I survived without anywhere to lay my sweet head.

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00:36:41.740 What you said that I loved was we may not be able to win the votes, but we can win the argument.

00:36:46.260 And in the end, the votes are going to follow the argument. We have to fight. As I've said about

00:36:51.120 abortion since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, we had no plan. The right had no plan because it assumed

00:36:55.620 that it was never going to win on overturning Roe v. Wade. It's going to take a generational effort

00:37:01.360 of winning the argument before those votes finally do change. And what I object to is giving up the

00:37:07.340 argument. I don't think that it is necessarily the case that in order to win in November, we have to

00:37:12.220 just pretend that we're not a pro-life party. But I don't think that's what J.D. did. I agree with your

00:37:16.780 point. But J.D. Vann said, look, I'm pro-life. You know, we've got to do a better job at

00:37:21.420 communicating. It's basically what he said. Here's my problem with that. And again, I think we all

00:37:26.540 agree. J.D. did a great job. And we keep using that kind of disclaimer at the beginning because

00:37:31.020 he did. He did a really good job. But there are some deeper issues that get uncovered in debates

00:37:35.580 like this, and this is one of them. The thing that he did that is a problem, I think, on this

00:37:41.440 particular issue, and again, I totally understand the tactic, is when he says we have to do a better

00:37:45.580 job of communicating, that immediately gets you into a democratic frame in which the problem is

00:37:51.260 that we need to convince individuals that they should not abort their babies. Okay, that is not

00:37:56.180 the question at hand. I, of course, agree that we should convince individuals that they should not

00:38:00.320 abort their babies. This is why we're big backers of, for example, Preborn, big sponsor of a lot of

00:38:04.300 the shows here who actually do that on like a case-by-case basis and show women ultrasounds

00:38:07.900 of their babies. You should check out Preborn. They're a really great charity. But when it comes to this

00:38:12.300 issue, the problem with saying that is that what you're actually doing is undercutting the very basis of

00:38:16.620 overruling Roe versus Wade. The basis of overruling Roe versus Wade is that in states,

00:38:20.600 there should, in fact, be legislation. And that is not just a matter of convincing individuals.

00:38:24.980 That is a human rights issue. And so what we could say, here would be a sample answer, would be,

00:38:30.220 listen, I'm going to be the vice president of the United States. The federal government's role

00:38:35.620 in abortion has been spoken on by the Supreme Court of the United States already, which is to say it's

00:38:40.120 extremely limited. This is an issue that has been kicked back to the states. And because there are

00:38:44.500 different state definitions, that's just the way that it is. I will argue in every case that children

00:38:50.200 deserve a right to life. And people are going to disagree in various states. And that's the way

00:38:54.300 that our system works. That's not going to be as evocative an answer for maybe some of the women

00:38:59.860 that he's attempting to appeal to. But it is going to not undercut the argument that pro-lifers are

00:39:04.860 now going to have to make for a generation in the aftermath of that. And the problem with making

00:39:08.480 it into a question of individual willpower is that a question of individual willpower is the

00:39:13.020 Roe versus Wade framework. Because the argument they're making is, well, sure, I mean,

00:39:17.400 you're saying individual will and we get to make it. That's our argument, right? Then all abortions

00:39:22.380 should be legal and we should get to make the call. It is from just a political perspective,

00:39:26.480 if you want to win the election, you do, yes, you need some suburban women. You also need pro-lifers,

00:39:32.820 and that is your base. And you need to mobilize them and you need to make them feel like you're

00:39:39.160 their champion. And that's the really difficult needle that they're trying to thread. I'm glad I

00:39:43.280 don't have to thread it. I know it's very easy for me that I can just rant because I'm not running for office.

00:39:47.400 Um, but I will say that there's, that I am worried that there's a potential political problem here

00:39:52.980 in that, um, a lot of pro-lifers are really demoralized right now. And I've, and I've been

00:39:58.980 to these pro-life events. I've gone to the fundraisers. We all, we all have, and you talk

00:40:03.040 to the pro-lifers, you know, off the record, off camera. Uh, and, uh, and that's what you get,

00:40:07.900 that they're just feeling really demoralized. Now I've, everyone here has said the same message.

00:40:13.160 If you're pro-life vote for Donald Trump, vote for him. If you don't vote for him,

00:40:16.520 you're voting for Kamala Harris. She's radically pro-abortion. It's an, it would be an insane

00:40:19.920 thing to not vote for Donald Trump. Go vote for him. Absolutely. It will save babies. Uh,

00:40:24.560 but even so when you have a demoralized base, that's, that's going to hurt you politically.

00:40:30.220 And, uh, and so that's why we can't just completely ignore that fact. You got to give

00:40:34.800 the pro-life base something to hang on to. It is kind of, it is kind of a positive thing that

00:40:40.800 Republican politicians aren't willing to go the Obama route of like, I believe that marriage is

00:40:45.480 between a man and a woman. Oh no, wait, I evolved. You know, they actually, they actually are having

00:40:49.200 a hard time lying. And so they're coming up with all this stuff and they're bobbling the ball.

00:40:53.440 But I do think that we can speak to the radicalism of the left. I think we can question them. I think

00:40:59.680 we can answer the moderators with, with questions. We don't have to take on this. Oh, you know,

00:41:04.500 a 10 year old rape by the truth is, and we all know this, America is one of the most radical

00:41:09.220 countries of abortion in the world. That's why when they said 15 weeks, like that was a shock.

00:41:13.340 That's most of Europe. That's most of Europe. Yeah. Far left. And in some cases, full on socialist

00:41:17.660 Europe. Yeah. The only countries that have our level of permissiveness around abortion are like

00:41:23.220 North Korea. Right. Right. China. It's a Canada, the most radical countries in the world.

00:41:30.580 Give, put them in a position of having to defend their radicalism. Even if you can't,

00:41:34.200 fully defend life in the ways that we have historically done so as a party. We're going

00:41:38.560 to take some questions from our Daily Wire plus members. If you're not a member, please head over

00:41:42.600 to dailywire.com right now slash subscribe. We have one of the biggest discounts that we're running all

00:41:47.660 year long, 47% off using promo code fight 47 for the 47th president of the United States,

00:41:53.420 which is what we hope Donald Trump will soon be. Not only do you get to ask questions of us right now,

00:41:58.120 if you're a subscriber, but you also get all of our amazing content. And right now,

00:42:03.080 for example, you could see the documentary that started it all. What is a woman doing

00:42:06.960 incredibly well on the platform as people are experiencing Matt for the first time with his

00:42:12.060 theatrical release of Am I Racist? You've got all that kind of content plus the daily shows

00:42:17.220 available at dailywire.com 40% off using promo code fight. First question from a DW member.

00:42:25.080 Why and how do you think that Trump and Harris are so close in the polls? And what does Trump need to do

00:42:30.380 to change? What does Trump need to change in order to lead in them?

00:42:35.260 So can I start with like a quick comment on the polls?

00:42:38.180 Yes.

00:42:38.440 So the polls themselves, I am not sure how much I trust them, which is a weird thing for me to say.

00:42:44.400 But when all the polls keep saying the same thing and they all keep saying that every single state

00:42:48.140 is margin of error, I start to think that pollsters are grouping, meaning that they are just being risk

00:42:52.100 averse. When you're looking at these polls, what they're doing is they're constructing what they call

00:42:55.440 likely voter screens. They're trying to figure out what the constituency of the voting population in each

00:42:59.900 state is going to be. And that means they get to play with the numbers. There's something when it

00:43:02.760 comes to scientific studies that are fake, it's called p-hacking. And what that means is that

00:43:06.740 you're actually screwing around with the interior stats to come up with these statistically significant

00:43:11.640 results you can get to publish. And when it comes to these polls, I feel like there's some p-hacking

00:43:15.020 going on. Because when I see every single poll in every single swing state this tight, I start to

00:43:20.000 think, I don't know, man, is that just a bunch of pollsters who are afraid to say what they actually think

00:43:24.420 is going to happen in this election? So first of all, I'd recommend that we look at registered voter polls

00:43:28.460 as opposed to likely voter polls. Because again, those likely voter polls, they're so weird,

00:43:32.780 right? I mean, you're seeing a poll that's showing Donald Trump only losing union members by like

00:43:36.780 seven to 10 points and only losing Hispanics by 14 points. And then he's tied with Kamala Harris.

00:43:41.920 You're like, what the hell? There's no way he loses Hispanics by 14 points and maybe comes close to

00:43:46.660 winning union members and then loses the election in the blues. Like, what are you even talking? But

00:43:50.940 that's what all the polls are saying. And so all I can say is I don't think anyone has a read on the

00:43:54.880 election. Anyone. I don't think pollsters have a read. I don't think I have a read. I don't think

00:43:57.840 anyone has a read. I kind of swivel from having a gut feeling that Trump is going to win when I think

00:44:03.220 about what a terrible candidate she is. And when I think about the fact that I think there is a hidden

00:44:06.820 mail vote that looks at Tim Walls and Doug Emhoff and goes, oh, God, no, not that. Anything.

00:44:14.140 But and then I swivel into, well, does Donald Trump have a get out the vote campaign? Like,

00:44:18.840 what does his get out the vote look like? Which to me is the single greatest factor in the election.

00:44:21.780 And I have no idea. I'm hearing conflicting information on the ground from some who say

00:44:24.860 sing a lot of Trump signs to people who are like, yeah, I haven't seen anybody door knocking here

00:44:28.000 for a year. So it's I got no idea. I think that there are three plausible scenarios and Trump loses

00:44:35.580 two of them. Plausible scenario. Number one, the polls are largely accurate. It's a very evenly

00:44:42.460 divided country. Trump has some good pickups among Hispanics. He has some good pickups among

00:44:49.300 working men. And he wins the election. Option two, the polls are largely right. It's a very

00:44:56.000 narrowly divided country. Suburban women vote in greater numbers than men. Even though Trump makes

00:45:02.360 some gains, he loses the election. Right. That's kind of the 50 50. There is kind of an outlier

00:45:08.400 possibility. And it really only works in one direction. And that is with the near ubiquity now

00:45:14.240 of mail in voting. Young people actually show up for the first time. Historically, young people

00:45:20.300 don't vote in our national elections. And we always bemoan the fact. But it's actually quite a good

00:45:24.460 thing. Yeah. Young people, as a general rule, should not vote in our elections. Elections are

00:45:29.780 supposed to be a little bit difficult to participate in because then there's a kind of self-selection that

00:45:34.340 happens. If you're the kind of young person, as I'm sure Ben Shapiro was, who the day he turned 18,

00:45:40.500 he found an election somewhere to vote in. And he knew everything there was to know about all the

00:45:44.280 issues that were on the ballot. And he knew everything there was to know about each candidate

00:45:47.220 on the ballot. He probably even knew the judges in California. Nobody knows the judges.

00:45:54.060 If you're that kind of young person, great, vote. You're the outlier. You're the exception to the

00:46:00.540 rule. And you'll take the initiative and you'll go register and you'll stand in line at your precinct

00:46:06.120 on election day and you'll go in and you'll register your vote. And that's great. I'm glad

00:46:10.540 that you vote. But what I don't is for college campuses to become part of the left's ballot

00:46:17.820 harvesting operation because of now the ubiquity of mail-in voting. So it is at least possible

00:46:24.340 that for the first time we will see massive, almost parody-level voting among the very young,

00:46:31.200 college-age population as we historically always have in older populations because we've completely

00:46:37.120 changed what it means to vote in this country. And if that is true, Kamala Harris will win 49 or 50

00:46:42.640 states. So I have to say that I agree with everything you just said except for one thing.

00:46:46.720 I think there's also another possibility, which is that Trump will win by a substantial margin,

00:46:51.520 a much greater margin than the polls show because of the internals on the polls,

00:46:55.780 which show that most people agree with him on most of the big issues and the groups that are

00:47:01.660 moving in his direction, like the unions and Hispanics, are actually substantial. And that

00:47:07.480 could be a big difference. So if that, that is the, to me, that's the fourth option. I also agree

00:47:11.900 with what you said that literally at this point, no one knows. But when you say that Trump could win

00:47:17.120 by a large margin, I don't think that Trump could win in a landslide. I think the only landslide

00:47:21.660 possibility is that voting has just fundamentally changed in the country.

00:47:25.680 Well, I don't know about a landslide, but I think a substantial, you know, I mean,

00:47:29.340 he could win the blue wall states and he could win all the states. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

00:47:32.840 I think the important thing here is that it is true that whichever one you pick, you've got a 50,

00:47:39.440 50 chance of winning. And so you're probably the one thing I will say is that there are polls right

00:47:44.020 now that are showing that 51% of people who vote in the selection are going to vote mail-in

00:47:47.220 are going to vote early. And those people are going to vote extraordinarily high levels for

00:47:51.300 Democrats. And, and, and every, so I've been around campaigning with a bunch of different

00:47:55.040 Senate candidates. I was campaigning with Eric Hovde in Wisconsin the other day. I was campaigning

00:47:59.200 with Sam Brown in Nevada. I'm going to go campaign with David McCormick in Pennsylvania and Bernie

00:48:02.500 Moreno in Ohio. Every time I go out and campaign, there's one guy in the crowd who raises his hand

00:48:07.020 and says, I'm afraid that if I vote by mail, then they're going to steal my ballot and dump it the

00:48:11.420 river. Like literally every single one of these campaign events, somebody will say that. But what I keep

00:48:15.220 saying to them is then vote by mail and then go vote your provisional ballot, right? Because the reality is

00:48:20.880 that one of the singly most damaging things that Donald Trump ever did was to himself in 2021,

00:48:26.600 when he suggested that because he had not won the 2020 election, that no one should vote in the 2021

00:48:33.140 Georgia election because they were stealing the votes and throwing them in the river. It turns out

00:48:36.400 that he set in the minds of Republican voters, this bizarre idea that if you vote by mail, there's

00:48:41.000 somebody at the balloting place who's taking your vote and chucking it out. Now, whether or not that's

00:48:45.500 true, and I really do not think that there's a high likelihood that that is happening on a mass scale,

00:48:49.460 whether or not you think that's true, it's the dumbest thing you could possibly tell Republican

00:48:52.580 voters because then a lot of people ain't going to vote. They're going to get on election day and

00:48:56.480 they're going to have a cold, they're going to have the gout, and they're going to be like, you know

00:48:58.640 what? I can't vote today. And does my vote really matter? It turns out Democrats do the only thing

00:49:03.160 that matters, which is they tell everybody to vote early and vote often. The question, it's really a

00:49:08.200 question of whether every political rule, all the political rules have been completely thrown out.

00:49:13.760 Are we living in a country now where like none of the political rules that have governed this

00:49:18.420 country since its inception apply anymore? Because if any of that stuff, if anything makes sense

00:49:24.980 in this country right now, then Donald Trump wins. Because you've got the last president that

00:49:31.980 dropped out of the race because he's senile. You put in this candidate nobody knows anything about,

00:49:36.640 and she's deeply unimpressive. Donald Trump has been almost assassinated twice. You have multiple

00:49:42.120 crises in this country and abroad. You have war overseas. You have inflation here. People are

00:49:48.740 literally underwater. Like their houses are underwater in multiple different ways. And so all of that

00:49:54.860 should mean that Donald Trump wins. And if he doesn't, then that means we live in a country where

00:50:00.240 like nothing matters. Where they're eating dogs and cats. Yeah. Where they're eating dogs and cats and

00:50:05.320 nothing matters. And it's just impossible to predict anything anymore. And I'm not sure. I think that's right.

00:50:10.060 He's actually almost been assassinated three times. Because of Iran, you mean? Because of Iran.

00:50:15.500 Ben, I think you have something that you want to tell the people. Do I? Well, I want to tell you

00:50:21.360 about something we could all use some help with aside from our early voting. And that, of course,

00:50:25.160 is fitness. The reality is no matter how much you work out and I work out like a freaking beast,

00:50:30.140 you're not going to be hitting your full potential if you don't diet right. See all these snacks we have

00:50:34.100 before us? Why do you think most of us, not me, but most of us are not jumping all over them in sort of

00:50:39.480 in some sort of National Geographic style feeding frenzy. Because most of us care about our diets

00:50:43.580 and because we use this. The lumen. The lumen is like a nutritional coach in your pocket. You breathe

00:50:48.840 into it. It analyzes your metabolism. It lets you know if you're burning more fats or more carbs. You

00:50:53.080 can do this in the morning, before, after your workouts, whatever works for you. Again, I exercise

00:50:57.260 pretty much every day. I'm ripped beyond all reason and measure. And I like to use it after working out

00:51:02.720 to see the impact of what I'm doing and how I need to eat for the rest of the day. Not only do you

00:51:06.480 get that data, lumen will make you a personalized nutrition plan for the day based on those

00:51:11.080 measurements. That meal plan will not include 90% of the stuff on the table in front of me.

00:51:15.840 Having information about your health available at your fingertips, it's an absolute game changer

00:51:19.060 for accountability and optimizing your fitness. I love this thing. It really is great. I use it

00:51:23.320 every day. It can even help improve your sleep and energy level. So if you want to take the next step

00:51:27.260 and improve your snacking and your overall health, go to lumen.me slash backstage. Get 15%

00:51:32.680 off your lumen.me slash backstage for 15% off your purchase. Ben, it actually does work out every

00:51:41.160 day and you actually do play video games and dogs and cats live together. The whole world has gone

00:51:46.260 mad. Michael, how do the VP candidate's performances compare to each one's running mate? I thought that

00:51:53.280 JD gave, as we've all said, gave one of the best debate performances for either the VPs or the nominees

00:52:01.140 of anyone in my lifetime. I mean, it was up there with Reagan and even Reagan had some stumbles in

00:52:06.900 his debates. So I thought he, he just did phenomenally. I thought Walls did better than

00:52:11.780 Kamala did. I thought Kamala, she and Trump were basically a draw in the last debate. She helped

00:52:18.220 herself a little bit. Trump was good. You know, he obviously Trump in the Biden debate was extraordinarily

00:52:23.520 good. So that he knocked Biden out and Biden was extraordinarily weak. So I really, you know,

00:52:28.740 not to be, I don't want to praise the guy incessantly, but I just thought, especially

00:52:34.040 compared to the degraded sense of debates that we've had going back to the 2000s, I just think

00:52:40.740 Vance did better than anyone just about. Well, what Vance did is he gave a consistently good

00:52:48.780 performance. It was reliable. What he did not do was ever have like a standout memorable moment.

00:52:56.580 Trump is full of the standout moments. I mean, you can go through a lot of them.

00:53:00.240 But this is actually a really good point, actually, because I do wonder what impact that has. Meaning

00:53:04.900 the way that we consume, we talked about this last time with the Trump versus Harris debate,

00:53:08.380 where we watched it. And I think the immediate takeaway was Trump did not perform well and Kamala

00:53:12.340 performed better than expected because we all sort of expected the possibility she was going to

00:53:15.320 completely word vomit for like the entire time. And she mostly word vomited, but she didn't kind of

00:53:19.460 vomit all over herself. So it wasn't particularly visible. And meanwhile, Trump was chasing every rabbit

00:53:23.560 hole that was possible to find in a 300 mile radius. And one of the things that I said at the

00:53:27.760 time, you know, again, being right always, is that when you look at how debates are then viewed in

00:53:32.760 retrospect, what you see are the clips, right? And so a lot of the clips went viral. The biggest clip

00:53:37.680 that went viral for Trump was, of course, the eating the cats and the eating the dogs. It didn't seem to

00:53:40.480 have any impact on the race because everybody kind of understood what he meant, which is the way that

00:53:43.880 things tend to process. I thought it was helpful, actually. It certainly didn't seem to hurt him too much.

00:53:47.940 But when it comes to this debate, I think there's really only going to be maybe one serious standout

00:53:54.180 moment. The Democrats are going to try to make the January 6th thing a standout moment for Walls.

00:53:57.420 But the really only standout moment was that moment where Walls looked for a second like a deer in

00:54:02.280 the headlights when he was asked about the China lie. When that happened, Walls looked as though a

00:54:08.440 trap door had opened out from underneath him and he was Wile E. Coyote in the moment before he was about

00:54:12.200 to plummet through to the alligators below. But that was kind of the only one.

00:54:16.120 I'm friends with school shooters. Could go viral on TikTok.

00:54:18.720 Yeah, but nothing J.D. said in particular was sort of like, this is the moment where J.D. just

00:54:24.000 knocked this guy through a wall. And that's different too because it's obviously, he's

00:54:27.480 obviously mis-spoken. It's funny, but no. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:31.260 Why do you think, these are questions from our DailyWire.com subscribers. If you're not one,

00:54:35.800 you could become one with promo code FIGHT and get 47% off. Why do you think the Dems oppose labeling

00:54:41.920 the cartels terrorist organizations? Because they're the government of Mexico.

00:54:45.520 It would have large implications. They're actually not terrorist organizations. They're

00:54:50.540 criminal organizations. It's a different category. I mean, they kind of are terrorist

00:54:54.680 organizations. It's just that terrorism is not directed directly at the United States

00:54:58.740 population. It's directed at the government of Mexico. I mean, they literally chop up

00:55:01.620 police officers. Yeah, but that's because it's a criminal state. I agree. There's a distinction.

00:55:05.900 I don't think that's a terrorist organization. I think of terrorism as targeting civilians to

00:55:09.980 achieve political ends, whereas these guys, in a way, they sort of target politicians to

00:55:14.140 achieve personal ends. For example, today, Iran launched at least 200 ballistic missiles at

00:55:20.660 Israel, and that is terror bombing. And the government of Iran is the largest state sponsor

00:55:26.480 of terrorism. But the Iranian regime is not a terrorist regime because it is a regime.

00:55:34.080 Its soldiers wear uniforms and drive around in tanks and therefore are a military. So while

00:55:39.380 they can engage in terror bombing, as they attempted to do today, in other words, we're

00:55:44.260 perhaps a bit loose with the term terror. The cartels are not, by the technical definition,

00:55:48.760 terrorist organizations. They are national security threats to us, and I believe they should be

00:55:54.480 handled by our military. I don't know why we don't go in with the military and bomb the

00:55:58.360 smithereens, but we don't have to call them a terrorist organization.

00:56:01.200 No, we can bomb all kinds of organizations.

00:56:02.980 Right. I can bomb anybody.

00:56:06.100 America!

00:56:08.060 Does the nice guy appearance between Vance and Walls seem to be genuine, or do you think

00:56:12.020 it was a play?

00:56:13.660 Well, I think Vance probably has a slight anger problem, and I think Walls is obviously killing

00:56:20.000 women and burying them.

00:56:21.700 Wearing their skin in a suit.

00:56:22.920 Do you think J.D. has a chance to be president after Trump's presidency, assuming that Trump

00:56:29.740 wins?

00:56:30.120 Yes, of course.

00:56:31.180 He has a chance to be president even assuming Trump doesn't win.

00:56:33.120 I mean, he's super young. He's very good at this.

00:56:35.600 His chances are much lower if Trump doesn't win.

00:56:37.560 Yeah, for sure. I mean, listen, you're the running mate to anybody, and there's always

00:56:41.060 this assumption that you are then going to be the next president. And actually, it's kind

00:56:44.500 of historically rare. I mean, it's been a while since this happened.

00:56:48.680 Who has been the running mate on a failed ticket who became president?

00:56:52.920 Wow, this is a really good quiz question.

00:56:56.160 That's a really tough one.

00:56:57.880 Let's see.

00:57:01.060 Running mate.

00:57:01.580 On a failed ticket.

00:57:02.580 And can we even remember the vice president?

00:57:04.180 Golly, I can't. I don't know that I could. I was just thinking of Nixon.

00:57:07.380 I was thinking of Nixon.

00:57:08.080 But no, he failed on his own run, and then he got it the next time. Or, you know, a couple

00:57:11.640 times later.

00:57:14.060 Yeah.

00:57:15.140 Wow.

00:57:15.460 That is an excellent question.

00:57:17.940 You'd think somebody would have written a book about something like this. Ben.

00:57:19.980 Oh, my God.

00:57:20.460 Why do the Democrats keep saying that Donald Trump is the candidate who benefits billionaires

00:57:27.300 when almost all billionaires are on Kamala Harris' side?

00:57:29.660 This would be the big question. I think the reason the Democrats keep saying that is because

00:57:32.800 they keep playing this class warfare shtick. They also say that Trump's tax cuts benefited

00:57:37.000 the rich more than anybody, which is a total lie. It was actually a regressive tax cut. It

00:57:40.480 actually helped people in the middle class and the lower class by percentage much more than

00:57:44.120 it helped people at the top of the tax spectrum. In fact, I was living in California. He got rid of the salt

00:57:47.780 deduction. My taxes went up, right? Because I was still paying that 13% state income tax in the

00:57:52.020 state of California. It wasn't deductible against my federal income tax. And my taxes as a non-billionaire,

00:57:56.980 but as a rich person in California, actually went up under Donald Trump's tax plan. I think this is,

00:58:01.200 by the way, one of the signal failures of the elite billionaire class, truly, is that the divide

00:58:07.440 between the billionaire class and the way they earn and then their values is truly shocking.

00:58:11.840 Because if you look at it, there's a famous book called What's the Matter with Kansas? That was

00:58:15.060 written by Thomas Frank back in the 2000s. And the sort of proposition was, why does everybody in

00:58:19.440 Kansas vote red when they're all on welfare? Because there's a heavy share of people who are on

00:58:22.980 welfare. And the answer, of course, was values. It turns out that they went to church. It turns out

00:58:26.360 that even if you're on welfare, you really didn't want to be on welfare. And it turns out people vote

00:58:29.840 their values. Well, one of the things that's happened, I think a lot of the disdain that common people

00:58:33.940 have for billionaires as opposed to wanting to be them and aspire to be them is the fact that

00:58:38.840 billionaires, by and large, now imbibe from this well of terrible social policies in which they

00:58:44.220 hate church and they hate religious people and they hang around at cocktail parties in Silicon

00:58:48.480 Valley. And they're like Sam Bankman Freed over in the Bahamas setting up sex pods. And you're like,

00:58:53.480 well, those are weirdos. Those are really, really strange people. And so that's actually created the

00:58:58.040 case for a class warfare on the right. The reverse class warfare that you're now seeing on the right,

00:59:01.540 the anti-billionaire sentiment you see on the right, is not because Republicans and conservatives hate

00:59:05.520 wealth or wealth creation. It's because they look at the billionaires in Silicon Valley

00:59:08.620 and this is exactly, by the way, what happened to J.D. Vance. Like on a personal level, this is

00:59:11.920 what happened to J.D. Vance, right? If J.D. wrote Hillbillyology, it was very popular with the

00:59:15.940 Silicon Valley class, so much so that he went to Peter Thiel and people in Silicon Valley

00:59:19.320 and started companies with them. And then he has said this. He said, I hung out a lot with people

00:59:24.280 in Silicon Valley and I found that they actually hated my values. And it's one of the things that

00:59:28.060 actually turned his politics toward this sort of more populist anti-capitalism sentiment in a lot

00:59:33.340 of ways. And I don't think that's rare. What does the Minnesota law on abortion actually say?

00:59:38.620 Is Vance right? Why can't the moderators say something on that?

00:59:41.560 He repealed the requirement that doctors... He, Walls. He, Governor Tim Walls, as governor,

00:59:47.840 intentionally repealed a requirement that made doctors provide medical care to babies who are

00:59:52.720 born alive surviving abortion. And so there have been multiple cases. I think it was something like

00:59:58.660 eight reported cases of babies being born alive surviving abortion. So they're there. You know,

01:00:03.840 like Governor Ralph Northam, Democrat in Virginia, saying the baby will be born and made comfortable

01:00:08.000 and then we'll have a conversation about what to do with him. That actually happened and these

01:00:11.660 babies died. And then there were no reporting requirements that, Walls removed those. And so

01:00:17.280 that, so it's, it's barbaric and it is a defensive infanticide. It is for all intents and purposes,

01:00:22.540 Walls saying, kill babies who survive abortion. Vance was totally right.

01:00:26.780 And that's the mainstream Democrat position. Correct.

01:00:29.600 Right.

01:00:29.720 To not provide aid to these babies. Because that's the position they have to take,

01:00:32.900 really, I, you know, politically they have to take that position because if they say we're going

01:00:36.700 to provide medical care and aid to the babies, then you're acknowledging number one, the life of

01:00:41.200 the baby. And number two, the violence of the abortion that the baby just survived. They can't

01:00:45.000 acknowledge that. So this is the mainstream position. Infanticide is a mainstream Democrat

01:00:48.780 position.

01:00:49.140 It comes down to also your description earlier of what partial birth abortion is, what late term

01:00:55.120 abortion is, that it, it is a delivery of the baby and then a killing of the baby during

01:01:01.520 delivery. Which is why sometimes, by the way, sometimes it misses and crap, the baby's here.

01:01:07.140 Now what do we do?

01:01:07.880 By the way, that's the question. I mean, the question that you asked is obviously the deeper

01:01:11.020 question about abortion. What is a person? But the question that I just, that's super simple

01:01:14.860 that I wish somebody would just ask somebody like Tim Walls on a stage is, would you veto

01:01:19.260 a bill guaranteeing the life of a baby born alive during an abortion? Would you, would you

01:01:25.480 veto that bill? And then if he says, I would veto that bill. So why then, you know, you did

01:01:31.040 in Minnesota, right? I mean, you actually did, that's the thing you did. Right. Like, like

01:01:34.720 ask him straight up the question. That, that, that's the thing I wish that the advance had

01:01:38.200 done today.

01:01:38.680 Yeah.

01:01:39.900 Here we go. And according to our crack research team.

01:01:43.240 Yes, this is exactly right.

01:01:44.320 In 1920, Warren G. Hardy won. FDR was the running mate of the loser, James Cox.

01:01:50.460 I was, I was going to, I was going to say that. I had it.

01:01:53.440 And then he went on to win the presidency four times, 400 times. How do you think the purchase

01:01:59.360 of over 200 radio stations by George Soros will affect the election? And why would FCC

01:02:03.920 expedite this?

01:02:04.760 It's a question that answers itself. It's actually, it actually is a propaganda, you know, instrument

01:02:10.400 that they're giving him because he's on their side. That's all it is. Will it affect the

01:02:15.180 election? It might, but probably not. It's probably too late.

01:02:18.460 This question is for Michael. Did J.D. Vance make Catholics proud? The question is decidedly

01:02:22.640 not for Matt.

01:02:23.580 Yes, that's, forget about Matt. Forget about that other Catholic. He did. He made Catholics

01:02:27.660 very proud because he did a fabulous job. And there was one moment that I thought was actually

01:02:31.140 really masterful and helpful, which is there are certain issues that are extraordinarily

01:02:35.920 controversial that are probably not appropriate to bring up in the weeks before a presidential

01:02:40.880 election. One of those is IVF, which the Democrats have tried to make great hay over. And it's

01:02:46.020 extremely, it's a relatively novel technology. It's one that the Catholics are opposed to IVF.

01:02:50.680 The Southern Baptists have recently come out against IVF. So it's not just the Catholics,

01:02:54.280 but this is a new thing. People are grappling with the meaning of bioethics and it's extremely

01:02:58.020 emotional issue. J.D. tonight said, we want more reproductive help and reproductive technologies

01:03:05.500 and therapies. And so he spoke in such a way that conveyed the true meaning of the Trump campaign,

01:03:11.980 which is we do want more reproductive help and family care and all the rest of it. But he didn't

01:03:17.240 lie. He didn't contradict his beliefs and principles. He didn't scandalize people

01:03:22.040 with a controversial issue. He didn't needlessly raise an extremely controversial issue.

01:03:26.100 I thought it was really well stated. It's part of why I say Trump is a wrecking ball and we love him

01:03:30.620 for it. And J.D. Vance is a scalpel and we love him for that. By the way, I will mention that that

01:03:35.160 was the first mention I think that I've heard of a presidential candidate actually invoking Christ on

01:03:39.140 a stage. Yeah, that's a good point. In decades, right? He did that in the middle of the debate.

01:03:42.300 He did it casually, which I thought was actually quite nice. That's a very good point.

01:03:45.020 Another question from a DailyWire.com subscriber. Can the Daily Wire please do something to focus

01:03:51.980 on nerd culture? There are millions of young men who don't know politics and love superheroes and

01:03:56.920 video games. And the fact that we aren't making it known that we care about what they care about

01:04:01.300 is crime. They'll end up falling in with leftists who do appeal to them on these grounds.

01:04:06.740 I actually have played video games on the air. I've actually had.

01:04:11.320 Yeah, we know about nerd culture. The 70-year-old who's read every book in the Western.

01:04:17.240 I think I do.

01:04:18.100 Who has been playing video games since they were invented.

01:04:20.340 I do a lot to appeal to nerd culture. I will say, I did once do a nerd culture. I talked about

01:04:28.900 video games on the show. I was defending gamers on the show. And then the gamers spent the next

01:04:35.220 three days yelling at me on Twitter telling me, how dare I speak on this issue? I have no right

01:04:40.120 to speak about it. That didn't happen.

01:04:42.280 That's a thing that happened. So, you know.

01:04:43.840 I will say this. It's going around right now. I think that our friend Liz Wheeler may have

01:04:49.320 started it on the right, although it's also going around on the left. This idea that it is a total

01:04:53.480 stone cold no. Like, complete turnoff. Absolute non-starter for a guy to play video games.

01:04:58.720 Women hate video games. They do.

01:05:00.760 And it is. I think that that's absurd. Obviously, video games like anything can be

01:05:04.720 abused and people can form unhealthy relationships as they can in the entire sort of interconnected

01:05:12.740 online world. And people can devote far too much of their lives to video games. But men

01:05:18.700 should be allowed to have things that they like that women don't like.

01:05:21.840 But do you agree, at least with Liz's point, that video games give women the ick?

01:05:28.120 Well, unless it's like Bejeweled or something, which women play lots of video games.

01:05:33.460 They just play video games that don't have, you know, story, depth, meaning, plot.

01:05:41.820 Actually, as someone who famously is not a video game fan, I do. I'm sympathetic to that. Because

01:05:47.320 the argument gamers will make, especially someone like me, is, well, you say video games are for

01:05:51.600 kids. You're sitting around watching football on Sunday. What's the difference? I think there is a

01:05:55.160 little bit of a difference. But I'm sympathetic to the argument. I actually think that it is pretty

01:05:58.400 similar. And so my take on video games is similar to football. I like watching football. People can,

01:06:04.720 men can have an unhealthy obsession with it, where it becomes your whole personality is football.

01:06:09.360 Disappear for the season.

01:06:10.220 Right. And that's unmanly. It's ridiculous. It's unmanly. Now your whole life is a game.

01:06:17.300 It's okay to sit down and watch a football game. I watch it as a family. It's a family thing.

01:06:21.140 And so it's the same thing with video games. If it becomes your whole life,

01:06:23.260 if it's the focal point of you and your identity, then that's a problem. Because

01:06:28.040 no form of entertainment or recreation should be the focal point of your existence, no matter

01:06:35.720 what it is. That doesn't mean that we don't engage in that stuff.

01:06:37.760 Yeah. I have to say, your Ravens looked amazing.

01:06:41.160 35 to 10.

01:06:42.080 But they look like super.

01:06:44.620 Oh, and the touchdowns?

01:06:46.640 Yeah. They scored them.

01:06:48.220 Joe Flacco, right?

01:06:49.440 Joe Flacco's.

01:06:50.320 Well, he plays for the Colts now.

01:06:51.400 Oh, yeah. Sorry.

01:06:52.120 Why are Kamala and Tim bringing to attention the fact that they are gun owners?

01:06:57.300 Won't that be controversial among their base? No.

01:06:59.500 Because they're lying.

01:07:00.820 Well, actually, this is a fascinating thing, actually.

01:07:03.660 If you want to know where the parties believe the American people are, watch where they converge.

01:07:07.660 It really is interesting. If you've watched the debate tonight, again,

01:07:09.980 one of the points I've been making is they kept saying they agreed with each other.

01:07:12.240 So where do they agree with each other? Where do they think the American people are?

01:07:14.800 So if you were to follow the arguments tonight, here's where you think they are.

01:07:18.120 Hawkish on the border.

01:07:19.640 Hawkish on foreign policy.

01:07:20.840 Right. Both of them converge on them.

01:07:22.340 We need steady, strong American leadership in the Middle East.

01:07:25.620 And both of them make that argument.

01:07:27.300 Kamala Harris's guy falsely.

01:07:29.220 Right. He's lying.

01:07:30.160 But on entitlements, both of them seem to be pretty pro entitlements.

01:07:34.200 On abortion, they both seem to be running away from from the pro-life position,

01:07:38.860 unfortunately, as we've been talking about tonight, at least publicly.

01:07:41.480 And on guns, both of them are running to the guns are really kind of great.

01:07:46.760 Like we all we all like guns, don't we?

01:07:49.020 And so, you know, apparently that's where both parties actually think the American people are.

01:07:53.580 And that is kind of a fascinating case study.

01:07:56.040 Did you notice there was a really interesting I think most people missed an answer when they tried to pin J.D.

01:08:01.260 on some particular shooting with a particular father's culpability over guns where this kid got the gun?

01:08:08.880 And J.D.'s answer highlighted a subtle difference between a conservative view and like a libertarian view or a liberal or leftist view where he said,

01:08:17.820 well, in that specific case, I would defer to local law enforcement.

01:08:22.300 I think they probably know their community better than some one size fits all policy, you know, say machine guns for everybody or something nationwide.

01:08:31.440 That was, I think, indicative of his more traditional kind of conservatism.

01:08:35.640 And I also think it played.

01:08:36.680 But how do you think the longshoremen strike will impact the election?

01:08:41.500 I think if they continue to soft soap the unions, it'll be really bad for the Democrats.

01:08:46.860 I mean, this is going to, you know, the big toilet paper shortages and food shortages and things like that.

01:08:51.320 If Biden goes around bumping into walls and saying, well, we have to have the people talking with the, you know.

01:08:56.400 I don't know. This feels like a setup to me, honestly.

01:08:58.420 It feels like a setup.

01:08:59.040 Yeah, it feels to me like Biden, Harris have already gone to the unions and they've gone to the employers and they basically are going to, you know, walk out.

01:09:06.680 Look, look at the strike that we just averted.

01:09:09.760 Look how, and we did it on behalf of our union workers because they know that they're really trailing with unions.

01:09:14.300 This whole thing feels, it smells like a setup.

01:09:16.240 If you're right, then it's because Joe Biden wants Kamala Harris to win.

01:09:22.680 And I'm not at all.

01:09:23.280 There's one, there's one really terrifying thing that could happen in the coming weeks and months with the longshoremen strike, which is that it will be much more difficult to get Mayflower cigars, which is why someone should probably stock up on them right now.

01:09:37.100 Everybody out there.

01:09:39.140 If it's a setup, it would be fitting because the union boss looks like the love child of Archie Bunker and Tony Soprano.

01:09:47.420 And he's, you know, he seems to be in the tank for the Democrats.

01:09:51.220 But I don't know.

01:09:52.680 You know, the head of the Teamsters comes out for Trump in this election.

01:09:56.160 Maybe something really is changing.

01:09:58.800 That's kind of been on my mind, but you may be right.

01:10:00.940 It's hard to know.

01:10:01.300 One thing that's on my mind, and I want to leave everyone with this thought, elections are incredibly consequential.

01:10:08.720 We talked about it tonight, the changes in both parties as a result of elections, the change in our national politics just because of the success of Obamacare.

01:10:19.240 Not as success as a policy, but it's success in becoming national policy.

01:10:24.840 So elections matter.

01:10:26.980 This election matters.

01:10:28.420 I have a lot of people that I know, like multiple people that I know, who are so afraid of Kamala Harris ascending the presidency that they've begun canning.

01:10:37.300 And this is one of the things that I love about conservatives is that they think that if the end of the world comes, they can perhaps avert the worst impact of the collapse of our society by having enough peach preserves in the pantry.

01:10:52.380 Right.

01:10:53.600 It's charming.

01:10:54.440 And it is, of course, always possible that we could lose all of this.

01:11:00.300 You know, we're not promised tomorrow.

01:11:01.880 We're certainly not promised that tomorrow will be good.

01:11:04.040 We're certainly not promised that our complex government structures will hold throughout society.

01:11:10.880 Throughout history, they change.

01:11:12.740 Often, often it's cataclysmic.

01:11:15.200 Often people suffer greatly and for long periods of time when great empires fall.

01:11:20.860 All of that is on offer.

01:11:22.440 We could lose the country.

01:11:24.900 I don't think that it's particularly likely.

01:11:27.660 I think that should Kamala Harris win and make no mistake, Kamala Harris could be the next president of the United States.

01:11:33.700 It is you can feel in your gut that maybe Trump is going to win.

01:11:36.960 You can think that maybe people aren't paying attention to the media.

01:11:39.460 I've got a sneaking suspicion that people aren't going to put up with this, but they might.

01:11:44.300 Kamala Harris might win.

01:11:45.140 It could be a worst case.

01:11:46.420 Like I said, young people could vote because of the ubiquity of mail-in voting.

01:11:49.800 She could win 50 states.

01:11:50.940 It could be a complete sea change in the country.

01:11:53.400 And if that happens, well, we'll just have to wake up the next day and get back to fighting.

01:11:59.240 And the fight will get harder.

01:12:01.060 There will be substantial policy that comes out of Kamala Harris' ascension that will set us back.

01:12:07.980 It will be terrible.

01:12:08.480 There could be what even seem like worst cases.

01:12:13.460 They could take the Senate, do away with the filibuster, add two states, try to create sort of permanent one-party rule in the country.

01:12:21.240 They could censor us greatly.

01:12:23.800 Truly bad things can happen.

01:12:26.400 And many bad things will happen if she is elected president.

01:12:29.920 But it will not be the end of history.

01:12:32.060 There is every possibility that the short-term pain of a Kamala Harris ascension could lead to a kind of national restoration, not through her presidency, but because of her presidency.

01:12:46.140 Her presidency could be like Jimmy Carter in the 70s that leads to Reagan in the 80s because it was so bad that it shook even all those new people who seem like they'll never change the way they vote.

01:12:56.160 So should you be cavalier about that?

01:12:59.200 No.

01:12:59.980 When people like Dick Cheney or David French or others say that they're willing to vote for Kamala Harris because of all of the unique evils of Donald Trump and because they want to save the Republican Party, many of their criticisms of Donald Trump aren't wrong.

01:13:19.080 What they're fundamentally wrong about is their assessment of the left, right?

01:13:23.220 They're sort of rightly observing that things are happening on the right that they're uncomfortable with.

01:13:28.180 And they're being, I think, pretty Pollyanna about.

01:13:32.740 But people will suffer if Kamala, like it is a certainty that Kamala ascending will lead to suffering.

01:13:37.460 There's a certainty that Kamala winning will lead to the destruction of many advantages that our values have in the culture.

01:13:44.360 And so even if we think that is it possible that Kamala winning could, in a longer view of history, redound to the good of the country, maybe so.

01:13:53.380 But that's not the.

01:13:54.540 That's for Providence to sort out.

01:13:55.720 That's for Providence to sort out.

01:13:56.880 What's before us is the election.

01:13:58.360 And in the election, we have to do the thing that's given to us to do.

01:14:00.680 What's given to us to do is to vote for Donald Trump.

01:14:02.760 Not because Donald Trump is great.

01:14:04.780 I happen to not think Donald Trump is great.

01:14:06.260 We have disagreement on this panel about how great he is or isn't.

01:14:10.360 He is better than Kamala Harris.

01:14:11.820 He is the people he will appoint to run the federal bureaucracy are far superior to the people who she will appoint to run the federal bureaucracy.

01:14:21.700 The judges that he will help move through the Senate are far, far superior to the judges that she will help move through the Senate.

01:14:28.360 We've lived through four years of Donald Trump.

01:14:30.460 And we know that despite his somewhat unique, I think he has some unique character flaws, he also has many unique advantages that we've seen redound to the benefit of the country.

01:14:39.740 That's what's been put before us.

01:14:41.020 So I'm not trying to say the election isn't important.

01:14:43.660 I'm not saying don't vote.

01:14:44.560 On the contrary, I think you have a moral obligation to vote.

01:14:46.800 And I think you have a moral obligation to vote for Donald Trump.

01:14:49.180 But we can't approach the election as though this is the last election of our lifetime.

01:14:53.440 That kind of language is both demoralizing instead of motivating.

01:15:00.480 People think it's motivating.

01:15:01.840 But I think it's actually demoralizing.

01:15:03.360 It keeps people from engaging in the political process.

01:15:05.780 Because if you think it's all over, then there's really no reason for you to go to the polls.

01:15:09.760 But it's not just that it's demoralizing.

01:15:13.280 It's also a kind of amelioration of your responsibilities.

01:15:16.700 Because if you do the thing you're supposed to do and go vote on November 5th for the Republicans, and we lose, your responsibility didn't end.

01:15:25.980 You just have a responsibility the next day to fight the harder fight.

01:15:29.400 And we're going to wake up and do that.

01:15:31.780 I hope we wake up on November 6th.

01:15:33.280 I mean, I think we're joking if we think we're going to wake up on November 6th and even know who the president is.

01:15:36.860 On December 15th, I hope we wake up.

01:15:39.560 Somewhere in mid-December, we'll have a president.

01:15:41.820 And I hope that it's Donald Trump.

01:15:43.600 And if it is, we're going to wake up.

01:15:45.780 And we're going to know that we have to hold Donald Trump accountable in some ways.

01:15:48.460 And we have to support Donald Trump in some ways.

01:15:50.000 And we have to continue to fight the fight.

01:15:51.320 You have to drink a lot of champagne, smoke a lot of cigars.

01:15:53.740 And if Donald Trump is not the president, the fight's going to be harder.

01:15:56.840 It may not be, you know, we may not live in the world that we want to live in.

01:16:00.300 We may not be faced with the kinds of challenges we had hoped to be faced with.

01:16:03.800 We may be faced by even harder challenges.

01:16:05.900 And if that's the place God puts us in the world, then we just wake up and we go and do that thing.

01:16:10.080 You can't live your life as though you have no agency.

01:16:14.520 You can't live your life as though the end of agency is, you know, 33 days from now.

01:16:21.740 You're still fully you.

01:16:23.300 And you still have responsibilities going into whatever is next.

01:16:26.760 And that's really been on my mind to communicate because I, I see, well, I see people canning peach preserves, but it's more than that.

01:16:33.840 I just see people thinking like somehow Kamala winning, winning is the end.

01:16:39.280 And it may very well be the end of some things, but it's not the end of everything.

01:16:43.080 It's not the end of, of the responsibility that God's given us.

01:16:46.540 When the Bible says that God establishes government, that must mean us because sort of uniquely in human history, it's a government of the people.

01:17:00.540 We are a, a functioning part of the government in a Republic, in a democratic Republic.

01:17:06.780 And that means that all the reasons that God established kings and queens of old are still in play when he established this country.

01:17:14.700 And those responsibilities, many of those responsibilities now are with us, not just with the people who are in that top chair.

01:17:21.740 And those responsibilities continue for as long as we're here.

01:17:25.300 Thank you for joining us tonight for the Daily Wire backstage.

01:17:28.020 We'll see you, I think the next time we'll see you is election night.

01:17:31.660 And so remember what I told you tonight, it's the last election of our life.

01:17:37.000 Be afraid, be very afraid.

01:17:38.920 And can your peaches.

01:17:40.120 Can your peaches.

01:17:41.240 We'll see you then.

The Matt Walsh Show - October 02, 2024

2024 VP Debate ｜ Daily Wire Backstage

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