Daily Wire Backstage State of the Union 2024 Coverage
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 39 minutes
Words per Minute
214.16559
Summary
It's that time of year again, the night that the President stands up and goes on and on and ON and on, and on... and on. It doesn't matter if it's a Republican President or a Democrat President, people used to say, oh, it's going to be great. It was not great. The State of the Union is one of the worst things that happens in public life.
Transcript
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Hey everybody, this is Matt Walsh. Drop everything you're doing and check out the latest episode of
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Daily Wire backstage. You're going to hear Jeremy Boring, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan,
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and yours truly, talking about all the important issues affecting you and your family.
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You don't want to miss it, unless you're a leftist, in which case, you're cancelled.
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Welcome to the Daily Wire's live coverage of the State of the Union.
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Tonight I'm joined by two of the best-looking men in the business.
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I don't want to say who, but I don't want to start no fights.
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I'm your host, Jeremy Boring. We're glad to have you with us.
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Before we get started, I want to remind you that all of our Daily Wire Plus members can submit questions,
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and we will do our best to answer a lot of them in the back half of the show coming up after
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the President's remark. That's right, it's that time of year again, the worst night of the year,
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the night that the President stands up and goes on and on and on and on and on and on.
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It doesn't really matter to me if it's a Republican President or a Democrat President.
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People used to say, oh, Trump, it's going to be great. It was not great.
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The State of the Union is one of the worst things that happens in American public life.
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That's why we joined together, so that you can suffer right here with us.
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The only thing that makes tonight's State of the Union somewhat more bearable to me is that while
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we're here suffering it with whiskey and Mayflower cigars and whatever it is that Ben's allowed to eat
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according to his religion, Michael Knowles is actually there in person.
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He's gone and his cigars are here. It's perfect.
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Good for him. He's finally getting what he deserves.
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Here's a little clip that Michael sent us from the event itself.
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Hey, gents. Sorry that I can't be with you all.
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That's actually not true at all. I'm very glad I can't be with you all because I'm here
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at the Capitol with Congressman Andy Ogles, who very kindly invited me here for the State
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of the Union. So you jerks can all watch it on camera.
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But, you know, we'll be here for the real thing.
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Andy, you just gave me a very important button on one of the biggest issues facing the country
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Well, every small town in America, every town in America is a border town because of Joe Biden
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and his failed policies. And so you have the results of Lake and Riley and so many others
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that have now come forward in the news of the assaults and the rapes and the murders
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and the burglaries at the hands of an illegal at the feet. You can lay this at the feet of
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Bring up Reagan's line. Are you better now than you were three years ago? And virtually
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any measure, that is not the case. So we'll see how the president can possibly spin this
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tonight. You know, one is hard pressed to think of even one area that has improved or
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even remained status quo under his tenure. So we'll see what he can do, if he can even
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stay awake for the speech. And then we'll speak to you afterward.
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That's Michael Knowles at the Capitol for the event. Probably the greatest night of his
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life, honestly. If any of us were going to have to go to this thing, who would love it
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more than Michael, who is an actual political creature?
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Again, he totally deserves it. Anybody who enjoys it should be there.
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Because not only is it the worst night just because the president talks like a dumbass
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for a thousand years and lists all the things he's not going to do, but he's going to yell
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at you about. But also, it's just a monarchic, anti-constitutional spectacle. You have the
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president of the United States descending among the various legislators who all ooh and ah
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over him and rush to grip and grin and take a picture with him and make kissy face. And
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then he's like, right over there in the corner, there's old Bob. Bob was a plumber during
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He claps. I have it on good authority that Bob will not be there tonight and that every
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single person the president points out will be there to advocate for slaughtering innocent
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No, that's right. He's big into the abortion talk. And so it's all of that. And then half
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the crowd stands up half the time, half the crowd sits down half the time, and every
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so often you have Nancy Pelosi rip something up in the background. And that's pretty much the
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The painful part for me is the press. The press has now gone so far. You know, I thought I
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was inured to it. I thought I'd gotten used to it. And then I saw Joe Scarborough saying
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So first of all, can I just say, Joe Scarborough now looks exactly like Waldo from Where's Waldo?
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So we've answered at least one important question.
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But I just thought, like, what has to happen to you before you can speak those words?
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F you, he said, if you don't agree that this is, this guy is on point. He's alpha. He's
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really, it was the, it was the SNL routine come to life. And I just can't, what Noel said,
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I hate to admit it, but Noel said something true, but he's, he's right. There's no area
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of American life that's better since Biden took office that he has any control over. And
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yet, you know, for the next two days, we're going to be listening to actual journalists wearing,
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who can dress themselves, wearing ties and dresses and looking like respectable people,
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Well, Ben and I had a conversation today with a journalist who is asking us about why Gina
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Carano won't consent to being vaccinated if she, she, she purportedly wants to get back
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into the movie business, but she's unwilling to get vaccinated, which is now the industry
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standard in Hollywood. And this, and this guy, it was a wonderful conversation we had with
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him. I'm sure he's on the other side, but it wasn't hostile in any way, but he brought
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this up as an, and he was actually, he said, God, I literally don't understand. I do not
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understand. I can't square it. She says that what she wants is to be back in the movies,
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but she, but she won't do the thing. The only impediment is getting vaccinated. Why won't
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she just get vaccinated? Please? I genuinely don't understand. And I thought, yeah, I know you
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don't understand because you're, you live in such a bubble. The left has built, you know,
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they're against walls ostensibly, but they have built walls between them and us such
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that they don't even understand how we think. I'm not saying that he would agree if he knew
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how we think, but you would, you would imagine that he would at least understand the basic
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premise of what it is. I have to tell you, I spent this week in New York and I was talking
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to a lot of publishing people and a lot of stuff about my work and all this stuff. And they,
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they're the same way. They're like, well, you can compromise here and you can cut this
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out and you could do, and I keep saying to him, I can't because it's not like I disagree
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with woke a little bit. I think woke is evil. I think you guys are the bad guys. So it's kind
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of like saying, you know, you could just put a nice thing about Hitler here, you know, and
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actually, you know, a nice thing about Mao. But this speaks to, I think, one of the things
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that's happened to Biden. So when Biden took office, he had about a 55, 60% approval rating
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and he came into office as a supposed moderate. He was somebody who's going to unify the country
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and govern from the center left, right? He won the entire race on the basis of not being
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Bernie Sanders on the one hand and not being Donald Trump on the other. And so he enters
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office and that's sort of the basis of his entire administration. And very quickly he
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shifts into, I'm going to be FDR. And that means I'm going to swivel to the radical left
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and I'm going to make myself subject to every single thing the radical left wants of me.
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And I'm just going to keep pandering to the radical left. The problem is there aren't that
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many radical leftists. And so what has actually happened is that the reason he's doing poorly
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in the polls is not just because his base is unenthused about him. It's because independents
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do not like him. Moderates do not like him. I've been saying this for weeks at this
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point. Joe Biden is not the moderate in this race. Donald Trump is the moderate in this race.
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If you look at him positionally on every single issue, Donald Trump has now taken the center of
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the political spectrum. That includes issues where we all disagree with him, right? On abortion,
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for example, he might argue for, say, a 16-week federal abortion ban, which is way too late for
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any of us. But for sort of the median American voter, that's a lot closer than Joe Biden, who's
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saying abortion up to a point of birth by every available poll. About 48 percent of Americans,
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according to Gallup, support a 16-week abortion ban. Only 24 percent of Americans want abortion
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available all the way up to birth. The rest want more restrictions than that. So that's
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not Biden's position. That's Trump's position. When you look at the Middle East, the crazies
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in Dearborn, Michigan, who are dictating to Joe Biden that he needs to be somehow putting
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pressure on Israel to stop the killing of members of Hamas, that is not where the median
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American voter is. The median American voter is in one of two places. Either I don't want
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to hear about it anymore and don't care, which is totally understandable. Or I like Israel
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more than Hamas. The number of people in America who like Hamas more than Israel is
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minuscule. I mean, truly minuscule. And those are the people that Joe Biden is catering
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to in the middle of this entire fight. In fairness, every one of the people in America
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who prefers Hamas to Israel is currently blocking the presidential route between the White House
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and the Capitol. I'm not making this up. All 17 to 18 of them are actually attempting
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to impede President Biden's approach to the Capitol. And he's such a weakling that he won't
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actually just say to the cops, OK, move everybody. Move them. Right. He'll just leave
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him there. It'll be four hours from now and we'll be sitting here. Yeah. Look at these
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morons. One of the things we miss, I think, because we pay attention to the news, is most
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people are so taken with appearances. I talk to I talk to Democrats all the time who say,
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you know, the Democrat Party has gone too far, but they still believe in Joe Biden because
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he looks like that guy who used to be the moderate. I mean, I've always detest the guy.
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I've always hated him. I think he's corrupt. I think he's mean. I think he's small.
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People forget he gave us our dear friend Andrew Breitbart, who would just mark the 12th year
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since Breitbart's death. Breitbart became a conservative in essence because of Joe Biden.
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And the other thing about Biden, first of all, I just want to say that I feel right at home
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because the start to this broadcast has been so negative and cynical. It's like, it's great.
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Yeah. The other thing about Biden, though, he's he's the radical in the race. He also,
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you know, what I think people are starting to finally realize about him is that
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he really hates the American people. And that's not just like a slogan. He actually does.
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This is always one of the distinctions between Trump and Biden, because Trump has the reputation
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of, you know, attacking people and going after people. But Trump always goes after
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the media. He goes after celebrities. He goes after politicians. He goes after world leaders.
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Trump never attacks people. He never attacks just like the American people. But that's exactly
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what Biden does. And I would look for that. That's one thing to look for in this in a State
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of Union address is when does he start going after the MAGA Republicans? Because that's his favorite
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phrase now. MAGA Republican means just people who vote for Trump.
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And that's that's, you know, that's tens of millions of Americans.
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Well, it's another distinction that they don't understand on the left that I always get a kick out of.
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Anytime a reporter writes something negative about Ben and I, they refer to us as MAGA
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Republicans or alt-right. Four years ago, it was alt-right. Now it's MAGA Republicans. It's like,
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you don't understand that no one hates Ben more than the alt-right. And neither of us are MAGA
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Republicans. Although, listen, Donald Trump's the nominee and I'm happy.
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We both voted for him in 2020. We'll both vote for him again.
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That's right. But the left has blinded itself. But, you know, the truth is that politics has just
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rotted all of our brains to the point that we can't see distinctions. One of the things I've
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been amused by all week is that when I talk to people on the left and when I talk to people on
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the right at the moment, they both tell me this is the most important election of our lifetime.
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They both tell me our democracy itself is on the line. And so to confront this existential threat,
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both parties have elevated men who will either one of them be the oldest man ever elected to
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president, both of whom presided over large chunks of the worst failure of our government in the history of
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the republic, which is the response to COVID-19, both of whom are obviously diminished, although
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one of them way more than the other, more obviously diminished. And both sides are going,
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I can't believe you would vote for that other guy. Can't you see how old and corrupt and out of touch?
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Well, what that shows me is that we are so convinced that our politics are so important
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that we're willing to overlook sort of the log in our own eye to a large degree. And so both
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parties are in this position of thinking that the other not only is evil, which is, that's one
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conversation, but out of their minds for actually elevating the person whom they're elevating.
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I think, to be fair, one of the things I've been talking about repeatedly on my show is I really
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do believe that we're watching the end of, really of my generation, of two failed ideas. One is the
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great society, which has been a complete and utter failure, but it has fed money and power into the
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Democrat party, which is why they keep amping up the charges of racism against individuals and now the
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entire nation to deflect from the fact that really this stuff needs to be gotten rid of. And that's
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Joe Biden. He embodies that failure. And the other is the failure of movement conservatism,
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the idea that we're somehow going to repeal the great society and maybe even dial back the New
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Deal and bring back a rebirth of freedom. Donald Trump, as you say, is not a conservative. He looks
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like a conservative. He talks like a conservative. He gestures like a conservative, but the stuff coming
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out of his mouth isn't conservatism. And I think the reason that nobody can see what's happening is
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nobody knows what comes next. Nobody's actually talking in the way I think they should be talking in big
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theoretical terms about what exactly the new movement, the new conservatism looks like.
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I've been talking to 25-year-olds and listening to a lot of their podcasts. And, you know, it's
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frightening. It sounds a little bit like Knowles, you know. It sounds a little bit like this kind of
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proto-authoritarianism, this idea that this guy Bukele, what a great guy, you know, he suspended
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constitutional rights and got rid of the gangsters. He is a good guy, though. In that country, he did the
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right thing. But I'm afraid that they like the suspension of rights more than they like the
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cleaning up of the gangsters. That's what bothers me. It's not the individual situation. It's the
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idea. What are they cheering? Are they cheering the arrests of the gangsters?
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Well, I think, I mean, not to get off on a tangent, but in his case, they're cheering a leader
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who cares about the safety and security of his people and will do what's necessary to secure that
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safety and to make their lives better. Because that's, you know, it's like a radical concept in
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this country, but your leaders are supposed to make your life better. They're supposed to make it,
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you know, easier for you to live and raise a family. And, and, but, but doing that requires
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you to do ugly. It's, it's, it's ugly. It requires you to do ugly things sometimes.
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I can see the point in the case of Bukele. I just think a lot of people cheering him or
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cheering the suspension of the constitution more than the, what you just said.
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Well, so I think, I think that the, the key proviso, I would just add to what you're saying,
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and obviously I agree with it, is with minimum possible force. Meaning that the, the idea that you
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should use the means necessary in order to secure the safety and security of your people,
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but using the minimum amount of government compulsion you have to do in order to achieve
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that is a different thing from saying that the government requires vast overarching powers in
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order to constantly do that thing. And so the idea of, you know, for example, if, if Bukele was doing
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what he's doing as an emergency power, I think most people are, are, are okay with that. Like on the
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normal person level. And the question is in the United States, what kind of powers are we talking
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about delegating to government for how long and how broad? When it comes to the movement
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conservatism point, I would agree with you, except I, I, I feel, you know, like the, the no true
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Scotsman communist here. I would, I would agree with you, except I don't think movement
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conservatism has ever been tried. There's never been a candidate in my lifetime running for
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president of the United States who vowed to actually seriously tackle things like the deficit,
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vowed to seriously tackle things like the great society program. George W. Bush increased spending.
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He campaigned as a compassionate conservative. In 1996, Bob Dole was not campaigning as a
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slash and burn government guy. In 1992, George H. W. Bush was not campaigning as a slash and burn
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government guy. In fact, even Ronald Reagan was not a slash and burn government guy. He talked like
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it, but he actually was not. He wildly expanded government expenditures under his reign. So, you
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know, the idea that what comes next might be something that looks like, say for another looking
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south of the border again, something like Javier Mille on the right, that would not be a bad thing.
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Like Javier Mille coming in and just vastly cutting programs. I'm totally in favor of that. The big
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question for me tonight, you know, getting back to Joe Biden and away from South America. The big
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question for me is, of course, whether Joe Biden is capable of remaining conscious or whether he's
00:15:59.380
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starts right now. So, yeah, I mean, the truth is hovering over all of the political talk is the simple fact
00:17:13.280
that most Americans vote based on who they just like when they get into the voting booth.
00:17:17.300
And who's taller. Well, yeah, that's who. And money. It is amazing to me. I think that the
00:17:23.440
Democrats really thought that everybody would just ignore the fact that Joe Biden is no longer
00:17:26.260
sentient. Everybody knows that's the underlying question of tonight is whether they're going to
00:17:29.520
have to break out the defibrillators. The only question is how serious the health crisis will be.
00:17:36.280
You know, I'm sure there are over-under bets on how long he will pause during the speech to
00:17:40.740
regain it. If somebody, you can end his presidency tonight if you unplug the teleprompter. If you
00:17:46.100
unplug the teleprompter, dude is toast. Because he will just start me, that's what, oh, my rosary.
00:17:53.820
It's just handing out Werther's Originals. There's only one way I truly think, honestly,
00:18:00.320
that he can save the speech tonight. That's to reach into the podium and get one of these.
00:18:03.880
And may the force be with you. May the force be with you. We're not going to explain that at all?
00:18:16.680
Nope. That's not the way of our show. We make obscure jokes. Fine, we'll explain the joke.
00:18:20.680
Okay, for those who haven't seen. No, what are you going to explain the show?
00:18:22.420
Because it's a great clip and so we have to show it. Okay, fine. So this went viral in 2003 in Chile.
00:18:27.800
We're back south of the border in Chile. They ran Star Wars A New Hope on TV and they did not tell
00:18:34.040
the advertisers that they were not allowed to do this. So the advertisers just did something unique
00:18:38.500
with Cerveza Cristal. And so we bring you this masterpiece.
00:18:43.440
You fought in the Clone Wars? Yes. I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father.
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I wish I'd known him. He was the best star pilot in the galaxy. And a cunning warrior. I understand
00:19:00.200
you've become quite a good pilot yourself. And he was a good friend. Which reminds me, I have something
00:19:10.380
here for you. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough.
00:19:23.500
I just say, when I watch that, I'm reminded by, I'm reminded about how bad the writing and acting
00:19:28.040
in Star Wars is. God bless it, Matt. It really is. It doesn't hold up at all. I'm not trying to be
00:19:34.380
controversial. I'm just saying. It's not true at all. It's not even remotely true. Ben, because you
00:19:38.440
watched it. No, my kids watch it. When was the first time you saw Star Wars? I don't know,
00:19:42.300
seven maybe? Exactly. You have a nostalgic attachment to it. If you wait like I did and
00:19:46.460
you watch it the first time when you're like 25, you go, like, this is Star Wars? This is what
00:19:50.900
everyone's freaking out about? I have to tell you, this is the one opinion of Matt's I agree with
00:19:55.400
100%. You do? You do agree? Of course you do, because you thought the talkies would never last.
00:20:01.300
By the way, you want to know something funny? Alec Guinness in that movie is 56.
00:20:03.980
Is he? Yeah. He's born in 1914. Every time I watch him, I think he's such an intelligent
00:20:09.140
actor, he must be thinking, I hope the paycheck for this is very good because I'm making a fool
00:20:13.760
of myself in time. They're not Americans. Are you going to defend the actor? I never thought
00:20:19.340
I'd want Michael. You think Mark Hamill? Okay, Mark Hamill's indefensible, but I will say
00:20:27.300
that Alec Guinness is great in everything, and he's great in this. And Harrison Ford is iconic,
00:20:34.920
he is. I mean, you want to talk about the greatest run? Sorry, Alec Guinness was 50, let's see,
00:20:39.820
he was 63. Anyway. You don't have to defend Star Wars to these bozos. It's one of the most
00:20:46.260
successful films of all time. Successful, no question about that. And it deserves it. No,
00:20:51.560
no, no, it destroyed the movie industry. It destroyed the movie industry? Yeah, yeah. In what way?
00:20:55.820
That's an interesting take. That's a stupid take. Because the IQ of movies before Star Wars was up
00:21:00.620
around 140. After Star Wars, the movie industry is not, the movies are now 90, you know,
00:21:06.480
What are you talking about? I like that take. I'm going to take that take. Can I take that take?
00:21:09.780
That's a stupid take. It's just a little, you know, copyright on it.
00:21:12.580
The IQ of the movie industry started to really wreck itself during Marvel era. Okay? That's late,
00:21:18.620
but it's really during Marvel era. No, but this created the Marvel era. This created the place
00:21:23.140
This is 30 years before. No, no, no. 77. It took a long time for the cancer to reach through the
00:21:30.180
entire body. I mean, now, go back and watch, like, the worst B movie made in 1948, and the
00:21:37.100
intelligence level is so far above Star Wars, and the depth of feeling and humanity. People now think
00:21:43.120
that there are good guys. Yes, but there was a decade called the 60s, and the movies sucked. And then
00:21:46.780
there was a decade called the 70s, and most of the movies, except for anything made by Francis
00:21:50.100
Ford Coppola, sucked. Okay? And then you got Star Wars, and it saved the movie industry, because
00:21:54.040
literally there wouldn't be a movie industry. Well, it saved the movie industry by turning it into a
00:21:57.280
stupid... Amadeus won Best Picture three years after this. I'm so glad I brought this up. I'm so glad I
00:22:02.300
brought it up, and also, yeah, that's a great take. It's absolutely true. I mean, I used to come, when we
00:22:07.860
were just starting the Daily Wire, I used to come in, and you guys would be arguing whether Spider-Man was
00:22:13.020
really dead or not, and I would think, like, how old are these guys? These people, these people are
00:22:17.900
over 12. I know, he's talking about, like, Austin and Mathis would be arguing about it, and he's
00:22:22.240
blaming us. I know. Because from his vantage, we all look the same, and by we, I mean anyone
00:22:27.400
under 60. I used to yell at you about it, because you were doing, you would sit there, I remember you
00:22:33.220
sitting there yelling at people. I felt like, who cares? He's a guy in a costume. Spider-Man?
00:22:38.800
Spider-Man. I know. What are you talking about? Yeah, it was some movie where he died, and you
00:22:43.720
were explaining to somebody that he had to come back in the next film. Okay. I'm sorry. Okay, I can't
00:22:48.340
believe these... You know, people tell me conversations that I've had with other people, and I can't
00:22:51.840
believe that I've had those conversations with other people, so I just don't believe that... I'm not, I'm just
00:22:55.600
not going to defend Star Wars. Star Wars doesn't... It requires no defense. Star Wars requires no defense.
00:23:00.560
Except for Kathleen Kennedy. I will say this. Except for Kathleen Kennedy. Well, the real problem with Star Wars now, too,
00:23:04.760
if you waited a long time to watch it, is that it's almost impossible to actually see the original
00:23:09.360
trilogy without all of the self-destructive additions that were made later, that I think
00:23:16.060
Lucas did on purpose. I think he had a sort of subconscious need to destroy the original
00:23:21.120
trilogy, so that, because he did not direct Empire or Jedi. Empire is one of the great movies
00:23:26.980
ever made. That's right. And I think that after he did write and direct the prequels, he needed
00:23:33.120
to go back and make the original trilogy much worse, so that people would quit saying,
00:23:38.420
you're ruining Star Wars. So he actually rewrote your, even your memory of Star Wars to make
00:23:44.120
it as bad as his prequels were. I mean, my biggest problem with Star Wars was always that this
00:23:49.760
is supposed to be highly advanced technology that can go the speed of light, and they're
00:23:54.580
using essentially swords, like glowing swords. Like, that's never... That repel laser is,
00:24:01.060
my friend. But even so, it just doesn't make sense with all the other technology that that's
00:24:07.000
the weapon you're using. It's a glowing sword. That's actually a good point, too. I'm sorry.
00:24:11.260
Why is that a good point? That's a terrible point. Anyway, well, you know, we can talk Star Wars
00:24:16.680
all night, but let's talk about the old man who might die tonight. So anyway...
00:24:21.160
Exactly. So I want to speak to that. I think Biden's going to do a great job tonight.
00:24:26.420
I mean, obviously, I hate the State of the Union. I think every word he's going to say is a
00:24:29.060
lie. But I think the performance will not be what everyone thinks it is. I think we
00:24:33.380
always think... We always go into these things thinking that the performance is going to be
00:24:37.600
bad. In fact, during Trump, people thought the same thing. Oh, he's so blustery and bumbling,
00:24:42.380
and he's going to get up there, and it's going to be awful. But it's not true. They get up there.
00:24:45.420
It's a very controlled environment. They're reading from the teleprompter. Their side bails
00:24:50.060
them out and claps for them anytime there's any sign of trouble. I think that it's actually
00:24:53.880
a very hard forum to fail in. I think that we, on the right, correctly observe, of course,
00:25:00.620
that Biden is very old, too old to be president, and diminished. But I think that we sort of assume
00:25:06.180
that he's more diminished than he is. And when you actually put him up on that stage in front
00:25:10.220
of a teleprompter and pump a bunch of heroin into it, he's going to do a fine. He'll do fine.
00:25:15.180
Well, so here's where I disagree. And I don't think it's possible for him to do fine. The reason I say
00:25:19.080
that is because I'm going to use the Roger Ailes before all the bad stuff about Roger Ailes came
00:25:22.740
out test. Okay, and the Roger Ailes test was... Can he twirl? Yeah, exactly. Can he twirl?
00:25:29.680
The answer is no, he can't. He can not twirl. No, but the actual test that he used to determine
00:25:33.540
whether somebody was good on TV or not is he would mute the TV. So if he was watching a news program
00:25:37.680
and he wanted to determine if somebody should be an anchor or not, he would watch them and he would
00:25:40.460
mute the TV and see if he was still interested in watching the TV, which is actually quite a good test
00:25:43.860
because TV is a visual medium. Well, the thing about Joe Biden is that if you mute the TV,
00:25:49.080
he looks like absolute death warmed over. He looks awful. He looks so much worse than he did
00:25:55.040
even four years ago. It's astonishing. The amount of decline that he has undergone... I'm not even
00:25:58.680
talking about like how often he slurs his words or reaches for a word that he can't find or starts
00:26:03.020
bumbling basic facts like who is the president of Mexico and who is the president of Egypt.
00:26:06.440
I'm talking about just looking at him as a physical specimen of a human being.
00:26:10.300
I know people who are 81, who are in significantly better shape than Joe Biden, like far, far better
00:26:15.380
shape than Joe Biden. He has undergone a steep decline. And so the very possibility...
00:26:19.060
So when you look at him, if you don't see Kamala Harris lurking in the background,
00:26:22.280
you're doing it wrong because that dude is not... Trump is in much better shape,
00:26:25.900
but Trump is also diminished. He is diminished. He is not 2016 Donald Trump.
00:26:29.500
He's not, but they've done everything they could possibly do to him to destroy him. And he's kind
00:26:34.260
of amazing. He's still making jokes. Well, he's preserved his life energy by eating cheeseburgers
00:26:39.020
and never exercising. Amazing. Peter O'Toole said the only exercise he gets is carrying the coffins of
00:26:44.820
people who exercise. Also, the delta between 2016 Trump and 2024 Trump is not nearly the delta
00:26:53.540
between... And that's the real question. It's not that... Of course, he's diminished, but he was
00:26:58.860
starting from a point where he was a stand-up comedian who makes funny jokes, and you weren't
00:27:02.440
expecting him to deliver a disquisition on the future of Iraq or something. You weren't expecting
00:27:07.160
that if you watched from Joe Biden either, but that's what Joe Biden held himself up to be.
00:27:09.860
Joe Biden always thought of himself as this sort of senatorial demosthenes, right? He was going to
00:27:14.560
be out there just speaking pearls of wisdom and speaking fluently and smoothly with the gift of
00:27:19.800
gab and all that. Like, Donald Trump has always spoken in short declarative sentences with about
00:27:25.080
a fourth-grade vocation. That's not a rip on him. It's one of the reasons he's a successful
00:27:27.900
communicator. Because of that, it hides a myriad of sins. It's not as though he's a guy searching
00:27:32.940
for the word myriad, right? Like, he's not going to be doing that, right?
00:27:36.560
He's, like, the only thing that he's searching for is whether to use dumb or stupid, or great
00:27:43.800
or magnificent, right? Those are the big puzzles. So when he has a brain fart for a moment,
00:27:49.540
it also just fits well within his oeuvre, right? That's what he does. Like, okay, fine.
00:27:56.240
He can barely walk. When he does... Him walking... I swear, when he walks down the steps here,
00:27:59.840
they're going to be so careful about him walking down, steps in the ramp down here.
00:28:04.340
Yeah, that's why. Actually, you know, there has not been a State of the Union that mattered in my
00:28:09.920
entire lifetime. And generally, they're forgotten within...
00:28:14.840
Within, really, the next day, you know what I'm talking about. This does have the chance to
00:28:18.740
actually be a State of the Union that will matter politically if there's a moment like that,
00:28:22.000
if he slips and falls, if he has a really bad brain fart-type moment. It does have the chance of
00:28:27.080
actually being a significant State of the Union for that reason. I just don't think we'll actually
00:28:29.920
get that. I think that this is... I think that if you set yourself up to think you're about to see
00:28:34.460
Joe Biden fail, that you're probably setting yourself up to fail. We're seeing some footage
00:28:39.380
here now of the Supreme Court justices entering the House chamber. And you may notice that all of
00:28:46.320
the Democrat senators and female senators and congresswomen are wearing white. And that's to show
00:28:53.020
that they stand with the people who rip babies out of the wombs. Wouldn't it be red? I'm sorry.
00:28:57.700
You know, they don't say white long in that line of work. Yeah, props, by the way, here to Samuel
00:29:02.820
Alito, who never shows up for this. Yes. So every year, Samuel Alito's like, we're a co-equal branch
00:29:06.600
of government. I'm not doing this stupid nonsense. And then he doesn't show up. And cheers to Samuel
00:29:10.460
Alito because that is precisely... I don't see Clarence Thomas there either. Yeah. I mean, when was the last
00:29:16.260
time Joe Biden spoke on camera for more than 20 minutes live? When he gave that rousing...
00:29:23.060
Fascist, independent... Fascist, independent state speech. Oh, that was great. I love that. Hellraiser
00:29:27.120
too, right? Yeah. Speaking of Star Wars, he literally looked like he was... I mean, it was Palpatine in
00:29:31.480
the throne. It was Palpatine, yeah. It was pretty wonderful. You know, to go back to Trump for a
00:29:37.220
minute, though, I have to say the stuff they have done to him, I believe that every indictment against
00:29:42.140
him, though not everyone is untrue, some of them are... They're all unfair. And they're
00:29:48.540
obviously lawfare. They're obviously political. Of course, yeah. And he is, like, still, like,
00:29:53.820
upbeat. And you can see... Why wouldn't he be? He's winning. I know, but it's real. Like,
00:29:58.100
even if they put you through that and you were winning, wouldn't it beat you down a little
00:30:01.940
bit? You know, he's like, he's having a time in his life. Okay, so here's my problem with
00:30:05.600
this. I don't know what that means. Him being grumpy is a form of upbeat. Right. Like, really,
00:30:11.280
what's he... I mean, pugnacious is what you're looking for. Donald Trump does not have a mode
00:30:16.200
where he's in, like, mourning and self-reflection. Right. That mode does not exist in the spring.
00:30:19.980
Yes, that's right. And so if you attack him, him being pugnacious is just the norm. But he
00:30:23.580
doesn't even have a mode where he feels, like, beaten. It's like, it's... I'm sorry, but it's
00:30:28.200
moving, you know? It's kind of like when they say, oh, you've got to pay half a billion dollars.
00:30:32.140
And he's like, oh, corrupt guy. I'm going to take him down. I'm kind of thinking, like,
00:30:36.180
you go get him, buddy, you know? I mean, listen, I agree with all of that. Also, I just don't wish to
00:30:40.900
attribute... It's like when people say, oh, he did an amazing job fighting cancer. And it's like,
00:30:44.000
what else is he going to do? Surrender? I mean, like, what are his choices here? I mean,
00:30:47.880
he's running for president. Don't even catch him in a candid moment, like, staring at his shoes,
00:30:52.620
thinking, you know, like, I could go to prison. Listen, he's a high-energy dude. And the fact
00:30:56.100
that he's a high-energy dude is the reason why he is such a contrast with Biden. Because by all rights,
00:31:02.240
he should be running 10 points behind Biden, regardless of what Biden is doing as president,
00:31:05.300
given all the things that he's been hit with. Yep. And given the fact that, you know,
00:31:08.180
he lost the last election, and now he's running again against the same guy. Yeah. And yet...
00:31:12.960
And yet, there he is. I mean, he's ahead in virtually all the swing states. And the New
00:31:17.680
York Times is saying things like, well, one conviction, and he'll be over it. One conviction,
00:31:21.760
he'll be elected in the last line. Yeah, one conviction, he'll be president of the world.
00:31:25.360
Yeah, this is wishful thinking. It's like, every single time... It's Lucy in the football.
00:31:30.640
Every single... We've got him this time. Oh, how did he escape? How did it happen this time?
00:31:35.100
I will say, he's his party's nominee, which he wasn't the last time we were all together
00:31:38.920
in one room. He's, you know, I mean, he's not officially the party nominee, but he's the last
00:31:43.760
man standing, and almost certainly, you know, acts of God notwithstanding, he's the nominee
00:31:51.300
for his party. And the truth is, he has been since the raid on Mar-a-Lago. Yep. Before the raid on
00:31:58.620
Mar-a-Lago, there was the idea that there might be a primary. After the raid on Mar-a-Lago,
00:32:02.480
it pretty quickly became evident that to the Republican electorate, this was an incumbent
00:32:07.760
president. In other words, the primary itself was perfunctory, just like Joe Biden's primary
00:32:12.580
was perfunctory. I think that that is why some of the criticisms, for example, of, say, Ron DeSantis
00:32:20.160
and how he ran a terrible campaign. I agreed with our buddy Kurt Schlichter, like, maybe he did,
00:32:25.760
maybe he didn't. It wouldn't matter if he'd run a great campaign. I agree.
00:32:27.980
Well, I agree. It was Donald Trump. It wouldn't have mattered, but I also think he ran a terrible
00:32:31.120
campaign. I mean, again, both of those things could be true, but I think that basically there
00:32:34.400
were two factors that cut against him. One was the feeling of defensive protection that the
00:32:39.740
Republican base took toward Trump the minute he got hit with the indictment. And the other was
00:32:42.900
Joe Biden collapsing, absolutely collapsing like a dying star in the polling number, because the
00:32:47.800
entire basis for a competitor to Trump was, he can't win, I can win. That's the reason you run
00:32:53.020
against him. I don't want to say collapsing star. I feel like dying star gives me visions
00:32:56.380
of Kamala ascending, and I don't really want to know. Oh, my gosh.
00:32:59.080
But there just is no correct way to go after Trump if you're in a primary. That's what, you know,
00:33:04.120
what do you do? Because you can not respond to him. That's what DeSantis did at first. Everyone's
00:33:09.420
like, well, you got to go after him. And you go after him, you alienate his supporters. It's just no,
00:33:13.500
it's a, there's a no way, it's a no-win proposition.
00:33:17.200
His basic argument also was, I'll be Trump, but better, which is just not a very good sales.
00:33:21.580
Well, I mean, it would be a good sales pitch if Trump were running at 35%. But Trump wasn't
00:33:25.040
running at 35%. Trump was running dead even with Biden at the time. And so that's-
00:33:28.620
I think that Joe Biden is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Republicans that we didn't
00:33:34.300
take. There is a tragedy to DeSantis, who is the most successful governor of my lifetime,
00:33:44.940
I mean, it's funny to think, though, that like Nikki Haley, I think, would trounce Joe Biden,
00:33:51.220
but I don't want Nikki Haley to be president either. I don't think she'd be a very good
00:33:55.060
Well, I mean, the real question about whether, about what Trump does in term two is going
00:34:00.820
to be how serious he is about appointing serious people.
00:34:07.780
I think that when somebody's the president, people show up around him. I do think that.
00:34:10.920
But I think that Trump also has this thing in his head that, you know, if you weren't
00:34:16.420
loyal to Trump from beginning to end, he's, this time, he's not going to take in anybody
00:34:22.580
And so there could be a sort of internal battle inside Trump administration, too, between
00:34:26.800
the loyalists who are not amazingly good at their job and the people who might be actually
00:34:30.400
really good at their job and transformational and being able to, say, clean out the executive
00:34:33.380
branch, but once said a bad word about Donald Trump or endorse somebody else in a primary
00:34:46.700
I hope, like hell, that he wins the general, because he is the nominee.
00:34:54.700
I actually think that there's this image that Donald Trump holds grudges.
00:34:57.500
Donald Trump holds a grudge right up until the grudge ends.
00:35:00.360
So if you supported DeSantis, if you bashed Trump during the primary, some of Donald Trump's
00:35:08.420
Donald Trump will stop caring the second that you say something nice about him.
00:35:13.380
If you don't say the nice thing, you're dead forever, no matter what.
00:35:17.700
But you say the nice thing, he lets it go instantly, which there's a kind of charm to that.
00:35:24.260
No, he does have a kind of charm, and the press enhances his charm because they're worse than
00:35:31.060
So that everything, all the kind of overstatements he makes, the hyperbole and all that stuff,
00:35:36.020
don't look like anything compared to the lies of the press.
00:35:38.640
And not only that, they take those and then they treat them absolutely literally.
00:35:41.820
I mean, that's the part where we all start doing it.
00:35:45.340
Shane Gillis has a wonderful routine about Donald Trump's speech that he made after Abu
00:35:53.940
When he says, like, what he's saying about the wonders of Trump and how Trump came out
00:35:56.440
and where Obama, after they killed bin Laden, he came out and he was very somber and he
00:35:59.820
was trying to explain in very measured tones what had happened.
00:36:10.520
And the media were like, I can't believe he would talk like that.
00:36:19.440
I think that there is a whole group of Americans who are older, who are looking at younger Americans
00:36:23.220
and they're like, what's happening right now isn't normal.
00:36:32.760
There are people who are going to vote in the next election cycle who are legitimately
00:36:36.600
nine or 10 years old when Donald Trump became a presidential candidate for the first time.
00:36:42.580
I had this guy I interviewed this week, a 24-year-old conservative talker with a small
00:36:53.340
You watch the press tell you that these riots will cure COVID.
00:36:56.940
But if you go to a Donald Trump rally, that will spread COVID.
00:36:59.880
And the riots are mostly peaceful with the buildings.
00:37:02.260
He said, you realize these people are not here for me.
00:37:06.280
Sorry, on the screen, they're just showing, this is the greatest collection of IQ I've
00:37:10.500
Maisie Hirono and Bernie Sanders laughing together about how many people they would
00:37:15.200
put in the gulag if they actually had the opportunity.
00:37:19.460
600, their combined age is significantly higher than their combined IQ.
00:37:22.280
She wasn't wearing white, which I appreciate in this setting.
00:37:28.920
I mean, like, Congress is filled with dullards.
00:37:33.460
Will there be actual support after this for a presidential age limit?
00:37:40.440
Like, it's unassailable in my mind that obviously 75...
00:37:53.740
It's telling us that the boomer generation is the last generation that was playing...
00:37:58.620
Well, I think that something you've said before, Drew, and I think this is right, is that,
00:38:01.680
yes, we can yell at the boomer generation and blame them, and they deserve a lot.
00:38:06.380
But I think they think they're holding back something that's catastrophic.
00:38:12.760
I mean, you think about even the air, you know, we talk a lot about the DEI in the airline
00:38:18.500
And I think you've got this generation of, and I've seen people talk about this generation
00:38:21.920
of, like, boomer pilots who are just keeping us from catastrophe, and once they shuffle
00:38:31.300
He said, you know, you guys have a lot to answer for, speaking to me.
00:38:33.820
He said, you guys have a lot to answer for, but you knew what you were doing.
00:38:39.720
Yeah, we will hearken back to the good old days when planes didn't crash.
00:38:44.940
I mean, one of the pieces of reportage that we've done on the DEI stuff is on the surgery
00:38:50.160
industry, and the fact that DEI has now infused, you know, like, the people who are cutting
00:38:56.540
I mean, the insanity that is about to be unleashed among people of the younger generation is totally
00:39:06.960
The truth is, not that there wasn't a conservative movement, Drew.
00:39:09.500
The fact is that there was this sort of, everyone hates the blob, and for a reason.
00:39:15.500
The question is always, what comes after the blob?
00:39:18.180
And so, it could be something good, or it could be something even worse than the blob.
00:39:23.580
You could get a polarization between the Wokies on one hand, and the, and, you know, people
00:39:28.700
who really do believe that the government should have extraordinary powers at the top level
00:39:38.840
As I'm fond of telling Jeremy, it always looks darker just before it goes pitch black.
00:39:44.780
But there is something that I think would make us all feel better at this point, of course.
00:39:57.300
So, if you thought that joke was funny, you should become a Daily Wire plus subscriber.
00:40:02.300
You'll be able to ask us questions in the back half, like, what the hell?
00:40:11.200
They say the president is still in the car, so it may be a minute here.
00:40:14.840
I don't know if that means that he's still stuck behind the...
00:40:20.140
She's like the Michael Scott of vice presidents.
00:40:21.820
You know that she has, there's like a 20% chance that she is our next president.
00:40:28.500
I mean, I would say right now that there's maybe a 50% chance, because if you figure that
00:40:32.700
that Biden has a 50% shot of being president, then she almost certainly will be president
00:40:37.120
because he will die, unfortunately, because you don't want that to happen to anybody.
00:40:40.980
There's Jill, who's guilty for pushing her, the greatest doctor of our time.
00:40:57.420
I still refuse to believe Biden's going to be the nominee.
00:41:02.900
Well, I mean, at this point, they have no choice.
00:41:05.340
Oh, they have one choice, but only if Biden were to die.
00:41:10.280
The only path would be, actually, that isn't a path.
00:41:13.780
The only path would be if they somehow convince Biden to step aside.
00:41:16.460
If he dies, Kamala Harris is the nominee and Donald Trump is the next president.
00:41:20.720
But if they could get Biden to step aside and get Kamala, or get-
00:41:33.760
Lloyd Austin, fresh from the hospital, who has done nothing but cripple the American military
00:41:41.840
What a cavalcade of comedy geniuses we have over here.
00:41:45.380
Merrick Garland, the most corrupt AG of the modern era.
00:41:47.680
I think the, can I just say, Kamala Harris being the first woman to be president of the United
00:42:14.220
Until you see them all in a room together, you're like, wow.
00:42:18.280
It's like watching, it's looking like a Surratt painting of stupidity.
00:42:22.520
And then you pull back and suddenly it's an entire picture of Sunday in the Park with
00:42:30.780
He went on paternity leave and he's, yeah, he's probably still on paternity leave and we
00:42:35.240
Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior, who, as far as I'm aware, does absolutely nothing.
00:42:40.840
I actually think that Democrats believe that Pete Buttigieg could be president.
00:42:48.500
They think that Joe Biden is having trouble with his minority base.
00:42:53.780
Meanwhile, the transportation industry has like fallen apart.
00:43:01.240
He just walked in with two illegal immigrants under his jacket, smuggling them directly into
00:43:08.140
Mayorkas is the closest thing we have to Putin.
00:43:10.040
He's the closest thing we have to a man who speaks with no connection to his heart or mind.
00:43:13.820
The words come out of his mouth and he actually means nothing that he says.
00:43:20.000
How dare you speak about Vladimir Putin that way?
00:43:28.560
I mean, he's 40 IQ points dumber than Putin, though, I would say.
00:43:48.200
All my energy just drops and just stroke my much shorter beard.
00:44:00.740
We're definitely getting people excited to watch this thing.
00:44:03.720
Are we the uppers or are we the uppers over here?
00:44:06.220
Well, maybe there's a rerun of the Flintstones on it.
00:44:08.480
We could go back to the Star Wars conversation.
00:44:21.480
You're a terrible person and you have no taste.
00:44:32.500
Do you think that's like high art, Empire Strikes Back?
00:44:34.580
First of all, Darth Vader, again, again, when you're 25 years old, you watch a third.
00:44:47.120
He literally puts a dude up by his throat and kills him in the first five minutes.
00:44:49.960
A great movie villain is like Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.
00:44:53.840
It's like, you would actually be terrified to be in the room with that guy.
00:45:05.020
He can actually crush their larynx like somebody who actually died of asphyxiation.
00:45:09.040
But I'm saying, in the performance and in the writing, I just don't feel.
00:45:29.020
He stood next to me at the phone booths when my daughter was born.
00:45:32.800
Because his son, I think it was his son, was born.
00:45:34.780
And the two deepest voices in New York were going, I have a daughter.
00:45:40.140
Fortunately, she doesn't have her boyfriend there this time.
00:45:51.740
You'll remember her from the DNC in 2012, waving her arms like a nut job.
00:45:55.400
Boy, that shot just there before was like this textbook illustration of the fall of the
00:46:06.320
And then there's, I got to say, the Republicans have run their Congress beautifully, I think.
00:46:11.160
And the nice thing is, if you don't like this speaker, you can wait two minutes and you'll
00:46:15.080
So as long as you're going to be depressed about everything, how about the fact that they
00:46:18.620
just booted a speaker for no reason and they appointed a new speaker and he cuts deals
00:46:27.920
When you have a one vote majority, you're done.
00:46:31.480
Because I think he is, this speaker, is more conservative.
00:46:34.980
On a gut level, no question he's more conservative than Kevin was.
00:46:37.720
But the idea that Mike is way more conservative than Kevin in terms of governance, that's not
00:46:42.240
People keep mistaking, and this is true for all of American government, people keep mistaking
00:46:49.020
When you keep redefining the job and leave the incentive structures the same as they always
00:46:54.420
And that's particularly true for Senate Majority Leader.
00:46:56.440
When people say, oh man, we'll get rid of McConnell, and then we'll have somebody who's
00:47:00.280
First of all, can I explain to you that Mitch McConnell achieved more conservative victories
00:47:03.220
during his tenure than any Republican legislator of my lifetime?
00:47:07.480
You have a Republican majority on the Supreme Court because of Mitch McConnell.
00:47:24.500
The president is entering the House chamber, and we're going to take you live to the State
00:47:28.820
of the Union, and we'll be back to let you know just how bad it was as soon as the president's
00:47:50.260
It was honestly the worst State of the Union address that's maybe ever been given.
00:47:54.500
Especially for the first 30 minutes, angry, slurring, starting with the most hyper-partisan
00:48:05.760
The very first thing you talk about is Ukraine was...
00:48:11.160
He was using it only to get to call his fellow Americans equivalent to Vladimir Putin invading
00:48:18.660
I mean, that was his gateway into January 6th, because democracy is a threat in Ukraine,
00:48:26.080
That was literally the reason that he led with the Ukraine stuff, was that he could call
00:48:48.880
He's always been an angry, mean, hateful, corrupt little son of a gun.
00:48:53.440
You know, this may be the only state of the union that ever accomplished anything, which
00:48:59.220
might be getting Donald Trump elected, if it accomplishes anything.
00:49:02.360
Number one, nobody listened to the state of the union.
00:49:05.260
The only part that anybody heard was the first 10 minutes, which is why he led with all the
00:49:09.040
hyper-partisan stuff, because he figures this is his last chance.
00:49:11.680
And he's figuring that what he can aim for here is energetic, passionate, right?
00:49:16.260
You know what the headlines are going to be, right?
00:49:21.400
And the Republicans, of course, were probably helping him along with that by fighting with
00:49:24.940
him, because that way he can do his, look at me, I'm a feisty fighter.
00:49:27.460
I'm not an old geriatric dotter who feels like he's going to crap his pants any moment.
00:49:31.760
But, you know, the fact is that the state of the union, just to remind everybody, is
00:49:36.900
provided for under the Constitution of the United States so that the president can, from
00:49:42.100
time to time, inform the Congress of the latest developments inside the executive branch.
00:49:49.380
Instead, he didn't even get to the usual phrase you start with, the state of the union is strong
00:49:53.480
He didn't even get to that until like 12 minutes into the speech.
00:49:56.080
And the entire opening of the speech was about how his fellow Americans are terrible and evil
00:50:00.680
and corrupt and vicious and insurrectionist and terrible, and particularly because of Ukraine.
00:50:06.660
There's so many problems, logically, with the speech.
00:50:08.460
I mean, first of all, he starts with the, there have been a lot of attacks on democracy.
00:50:13.420
He saves all the Israel stuff, which is an attack on a democracy, by the way, by a terrorist
00:50:16.520
He saves that for the end when he chides the Israelis for not being nice enough to the Palestinians
00:50:20.580
and talks about how we're, did you guys know that we're going to build a peer?
00:50:26.860
You can put it like a Ferris wheel, maybe like a merry-go-round on the pier in the Mediterranean
00:50:31.860
He says we won't be putting American boots on the ground over there, which is weird because
00:50:35.380
I'm not sure exactly, what are they going to do, swim?
00:50:37.100
Like, are they going to be like, there's going to be scuba divers?
00:50:39.380
Gazan scuba divers are going to jump out into the water and take the stuff in.
00:50:42.920
Yeah, putting Americans, it seems like, directly into a foreign war zone is probably the smartest
00:50:50.960
You know, I can't help but think, and I know this is comparing great things to small, after
00:50:56.000
the Civil War, 700,000 Americans slaughtered by each other, Abraham Lincoln gets up and
00:51:02.660
says, with charity toward all and malice toward none, you know, we're going to rebuild.
00:51:06.940
A couple of hundred doofuses go into the Capitol, and he actually puts this forward as the worst
00:51:14.100
thing since the Civil War and the kind of threat to democracy that Putin invading a country
00:51:19.540
The meanness of it, the smallness of it, and the one, remember when Trump gave his inaugural
00:51:25.660
and all we heard was, it's dark, it's dark, it's dark.
00:51:31.740
But now it's like, he's feisty and energetic, and he's just mean.
00:51:39.840
It's the angriest, angriest State of the Union that's probably ever been given.
00:51:43.640
And the symbolism, I mean, of course it doesn't matter because nobody's going to remember,
00:51:46.380
but the symbolism of, you begin with Ukraine, he hits Ukraine, January 6th, abortion, IVF.
00:51:56.740
And then he gets to, like, the size of chip bags, and then finally, right after chip bags,
00:52:03.420
he gets to the border, which is the thing that's most, you know, one of the top issues
00:52:07.900
Where he proceeds to blow the name of the victim that people are wearing the pin for.
00:52:16.520
And then he starts jabbering about, like, and how many thousands have been killed by illegals?
00:52:22.620
That's literally what he yelled back at the Congress when MTG, when Marjorie Taylor Greene
00:52:27.560
He said, he takes out the pin, he mispronounces the name.
00:52:29.980
And then he says, and she was killed by an illegal, pissing off his entire left flank
00:52:32.960
because you're not allowed to say the word illegal if you're on the left.
00:52:35.900
And then he follows that up by saying, and how many thousands have been killed by illegals?
00:52:39.460
The implication, of course, being that everybody is overestimating the amount of crime from
00:52:44.840
So that's like three screw-ups in three sentences right there.
00:52:48.300
But also, I think, you know, I understand that the State of the Union is forgotten and
00:52:52.800
people don't watch it, but I think people are going to remember that screaming.
00:52:56.160
I think they're going to remember the sound of that voice just scolding everybody and
00:53:03.160
What has he accomplished that he should be yelling at us for being unhappy that our price,
00:53:07.320
the price of food has gone up 35% since he took office and the value of the dollar
00:53:11.580
is lower than it's been since anyone but Carter after, after this period of time.
00:53:24.060
Because during the 2020 election, one of the things that he had going for him is that
00:53:29.580
You remember during that debate that was terrible for Trump.
00:53:37.340
And he was like talking over Biden, just kept jumping in, talking over Biden.
00:53:41.180
And finally, Biden kind of turned to the camera and went, oh, shut up.
00:53:43.800
And everybody, even people who were voting for Trump, like me, well, I mean, Trump was
00:53:52.920
The one who is being loud right now, he's out louding Donald Trump.
00:53:56.940
He's currently running the worst re-elect campaign we have ever seen.
00:54:01.080
I mean, this is a truly awful re-elect campaign.
00:54:03.440
And it may be because he is bound by the strictures of who he is.
00:54:12.260
It can't be his charm because he's not charming at all.
00:54:15.420
It certainly can't be his energy level because he's dying.
00:54:18.200
And so what we end up with is the old man raging against the dying of the light, literally.
00:54:24.060
Like literally just looking out at the crowd and yelling at you.
00:54:36.120
There's a lot of talk going in that he might not be able to hold up long enough to give
00:54:43.360
Yeah, also, my favorite part is where he said that he taught constitutional law for 12 years.
00:54:47.140
Where he said, I taught the second amendment for 12 years.
00:54:50.860
I think he's referring to Barack Obama and his time as a constitutional...
00:55:00.640
I think that he, and he, you know, he spent eight years of his life telling the fable
00:55:05.800
I honestly think that he just lapsed into the wrong fable as his own biography.
00:55:11.780
During my time as a community organizer on the south side of Chicago.
00:55:19.120
And remember how they counted every lie, every hyperbole that Trump used, they counted
00:55:24.060
it as a lie and they had 3,000 lies and all this.
00:55:26.980
But Joe Biden is our tale teller in chief, as the New York Times put it.
00:55:30.760
You know, it's okay because he's just telling tales.
00:55:34.060
I will say that I personally enjoy the new trend now of shouting at the president of
00:55:43.420
And also, if we're going to do this, like, you know, let's drop the pageantry of pretending
00:56:01.740
I will say that Mike Johnson, I think, stood up one time the entire speech.
00:56:05.020
It was when he said that Hamas should surrender.
00:56:06.500
And that was pretty much it for the entire speech.
00:56:08.760
Mike Johnson had a really unenviable task tonight, which is he had to keep a straight face.
00:56:12.300
And behind him, you could see there were a lot of skeptical looks from Mike Johnson,
00:56:20.220
And so him, like, giving the kind of side eye to Joe Biden will be...
00:56:24.740
I was sorry he didn't tear up the speech at the end.
00:56:33.000
Kamala Harris being as absolutely smarmy and irritating as it's possible to be.
00:56:38.080
Without even opening her mouth, I was saying to Drew while we were watching that the noun
00:56:45.140
rictus was coined in ancient times to describe her smile.
00:56:49.400
Like, that is a rictus, a frozen rictus upon her face.
00:56:53.260
And it's just all the awfulness of American politics just telescoped into one hour and 20
00:57:04.040
We're supposed to be, at this point, inured to the stupidity of people suggesting the
00:57:08.740
I'm never inured to it because I used to be not rich and now I'm rich.
00:57:11.320
And I got to tell you, I pay a load of taxes, guys.
00:57:21.480
If there is such a thing as a share which is fair, what is the size of that share?
00:57:26.300
And there's no fair share of garbage, you know?
00:57:32.520
Is life better than it was three, four years ago?
00:57:35.380
He'll say things like, well, you know, the billionaires only pay 8.2%.
00:57:41.740
Because if it's on their income, I promise you, they pay exactly what the federal prevailing
00:57:46.140
If you mean their entire wealth base, yes, it's true.
00:57:48.440
Because you also do not pay a tax on the value of your house to the federal government,
00:58:02.300
He says, my favorite is when he talks about lowering the deficit.
00:58:06.660
And then he's like, we cannot touch the retirement age.
00:58:09.460
Anyone who touches Social Security will immediately be shot.
00:58:13.360
Well, then you're not doing anything about the deficit.
00:58:18.540
Lower inflation by paying for everybody's mortgage.
00:58:20.600
The other thing that always really disturbs me is this thing about controlling the price
00:58:27.760
Because if you wanted to control the price of medicine, the thing to do would be to not
00:58:31.160
allow them to sell it overseas for lower prices.
00:58:36.500
Well, we'd actually do a sanctioned foreign countries.
00:58:38.700
Because what really what happens when that happens is medicines that you would have had, you don't
00:58:44.020
So nobody understands that they're getting less.
00:58:49.520
It's like, let people die so that we can lie to ourselves that we lowered the price
00:58:54.320
But the other thing is, you could lower the cost of healthcare in this country markedly
00:59:02.560
Everybody always says, we have a free market healthcare system in this country, and it's
00:59:07.680
We don't have a free market healthcare system in this country.
00:59:11.040
First of all, if you cross that border illegally, you can go to any hospital in this country
00:59:15.180
and get any treatment that we offer and not pay for any of it.
00:59:19.920
Secondly, most healthcare expenses are incurred in the last two years of life.
00:59:25.660
And most people in the last two years of their life are on Medicare.
00:59:29.120
Which means the majority of the healthcare that you will ever receive in your life is
00:59:37.200
And when you look at things that everybody has, like television sets, they come out,
00:59:41.260
they're incredibly expensive, and then when they've sold them to the people who buy them
00:59:46.660
The price of a TV that was literally $10,000 15 years ago is now $600.
00:59:54.660
But that doesn't happen in medicine because the government is the biggest customer.
00:59:59.440
And the second biggest customer are insurance companies.
01:00:02.340
And so you end up in this situation where there is almost no direct relationship between
01:00:07.360
who we think the customer is, which is us, and the provider of the service, which is
01:00:15.440
And because it takes more than one second to explain, it's easier to just say,
01:00:18.400
Well, cap the price of pharmaceuticals, and now everything will be free.
01:00:21.860
But, you know, the litany of lies, I'm with Matt.
01:00:25.160
The litany of lies to me is almost, it's pretty much utterly secondary because we've all watched.
01:00:30.080
I mean, I remember during the Obama years, fact-checking.
01:00:32.340
I was working at Breitbart at the time, and I remember fact-checking, like, at length,
01:00:35.800
all of Obama's speeches, and you would tell dozens of lies like this during the speech.
01:00:39.900
The new thing that we're seeing right now is the utter demonization of half of the American public.
01:00:48.560
No, it started under Barack Obama, who called Republicans his enemy.
01:00:52.080
I mean, that's true, but I, honest to God, think that Joe Biden is going further than Obama did.
01:00:58.720
I mean, like, Obama was at least a little subtle about it.
01:01:03.960
But Biden is not, he's like stupid people version of that.
01:01:07.080
He's like, he's saying, he's just saying all the things out loud.
01:01:09.640
And then he ends with something Orwellian like,
01:01:13.780
You literally just said half of Americans are insurrectionists who are akin to Russian invaders of Ukraine.
01:01:18.680
Well, I mean, since you are funding the killing of Russian soldiers in Ukraine, I don't know what that means for, you know, those of us who disagree with you domestically.
01:01:24.600
I mean, that comparison doesn't sound so great.
01:01:27.520
And if we assume, if we assume that the election was fairly won, which I actually, I've never seen have proven that it wasn't,
01:01:34.320
it's only a few people who were so angry at Donald Trump, who were so, you know, so opposed to Donald Trump that they moved over to the other side.
01:01:43.660
Trump got more votes than any other president except Biden, you know, in the last election.
01:01:47.920
So he's actually saying that all those MAGA Republicans are the enemy.
01:01:53.060
Well, you know, January 6th is an incredibly complicated topic, which makes it very difficult to ever discuss.
01:02:02.240
Obviously, the Capitol compound is an enormous facility.
01:02:06.420
Obviously, there were tens of thousands of people there.
01:02:12.600
You know, people on this side of the building don't know what's going on on this side of the building.
01:02:17.780
So there were people who were there and then left and people who came and then, you know, so no one's experience of January 6th can really tell you what January 6th was.
01:02:25.920
There were plenty of people who police just let them in the building and they walked through the building and walked out the other side.
01:02:30.600
And there were people who broke glass and smashed through barricades and punched cops.
01:02:34.180
I mean, many, many things are true about January 6th.
01:02:38.580
And we, just as a people, I don't think this is just as Americans, I think it's as upright monkeys, you know, as human beings, we cannot handle the complexity and nuance of an event like January 6th, which means we can't create a true narrative about it.
01:02:55.040
We can only create these very, very hyperbolic political narratives.
01:02:58.140
What that means is that there are a lot of true narratives about it, but there's only one false narrative.
01:03:03.660
Yeah, the false narrative is that America was in dire danger of our democracy being overthrown on January 6th.
01:03:17.120
At no point during that riot, and I hated the riot.
01:03:22.480
At no point during that did I think, oh my God, democracy in the United States is about to end.
01:03:26.940
A military dictatorship is about to be declared with God, Emperor Trump at the head of it, leading his way into the Senate and slaughtering his opponents.
01:03:33.500
At no point did I think that was even remotely true.
01:03:36.240
No, they took this issue that actually could have played well the Democrats took, and they turned it into the Reichstag fire.
01:03:41.800
It's like this small thing that may not be a good thing to set the Reichstag on fire if you're a socialist, but still, that's no right reason to take everybody's rights away and to declare half the country as insurrectionists.
01:03:54.000
I mean, they flip on the language that he is constantly, and the Democrats are constantly doing, is truly an amazing thing.
01:04:00.120
According to this speech, we're the safest we've ever been, which is presumably why Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, just unleashed 750 members of the National Guard to guard the subway so people would stop shoving each other in front of the damn trains because things are going amazing.
01:04:12.460
He then suggested that his plan on the border was more hawkish than the Republicans' plans on the border, despite the fact that obviously that's wildly untrue.
01:04:23.780
I like when he suggested that freedom is under attack because true freedom is being able to kill babies.
01:04:31.020
That portion of the speech was really solid to me.
01:04:33.160
When he just started ripping on the Supreme Court, which we know, by the way, is apparently—it's funny how that goes from being incredibly valuable and necessary to a danger to democracy back to being incredibly valuable and necessary depending on who's ripping the Supreme Court at the time.
01:04:45.780
So he's sitting there, and he's yelling at the Supreme Court with the Supreme Court sitting right there in front of him.
01:04:50.020
I mean, that's another—that feels pretty unprecedented to me, I mean, except when Biden has done it before.
01:04:55.600
But usually, historically, Democrats will—they'll make a few references to—
01:05:00.840
I remember Obama did it, and there was a justice who actually shook his head, and it was like a national scam.
01:05:05.120
But I mean, with abortion, with the abortion issue, they'll make a few references to reproductive freedom or whatever.
01:05:08.860
Reproductive freedom, of course, that ridiculous euphemism.
01:05:11.500
But Biden, I mean, he spent several minutes going after abortion in a really direct way.
01:05:17.720
I mean, this is obviously the most radically pro-abortion president we've ever had.
01:05:21.380
Meanwhile, he's, of course, sending his federal government after pro-life protesters and trying to put him in jail for 11 years.
01:05:32.240
Very disturbing to watch people stand up and applaud for abortion.
01:05:36.980
You know, I cannot get that out of my head that this is now something that a vast number of people feel is a human right.
01:05:43.500
And even if you would argue, oh, it's a terrible tragedy, but sometimes it has to happen, I would disagree with you, but at least I would understand.
01:05:52.040
I was making this point on my show the other day, which is that Donald Trump's campaign is closer to Bill Clinton's 1996 campaign.
01:06:03.460
Bill Clinton ran on welfare reform, reduction in crime, balancing the budget.
01:06:10.580
He ran on not gay marriage, because nobody's talking gay marriage in 1996.
01:06:16.700
He was, you know, like, and when it came to immigration, he wasn't an open borders president at that time.
01:06:31.580
Like, the fact that the Democratic Party moved, in my lifetime, from safe, legal, and rare, to cheer your abortion, celebrate your abortion, is totally insane.
01:06:41.060
And that's why, again, I think that the thing he needs to do, he is under a fundamental misconception in this election cycle.
01:06:46.640
It's the same misconception every Democrat's been under since 2012.
01:06:49.700
If we get enough members of the base jazzed about voting for us, we'll win.
01:06:54.360
It did work in 2020, because they changed literally all the rules.
01:06:56.880
And then went to every single human in the United States eight times and picked up the ballot from their house and dumped it in a mailbox.
01:07:04.780
And I don't think it's going to win, specifically because it's wrong.
01:07:12.420
The thing he needs to be doing right now is appealing to moderates and independents.
01:07:16.720
With Trump, you can do it in terms of personality.
01:07:18.740
You can say, he's a crazy person, and I'm sane.
01:07:21.160
That was an insane speech, and he looked like a crazy, addled, old asshole.
01:07:25.500
And then you can also present a moderate policy agenda.
01:07:31.420
So he goes zero for two on the two things he needs to do to reach out to the median voter.
01:07:35.820
He's pushing the median voter over toward Donald Trump.
01:07:46.180
One, they literally don't allow him on any social media platform to express his opinion.
01:07:49.700
And by the way, it's been the greatest favor to him.
01:07:51.180
If you're on Twitter right now, it'd be way worse for him.
01:07:54.200
Number two, he is running a form of Joe Biden's 2020 campaign.
01:07:59.960
I mean, Donald Trump is not really out there campaigning.
01:08:06.320
But you're seeing less of Donald Trump so far in this election campaign than probably any president
01:08:13.840
or any candidate for the presidency in the modern era except for Joe Biden 2020.
01:08:19.040
And he's not out there in a major way, which is good.
01:08:26.420
He's ahead in the polls, which he never was in the last election.
01:08:30.020
You know, we always attack the polls, but he was never ahead in the last election.
01:08:35.540
The great, hilarious thing about this election cycle right now.
01:08:39.280
Donald Trump is running the best he has ever run against any candidate.
01:08:43.400
2016, 2020, any of them is currently running ahead of Joe Biden by a point or two in the
01:08:51.000
He has led in, I believe, 24 of the last 31 polls.
01:08:55.820
He Joe Biden has not had a real politics polling average since mid-September at no point.
01:09:01.220
Literally no point during the 2020 race was Donald Trump polling ahead of Joe Biden.
01:09:06.140
As soon as we got to the point where Biden was the nominee, Biden led wire to wire in that
01:09:10.480
In the final result in real politics polling average, Joe Biden was up by seven and a half
01:09:16.840
If Donald Trump is up by two and a half points right now or two points, he's actually up
01:09:22.140
And because there are a bunch of people out there, independents, who are telling pollsters,
01:09:27.860
And then when it comes right down to it, they're going to vote against Biden.
01:09:31.460
He is forcibly pushing moderates away from him.
01:09:33.860
I was in a major, I can't say who it was for reasons that will become clear, but I was in
01:09:38.880
a major New York media office this week where the head of that office started talking about
01:09:46.300
Trump in such a way that one of the other people said, I should close the door because
01:09:50.240
he was saying, you know, Trump really was a better president and he saved this country
01:09:57.020
This is a guy I know left us down to his knees.
01:10:01.420
You know, it's in every election of my lifetime.
01:10:04.260
The question of who wins the presidential election is determined by who it is that the
01:10:12.740
And Donald Trump's enormous mistake in 2020 is that he could not subordinate his ego.
01:10:19.340
He couldn't let it be a referendum on the left.
01:10:22.380
It had to be a referendum on himself because he wanted to be at the center because that's
01:10:32.600
If you are the president, you sort of are de facto who it is a referendum on unless you
01:10:39.980
What Biden was trying to do with the beginning of his speech tonight was make the election
01:10:47.020
But I think he did it in such a tone deaf and angry way because he blamed the people because
01:10:55.180
This election is still a referendum on Joe Biden.
01:10:58.960
And because even when Trump makes this election about himself, he's making it about them because
01:11:04.720
And they're legitimately after him in such a way.
01:11:06.780
I mean, this is a guy who's talking about unity while he gave instructions to his Justice
01:11:14.080
You know, the New York Times actually had an op-ed by this guy Edsel, who's one of their
01:11:18.260
big left-wing columnists, saying, we can't win unless we convict them.
01:11:24.400
So we're going to take a few questions from our Daily Wire Plus subscribers.
01:11:28.400
If you want to get your question in, head over to dailywireplus.com.
01:11:40.460
When would you guys say was the last time we had an election that was truly about voting
01:11:44.100
for the guy that you like rather than voting against the guy that you don't like?
01:11:57.040
I think 2016 for a lot of people, you know, they...
01:12:05.380
I mean, I think for the majority of people who voted for Trump, at least in the independent
01:12:08.680
crowd, which shifted two to one for him, was voting against Hillary.
01:12:15.460
But I think it is fair to say 2008, the election of Barack Obama was an aspirational moment for
01:12:28.200
I think for the average person in the country, they thought, elect a black man?
01:12:32.320
What a wonderful thing for us to do as a nation.
01:12:37.540
And he speaks with a kind of authority about unity, because he's from the group that ostensibly
01:12:42.760
needs to be unified, that's not been part of the culture, you know, in the way that
01:12:50.200
The problem is that, you know, everybody says this is the most important election of our
01:12:57.320
Everyone always says that every election is the most important election of our lifetime.
01:13:00.720
And every election is very important and consequential.
01:13:03.180
The most important election of our lifetime was 2012.
01:13:05.840
It is not this election, it was 2012, because 2008 was an aspirational vote for Barack Obama.
01:13:11.920
But by 2012, Obama had made a cynical political calculation to divide the country on race to
01:13:18.000
secure re-election because Mitt Romney was popular and was an actual threat to him.
01:13:24.580
Mitt Romney was popular and was a threat to Barack Obama.
01:13:28.000
And he made that cynical calculation, he made it right out in the open, and we had one opportunity
01:13:32.660
to reject the fundamental transformation and all of the chaos that's ensued ever since.
01:13:38.340
You can say, well, Mitt Romney wouldn't have been a great president, Mitt Romney would
01:13:41.500
have been a squishy president, and electing Mitt Romney, all that's true, but electing
01:13:45.560
Mitt Romney would have been tacking back toward the traditional relationship between the
01:13:52.540
parties, the traditional relationship between the people and the government, traditional
01:13:59.200
It wouldn't have been about Romney being president.
01:14:03.660
...the argument that Obama was making, which is that there is a victim-victimizer complex
01:14:07.320
in the United States, and he was at the head of the Coalition of the Oppressed, rising
01:14:11.800
And when we miss that opportunity, everything else that's happened has happened as a result
01:14:19.180
And so, certainly voting for Obama in 2008 was because people liked the idea of Obama, but
01:14:24.420
voting for Obama in 2012 was a cynical decision by Democrats, and everything has been a reaction
01:14:35.620
Why do candidates make so many lofty promises when they know they can't actually deliver?
01:14:42.020
Do the majority of voters not look at these things realistically?
01:14:45.520
I actually believe that voters are somewhat smarter than we give them credit for.
01:14:50.520
Or TV has an investment, whatever you want to call it, the screen, has an investment in
01:14:56.760
making us think that what we care about is witty lines at debates, and the way people
01:15:05.620
But people do understand that food is too expensive, that policies are not working, that
01:15:11.140
some policies are actually a threat to their freedoms.
01:15:15.600
More people understand more of that than we give them credit for.
01:15:19.120
And so the promises, you know, they're showbiz.
01:15:24.280
They've been part of politics, of democratic politics forever.
01:15:26.820
As long as there have been people campaigning, they've made stupid promises.
01:15:30.880
But I think it's partly a cynicism that actually the people don't deserve.
01:15:35.400
People actually have some sense of what's going on, more sense of what's going on than
01:15:42.960
You know, they don't have actual policies that work.
01:15:44.820
And I would just say that there is a complete information overload.
01:15:49.080
Obama really introduced this into our politics.
01:15:53.380
They always say there were no scandals during his administration.
01:15:56.680
When the reality is he so overwhelmed us with scandalous behavior that you could never
01:16:02.360
focus on making any one of the scandals last or stick or be meaningful.
01:16:10.460
But this sort of shotgun effect has been our national reality ever since Barack Obama.
01:16:17.020
Politics comes at us so fast and so constantly now.
01:16:20.620
No one will ever remember any of the promises that Biden made.
01:16:23.520
I don't think we can blame Obama for the information overload.
01:16:29.840
I think the minute that we, and this is just a historic argument, the minute that we expanded
01:16:35.380
the inherent power of the federal government, this was the wage.
01:16:39.840
Because as soon as the power, when the power was small, you couldn't promise things that
01:16:45.440
If you promised that you were going to put a chicken in every pot in the United States,
01:16:49.340
everybody's going to be like, hell, you don't have that kind of power.
01:16:52.480
Be like me arguing that for my income, I'm going to give each person in the United States
01:16:59.740
The minute that the government expanded its powers, what it did is two things.
01:17:02.620
It made an empty promise to the American people that it could use those powers for exorbitant
01:17:07.340
And two, it did everything way more incompetently.
01:17:09.820
And that combination means that you get a spiral of promises.
01:17:12.400
Because what happens is that people look at the size of the government.
01:17:14.820
They're like, why can't the government fix this problem in front of me?
01:17:20.780
A problem that the founders never would have thought the federal government should be in
01:17:23.880
It turns out the federal government can't fix that problem because the federal government is
01:17:26.960
So instead, the federal government, but if you're a congressperson, you can't make the
01:17:31.280
argument we'll crap at everything because if you're crap at it, we'll replace you.
01:17:33.780
So instead what you do is you say, I will fix it.
01:17:35.880
You put me in charge of the $7 trillion federal government and I'll fix that problem for you.
01:17:39.740
And you say, well, the reason that I failed is because I didn't have enough power, guys.
01:17:42.860
Obviously, if I had more power, then I mean, that's Joe Biden on the border, right?
01:17:48.220
But if you just give him more power, then he'll fix all your problems for you.
01:17:52.240
And again, the only check that the American people had on that was the original constitutional
01:17:56.320
structure that limited the inherent power of the government.
01:17:59.240
As soon as it becomes a big grab bag of cash and power, then the person who promises to
01:18:02.900
do the most for you and your friends with it is going to win.
01:18:04.940
These are questions from our Daily Wire Plus subscribers.
01:18:09.780
They make it possible for us to bring you the show.
01:18:11.320
So we try to give them horrible answers to the questions.
01:18:14.700
What is your opinion on starting a boycott on CVS and Walgreens over the abortion pill?
01:18:21.600
I mean, on an individual basis, if somebody decides they don't want to shop at a store like that
01:18:27.320
for that reason, I think that's perfectly noble.
01:18:29.500
Well, I wouldn't be in favor of announcing a boycott on CVS and Walgreens, or even one
01:18:38.600
or the other, certainly not both, because it will fail.
01:18:41.220
And the thing we learned with Bud Light is that you can have a successful boycott until
01:18:47.580
you have powerful people on the right who come along a year later and decide to undercut
01:18:52.200
But you can have a successful boycott, but you have to be very targeted and you have to
01:18:56.540
You have to find a good target, a target you have a leverage over.
01:18:59.500
And that you could conceivably, you know, you could remove this from people's lives
01:19:03.720
and it wouldn't be a huge inconvenience to them.
01:19:08.120
You know, the problem on the right for so many years, the reason why we couldn't successfully
01:19:11.600
complete a boycott is because, you know, we're just, it's like every company is woke.
01:19:19.680
And, you know, something like Walgreens and CVS, you're just not.
01:19:25.880
And so we can announce that and say, we're not going to go there anymore.
01:19:30.380
I mean, and their pharmacies is kind of, it's kind of not quite the same thing as putting
01:19:38.220
It's just not, it's, it's, it's, it's a noble thing.
01:19:41.520
It's moral, but it's, it's not a smart strategy to announce a boycott like that.
01:19:48.800
Man, I live in California and all of my friends are liberal, but they hate Joe Biden.
01:19:54.000
How can I show them that while Trump may not be ideal, he's definitely better than Biden?
01:20:01.220
You're never going to convince people, left people in California, California left us,
01:20:11.960
Your liberal friends break down into two categories.
01:20:13.740
The ones who will so do voce sort of say, oh man, I would hate to vote for Trump, but
01:20:19.300
Those people, you can get those to vote for Trump and they probably will.
01:20:21.920
The people who are like, I hate Biden, but man, Trump is so much worse.
01:20:38.480
You know, I, you know, like it's, I wouldn't be surprised if voter turnout's down this year.
01:20:42.660
It turns out that a vote not for Joe Biden is a vote that does not count it for, get
01:20:48.140
It's worth half a vote if he doesn't vote for Biden.
01:20:50.300
Just don't, I was going to say, don't, don't try to trick them by telling them that the,
01:20:57.760
If you tell them the election's on a different day, then, then Biden will throw you in prison
01:21:04.440
You know, for, for years, many years, I've been telling my left wing Jewish friends that
01:21:12.940
So I thought I would cash in on October 7th by saying, I told you so.
01:21:20.180
They all say, yes, this is terrible, but it's not Joe Biden.
01:21:23.980
And I keep saying he's going to stab Israel in the back.
01:21:26.900
You know, everything he says, he is actually, as he's not the greatest supporter, as he said,
01:21:32.800
To speak for the Jews, I will say that, number one, I'm going to separate off my community.
01:21:37.800
The Orthodox community is going to vote 197% for Donald Trump.
01:21:46.420
But with that said, that's actually not my experience.
01:21:49.360
I've had a bunch of people who are liberal to kind of moderate left Jews who are quietly
01:21:54.820
saying to me, like people who I haven't talked to politically, just people I know from
01:21:58.340
my life, who have called me up since October 7th and been like, I cannot vote for this party.
01:22:05.880
I'm just telling you, my experience is, I say these things to people, and it's like hitting
01:22:14.080
It is also the case that if you believe, as people have allowed themselves to believe,
01:22:25.040
Which is funny because, I mean, on the other side, you have people who literally are standing
01:22:38.440
Isn't it illegal to use the State of the Union as a campaign speech?
01:22:41.920
The Hatch Act doesn't apply to the president, but surely this is illegal.
01:22:46.740
Well, I mean, because the Hatch Act doesn't apply to the president, it's not.
01:22:53.120
And he was obviously using the State of the Union as a campaign speech.
01:22:56.960
I think that the Americans who like the State of the Union, who are the ones who are most
01:23:00.480
likely to be affected by the State of the Union, are not going to like this approach
01:23:05.280
If you're like us, you and me, we hate the State of the Union generally.
01:23:09.100
Or Matt, you and me, and we're happy to see eggs thrown at the president and all
01:23:17.580
The people who are watching the State of the Union because they want to see the pomp and
01:23:19.840
circumstance, like the Oscars of presidential politics.
01:23:22.540
And then they see the president roll on in there with his Harley-Davidson jacket on and
01:23:29.440
I'm not sure that's going to rub everybody the right way.
01:23:32.720
Who do you anticipate Trump will choose for his VP and why?
01:23:38.700
Yeah, I kind of think, I think some of the predictions are probably off because, well,
01:23:44.840
first of all, I don't think Trump wants a VP who he feels will get more attention than
01:23:53.020
That's why something like Vivek, I don't think that's going to happen.
01:23:58.600
So it would have to be someone who he feels is politically advantageous, but won't overshadow
01:24:11.280
So he also, Trump likes to do this thing where he's like, I will cast this like a movie because
01:24:16.660
So who looks like a vice president in that group?
01:24:19.740
He's like, oh, it's a racially diverse, united colors of Benetton cabinet.
01:24:24.820
And here's Tim Scott, who has kissed the ring and has been as subservient as I've made him
01:24:37.080
I also, I don't think that Trump wants a woman.
01:24:42.220
Because I think that he's afraid that it will overshadow his campaign.
01:24:46.700
So I think right now that Tim Scott is the obvious kind of front runner right now.
01:24:59.680
Because personally, I think the chief of staff is going to be the most important person in
01:25:10.680
And I think that he could actually run a good government while Trump is doing whatever
01:25:16.900
Well, there will be, if Trump is to serve another four years as president, there will be at least
01:25:23.620
Yeah, the first, I meant the first three months.
01:25:27.980
Let's see if we have any more questions from our Daily Wire plus subscribers.
01:25:32.020
Do you guys think that the VP pick really matters?
01:25:45.920
Can we get some Dr. Dreadle t-shirts in the VW shop?
01:25:49.780
I will say that the fax, from what I've been told, the fax sweatshirt that I wear in that
01:25:55.620
amazing rap video, that piece of high Western art, is one of the top selling items we have
01:26:05.760
I have to say that Dr. Dreadle may be one of my top five Daily Wire jokes, I think.
01:26:23.840
Can you please articulate why Trump's many character flaws do not disqualify a Christian
01:26:41.900
You know, Paul kind of expounding on Jesus saying, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's.
01:26:49.440
Paul makes this point that you should obey the governing authorities and basically stay
01:26:56.020
And I think that was a really pragmatic thing for Paul to say, because the early church would
01:26:59.880
have just been stamped out if it had taken any other position.
01:27:03.700
But I also think that there's theological truth to it as well.
01:27:13.820
There was no republic at the time that Paul was writing.
01:27:16.180
The Roman Republic had been supplanted by the Roman Empire, and the Jews didn't live
01:27:23.260
Obviously, they were colonized by imperial Rome.
01:27:26.120
But in a republic, in a democratic republic, the government is comprised and given its
01:27:37.540
And in that sense, what Paul said, or what Christ said, render unto Caesar what is Caesar,
01:27:44.440
It's just that that relationship looks much different.
01:27:48.860
And so it's not, I think, a fair New Testament position that you shouldn't be involved in the
01:27:55.100
government when you live in a democratic republic.
01:27:57.380
So to the extent that you do exist in a democratic republic, you have responsibilities.
01:28:02.520
And one of those responsibilities is your vote.
01:28:05.860
You don't always, in an electoral system, have the opportunity to vote for a great person.
01:28:13.240
You very rarely have the opportunity to vote for a great person.
01:28:15.840
You don't always have the opportunity to vote for a particularly good person.
01:28:23.480
And that vote does come with responsibility, and it is a kind of power to impact the government.
01:28:28.920
And so the choice before you in this election, I could not vote for Donald Trump in the primary.
01:28:34.660
Even though Ron DeSantis has already suspended his campaign, I voted for him in the Tennessee
01:28:42.880
Because a primary is a party preference election, and I do not prefer Donald Trump to represent
01:28:50.640
In a general election, however, it's not about my preference.
01:29:03.320
What little piece of power I have in a Republican system to represent me and to represent the country?
01:29:09.180
I don't have an option there for someone who I prefer, who actually has an opportunity
01:29:14.440
where my vote can make a difference and actually help them be elected president.
01:29:21.360
I thought there were a lot of unknowns around Trump that could be as bad as anything.
01:29:29.020
2020 was different because Trump had been president for four years, and I had seen some-
01:29:35.700
Certainly he did bring some of the bad things I was worried about.
01:29:38.120
He brought some good things that I never thought in a million years that he would bring.
01:29:41.520
He didn't bring, and this is the critically important point, he didn't bring the worst things
01:29:49.680
And so in 2020, he's a known quantity, and it became clear to me that even as a Christian
01:29:53.760
who objects to many of the behaviors of Donald Trump, when I'm actually looking at the policy
01:29:58.980
distinctions between Donald Trump and his opponent, Joe Biden, I need to use whatever
01:30:05.040
power I have not to endorse Trump, but to oppose the agenda of-
01:30:10.800
It's also better to say that in 2016, both you and I had the luxury of being in a state
01:30:16.460
If we'd been to Ohio, I probably would have voted for Trump.
01:30:20.060
But you know, Antonin Scalia once said, when he is asked what it is to be a good Christian
01:30:28.020
And I think that the same thing is true of being a good voter, and I think a good Christian
01:30:32.400
voter, that I'm not voting for the best Christian.
01:30:35.760
I'm voting for the best president that I think will win.
01:30:44.520
And destroy the border, and he's hunting down pro-lifers and throwing them in prison.
01:30:52.380
Again, your vote doesn't say that Donald Trump is the person who you would prefer to be president
01:30:59.520
It says that Donald Trump is who you would prefer to be president in a race against Joe Biden.
01:31:06.300
Do you guys think that we are realistically on the brink of World War III, and do you think
01:31:09.560
Joe Biden being a weak leader is a main cause of that?
01:31:12.100
I don't think we're on the brink of World War III, no.
01:31:15.240
I think that I could see a series of events that would lead to World War III, but you
01:31:20.020
And I think the situation we're in is directly caused by his weakness and his, especially
01:31:30.600
But, you know, the brink of World War III is a little, that's very strong for this situation.
01:31:38.240
Well, okay, so I think that to be realistic, in order for there to be a World War III, you
01:31:42.880
have to think about which powers would be involved in that world war.
01:31:46.100
Russia does not want to go to nuclear war with the West.
01:31:48.680
That is not a thing that Russia is pursuing or interested in.
01:31:51.080
Russia does not want to go to conventional war with the West.
01:31:55.480
They're getting destroyed by Ukraine, which is a second-rate military being armed with
01:32:01.220
I mean, where else could World War III come from?
01:32:03.980
Iran is not capable of fighting a World War III.
01:32:06.020
If Iran actually launched serious assaults on the United States, the United States would
01:32:14.120
China is capable of theoretically fighting with us, but China also does not want to do
01:32:19.040
They see themselves declining, but they don't have the strength to seriously challenge.
01:32:24.240
What they would do is make regional power grabs in places like Taiwan.
01:32:27.260
They don't want to get into like a real shooting war with the United States military.
01:32:29.820
Well, they're fighting a different kind of Cold War with America right now.
01:32:33.700
An information Cold War, a cybersecurity Cold War, a trade Cold War.
01:32:37.160
And it does resemble sort of the later stages of the Cold War in the sense that they have
01:32:41.340
a collapsing demographic, a collapsing economy, an expanding military-industrial complex, and
01:32:50.180
So, you know, that's not going to be a Cold War.
01:32:51.780
That'll be a bunch of regional wars around its borders, if anything.
01:32:55.020
But that said, we have more war in the world now than we have at any time during, really,
01:33:00.800
Because in enough areas of the world, you have these wars that are cropping up.
01:33:05.440
Obviously, we had the war in Afghanistan, but that was like one place.
01:33:07.360
We had the war in Iraq, that was one place, and we were directly involved.
01:33:11.700
But in terms of like international conflagrations that could break out more broadly, we have
01:33:15.860
two major ones right now, one in the center of Europe and one, obviously, in the Middle East.
01:33:22.220
I mean, what's happening in Ukraine, Joe Biden literally said a month before the invasion
01:33:26.680
of Ukraine that if basically Vladimir Putin just used the tip, he'd be fine, right?
01:33:33.040
He was like, if you just take part of Ukraine, then it'll probably be okay.
01:33:36.420
And Putin read that, and he goes, okay, well, what about if I go like further than that?
01:33:44.000
There was the fact that he had already pulled out of Afghanistan and obviously had no stomach
01:33:50.900
And communicated that very pronounced way to the world.
01:33:53.020
It was his belief that he could split Europe based on European dependency on gas.
01:33:58.780
But that miscalculation was caused by Joe Biden's appearance of weakness.
01:34:03.240
In the Middle East, the real fact that there's not Afghanistan, obviously, the real factor
01:34:08.160
The attempt to re-engage with Iran, the attempt to re-center Israeli-Palestinian policy at the
01:34:13.540
center of Middle Eastern policy is the single worst foreign policy mistake of my lifetime.
01:34:17.860
You had a burgeoning peace deal between a wide variety of Sunni states in the Middle East
01:34:24.320
All it would have taken for Saudi to sign on to a full normalization day one is like this
01:34:29.960
All Biden would have had to do is basically just pat MBS on the back.
01:34:38.280
And if Trump had been re-elected, there is zero doubt.
01:34:40.900
I mean, less than zero doubt that that absolute 100% that would have happened.
01:34:45.420
The first thing that Biden did is he came and he wrecked everything.
01:34:47.380
He came in and he delisted the Houthis, which are Saudi's enemies, as a terrorist organization.
01:34:52.120
He started renegotiating using Robert Malley, an Iranian cutout, as his go-to guy.
01:34:56.460
He started talking about how Israel needed to make concessions to the Palestinian authority
01:35:00.200
and Hamas, both of which are Iranian-funded enterprises at this point.
01:35:04.140
I mean, all of these things simultaneously led Iran to believe that if they push hard
01:35:08.580
enough, they're going to be able to scuttle all peace in the Middle East while killing
01:35:14.260
And to be fair to them, strategically, so far, that's been a success.
01:35:18.900
I mean, strategically, by launching the war and forcing Israel, because what else are they
01:35:26.100
They have obviously put any peace deal on hold because all the domestic populations in
01:35:29.200
places like Saudi Arabia are not going to be super happy.
01:35:31.780
But beyond that, the next move the Biden administration is making is even more insane.
01:35:36.320
The idea that the United States is going to put its force and weight behind a Palestinian
01:35:40.140
state in the aftermath of the Palestinian government fomenting the worst terror attack in my lifetime
01:35:49.160
or my parents' lifetime is so batshit insane that all it's going to do is lead other terrorist
01:35:55.280
groups in the Middle East and think, OK, I mean, push where there's mush, man, go.
01:35:58.100
I think we are the closest to a third world war that we have been in my lifetime, with
01:36:03.960
the possible, possible exception of the early days of the Reagan administration.
01:36:13.900
I think we're the closest we've been to a third world war in my lifetime, and I still
01:36:42.980
We were hoping he might be able to make it to a studio across from the Capitol, but we
01:36:47.600
No, they literally said in my ear, we have a clip from Michael Knowles if you want to
01:36:51.120
And then as soon as I started talking to you, fine people, about that clip, they said,
01:36:56.340
It actually is just a picture of Michael Knowles, as it turns out.
01:37:03.000
I mean, I won't say he looks amazing in this picture.
01:37:08.940
I mean, like, he's within margin of error, probably.
01:37:11.620
Michael, has Michael ever been happier than being at the State of the Knowles?
01:37:15.220
He pretended that he didn't want to be there when I saw him this morning.
01:37:22.820
Michael is to going to the State of the Union, as you are to directing films.
01:37:33.660
I'll say one more thing about the Third World War, which is, I do think, I do think
01:37:38.860
I just think we're going to start sentences that way.
01:37:40.540
I do think that we're at a fairly high likelihood of finding ourselves in the
01:37:48.480
I think we're at a very high likelihood right now.
01:37:50.340
With Biden's announcement today, I think we're like five minutes away from the United
01:37:52.820
States having to shoot things at people in Gaza or at Hezbollah.
01:37:57.580
You bring a bunch of ships right off the coast there.
01:37:59.420
All it takes is one rogue Hezbollah agent firing a rocket in an American ship, and suddenly
01:38:04.860
I mean, like, that's, this is, it's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard in my
01:38:08.560
As somebody who does not want American boots on the ground in the Gaza Strip, I would much
01:38:12.420
prefer that we not put American boots on the ground two meters from the Gaza Strip.
01:38:16.600
I saw on X that you're an evil Jew who's trying to get Americans caught.
01:38:24.560
I mean, listen, in my status as a Mossad agent, I have to cover for my actual view.
01:38:31.080
How are we looking on that Michael Knowles clip?
01:38:37.260
Gents, I wanted to come to you live, but unfortunately, the deep state has conspired to shut down our
01:38:49.220
Congressman, you had a better view than I did, and you were there with some of the hecklers
01:38:57.060
Well, I was the first to speak to Joe Biden as he entered the chamber, and I pointed to
01:39:01.940
my pen and said, Lakin Riley, and it didn't even ring a bell to him.
01:39:06.980
And when I pointed to my pen, he simply said, I like your pen.
01:39:10.180
And then later in the speech, when he said her name, he actually pronounced it incorrectly.
01:39:20.520
But I mean, you could clearly tell that he wasn't with him.
01:39:22.960
Michael Knowles and congressman from our great state of Tennessee, Congressman Ogles, who
01:39:35.900
We've delivered the people wonderful commentary.
01:39:38.000
So guys, what do you think about Return of the Jedi?
01:39:40.720
We look forward to seeing you on the next Daily Wire backstage.