Ep. 1059 - How The Red Wave Became The Red Ripple
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Summary
The Red Wave did not come to pass, but it was not a decisive win for the Democrats either. So how do we interpret this and where do we go from here? We ll talk about that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
Transcript
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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, the red wave did not come to pass, but it wasn't a decisive win
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for the Democrats either. So how do we interpret this and where do we go from here? We'll talk
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about that today. Also, voting machines were having hiccups in Arizona. Well, hiccup is one
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way to put it. And there was a red wave in Florida, at least. What can we learn from what
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happened in Florida? The women of The View try to explain what qualifies as okay free speech.
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In our Daily Cancellation, a New York Times writer accuses Jennifer Lopez of feminist heresy for
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taking her husband's last name. How dare she? All of that and more today on the Matt Walsh Show.
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Roe v. Wade has been overturned and this battle is now finally leaving D.C. and going to the
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grassroots. No group in America is better positioned than 40 Days for Life to deal with that. With about
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1 million volunteers in 1,000 cities, 40 Days for Life holds peaceful vigils outside abortion
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facilities. They have a larger presence in blue states with California being their largest state.
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Some former abortion facility directors say that these vigils can cause the abortion no-show rate
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to go as high as 75%, which is detrimental to their abortion business. These law-abiding vigils have
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closed many abortion businesses in America and nearly half of those closed abortion facilities were in
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liberal cities where abortion remains legal, including closures in San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle.
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40 Days for Life is effectively changing hearts and minds in the grassroots to end abortion.
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Check out their locations, their podcasts, and their free magazine at 40daysforlife.com. And you know,
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it's more important than ever, especially now after the election, what we find is that the fight for life
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has entered a new phase, a critical phase. It's all the more reason to get more information on 40 Days for
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Life at 40daysforlife.com. After our marathon election coverage last night, I emerged from the studio and
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looked up to see the promised red moon, or I was hoping to see it, but I couldn't see anything because
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it was overcast. It was, I think, a perfect symbol, the red moon blotted out by clouds and fog just as
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the red wave lost steam and became in the end at most a red ripple, a small red splash maybe in the
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shallow end of the pool. Now, as I speak right now, we still don't know, we don't have the final results.
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Control of Congress remains up for grabs. Republicans are inching closer towards the 218 seats in the House
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needed to take control. But the Senate sits at a 48-48 split right now, while the results in four states are
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still pending. Once again, it may all come down to a runoff election in Georgia, as at this moment, Raphael Warnock
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leads Herschel Walker by 40,000 votes or so. Now, Republicans had decisive victories in some races
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and in some states. Stacey Abrams lost convincingly to Brian Kemp, though she is, of course, still the
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governor of Georgia this morning. Beto O'Rourke once again showed off his skill as a professional
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political loser, getting demolished by Greg Abbott in the Texas governor race. In the Ohio Senate race,
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rising Republican star J.D. Vance knocked out incumbent Tim Ryan. In South Dakota, Kristi Noem doubled her
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Democratic challenger's vote total. In New York, Republicans did manage to flip a few House seats.
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And then, of course, there's Florida, where Ron DeSantis beat Charlie Crisp by 20 points,
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not only taking the governorship, but effectively flipping the entire state red. So Florida is no
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longer a swing state. It is a red state. And that's something that even the media had to begrudgingly
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admit. Can we just talk about Florida? Because we really haven't had a chance to do that.
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I was texting with a source in Florida, political source, who pointed out to me that this will be the
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first time since Reconstruction that Florida won't have any Democrats in statewide office. Period. So and
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DeSantis' victory, Miami-Dade. Florida, once a perennial swing state, it turned blue for Obama twice, then red for
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Trump twice. Now it appears solid red, thanks in part to a huge effort in voter registration on the
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Republican side and the powerful Latino vote leaning further and further red. Even the Democratic
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stronghold of Miami-Dade County turned red for the first time in 20 years. Can I ask you while we've got
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you if there's any single result or any single trend that's evident thus far that surprised you the most
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tonight? Obviously, all of us looking at this stuff and hearing both sides make their projections, you sort of
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weigh everything based on what you know and what you can view yourself. But as somebody who's been inside these
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kinds of campaigns, what has struck you as legitimately unpredictable in tonight's results?
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Well, first of all, the divergence between Florida, which, you know, can't sugarcoat a disaster for the Democrats.
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Disaster for the Democrats indeed in Florida, but the entire election nationwide was not. In fact,
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the disaster went the other way in some cases. Dr. Oz may now lay claim to the most humiliating
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Republican political defeat in American history, losing his Senate race to a man with brain damage.
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Fetterman, an oafish, ridiculous man-child who lived off of his parents' money until recently
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and campaigned on releasing violent criminals from prison, and then suffered a stroke almost
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entirely destroying his ability to understand English or speak it, both of which skills that
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he hadn't quite perfected even before the stroke, still managed to win. He was one of the weakest
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candidates ever fielded by a major political party in the United States, and somehow Republicans
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managed to field an even weaker one. So we'll return to that in just a moment. But staying on the
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depressing side of things, both Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan and Kathy Hochul in New York won their
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races. Now, you could say that both races were uphill battles for Republicans, and that would
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be true. You could try to find a moral victory in the fact that Lee Zeldin, the Republican challenger
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in New York, made it within striking distance. In fact, he did better than any Republican gubernatorial
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candidate in that state in years. But there really are no moral victories in politics. There are only
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victories and defeats, wins and losses. And the fact is that Nurse Ratched in Michigan and her awkward aunt
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in New York both won their races. That's it. So no matter what happens from here, it will not be the
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Republican blowout that many of us expected. Neither will it be a resounding victory for the Democrats.
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The voters certainly are not giving the Democrats a mandate. They might not even give them control over
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Congress, let alone a mandate. But they also aren't delivering a sharp rebuke. So where are we left?
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We're left with an electorate, divided, confused, uninspired. And here are my takeaways at this point.
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First, as a believer in personal accountability, we cannot ignore the role of the voter in their own
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voting decisions. In fact, one might even say that the voter is 100 percent responsible for his own
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vote, which means that voters in New York and Michigan, for example, chose feckless tyrants who
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locked them down during COVID but refused to lock up violent criminals to keep their community safe.
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They chose moral incoherence and tyranny. In Pennsylvania, they chose a vegetable.
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In many states and in many races, they chose to reward the people who are actively making their lives worse.
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Exit polls, for whatever they're worth, which clearly isn't much, did consistently show that
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voters are angry, they're dissatisfied with the direction of the country. And yet, in so many cases,
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they chose more of what they're not satisfied with. They think we're on the wrong path,
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and they decided that we might as well keep driving down it.
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This is the kind of election post-mortem analysis that nobody really wants to give because it's
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unpopular to blame the voters for their own choices. We'd rather treat voters like children
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who are not responsible for their own decisions, but I'm not a fan of infantilizing adults in that
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way. And so I must point out, however unpopular it might be, that there is a sickness in the minds
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and souls of many people in this country. It compels them to choose tyranny, to choose dysfunction,
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to choose things that are anathema to their own well-being. And this election isn't, that isn't,
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you know, breaking news from this election. We've known that's the case for a long time now.
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And we have to confront that fact, whether we like it or not. And I certainly do not like it.
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Second, all of that said, we cannot let the Republicans off the hook, not by a long shot.
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Yes, it is actually, in a literal sense, insane for Pennsylvanians to choose a cucumber to represent
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them in the United States Senate. But it's not as though the Republican alternative was highly
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appealing. I mean, Dr. Oz is a snake oil salesman fraud, as I said during the primaries.
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He's a carpetbagger phony who didn't even live in the state he wanted to represent.
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I actually largely agree with, and there are some conservatives that are making fun of this,
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but I largely agree with this assessment from Claire McCaskill on NBC. Listen.
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I don't think we should leave the conversation of Oz and Fetterman without talking about authenticity.
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He was who he was. He dressed how he dressed. He was comfortable in his own skin. Meanwhile,
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we had crudités. And then, maybe the biggest sin of all, the Sunday before the election,
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or Saturday before the election, he makes reference to people, Oz does, in Pennsylvania.
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He says, go out and find 10 voters before the Steelers game tomorrow. The Steelers had a bye.
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They didn't even play the next day. He didn't even know the Steelers' schedule. Now,
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that is really political malpractice in a state like Pennsylvania.
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That's basically right. I mean, John Fetterman's regular guy shtick wasn't nearly as authentic as
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she claims that it was, but he was more authentic than Oz. Most importantly, Fetterman was a leftist,
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and for the most part, he didn't try to hide it. Now, with a few exceptions, flip-flopping on fracking
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and all of that, but he mostly ran on a platform that he believed in. It was an insane, destructive,
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radically crazy platform, but it was his platform. Oz, meanwhile, ran on a conservative platform that
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he was making up on the fly. Oz, too, is a radical leftist. I mean, he was shilling for transing the
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kids 10 years ago. He was ahead of the curve, except he decided 15 seconds ago to pretend to
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be a conservative. Now, voters shouldn't want to vote for a radical leftist, but if they do,
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why would they choose the one pretending to be a conservative when they have the authentic
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article available to them, right? The authentic leftist who embraces his leftism. If that's what
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they want, that's what they're going to take. Oz's campaign had no message. It had no point.
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It couldn't justify its own existence. Oz had nothing to say. He couldn't even explain, like,
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why are you running for Senate again in Pennsylvania, of all places? You don't even live here? Like,
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what do you, why? He could never explain that. He was fighting for nothing but his own political
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advancement, and that was incredibly obvious to everyone, everyone except Republican primary voters
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in the state, apparently, and Donald Trump, who endorsed Oz. Yet, this is symptomatic of a much
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larger issue with the Republican Party nationwide. It has no message. It has no point. It has no
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coherent platform. It has no leadership. It has leaders, you know, warm bodies filling those roles,
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I mean, but they're not actually leading, which is why they should all be fired and sent off into
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exile in disgrace. I mean, it's one thing to campaign on the fact that Democrats are bad.
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And they are, and that's easy enough to point out. We know they're bad. Apparently,
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even many of their voters know they're bad. But you also have to be able to explain, number one,
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why they're bad and why you are better and what exactly your vision for the country is. You need
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to have a complete message. But what is the Republican message? It's a day after the election. They still
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haven't figured it out. Third, all of that said, there is one place, at least, where the Republican
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Party has a message and knows how to communicate it. And as we already covered, that place is
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Florida. In fact, Ron DeSantis conveyed that message very concisely, I think, during his victory speech
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last night. Let's listen to this. We have embraced freedom. We have maintained law and order. We have
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protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers. And we reject woke ideology.
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We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the
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corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die.
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Now, these election results are shaking out in such a way as to guarantee that both parties learn
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exactly the wrong lessons. Democrats will decide that losing by less than expected counts as a historic
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paradigm-shifting victory. And they will proceed to double down on left-wing radicalism.
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Republicans, on the other hand, will likely determine that they lost because they leaned
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too heavily into the culture war. They'll decide that they should simply stick to talking about taxes
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and leave it at that because that's what they learn after every election.
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But Florida proves both assumptions wrong. You heard it there in his speech. Ron DeSantis ran on
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and governed on a commitment to freedom, law and order, the rights of parents, opposing leftist
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indoctrination in education, and rejecting woke ideology wholesale. On that final point, he is one of a few
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Republicans on the national stage who made gender ideology, especially as it targets kids, into a
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central campaign issue. And do you know what those few Republicans all have in common? They won. And
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they won big. Ron DeSantis fights the culture war. He fights it boldly. And he fights it not just with
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speeches, but with law and policy. And he wins. He doesn't just win. He flipped deep blue parts of his
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state red with his strategy. He took entire Democrat voting blocks away from them. He won the Latino
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vote. And not by pandering, but with a cultural family first message. And it turns out that's what
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Latino voters are looking for. I mean, many of them live in multi-generational households. They value
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family. So they don't need to hear Latinx and they don't want to hear the LGBT. They don't want to hear
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about that. They want to hear about the rights of parents, protecting kids. That's what many
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Americans want to hear about. DeSantis is perceived as the governor most invested in the culture war
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and most willing to fight it. And this was the result. That was the result. Okay. And on top of that,
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he is simply an effective and competent governor in a country that has too few of them.
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And you need to have both of those. Okay. Because you can't just like talk about cultural issues
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and all of that. You also have to govern. He does both. The common thread connecting the
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underperforming Republicans is that most of them, not all, most of them were empty vessels with no
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coherent vision or message. And despite of what you'll hear in the coming weeks, they mostly shied
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away from the cultural issues. Or they were too busy, you know, sucking up to Donald Trump,
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thinking that that would bring them over the finish line. And that brings me to my final point, which is
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that we can whine and cry about this and throw up our hands in defeat, you know, and that's it.
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Or we can see this as an opportunity. Because again, neither party has a mandate. Neither party came
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away with a landslide victory on a national scale. The voters, as I said at the top, are listless,
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confused, apathetic, uninspired. They're looking for leadership, for a message, for something and
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someone to rally behind. Are we going to give that to them or not? Now let's get to our five headlines.
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All right. Well, it wouldn't be an American election in the modern age without hiccups,
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you know, voting machine hiccups. You know how they always have those hiccups. And so this is
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a report from Fox News. It says, the campaigns for Republican gubernatorial candidate Kerry Lake,
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U.S. Senate candidate Blake Masters, and the RNC are suing Maricopa County, Arizona over issues with
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voting tabulation machines. The GOP lawsuit sought to keep polls open until 10 p.m. in a county. It
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also asked the state court to instruct the inspector at every polling location that voters whom the e-poll
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book have recorded as having previously voted this election must be permitted to complete and cast a
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provisional ballot. So that was the lawsuit. And what this comes from is, as we say, or as the
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Maricopa County Board of Supervisor Bill Gates told Fox News there was a hiccup, and the hiccup led to
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20% of the voting machines going down, just like that. The GOP lawsuit said that the issues hit at
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least 36% of all the voting centers. Now, the fact that we always have these kinds of issues,
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the fact that they are so often in the same places, like Maricopa County is always a problem,
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like at a certain point it becomes a conspiracy theory to claim that, or to assume that there's
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no intentionality behind any of it. That becomes the conspiracy theory. You have these kinds of
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issues every single time, burst water pipes, whatever, like you just, you know it's going to
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happen, and it does. And it's happened here too. So as I've said many times, like first of all,
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is there cheating in an election? Of course there is. I mean, absolutely. That's just a fact.
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The only question becomes, where is it happening? On what scale did it happen?
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But just to deny it wholesale, as Democrats like to do, again, that's just, that's the conspiracy
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theory. Because now, they don't want to talk about voter fraud. For them, they say, they talk
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about voter suppression. And in fact, they were doing that last night. There were left-wing pundits on,
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there was one on MSNBC, for example, blaming voter suppression. And in fact, saying that this doesn't
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count as a fair and equitable election in Georgia, because Stacey Abrams didn't win.
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The thing about voter suppression is that, you know, to use a term I find myself using a lot
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recently, that is unfalsifiable. That's an unfalsifiable theory, to say voter suppression.
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Because what you're claiming is that, well, there are a whole bunch of voters who would have
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voted, but they didn't. And the reason they didn't is because the vote was somehow, in some
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really abstract way, suppressed. Like they were convinced in this, some kind of mind game to not
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go and vote. You can always just claim voter suppression. It's unfalsifiable. Now, on the other
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hand, when we talk about potential issues of voter fraud, cheating, rigging, that sort of thing,
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you can point to actual things that are happening, like a voting machine hiccup, for example.
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And also, we can look at what they're doing in broad daylight.
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You know, opening up early voting, turning election day into election month, election two months,
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election three months, going out of their way to make the election less secure.
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These are all, these are all attempts to, in effect, rig the election. And then that's to say
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nothing of the media and big tech, as we know, they did Hunter Biden laptop. That's the most infamous
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example. It's certainly not the only example. It's the full, it's a, it's a full court press all the
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time, but especially around elections, to get rid of and suppress anything that might be inconvenient
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or embarrassing for Democrats. They did with Hunter Biden laptop, but they do that with everything.
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And all of these are efforts to influence and, in effect, rig the election. All of that is happening.
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There's also this, a lot of the analysis this morning focuses on Trump, and a lot of that analysis
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is like this from CNN. This is a typical, typical article here. It says, former President Donald
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Trump's endorsements for political candidates in close, high-profile races have not yet given
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Republicans the swift and sweeping victories they had anticipated for this election cycle,
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despite many GOP hopefuls banking on his support to propel their campaigns.
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Many critical midterm races have yet to be called as of Wednesday morning, but so far,
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no Republican endorsed by Trump in a toss-up gubernatorial U.S. Senate or House race has won.
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Among those toss-up races where Trump had publicly backed a candidate, CM projects the governor's seats
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in Wisconsin and Kansas, a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, and four House seats are going to Democrats.
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The Trump-backed candidate with the highest profile who pulled out a win was J.D. Vance in Ohio,
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who is projected to become the next U.S. senator from Ohio after defeating Tim Ryan.
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Trump has traveled across the country, stumping for Republicans at huge rallies that mirrored event
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programs of his past presidential campaign stops, and so on and so forth. Now, right,
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not all of Trump's candidates did poorly. J.D. Vance, good example of one who did well.
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And we say Trump's candidates, it's like he endorsed them, but he didn't own them. And J.D. Vance in
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particular. Now, you're not going to take the credit away from Trump. So that's the thing you
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can't give him. That's what the media wants to do. And Trump pointed this out yesterday.
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And of course, it's true that if the candidate loses, then that's Trump's fault. But if it
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wins, Trump doesn't get any credit for that. So you can't do that. J.D. Vance, the endorsement helps,
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but J.D. Vance is also was a really good candidate and ran a very good campaign on top of that.
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So there's a candidate that won. And some of the ones who may or may not lose were still good
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choices in my view. I mean, I like Blake Masters in Arizona. I would have chosen him too if I was
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Trump. I would have endorsed him. And I don't know if he's going to win or not at this point. It's
00:24:21.940
still, I guess it's, it still hasn't been decided. And you also can't blame Trump entirely for
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a candidate's loss, obviously. But the fact is that he made some awful choices. Principal among
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them was Oz, but that's not the only one. And these again are, these are, it's not,
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it's one thing to come along during the general election and endorse the Republican, okay.
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And then the Republican loses, well, you know, you can't be blamed for that, obviously.
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But Trump actually, you know, Trump is the reason, most likely, that Dr. Oz became the
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Republican nominee, endorsed him in the primaries. And then that nominee went on to lose to a
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vegetable. It's not like this was unforeseeable, okay. It's not like this is, this is some sort of
00:25:08.220
twist ending that nobody could have seen coming. Many of us were saying all along, it cannot be Dr.
00:25:14.000
Oz. Whatever you think of the other candidates in the GOP primary, Oz cannot be the guy. He's a
00:25:19.600
fraud. He's a phony. He doesn't even live in the state. Nobody's going to take him seriously.
00:25:24.420
The fact that he was on TV doesn't matter. Nobody cares about that. No one's impressed with that
00:25:28.680
anymore. And we said that and it was to no avail. So what does this mean? Does it mean that everything
00:25:36.440
Trump, that every pick Trump makes is wrong? No, but it does mean he doesn't have a Midas touch,
00:25:43.700
far from it. And then there's the bigger point that Trump sort of reasserted himself into the
00:25:51.580
election conversation in the days leading up to Tuesday. And that doesn't appear to have helped
00:25:56.980
very much either. The other thing to keep in mind, you look at Trump now in 2022, you look at him after
00:26:02.400
after 2020. And there's been a definite change. Because Trump in 2016, this is one thing people
00:26:09.920
miss. Yeah, he was a sensation. Yes, he was a celebrity and all of that. And he still is all
00:26:18.520
those things. But he also, it was a very message-driven campaign in 2016. You knew what the message was.
00:26:26.660
It was a forward-looking, message-driven campaign. And people forget that it's not just a personality
00:26:34.600
cult. People got behind Trump because they believed in his message. And he hammered that message home
00:26:41.260
constantly. Immigration, build the wall, right? That was probably the number one thing. But also,
00:26:49.600
drain the swamp, dismantle the establishment. Now, we can talk about how well he followed through,
00:26:56.540
in any of those things when he was actually president. But that was the message. And it was
00:27:00.460
a message-driven campaign. And there's this, the media wants to pretend that Trump in 2016 was
00:27:10.640
entirely personality cult. That's all it was. Yeah, there's some element of that. There's an element
00:27:15.820
of that with every politician on a national scale. With Trump being at the level that he is,
00:27:21.060
it's a much, much greater element. But even so, it was message-driven.
00:27:27.540
You look at him now, though, and what is the message? It's, it's, it's, there's, I'm not even
00:27:34.000
sure what, we talk about the problem with Republicans not having a message. What's your point? What's your
00:27:37.900
message? That includes Trump. He's one of the principal violators here. What's your, what's your message?
00:27:45.320
What does all this mean? Well, it means it needs to be a real primary in 2024.
00:27:54.380
You know, if you're a Ron DeSantis supporter, there's no point in complaining and saying that
00:27:59.560
Trump should just not run and should endorse DeSantis. It's not going to happen. And if you're
00:28:05.520
a Trump supporter, there's also no point in saying, well, DeSantis should stay out of it and just,
00:28:09.320
this rightfully belongs to Trump. It doesn't rightfully belong to anyone. No one's a king.
00:28:13.900
You got to run and you got to win. And so now this is what we should be pushing for.
00:28:20.080
This is, this is what we're, we're, we're gearing up for is a, a 20, a primary for 2024,
00:28:24.160
knock down, drag them out. And it's not just going to be Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump either,
00:28:28.500
by the way, there's gonna be a bunch of them jumping in there. We might as well embrace that.
00:28:33.820
Let the best man win. All right. Not all bad news. Uh, actually some very good news here in Tennessee,
00:28:40.180
where our incumbent governor, by the way, Bill Lee won easily, uh, bill one, this is the first,
00:28:45.640
well, Bill Lee won easily. We also have the legislation, which is bill number one that is
00:28:51.780
just officially been filed. Uh, the first piece of legislation of the season, which bans the gender
00:28:58.340
transition of minors in the state. Uh, we've been fighting for this and now we have it now it's here.
00:29:03.940
So here's the press release from majority leaders, William Lamberth and Jack Johnson.
00:29:08.260
We pull it up. Um, it says Tennessee majority leaders, William Lamberth and Jack Johnson today
00:29:13.440
introduced the protecting children from gender mutilation act, providing the nation's strongest
00:29:18.100
protections against the removal of a child's healthy body parts. House bill one, Senate bill one
00:29:23.500
bans medical interference that alters a child's hormonal balance and procedures that remove their
00:29:28.600
organs to enable the minor to identify as a gender different from their biological sex.
00:29:32.920
So this is not just banning the, uh, surgical procedures on minors. Of course it does ban that,
00:29:40.640
but very crucially, it also bans the drugs, you know, puberty blockers, hormone drugs,
00:29:45.940
and all that. That's all bans. It creates a private right of action, allowing a minor injured due to a
00:29:51.060
violation of the law to sue for damages. The legislation also allows courts to impose an
00:29:55.600
additional $25,000 for each violation. Republican leaders committed to, uh, ban gender disfiguring
00:30:02.000
procedures for minors after troubling video surfaced on social media in September. Reports
00:30:05.720
from daily wires, Matt Walsh showed a local medical provider promoting so-called gender affirming care
00:30:09.900
as a huge moneymaker. The report raises nationwide awareness and serious ethical concerns about
00:30:14.760
procedures performed on minors at pediatric transgender clinics across the country. Uh,
00:30:18.980
and then we've got the bullet points that the statement goes on for a while, but the bullet points
00:30:22.880
just to review the protecting children from gender mutilation act filed today.
00:30:27.160
One creates a private right of action, allowing a minor parent of a minor injured as a result of
00:30:32.300
the violation to sue for damages, uh, allows a child to bring a civil cause of action against
00:30:37.560
a parent. If a parent consented to the violation on the minor's behalf allows courts to impose a
00:30:42.920
$25,000 penalty per violation requires a state attorney general to establish a process for reporting
00:30:48.340
violations of the law allows the state attorney general to bring an action against a healthcare
00:30:52.020
provider for knowingly violating the law within 20 years of the violation, uh, within 20 years.
00:30:58.100
That's important too. Uh, and then also the bill makes exceptions for children born with chromosomal
00:31:03.740
anomalies or congenital defects. Now, um, so there's two key points here.
00:31:12.260
Well, three, I mean, the first is that these procedures are banned. That's the most important thing.
00:31:16.100
The second is the financial compensation aspect of this, which I think is really important,
00:31:21.940
uh, because there are a lot of people, a lot of minors that are being victimized by this stuff,
00:31:31.180
but they have no recourse. They have nowhere to go because the law doesn't allow it. The law doesn't
00:31:37.400
allow them to sue for medical malpractice because according to the law in these States, technically,
00:31:42.820
even though what is happening to them is this Frankenstein butchery, it's technically legal.
00:31:49.040
And so they can't sue. They got, so there's just, there's no recourse. There's nowhere to go for,
00:31:54.480
for justice, nowhere to go for compensation. Not that you can ever be fully compensated when your
00:32:00.900
body is altered in this way and disfigured permanently, but there's nowhere for them to go.
00:32:05.340
That's going to change in Tennessee. So they have somewhere to go and they can sue.
00:32:09.660
I also think it's great that they, that the children, they can not only sue the medical
00:32:16.040
providers who did this to them, but they can also sue their parents if, if their parents were complicit.
00:32:24.720
And, uh, I don't know how people are going to react to that or, or, or take that, but as far as I'm
00:32:31.880
concerned, that is exactly what needs to happen. Because in many of these cases, not all, but in many of
00:32:38.840
these cases, these parents are the number one villains. Yeah. There's the doctors. Okay. And
00:32:43.640
they're in it for the money and it's a big cash cow and all that. We know that from the videos that we
00:32:47.300
posted, but the parents, like at least you can. So you've got corrupt money, hungry doctors. I get
00:32:57.480
that. It's not good. It's evil. It's terrible. But I sort of understand the concept that there are
00:33:02.300
corrupt money, hungry people out there that will do terrible things because they get paid and you,
00:33:05.860
you understand their motivation. Um, it's the motivation shared by many evil people who've
00:33:13.880
done many evil things over, over history, but the parents, I mean, what's your motivation
00:33:19.280
to consign your children to this? And I'm being somewhat rhetorical here. I know some of the
00:33:25.460
motivation. It's, it's a form of virtue signaling. It's a lot of different things,
00:33:28.760
but they need to be held accountable to. And there's one other point in the way that this
00:33:35.800
bill was written, but I also want to point out, um, which is that the, the bill makes the gender
00:33:45.320
transition of minors. It makes it a prohibited medical practice. Okay. Bans it as a medical
00:33:50.460
practice. And what does that mean? It means that, well, it means you can't do it. It's your band.
00:33:53.840
If you do it, you lose your medical license, uh, along with all these other penalties that will,
00:33:58.340
that, that come down as well, but it's not criminalized. It hasn't been made a criminal
00:34:04.360
matter. And I, I, I talked to some of the legislators about this and they were explaining to me,
00:34:09.980
you know, when they, and they first shared the bill with me and, you know, the fact that it's not
00:34:15.340
actually criminalized, of course, for my, cause I'm, I'm gung ho. And like, I want to take these
00:34:20.100
doctors, put it, put it, throw them in prison for 50 years, you know, for, for life in prison
00:34:24.680
is what I would like to do. And what they explained to me, and I thought I found it very compelling
00:34:30.240
is that if you don't make it a criminal matter, then you are sidestepping the DAs because one of
00:34:39.280
the big problems that Republicans have is you got these woke, often Soros funded DAs that come into
00:34:45.900
these cities. And yeah, there are a lot of things that are crimes, but the DAs have the power to
00:34:51.460
decide what they're going to enforce. And they could just say, well, I'm not enforcing that,
00:34:54.780
you know, it's a crime and I'm not going to enforce it. You say that it's a crime, but I say,
00:34:58.300
I'm not going to enforce it. And then what do you do? You're just, you're just, uh, you're handicapped
00:35:03.640
by that. You've, you've put yourself at their mercy. So this is, this is a way of getting around
00:35:10.500
that problem. You're not going to make yourself, you're not going to put yourself at the mercy
00:35:14.380
of democratic left-wing DAs relying on them to enforce this law, which they simply just will
00:35:20.700
not do. I think this is a clever way of getting around that by saying, well, it's, we're, we're,
00:35:26.500
we're going an entirely different direction. So of course, if you, you know, you remove,
00:35:33.320
you take away the medical license, if you continue practicing medical without medicine without medical
00:35:36.920
license, that is a crime and you go to prison for that. So it's in effect, it's still even criminalized.
00:35:41.600
Uh, but then you also have the civil penalties and you are initially stepping around the DAs,
00:35:47.640
which I think is a smart idea. All right. So the women over on the view were, um, squawking this
00:35:53.820
week about free speech. And I want to go through a couple of these clips. First of all, here's Whoopi
00:35:58.940
Goldberg announcing, um, tragically that she's leaving Twitter.
00:36:04.980
It has been a little over a week since Elon Musk took over Twitter and the places. It's a mess.
00:36:11.920
He's already called back some of the workforce. He fired a few days ago. He's putting his $8 charge
00:36:17.420
for blue check verification on hold. First, it was going to be $20. Now it's going to be $8.
00:36:22.660
He also suspended Kathy Griffin for impersonating him on a parody account,
00:36:29.260
which has started a free Kathy hashtag to Trent. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm getting off. I'm getting
00:36:38.880
off today because I just feel like, you know, it's, it's so messy and I I'm tired of now having
00:36:48.420
had certain kinds of attitudes blocked and now they're back on. And I just, I'm going
00:36:55.260
to get out. And if it settles down and I feel more comfortable, maybe I'll come back. But as
00:37:01.540
of tonight, I'm done with Twitter. Of course, if you're like me, you hear that and you think,
00:37:07.780
uh, uh, Oh, you were on Twitter. I didn't even know that. Like, what are the, what are the,
00:37:11.600
I just want to know if I can get in their own head, get in their heads, which is not really
00:37:16.240
the place I'd want to be. But well, how do you think people are going to react to this?
00:37:19.560
Do you think people are making some big dramatic announcement? I'm done. You know,
00:37:24.120
I might be back later, but I just, for now I'm out of there, which by the way,
00:37:27.740
when it comes to dramatic announcements, that's, uh, that's, that's kind of an anticlimactic way
00:37:32.940
to go about it. I'm done. I mean, I might come back later, but I'm done for now. I will not be on
00:37:38.820
Twitter again until at least tomorrow morning, if not a little bit sooner, but at this moment
00:37:44.600
right now, I'm not going to be, I am not using Twitter at this moment while I'm on TV.
00:37:49.320
But what do they expect? Do they think that people are going to, like the people think it's
00:37:53.920
good that Elon Musk took over Twitter? Are they going to say, well, nevermind. I mean,
00:37:56.460
if this scares, uh, Whoopi Goldberg away, I can't imagine Twitter without Whoopi Goldberg.
00:38:04.380
And then you also see once again, just the total absolute fragility of these people.
00:38:09.720
She says, oh, all these people that were, they were, I was insulated for them, from them. And now,
00:38:16.040
and now their, their ideas are going to be, I'm going to maybe be exposed to some of their ideas
00:38:23.280
and opinions and their words. And I can't, I, I can't deal with that.
00:38:30.860
She also has some thoughts on the nature of, uh, free speech. I think this is in clip six.
00:38:35.860
Communications Act, which a lot, which basically allows this to happen. I think it's section 230.
00:38:42.400
It allows, um, you know, protection of social media as just platforms under the freedom.
00:38:49.420
Well, they're just say that they're, they're third party platforms. They're not the ones that
00:38:52.840
are putting it out there. And that can only change by legislation. And if the Republicans
00:38:57.720
rule the Senate, it's a bit challenging. So if you treat it like a publication, then that means
00:39:04.220
they're liable for any crazy thing someone posts, which-
00:39:06.600
Well, it is a publication. It is a publication.
00:39:10.080
They keep saying that it's free speech. And some speech is not all for, all speech is not
00:39:15.340
free speech. Some speech is not okay free speech. So everybody has to agree on that. But if people
00:39:22.140
keep saying, well, you heard my free speech, it's going to be a problem. But you know what?
00:39:26.020
This is going to be, this is our problem, but ain't my problem today because I'm out.
00:39:33.700
Some speech is not okay free speech. That's, that's it. So there's been this debate for
00:39:41.000
centuries really about, about free speech. What is free speech? What counts as free speech?
00:39:45.620
And is free speech absolute? And Whoopi Goldberg has, I guess, settled, settled the debate entirely.
00:39:54.800
She says that, you know, some speech is just not okay. And how do we know if it's not okay or not?
00:40:01.880
I guess she'll tell us. Meanwhile, although this maybe has been a debate, I've never found the debate
00:40:09.980
all that interesting because to me, now they're always around the margins. They're always going to be
00:40:14.740
the harder kind of cases. But for the most part, you know, when you, like 99.9% of all the speech
00:40:23.300
that goes on, it's, it's really easy to, to determine whether it, quote, counts as free speech
00:40:31.000
or whether it ought to count as free speech or not. Okay. And the things that shouldn't count as free
00:40:38.060
speech, generally speaking, if you're making direct violent threats against someone, actual threats,
00:40:44.740
and using a pronoun, you know, like that's not a threat. Disagreeing with you is not a threat.
00:40:52.480
Saying something like, I'm going to come to your house and kill you, like saying the things that
00:40:55.400
trans activists say to me almost every day, that's a threat. That's clearly a threat. So
00:41:00.800
that's not free speech. At least it shouldn't be. Trying to explicitly encourage other people
00:41:07.880
people to cause harm to someone or to commit a crime. Again, that clearly shouldn't count as free
00:41:14.500
speech. Defamation, right? Slander, libel, any, any, any, any form of, of speech written or spoken
00:41:24.640
where you're lying about someone in order to cause them harm, not free speech.
00:41:30.940
And those are pretty much all the exceptions. You might be able to come up with a few here and
00:41:36.660
there, but you know what the exceptions are when you see them. It's, it's pretty rare when you come
00:41:44.020
across an actual hard case of trying to determine, oh, does that qualify as free speech or not?
00:41:48.460
Because again, I think 99.9% of it, we all know. And most of the speech that goes on,
00:41:54.360
on social media, it's, uh, people might be vulgar. They might be, you know, they might be cruel.
00:42:01.380
They might be rude, but they're essentially just expressing their opinion. And if you're expressing
00:42:08.400
your opinion, that's free speech. And that ought to be allowed on social media. It ought to be allowed
00:42:15.300
on Twitter. If Twitter is saying, I mean, if, if Twitter is saying that they've got, if Elon Musk is
00:42:19.700
saying is a commitment to free speech, if that's what he's saying, that's what he wants to run his
00:42:22.780
company, then that means that people should be able to simply just express their ideas
00:42:27.000
and their opinions. And that's it. And if you don't like what someone says, you can disagree with
00:42:33.460
them. You can even block them. There's a lot of, you can choose not to read it. There are a lot of
00:42:37.180
ways around it, but to me, it's not all that difficult. Let people speak, let them voice their
00:42:46.340
opinions. That's it. That's all. Uh, speaking of letting people speak, let's get to the
00:42:52.500
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coffee. CoolPapaJMagic says, Matt is the worst of all the DW hosts when it comes to pretending to be
00:44:14.060
excited about the sponsors. I don't know why I'm always accused of that, but my excitement is
00:44:21.200
deeply sincere. Dakota says, after watching the Rogan episode, I think you really planted the seed to
00:44:29.520
get his mind going in the right direction. Well, you know, and that's in a conversation like
00:44:34.400
something like gay marriage. That's what you're looking to do, to my mind anyway.
00:44:44.020
It's very unlikely. It's unlikely in any debate, but especially if something like gay marriage,
00:44:49.340
you know, a really contentious topic like that, it's unlikely that the person you're talking to
00:44:54.820
in the moment will say, you know what, you're right, I'm going to change all, I have completely
00:44:59.500
changed my mind about this fundamental issue. So what you want to do is plant some seeds,
00:45:06.340
say a few things to get them thinking. And if in, you know, of course, in the context of a
00:45:09.300
Joe Rogan episode, it's not just talking to Joe Rogan, but to tens of millions of other people.
00:45:14.300
So even if you can't plant a seed in his mind, maybe in the minds of others.
00:45:20.920
Amanda says, my biggest criticism of Matt's appearance on JRE is that aliens didn't come up
00:45:26.440
not once. I can tell you that is also my regret as well. I just, I'm not the one leading the
00:45:36.080
conversation. It's not my interview. I was hoping for a pivot point, but then once we got on the
00:45:42.860
marriage topic, even I could, it seemed very difficult to like, how do we get from here to
00:45:47.740
space aliens invading and UFO sightings? And I just couldn't figure out how to bridge that gap.
00:45:54.020
But if there's ever another appearance, maybe we could talk about it then.
00:45:59.320
Let's see. Sarah says, side note, why does Matt look so small at his desk? Did he get a new desk,
00:46:06.500
a broken chair? This is driving me nuts. Steve says, excellent show, Matt. Thanks. Is your chair
00:46:11.620
seat closer to the floor lately? Met Freak says, for some reason, Matt looks like he's a little person
00:46:17.600
at a giant desk, like he shrunk about half a foot or something. We had this conversation before we
00:46:24.140
went on and I'm very upset by this because I know that Sean's in the control room right now
00:46:30.480
celebrating because I said I wanted to put the chair down a little bit so that I could pull my
00:46:35.020
chair in and get it underneath the desk. It just bothers me. I can't get it all the way underneath
00:46:38.380
the desk. And so I put the chair down and then we had this conversation before on the air where Sean
00:46:42.820
said that I look, you know, I look like a little person at the desk now. I look like a small child,
00:46:46.980
small beard. I look like the sweet baby gang. I look like a bearded baby at the desk because it's
00:46:50.960
too low to the ground. And I was hoping that the audience wouldn't notice it. Or if you did,
00:46:57.100
you wouldn't have, you wouldn't make comments about it, but I should know better. So Patrick says,
00:47:03.860
finish listening to the Rogan conversation before listening today. The Daily Wire article didn't capture
00:47:08.260
how well you handled yourself in the discussion on gay marriage. Rogan consistently changed
00:47:11.660
between hypothetical, moral, and legal arguments. You stayed constant. You even started defining
00:47:15.460
which argument it was as it went on. The longer it went, the better you looked. Still room for
00:47:21.340
improvement though. For example, when Rogan asked if God makes gay people, I really wanted you to ask
00:47:26.300
if God makes kleptomaniacs. And if he does, is stealing still wrong? Yeah, to me, the question about
00:47:33.840
whether people are born gay, and that kept coming up in the conversation, to me, it's kind of
00:47:39.960
irrelevant to the marriage question. Right? Like, are people born gay? Where does that come from?
00:47:51.840
All of that, that's not directly relevant to the question of how you define marriage.
00:47:57.600
And it's yet another road that takes us away from the main point that I wanted to stay focused on,
00:48:03.640
and I wanted to hammer home. But room for improvement? Yeah, absolutely. There's always
00:48:10.800
room for improvement. Look, one thing you have to know about me is that I am not satisfied with
00:48:15.860
anything ever. You know, any show, any interview I do, anything at all, I'm going to go back. It's
00:48:23.420
like a football player watching game tape, and you start picking yourself apart. That's what you have
00:48:27.740
to do though. I think that's what you have to do to be successful. It may not be to never be satisfied
00:48:32.660
with anything and to constantly be picking yourself apart and looking for weaknesses and looking for
00:48:37.160
things you can do better. That may not be the key to, you know, always being the happiest and most
00:48:43.780
satisfied person in life, but I do think it's necessary for success. Are you still giving your
00:48:48.160
money to woke razor companies that hate your values, see masculinity as toxic, and think that you
00:48:53.040
should teach your daughter to shave her beard? Well, there's a better way. Jeremy's razors are 100%
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off your founder series shave kit. That's jeremysrazors.com. Jeremy's razors, shut up and
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shave. Now let's get to our daily cancellation. Today for our daily cancellation, we turn to the
00:49:38.560
New York Times and a writer by the name of Jennifer Wiener. Back in July, Ms. Wiener wrote an article
00:49:44.160
reflecting on a very important national issue that Jennifer Lopez had gotten married to Ben Affleck
00:49:50.480
and taken his last name. I only became aware of this article because Lopez reacted to it this week
00:49:55.440
in an interview with Vogue magazine. And as you know, I am an avid reader of Vogue magazine.
00:50:00.900
Before we get to Lopez's response, let's first review Wiener's piece, which is titled,
00:50:06.560
Why It Matters That J-Lo Is Now J-F. She writes,
00:50:11.220
The second chance romance leading up to last week's nuptials between Jennifer Lopez and the actor and
00:50:15.560
director Ben Affleck was a pandemic gift that kept on giving for romantics and celebrity gossip
00:50:21.080
addicts alike. Every chapter of the Bennifer 2.0 love story gave us something new to chew on. The
00:50:26.980
most recent nugget, J-Lo's decision first announced in her subscription only on the J-Lo newsletter
00:50:31.820
to change her last name. Quote, love is a great thing, maybe the best of things and worth waiting
00:50:37.600
for. She wrote, signing off, With Love, Miss Jennifer Lynn Affleck. True love wins, except also
00:50:44.480
oof, Wiener writes. And just so you know, except also oof will be about as insightful as this essay
00:50:51.240
gets. She continues, Miss Affleck may be surrendering to the power of love with this, her fourth marriage,
00:50:57.260
but given the cringy history behind the practice, a woman taking her husband's last name feels to me
00:51:02.240
like a submission, a gesture that doesn't say I belong with him so much as I belong to him. And at
00:51:08.700
this fraught moment for feminism in America, a woman like the former Jennifer Lopez deciding to
00:51:13.920
change her name feels especially dispiriting. Sure, taking your husband's name might be a way of saying
00:51:19.080
this is for keeps, but it's also a gesture inextricably rooted in peak patriarchy, specifically
00:51:24.060
in 11th century law of coverture, which held that a married woman was for legal purposes merged with her
00:51:28.980
husband with no standing or identity of her own. That notion hung on for centuries and still
00:51:32.920
endures in various forms around the world. Now, it will not shock you to learn, as Wiener reveals
00:51:38.060
later in the article, that she herself has been married multiple times. She explains that she
00:51:42.980
didn't take the last name of her, in her words, current and final husband. It will also not shock
00:51:48.760
you to learn that she references The Handmaid's Tale, writing, quote, The idea of taking a husband's
00:51:53.220
last name always made me uncomfortable, reminding me of The Handmaid's Tale. In Margaret Atwood's
00:51:57.200
Gilead, the Handmaids, who exist to carry the babies of the elites, are stripped of anything
00:52:02.220
that identifies them as individuals, including their names. As we know, if not for Harry Potter
00:52:07.340
and The Handmaid's Tale, leftists would not be able to make any literary references at all,
00:52:11.920
just as if not for Hitler, they would be unable to make any historical references at all.
00:52:17.220
But in any case, Wiener goes on for several more paragraphs explaining why Jennifer Lopez should have
00:52:21.360
made a different decision about her own last name, and why her decisions are somehow relevant to the
00:52:26.940
public. Indeed, she says, Jennifer Lopez's name is, whether she likes it or not, a political issue.
00:52:32.900
She concludes, whether or not to take a spouse's name is a personal decision. But the personal is
00:52:38.540
political now more than ever, and especially for celebrities. Like every star or every mortal with
00:52:43.620
an Instagram account, Ms. Affleck has constructed a persona for public consumption. She has used her
00:52:48.840
platform to tell the tale of the upward trajectory of a strong, independent woman, a woman who has gone
00:52:53.600
from backup dancer to global superstar. Her brand is intense competence and hardcore self-sufficiency.
00:52:59.840
In control and loving it, as she sings in Jenny from the Block. Whoever Jennifer Affleck is in her
00:53:04.640
private life, J-Lo is a woman who might love a man but doesn't need one. Imagine if in her newsletter
00:53:10.500
she had said, I love my husband. Right now, though, women are under attack, and I won't participate in a
00:53:15.420
tradition that's historically rooted in women relinquishing their identities and their legal standing.
00:53:19.180
I'm giving my husband my heart, but I'm keeping my name. Or imagine if Ben Affleck had become Ben
00:53:26.220
Lopez. Now, admittedly, I'm sort of surprised that he didn't go that direction. And I'm also
00:53:32.280
surprised, pleasantly so, by Jennifer Lopez's response in Vogue this week, where she offers a
00:53:37.880
defense of family and of tradition. She says, reacting to the New York Times article, what, really?
00:53:43.320
People are still going to call me Jennifer Lopez, but my legal name will be Mrs. Affleck because we're
00:53:47.220
joined together. We're husband and wife. I'm proud of that. I don't think that's a problem.
00:53:51.160
And then when asked about the idea of Ben Affleck becoming Ben Lopez, she says, no, it's not
00:53:54.840
traditional. It doesn't have any romance to it. It feels like it's a power move. You know what I mean?
00:53:59.580
I'm very much in control of my own life and destiny, and I feel empowered as a woman and as a person.
00:54:04.100
I can understand that people have their feelings about it, and that's okay, too. But if you want to
00:54:07.740
know how I feel about it, it just feels romantic. It still carries tradition and romance to me, and
00:54:11.960
maybe I'm just that kind of girl. Well, well said. And now, admittedly, Jennifer Lopez has
00:54:19.340
been married something like 14 times. Under most circumstances, you would not consider her to be
00:54:23.360
an advocate or defender of the sanctity of marriage and the beauty and importance of tradition. But on
00:54:29.000
this issue, at least, she's correct. And Miss Wiener in the New York Times is, like so many other left-wing
00:54:33.660
feminists, frivolous, ridiculous, spiteful, despising what is traditional simply because it is
00:54:40.980
traditional without being able to articulate any reason beyond that. So there are three points we
00:54:46.780
made here. First, you notice how quickly the let women make their own decisions facade falls away.
00:54:53.640
As we see time and time again, the feminists left, they respect and value a woman's choice
00:54:59.360
provided she makes exactly the choice that they want her to make. If she makes the personal choice
00:55:05.780
they prefer, then it's good that, you know, she made a personal choice and they should respect her
00:55:09.980
choices. If she makes the personal choice they do not prefer, then the personal is political and they
00:55:16.200
have every right to attack her for it. That's just the way the game is played. Second, Lopez is correct
00:55:21.640
that sharing a last name is about unity. It's about being joined, bonded together. The modern,
00:55:27.320
enlightened, quote-unquote, marriage is one where nothing is shared. Separate finances, separate names,
00:55:33.420
separate lives, and eventually separate houses and separate divorce lawyers. Because the whole point of
00:55:39.440
marriage, the reason it exists is to bring man and woman together as one. That's its beauty, its mystery,
00:55:45.220
its reason. If you're determined to maintain an entirely separate identity from your spouse,
00:55:50.060
then you're really determined to close yourself off from the true nature and the greatest joys of the
00:55:56.220
marital union. Now, you could say that a last name is just a last name. What does it matter? But a name is a
00:56:03.660
symbol and symbols are deeply important and meaningful to human beings. The choice to share a name is
00:56:09.600
symbolic as discussed, but it symbolizes unity and fidelity. The choice to not share a name is also
00:56:17.900
symbolic then. And what does that symbolize? Well, the opposite of unity and fidelity. One of my favorite
00:56:23.840
Avett Brothers song called Murder in the City says, always remember there was nothing worth sharing like
00:56:28.680
the love that let us share our name. And that's what it symbolizes. Men and wife share a name because
00:56:35.480
of the love that bonds them together. Third point, finally, to Jennifer Lopez's point, tradition does
00:56:45.780
matter. Now, it may not always be enough to defend a tradition merely on the basis that it is a tradition.
00:56:52.280
Not all traditions should continue indefinitely just because they're traditions. But traditions
00:56:58.840
matter. They tie you to your ancestors, to your heritage, to your past. Our ancestors speak to us
00:57:05.940
through tradition. Traditions are their voice, the democracy of the dead, as Chesterton said.
00:57:12.620
What this means is that if you're going to tear down a tradition or get away from one,
00:57:17.900
you better have a very good reason. We may not continue every tradition, but there needs to be
00:57:24.160
a reason to discontinue it, a compelling reason. But because, you know, even if at first you're
00:57:31.360
doing something and you're saying, well, why are we doing this? And the fact that generations and
00:57:38.000
generations and for centuries and millennia before you, people did that thing, that's like an indication
00:57:45.780
that there's something worth doing here. And again, that's not always going to mean that you
00:57:50.880
should continue it. But to just reflexively say, oh, we're not going to do this anymore.
00:57:57.420
That's the problem. And the left reacts reflexively to tradition. Only their reflex is to reject it.
00:58:04.120
It may not always make sense to defend traditions merely on the basis that they are traditions,
00:58:07.800
but it makes even less sense to attack them merely on the basis that they are traditions.
00:58:12.180
In the case of marital names, the tradition is good because, as we've already covered,
00:58:16.980
it fosters unity and a shared purpose and a shared identity. It's also good because it is a tradition.
00:58:23.900
It became a tradition because it's good and meaningful. And the fact that it is a tradition
00:58:28.660
only makes it all the more good and meaningful. And that ultimately is why the left wants to dismantle
00:58:35.360
it, because they seek to dismantle everything that is good and meaningful, especially if it's traditional.
00:58:40.580
And that is why Jennifer Wiener, not Lopez, is today canceled. And that'll do it for this portion
00:58:49.540
of the show as we move over to the members block. Hope to see you there. If not, talk to you tomorrow.