The Matt Walsh Show - Friendly Fire： The LATEST Somali Scandal

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00:00:56.520 I've got to bring my kid to an appointment.

00:01:01.160 Do you know you have a wife?

00:01:03.860 You know I have six kids?

00:01:06.000 I've got a lot of kids.

00:01:07.100 I've got to go different places.

00:01:10.240 That's going to be my excuse.

00:01:11.740 I'm sitting at a hotel in Clearwater, Florida right now.

00:01:17.020 Just waiting.

00:01:17.460 Romantic Clearwater?

00:01:19.220 I am. 0.99

00:01:20.460 I'm thinking of the conversion.

00:01:22.240 I think it's time.

00:01:23.160 Full Scientologist mode.

00:01:24.700 No, I'm not.

00:01:25.240 And I don't want to offend any of the Scientologists in the audience, by the way.

00:01:28.540 Not doing that.

00:01:29.560 I'm not.

00:01:30.060 I'm just here.

00:01:31.040 I'm giving a speech.

00:01:31.980 I was doing a debate last night up at Dartmouth.

00:01:34.620 Yeah, you're debating Mehdi Hassan.

00:01:36.840 How was that?

00:01:37.980 I watched some segments of it.

00:01:40.560 So it was a real delight because it was one of those debates where they actually score it at the end.

00:01:45.640 It's a monk debate.

00:01:46.780 Right, yeah, yeah.

00:01:46.920 I saw that you won, yeah.

00:01:49.160 That was good.

00:01:49.840 Thank you.

00:01:50.540 I was really pleased to win.

00:01:52.420 Mehdi, we had a nice dinner afterward.

00:01:54.300 You know, it was it was great that I was able to vindicate the president and he, you know, was not vindicated.

00:02:00.900 But the thing I really love about it is I found out.

00:02:03.900 What did you say?

00:02:05.520 His beeper didn't go off.

00:02:07.860 I know someone told me to use the beeper line.

00:02:10.220 I didn't. It was mostly above the belt.

00:02:12.520 But the one thing I found out after is apparently Mehdi has written a book called How to Win Every Debate, which I now want to put on my mantle.

00:02:20.380 That's true.

00:02:20.900 How to win every debate except Michael Knowles.

00:02:22.560 Anyway, it was it was a good time.

00:02:24.300 but i missed the big debate last night which i hope we get to in the show which is the california

00:02:28.300 governor debate yeah i mean that that was the thing that happened and uh it was it was like

00:02:34.400 did i miss anything right now promises to each other uh i don't know are we even taping right

00:02:38.160 now i don't know i'm still having makeup put on me and applied so i'm hoping this is great content

00:02:42.200 matt do you think this is great it'll just be a running gag that throughout the next

00:02:47.160 throughout the next segment i'll just have hands coming in and adjusting my hair and putting makeup

00:02:52.040 I still think, was it Ann Coulter who referred to John Edwards as the Brett girl?

00:02:56.980 Or was that Peggy?

00:02:57.700 Yeah, that was Ann. 0.99

00:02:58.960 That was Ann. 0.80

00:02:59.460 Yep.

00:03:00.680 I want to make sure.

00:03:01.580 So we still have Matt for 93 seconds, I think.

00:03:06.120 Which means this is Friendly Fire.

00:03:15.500 Welcome, everybody, to Friendly Fire.

00:03:18.180 Very, very excited to have all of you here.

00:03:20.640 Especially this week because the Daily Wire broke this major story thanks to our intrepid Luke Rosiak, where he discovered, I think, $150 gazillion worth of fraud coming out of Ohio.

00:03:34.240 This after the great exposés from Nick Shirley and Chris Ruffo, Minnesota fraud, California fraud.

00:03:41.080 I guess what singles this one out a little bit is that this is a Republican state.

00:03:45.560 It shows you just how bad the fraud was.

00:03:48.340 And look, I'm actually speaking to some financial officers right now, weirdly enough, that's why I'm on the road right now.

00:03:53.420 And it occurred to me when I was a kid, you know, and you guys, you've all been in politics a very long time.

00:03:58.800 I remember we would hear that waste, fraud, and abuse was actually not that bad.

00:04:03.000 And you'd hear that from the Republicans because the Republicans wanted entitlement reform.

00:04:06.420 And you heard it from the Democrats because they wanted to keep doing their waste, fraud, and abuse.

00:04:10.400 Am I just enumerate or something?

00:04:13.680 Am I missing out on the magnitude?

00:04:16.420 It seems to me that the waste, fraud, and abuse actually is that bad.

00:04:23.140 I'm going to wait for Matt to talk, because if he does not talk, then it's going to be a real problem. 1.00

00:04:28.600 Yeah, well, I've only got three minutes, so I'll give my spiel about Somali fraudsters, which is they're bad. 1.00

00:04:37.460 I oppose them. I'm against it. We should deport them all. 1.00

00:04:40.620 Now, here's what I think about the fraud, though. The most shocking thing about it,

00:04:48.420 the most infuriating thing about it is just how, and this is what you take from Luke Rosiak's

00:04:53.380 report and from Nick Shirley's and from others who have looked into it. It's just how obvious

00:04:58.920 it is. It's like it didn't require, you didn't have to go undercover for years to infiltrate

00:05:05.060 their scamming gangs. All you have to do is just show up like one guy with a camera just shows up

00:05:11.660 to one of these places and looks around and it becomes incredibly obvious that these are all

00:05:17.580 shell companies and that none of this is real. So the fact that it's so obvious, that it's so

00:05:23.140 easily exposed, just makes it all the more shocking that this didn't happen earlier.

00:05:28.820 And in particular, in a place like Ohio, that's a red state. I mean, it's maybe easy enough to

00:05:34.140 understand it in a blue state because they have the political, you know, motivation to look the

00:05:39.160 other way. But this is happening in red states too. And so it's very easy to expose and easy

00:05:45.340 to crack down on. I wish it had happened a lot sooner, but now that it's happening, it's a good

00:05:49.960 thing. And we've got to go all the way, deport all these people. What I want to know is how do

00:05:56.020 we actually, how do we rent one of the, I want to own one of these buildings. I feel like the

00:05:59.800 Upkeep on the building is fantastic, right?

00:06:01.420 I mean, like you have 300 people paying you rent

00:06:03.880 and nobody in the actual building,

00:06:06.300 which means your overhead is non-existent.

00:06:08.960 That is a fabulous deal for the landlord.

00:06:12.000 That was the first thing that went through my mind.

00:06:13.780 There you go.

00:06:14.240 How do I get in on this?

00:06:15.220 It was my move.

00:06:16.480 Exactly.

00:06:17.980 There you go, Ben, thinking like a landlord.

00:06:20.860 I'm sorry. 0.98

00:06:22.320 No, but the thing that I find to be so ridiculous

00:06:25.940 about the conversation around this

00:06:28.840 is that this is in part the consequence of Republicans pushing an idea years ago,

00:06:36.440 one that I myself thought sounded like a good idea, including a lot of smart people,

00:06:41.480 to block grant money to all these states, that basically we would just take money out of the

00:06:47.840 federal government, send it in a block portion to these states, and then they could set up their

00:06:52.860 own programs that they would presumably manage more responsibly than the terrible bureaucrats 0.99

00:06:58.840 in Washington. 0.78

00:06:59.740 It turns out that bureaucrats can be terrible anywhere, including in Ohio.

00:07:03.340 And it's the kind of situation that, unfortunately, I think is far more rampant in people's

00:07:10.220 communities than maybe they understood before this whole conversation started, that all

00:07:16.040 of this kind of money flow from D.C. that goes there, there are a lot of people there

00:07:21.280 who are totally willing to stand in line to fill out forms

00:07:24.140 to do the basic DMV crap that they need to

00:07:28.120 in order to apply for these Medicaid grants and the like

00:07:31.880 and get a lot of money out of it.

00:07:34.860 And, you know, frankly, I think, you know,

00:07:37.440 the next time that I need to renew something at the DMV, 1.00

00:07:39.620 I need to find somebody from one of these Somali families 1.00

00:07:42.640 to go and just go through the process for me 1.00

00:07:44.280 because they're clearly far more efficient at it than I am.

00:07:46.320 now listen we're about to dive into all that great ohio waste fraud and abuse but first this story

00:07:55.360 from the daily wire's very own luke rosiak only exists because we have loyal mission-driven

00:07:59.800 members luke spent two months digging through a treasure trove of doge data thank you very much

00:08:04.260 elon and he was on the ground in ohio investigating this type of investigative work takes resources

00:08:09.500 and independence from woke corporate sponsors and political pressure it takes in other words

00:08:14.360 you. It has already caught the eye of the vice president's fraud task force. Vivek Ramaswamy,

00:08:21.380 the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, says he wants to prosecute aggressively

00:08:25.360 if he is the next governor. Jim Jordan, Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, they're all paying attention.

00:08:30.660 This is what mission-critical conservative journalism looks like. If you want to support

00:08:34.240 reporting that holds power accountable, become a Daily Wire member right now at dailywire.com

00:08:38.720 slash subscribe. So my question on all the waste, run, abuse is, yeah, to your point, Matt,

00:08:44.040 Yes, we don't like it.

00:08:46.500 All the...

00:08:47.860 Matt, are you leaving already?

00:08:48.960 Okay, goodbye, Matt.

00:08:50.480 The thing that we are concluding is, of course, 1.00

00:08:54.460 get rid of all the Somalis who shouldn't be here. 1.00

00:08:57.560 Yeah, he's out. 1.00

00:08:59.200 Classic.

00:08:59.640 I feel like I made the show, so I had the best contribution.

00:09:04.540 I've already covered this subject, and, you know...

00:09:08.220 You don't want to...

00:09:09.340 Can I leave, too?

00:09:11.720 Can I get out of here?

00:09:12.560 I don't want to get out of here because you're going to miss out on a very substantive political discussion, which is, I was talking to Luke about this when he broke the story.

00:09:23.640 So Luke says, yeah, you know, the issue is all these fraudsters, they're getting paid money from the government in order to reimburse them for taking care of their family members.

00:09:32.380 And this is a health care program that says, all right, if you don't want to just ship your granny off to some Jamaican employee and you actually want to take care of her yourself, but you can't do that because you've got to work, well, here the government's going to give you those very same health subsidies that you give to a separate employee so that the granny can be taken care of by a family member. 0.89

00:09:50.680 And what's tough for me about this, I'm not a libertarian, I'm a traditional conservative, is I kind of like that in principle. 0.77

00:09:57.200 It's obviously so open to fraud and abuse, I hate that, but I don't hate the idea that we're prioritizing elderly people being taken care of by their family rather than by some random employee.

00:10:09.600 No, I hate all of it.

00:10:11.420 So, I mean, it's called having a family, and your family should take care of you, like, period.

00:10:16.840 And I should not have to be paid by the federal government to take care of my family.

00:10:19.600 Like, this is my general proposition in life.

00:10:21.340 Like, there is one thing if you are in dire need, in dire poverty, and, you know, we're all trying to help make sure that your kids get fed or something.

00:10:28.600 I mean, we have programs for that.

00:10:29.800 But the idea that you have to pay me in order to go spend an hour with mom and Redor is, that's just bad family stuff to me.

00:10:36.540 Like, this is the biggest problem, I think, on maybe the integralist, right?

00:10:41.440 This idea that the government has a role in everything that virtue should actually just fill.

00:10:45.040 And this is why when people say, you know, capitalism is emptying America of her virtue, it's like, well, no, you can be virtuous and also think that the federal government ought not spend my money paying you to go visit your mom.

00:10:57.760 And in fact, one of the things that you learn when you raise kids is that when you incentivize kids to do the things that they should do, they end up doing it less often, actually.

00:11:05.660 Like if you have an expectation that your kids do chores, for example, without compensating them, they will do chores and they will be better about it than if you actually pay them to do their chores.

00:11:13.600 because you pay them to do their chores.

00:11:15.260 Now they feel like they're giving you a service

00:11:16.620 in exchange for the thing.

00:11:18.280 And so without the pay,

00:11:19.320 they're going to stop doing the thing, right?

00:11:20.940 It's a Pavlovian incentive structure.

00:11:23.220 And so I think one of the things this comes down to is,

00:11:26.580 you guys have both seen Cinderella Man.

00:11:28.680 There's that great scene in Cinderella Man

00:11:30.940 where Russell, okay, remember Russell Crowe

00:11:33.860 is James Braddock.

00:11:35.020 He's a down on his luck boxer

00:11:36.100 and he ends up on welfare.

00:11:38.500 And he goes and he becomes champion

00:11:39.940 and he goes back to the welfare office

00:11:41.840 with a roll of bills

00:11:42.760 and he puts it back through the slot and he gives it back.

00:11:45.760 There is not a single human in America

00:11:48.440 who would do that with any form of taxpayer benefit today.

00:11:51.760 And that says something about our sort of collective morality.

00:11:54.520 And I think it's also one of the reasons,

00:11:55.800 one of the things that's sort of fascinating

00:11:56.860 is that this story that Luke uncovered here

00:11:59.880 has done outsized political work.

00:12:01.760 I mean, the reality is that it's, you know,

00:12:03.300 you've got all these politicians, vice president on down,

00:12:05.820 who are taking notice of this

00:12:06.820 and saying they want to do something about it.

00:12:08.380 But I will say that in terms of sort of spectacular traffic,

00:12:11.340 you know, gigantic public attention, it hasn't done the same sort of numbers. And I think the

00:12:15.740 reason for that is not because of the quality of the story. The story is incredible. I think the

00:12:19.700 reason for that is because people do not think of it anymore because of the size and scope of the

00:12:24.040 government as a massive sin to defraud the government. They don't understand that when

00:12:27.940 you're defrauding the government, you're defrauding your fellow taxpayers, that when you do this sort

00:12:31.400 of stuff, what you are actually doing is robbing human beings. There's a person on the other side

00:12:35.720 of the check. And this is the problem with these gigantic social welfare systems. If you are a

00:12:39.880 republican and you're only going to make the case that they need to be more efficient these social

00:12:43.720 welfare systems these social welfare systems if we just could get them more efficient then they

00:12:47.500 would be good then you're arguing at the margins the reality is that many of these social welfare

00:12:52.220 systems have actively deprived people of virtue i mean just to take a quick example uh you know

00:12:59.080 social security i understand why it exists no one's arguing for it to go away on a practical level

00:13:02.840 but one thing that social security has done is it has crowded out investment for the future for

00:13:07.880 people because they believe they are getting a check from the federal government. And it's also

00:13:11.280 crowded out people taking care of their parents and planning for the future in terms of their

00:13:15.340 financial, making sure that their parents are taken care of. And so what used to be a sort of

00:13:19.420 familial aspect has turned into a governmental aspect. And I can argue that that's made elderly

00:13:23.220 people more prosperous. That's fine. It is a gigantic social welfare system that's bankrupting

00:13:27.140 the country. But it is true that governmental systems tend to crowd out individual virtue and

00:13:33.000 social virtue. And so I think that's a huge component of this. I mean, why don't any of

00:13:37.000 people who are defrauding people millions of dollars feel guilty they should feel guilty

00:13:40.860 but also i think one of the things we have to keep in mind is that like if we're going to pay

00:13:46.220 people to take care of their elderly relatives should we be paying like boomer grandparents to

00:13:54.340 watch my kids because that i mean the same kind of idea is kind of there right you know it's like 0.91

00:14:00.520 wait a minute maybe this will be a lot easier if we just pay all the boomers who already have

00:14:05.140 taken so much money out of the system to spend more time with their grandchildren, which is

00:14:10.240 something that shows up in poll after poll after poll of younger parents. 0.73

00:14:14.140 Well, and how about, since you make the point, Ben, that these elderly boomers have already 0.88

00:14:17.660 taken so much money out of the system, how about we just force them, we repeal the 13th Amendment 0.97

00:14:22.540 and force them to watch all the grandkids for free, and we say, look, now we're even. We're

00:14:26.780 not going to get Social Security, but you have to watch the kids. We also, speaking of the kids,

00:14:30.900 we have Mary-Marvin Olahan, who I believe is joining

00:14:32.880 from the White House.

00:14:34.440 I do want to say, we are talking...

00:14:36.360 Oh, yes.

00:14:38.680 I just did want to say, real quick,

00:14:40.560 we are talking on the day that

00:14:42.800 we learned of the passing

00:14:44.980 of the late, great Peter Ferrara,

00:14:46.780 who is the originator of the idea

00:14:48.880 of the Social Security accounts that you

00:14:50.960 are talking about, Ben, which

00:14:52.900 obviously would have made everyone

00:14:54.800 much wealthier if they had

00:14:56.880 actually put them into practice.

00:14:58.740 And so, shout out

00:15:00.400 Shout out to him, phenomenal economist and a great, great guy in terms of the Washington, like, social security reform scene, which is not exactly the most thriving social scene.

00:15:12.820 Nothing makes me feel older than social security reform because I'm actually old enough to remember when all the Republicans were asking for that.

00:15:21.360 And now that is deader than disco.

00:15:23.920 Another thing that makes me feel old is Mary Margaret Olihan, who is young and vibrant and beautiful.

00:15:27.820 Mary Margaret, you are at the White House, as far as I can tell.

00:15:31.660 I am, and I've been enjoying listening to you guys.

00:15:34.600 A, I just have to say that Cinderella Man is my favorite movie of all time.

00:15:39.320 I think it is such an American, amazing story.

00:15:41.460 And the scene that Ben was talking about,

00:15:43.240 where James J. Braddock goes to give his welfare check back,

00:15:46.820 is one of the best scenes of all time.

00:15:49.200 So, Ben, thank you for bringing that up.

00:15:50.620 Also, if you want to pay me for going home to take care of my sister,

00:15:54.400 I'm definitely open to it. 1.00

00:15:55.660 she's sick. So I will be taking care of her tonight. So if that's on the table, we could

00:16:00.480 definitely talk about it. Well, at the White House, since they're looking into all the waste

00:16:06.140 fraud and abuse that you, like I, want to avail yourself of, the vice president, J.D. Vance, is

00:16:10.760 leading the fraud team. And it's great that they've announced that initiative along with these

00:16:16.560 stories. Obviously, there was the story to California and Minnesota, Nick Shirley, Chris

00:16:20.640 Rufo. And then Daily Wire's Luke Rosiak came out with this wild story and novel in the sense that

00:16:26.800 it's in a Republican state. So what are they going to do about it? Well, J.D. Vance says they're

00:16:32.180 going to do something about it. He said, if true, and they're looking into it, they're going to take

00:16:36.300 extreme action on this. He's already, obviously, as you all know, he's already taken a lot of action

00:16:40.920 in states like California, Minnesota, all over the country. We've been pressing for a little more

00:16:45.780 information to see if we can get the vice president's office to tell us exactly what

00:16:49.520 they're doing. But for now, this is a huge start. It's a massive win for Daily Wire for Luke that

00:16:55.240 our reporting is being taken so seriously. It's all over the airwaves. I was at the gym this

00:16:59.660 morning and I'm seeing it on every network. So this is really exciting and something that

00:17:03.720 I'm very proud of. On the part of the White House, you know, J.D. Vance was speaking about

00:17:08.640 fraud last night. He was in Illinois, I believe, and talking about this, emphasizing really

00:17:15.400 strongly trying to get Americans to understand that, like you guys were saying, not everyone is

00:17:19.980 fully enraged by the thought of this fraud because we're kind of used to it at this point. We're used

00:17:24.680 to the government. We're used to thinking that our tax dollars are being wasted. Well, J.D. Vance was

00:17:29.560 really speaking in, I would say, more colloquial, casual terms, trying to get the audience and

00:17:34.260 Americans to understand the gravity of the fraud that is going on and why they should care so much

00:17:38.600 and why they should trust him that he is doing something about it.

00:17:42.760 Gentlemen, does the issue move the needle in the midterms?

00:17:46.300 To me, it's a layup, obviously. 1.00

00:17:47.900 You got these foreigners bilking the taxpayer for this insane kind of fraud. 1.00

00:17:52.020 And so it would move me. 1.00

00:17:54.900 But do you think it will play or are people just so used to it?

00:17:59.480 I think that unless you connect it to a broader program of slashing these programs and restructuring

00:18:04.600 these programs, it's very difficult to see it moving the needle.

00:18:07.020 And this is kind of what I was referring to earlier.

00:18:08.860 As long as the Republican Party is the party of, yeah, we should have these gigantic social welfare systems, but we'll just make them slightly more efficient.

00:18:16.340 And the Democratic Party is, that's ungenerous, and you should spend more money on them.

00:18:20.100 I think you lose that argument every time.

00:18:22.320 The whole point of the, if you go back to the original sort of iteration of the pushback against the welfare state, which really had to wait until Ronald Reagan.

00:18:30.540 The sort of welfare queen argument, right?

00:18:32.520 the idea that people are driving around Cadillacs based on welfare, that was an argument that was

00:18:36.300 not devoted to the idea that people were bilking the welfare system purely and so we should crack

00:18:40.020 down on the fraud. The idea was we may need to cut welfare entirely or we need to heavily chop

00:18:44.960 into welfare. We need to completely restructure the system as it works. And that culminated,

00:18:48.920 of course, in actual welfare reform in the 1990s under Newt Gingrich, which is, I still think,

00:18:53.920 one of the single most transformative things Republicans have done over the course of the

00:18:56.540 last half century. Well, now you look at what Republicans are talking about and they're saying,

00:19:00.900 okay, we'll do the Doge. Doge will save us all the money because we'll go and we'll eliminate

00:19:04.900 this line item that shouldn't have happened. Or we'll do an investigation. We'll cut this

00:19:09.500 little piece of fraud out. That's not going to get anybody animated. The argument here

00:19:13.700 is that Medicaid itself has huge systemic flaws and you need to remove those gigantic systemic

00:19:19.380 flaws because Medicaid has turned into a gigantic fraud program that is not helping the people it

00:19:25.740 was set out to help. And many of the people who set out to help don't actually need the help of

00:19:29.920 medicaid because again depending on where you are you're talking about people who are many times

00:19:34.340 over the actual poverty line who are receiving aid from the federal government if you don't have

00:19:39.580 a program on the republican side to actually go small this is why big government conservatism

00:19:43.320 is never going to last very you'll have spates of it in reaction to even bigger government

00:19:47.980 liberalism but i think that at a certain point i know it's controversial and i know it's falling

00:19:51.480 out of fashion at some point conservatives may have to argue again for smaller government not

00:19:56.340 just, quote unquote, more efficient government. I mean, look, sorry, go Ben. I was on the 1998

00:20:03.440 Social Security and Welfare Reform Commission. That's how old I am. And Clinton and Gingrich

00:20:11.160 and that kind of thing that did all that stuff. And the thing that I'll keep, I want people to

00:20:15.840 keep in mind is as much as welfare reform was a phenomenal achievement at the time that it

00:20:21.220 happened, that's one program. You never saw that spread the way that it ought to to other programs

00:20:28.500 as well in terms of work incentives, in terms of the demands of actually having people follow the

00:20:35.440 money and make sure that it's not going to people who don't deserve it. And so then you end up with

00:20:39.060 these massive systems that, as Ben says, they're piggy banks for people who do crime. And they do

00:20:44.860 crime very efficiently, it turns out, and they're very organized at it. You have a low trust sort

00:20:51.140 of population of immigrants combined with a high trust population of Minnesota or Ohio or California, 0.92

00:20:58.980 et cetera. And they can just reap the benefits of knowing how to fill out all the forms,

00:21:03.360 knowing that nobody can really ask questions because if you do, you're just going to get

00:21:07.620 called a racist. And I think that that's something that has to be overcome by Republicans confronting

00:21:13.840 this stuff and taking it on and calling for the end of some of these programs.

00:21:18.120 I mean, just saying these things, should these things even exist?

00:21:21.920 Let's maybe start with that question, as opposed to trying to find different paths toward

00:21:26.960 efficiency or the like, which is what we normally hear from the kind of DC think tank set of

00:21:32.480 we can tweak this and we can turn this knob and things will work a little bit better.

00:21:36.940 And I just, I don't, I don't necessarily see this Republican class.

00:21:41.660 I just was talking to Kevin McCarthy right before we started this about what they should do to try

00:21:46.620 to hold back the wave. I'm not sure I see this Republican class coalescing around that argument

00:21:52.280 in time to have it actually affect the election. Well, and even forget about the Republican class.

00:21:57.100 I think about just the Republican base or the ordinary Republican voters, because Ben,

00:22:01.600 the vision that you're promoting, look, I remember it. I was cheering on that vision

00:22:07.280 for a while. I was working on campaigns for entitlement reform. And I remember just as well

00:22:12.380 as all of you do, it flopped. It didn't work. We'd been pushing for it. I mean, really, even going

00:22:16.860 back to George W. Bush was really pushing for Social Security reform. And then Paul Ryan made

00:22:21.460 this his raise on debt. You had some of the fringier libertarian candidates like Ron Paul and

00:22:27.040 others. But that was the animating spirit of the Tea Party. You know, we did it. We gave it a really

00:22:31.120 good shot. And it seems to me that every time we really made that a big issue, we got completely

00:22:36.000 blown out of the water. And then in 2016, one of the big shifts that President Trump made,

00:22:40.960 and it irritated a ton of conservatives at the time, is he said, you know what? I'm not getting

00:22:44.920 into the entitlement thing. I'm not going to cut Social Security. I'm not going to cut Medicare

00:22:48.380 or Medicaid. He leaned a little more economically populist, though, of course, he's still substantially

00:22:53.580 a free trader. But nevertheless, that built a really big coalition of people that I don't think

00:22:58.860 we're going to get on board for Paul Ryan. Well, I mean, I think that's true, Michael.

00:23:02.540 I also think that's why if we're asking why this is not a liver issue, the answer is if people see government programs in terms of here's the choices, either we police fraud and maybe my program goes away or we don't police fraud and my program stays, then people are going to tend toward, OK, whatever, man.

00:23:19.660 Like, OK, so that, yeah, that guy built the program, but I did get my Medicaid check.

00:23:23.120 So, you know, as long as we're spending a cheap heartier, hands off my Medicare.

00:23:26.760 That's that's one of my favorite signs that we saw.

00:23:29.820 exactly i mean like that that attitude is is quite prevalent but i think that it means that

00:23:35.060 it's never going to be the livest issue until you get back to it so that's fine you can have a big

00:23:38.860 government conservatism that doesn't make fraud waste and abuse a live issue but i think it's

00:23:41.880 very difficult to say waste fraud and abuse are a giant issue for us also we are not touching any

00:23:47.180 of these social welfare programs because they're just too important by the way calci has the

00:23:51.560 chances on anybody being prosecuted in minnesota the child care fraud scandal um and uh i believe

00:23:58.940 that the chances right now a little small here what do we have that at 60 percent something like

00:24:06.000 that and then that there will be a yeah there goes 77 percent of people believe that somebody

00:24:10.980 will be charged in the minnesota daycare fraud scan okay that sounds about right to me i'm sure

00:24:14.680 somebody will be charged there uh yeah mary margaret you know when when you're walking around

00:24:19.520 the white house and obviously the vice president is very very focused on digging up these sorts of

00:24:24.360 cases. Does he see this as being sort of a major political issue that Republicans are going to be

00:24:29.740 able to push? Because obviously, I think some of us are skeptical. What do they think in the White

00:24:33.780 House about it? Well, they kind of need it to be a major political issue. And I think Vance,

00:24:38.860 in particular, kind of wants it to be a major political issue. Not that the Vance team has

00:24:43.920 told me this, but reading between the lines, look, this is something that J.D. Vance has been tasked

00:24:48.220 with as kind of his project. He is the fraud czar in the same way that Kamala Harris was the

00:24:53.560 borders are and everyone at the white house has joked about how she failed so miserably at that

00:24:58.120 right so everyone jokes about how she failed so miserably at that this is his big chance his big

00:25:03.840 moment meanwhile we have marco rubio kind of edging up on the sides he's in the briefing room

00:25:08.280 yesterday he's getting all this positive attention so i gotta i gotta ask the question i gotta ask

00:25:13.160 the question we're seeing the glow up for marco happen we're seeing the wall street journal

00:25:17.620 headlines we're seeing this thing like was he he seemed awesome but was he really that awesome in

00:25:24.560 the room i mean look i was in there with i don't know how many other reporters so many we were so

00:25:31.740 crowded it didn't smell good i was had people's arms in front of my face everyone was laughing

00:25:36.180 at him everybody loved him he was as the youth say he was rizzing the crowd uh he enjoyed it it

00:25:42.740 was very clear that he did. He worked in two different lines from popular music songs that

00:25:48.360 I'm a little too young to actually realize the references. Maybe you guys know them better than

00:25:53.600 I do. Insane in the membrane. I feel so old, man. Why are you going to throw that in there,

00:25:59.520 Mary Margaret? I'm sorry. I have one question about it. Was he lying when he said that he

00:26:05.540 didn't know the names of the people in the room? Oh, he definitely didn't. I mean, think about it.

00:26:10.400 he was on Capitol Hill. Capitol Hill Press is very different than the White House Press Corps.

00:26:15.100 Someone like me, I think I've interviewed him like years and years ago, but it would have been

00:26:19.560 like a one-off, you know, at CPAC or something like that. It's not like the White House Press

00:26:23.080 is spending a lot of time over on Capitol Hill or actually at the State Department. So the

00:26:27.320 reporters that he would know were in the front row. And I think I said this yesterday, but

00:26:30.980 he wasn't calling on the front row too much, which as a member of the new media, I kind of liked

00:26:35.400 because he was calling on the aisles. He was calling on people in the back. He called on the

00:26:39.360 guy right next to me so just bouncing around the room he was clearly a little overstimulated by the

00:26:44.940 vibe in there but anyone would be and i don't know ben i think i think he did a good job and i think

00:26:51.100 he really enjoyed himself and for the first time i personally thought oh wow maybe it's going to be

00:26:56.360 him there's no job he can't do yeah it's true um is that it just to follow up on just to follow

00:27:10.220 up on what uh what we were asking about when it comes to the fraud kind of thing you know how much

00:27:15.820 time does jd really have to spend on this it is his home state in terms of ohio is he going to

00:27:21.440 kind of do something there is he going to get involved there in some kind of greater respect

00:27:26.500 Do you know of any plans on the vice president's part to dive into that?

00:27:31.740 Well, the fraud team is taking it on.

00:27:33.500 So this is what they do.

00:27:35.080 They have a massive team here at the White House.

00:27:36.880 A lot of lawyers are involved.

00:27:38.660 Different people that I've actually known from different parts of my career,

00:27:42.200 whether they used to be on Capitol Hill or in different government offices,

00:27:45.500 they're all on this fraud team and they're digging in.

00:27:47.980 Of course, the FTC is involved.

00:27:51.100 Andrew Ferguson, Stephen Miller,

00:27:53.460 all of these people are zoning in on these issues. So while I know their focus is on issues around

00:27:59.360 the country, this is now one of the vice president's top issues. And if it turns out to be true, I

00:28:05.600 imagine that he would be delighted to be able to take ownership of this fraud scandal, which we

00:28:10.240 believe to be true. Absolutely. I wonder a little bit outside of Washington, D.C., but obviously

00:28:15.760 related. You know, Vivek Ramaswamy last night won this massive victory in what was not really a

00:28:22.260 serious Republican primary. So now he's going to be the nominee. But I think he's going to have a

00:28:26.700 little bit of an uphill battle in Ohio. Does the story, does the focus from the White House on

00:28:32.140 fraud, and specifically does the Daily Wire report on fraud in Ohio, how much juice does that give

00:28:38.100 him in November? Could that push him over the edge? I mean, is this going to be another Luke

00:28:43.880 Rosiak help someone over the edge like he did in Loudoun County and Glenn Youngkin? It could be.

00:28:49.760 you never know. I mean, Vivek would be wise to hop on this story and to really emphasize it

00:28:55.200 as he already is a little bit doing. But no, I talk about Luke's impact all the time and talk

00:29:00.720 about that Loudoun County story. I've written about it extensively. There's no, truly no way

00:29:05.320 to truly measure the impact that Luke's reporting had on that Virginia race and Glenn Youngkin

00:29:10.100 becoming governor of Virginia. So love to see that happen in Ohio as well.

00:29:14.520 also there's something else breaking right now which i didn't get the full story on but i do

00:29:21.260 speaking of criminals and fraudsters who is this top democrat politician who is having the feds

00:29:29.080 show up at her house right now we have calci shows the vakes chances at 47 maybe they go up

00:29:33.860 because of luke rosiak well i want to know the calci odds on this top democrat getting her house

00:29:38.020 raided and uh you know going going to prison do we know do we have any of the details this just

00:29:42.880 popped up before we're filming. So Louise Lucas is the top, is the most important Democrat in the 0.98

00:29:49.280 Commonwealth of Virginia. She is the octogenarian head of the state Senate for Democrats. And she's

00:29:57.780 also the one who bigfooted Abigail Spanberger and said, no, we're not doing a nine to two map, 0.91

00:30:03.520 we're doing a 10 to one map. And Mary Margaret will know this as a resident of the Commonwealth.

00:30:08.520 that was something that was deemed too extreme even for Spanberger at the time. She was worried

00:30:14.840 about it. And it's one of the reasons why they have questions at the Supreme Court of Virginia

00:30:18.400 right now because of how extreme the map is. She has long been considered one of the most corrupt 1.00

00:30:23.260 members of the legislature in Virginia. It's connected to a series of cannabis shops that 1.00

00:30:30.540 she runs for profit in the Portsmouth region. The FBI apparently raided her offices today

00:30:37.980 uh fox was reporting on it today and we had uh and there were people who were on the scene

00:30:42.980 they were for hours taking out boxes of materials and other things preventing staffers from coming

00:30:49.840 inside uh and so we don't really know what the case is about yet or what they've been building

00:30:55.340 it toward the the irony of this though is it actually could be something that could benefit

00:31:01.100 spanberger because she would get potentially a potentially a less uh radical uh democrat 0.99

00:31:07.640 leadership uh in if louise lucas ends up going down over some kind of uh potential criminal 1.00

00:31:14.040 activity we'll have to wait are we watching ozark because that'd be that'd be awesome

00:31:18.120 i mean i feel like that's very very ozark

00:31:20.660 she just got like gigantic weed farms it'd be great it would be it would be amazing one of my

00:31:27.840 favorite parts of the story is the backlash online currently about Fox News being at the

00:31:33.580 in the vicinity to document what was happening here. So I think it was Bill Malugian that was

00:31:38.500 on the ground and clearly got a tip from the FBI that this was going to be happening. All these

00:31:43.860 liberals online, including Tim Miller, are complaining and saying, you know, oh, how did

00:31:48.740 Fox know this was going on? And myself and a couple other people pointed out CNN got the

00:31:54.160 exclusive when roger stone was arrested by the fbi they were there with their cameras many many

00:31:59.740 other such instances but now you know that fox news happened to be on the scene uh documenting

00:32:04.900 this raid uh god forbid this happened so i i've been amused by that from a media critic criticism

00:32:11.240 perspective because everyone's up in arms about it and they're all trying to say that she wasn't

00:32:15.940 close to spanberger which is not true as ben just pointed out yeah yeah the the the truth is that

00:32:21.920 Spanberger, if you know the makeup for coalition, she's a Northern Virginia person. She needed the

00:32:28.320 support of people like Lucas to bring along the black vote that was a little more skeptical about 0.60

00:32:33.740 Spanberger being such a kind of Nova Karen type when that sort of portion of the vote is so

00:32:41.640 critical to winning in Virginia. Now, turning from the East Coast over to the West Coast,

00:32:48.660 One story we talked about at the top of the show a little bit that I totally missed last night

00:32:53.340 because I was doing my little debate over in Dartmouth.

00:32:56.120 There was a much bigger debate going on in California between the candidates for governor.

00:33:01.480 And it was all the looniest Democrats minus Eric Swalwell, who we don't need to get into any.

00:33:09.160 Maybe we'll get some video clips in the debate.

00:33:10.640 He's taking time to spend more time with Snapchat.

00:33:11.220 We don't need any clips of Swalwell.

00:33:13.100 Oh, gosh.

00:33:13.400 Yeah, all the clips of Swalwell are on Snapchat.

00:33:15.740 They're not on Friendly Fire.

00:33:17.780 But when Swalwell was still in the race, there was a very good shot that you could have had a Republican governor of California, just the way that the elections are conducted there.

00:33:25.920 I think this is a big reason why the Democrats sniped Swalwell on three different fronts, on residency, on financial corruption, and then eventually on a sex scandal.

00:33:34.720 So Swalwell's out.

00:33:36.720 One, does this improve the Democrats' chances?

00:33:39.020 I think pretty obviously it does.

00:33:40.580 But two, did anything happen at the debate last night that is going to affect the race?

00:33:46.980 Well, no, I mean, a Democrat's going to win. I mean, I like I don't mean to be a downer, but there's a reason we all left the state.

00:33:53.360 I mean, California is beautiful and it is mismanaged. And, you know, I love Steve Hilton. He's great. And and Chad Bianco is is fine. He's great.

00:34:03.420 I mean, but let's be real about this. If they sneak through with 17 percent of the vote in a multi-candidate primary and then they get through to a general election and Xavier Becerra versus Steve Hilton,

00:34:13.440 And I'm highly skeptical that the Republican ends up winning that general election race.

00:34:18.560 And that seems like that's the most likely scenario right now.

00:34:21.200 It was extraordinary to watch Democrats try to outbid each other in being insane. 1.00

00:34:25.520 So Katie Porter, who is a nut job. 1.00

00:34:27.880 I mean, Katie Porter is so crazy. 1.00

00:34:30.740 You know, you remember there are these stories about Amy Klobuchar throwing binders at people. 0.98

00:34:35.120 Apparently, Katie Porter throws potatoes at people or something like this is this is the steaming hot mashed potatoes. 1.00

00:34:40.780 yeah she was like chucking potatoes at people which which i like my my baby was like the least 1.00

00:34:47.140 crazy thing she did like that's and and and and last night uh she said that illegal immigrants

00:34:55.260 need to be given health care in california because californians deserve it which i mean i i sort of

00:35:01.000 agree because they voted for it but not the way that she thinks about it i mean i she means that

00:35:05.360 illegal immigrants are californians i think that californians deserve it because they keep voting

00:35:08.820 for this. And so, you know, you keep voting for it. You deserve it. But she said that. Then you 0.96

00:35:12.980 had Tom Steyer saying there wasn't enough of a wealth tax. I mean, that's presumably why he's

00:35:17.000 been taxing himself like $200 million every election cycle, which is the only way that

00:35:21.240 you can understand what the hell he is doing. Because literally every election cycle, he's

00:35:24.700 like, I'm running for dog catcher. Here's $100 million. And everyone hates him. And then he

00:35:29.040 loses. And so he was up there doing that routine. And then you had Becerra looking up there. He

00:35:34.220 He looked like a moderate, by contrast, while he called for the abolition of ICE. 1.00

00:35:37.520 It was it was just a cavalcade of idiocy and crazy. 0.99

00:35:42.300 And meanwhile, Steve Hilton is sitting there and he's looking at Chad and they're looking 0.99

00:35:45.220 at each other and like, I don't even know what's happening around me.

00:35:47.360 Like, California is such a disaster area that, you know, I'm telling people there they ought

00:35:51.860 to flee.

00:35:52.340 I've been saying this for a while.

00:35:53.720 I don't know.

00:35:54.060 What did you make of it, Ben?

00:35:55.920 Shapiro, every single morning.

00:35:57.460 Before I get your opinion, I just want to point out, you know, on a little bright side

00:36:00.900 here. The bright side was that during the debate, Katie Porter's staffers did not have to be around

00:36:07.660 her. And I think, do we have the clip? Do we have the clip of the poor staffers?

00:36:14.200 That we're going to lose more than half a million Californians dying prematurely

00:36:19.000 to air pollution and other problems. And the state could lose,

00:36:22.920 get out of my shot. I wanted to tell you that that's actually incorrect. It's not that

00:36:29.360 it's so bad okay it does okay you also were in my shop before that

00:36:38.300 stay out of my shot okay i'm going to start again with um electric vehicle saving us money

00:36:45.580 jacob more water i want more no i'm joking you don't actually have to he actually got

00:36:50.880 i was just doing a bit klobuchar eating salad with a with a with like a comb or something is

00:36:57.740 like totally fine and normal compared to that. Now, the problem I have, Shapiro, is that every

00:37:06.140 morning my wife asks me, do you think Steve Hilton can win in California? Do you think Spencer Pratt

00:37:13.740 can win in California? And I have to tell her no every morning. I just say, no, they're not going

00:37:19.740 to win. That's not going to happen. Hold on, Ben, before we get to your analysis of why the

00:37:24.200 Republicans can't win. I just wonder what you made me think of when you say this is the first

00:37:28.100 thing in the morning, your wife turns to you. I hope that when she turns to you, you are lying

00:37:33.160 in a beautiful Helix mattress. That's what I do, except when I'm on the road, which is why I look

00:37:37.940 haggard because I have my beautiful Helix. Helix uses a sleep quiz to match you to your perfect

00:37:44.360 mattress. They've got great factors. Sometimes you sleep a little too hot. Maybe you want a

00:37:49.780 little firmer. Maybe you want a little software. It is great. I am so into Helix. I have multiple

00:37:54.400 Helix in my home. I am such a good father that I've gotten Helix for my kids. It's award-winning.

00:38:01.020 It's gotten great reviews from outlets like Forbes and Wired. Everybody at the Daily Wire

00:38:05.220 absolutely loves it. And I am looking to get another one. That's right, yet another one,

00:38:10.880 because I keep having these kids. They ship directly to your door in the U.S. with free

00:38:14.060 shipping, 120-night sleep trial, a limited lifetime warranty, meaning you can test it risk-free,

00:38:20.380 send it right back if it's not right for you. With Memorial Day coming up, which is the unofficial

00:38:24.720 start of summer, talk about the importance of good sleep for your whole family, especially

00:38:28.600 since the kids are home from school and you've got all these things going on, okay? This is the

00:38:34.380 time, folks. Get your Helix. Go to helixsleep.com slash friendlyfire for 27% off site-wide. That is

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00:38:44.920 after checkout so they know that we send you helixsleep.com slash friendlyfire.

00:38:50.140 Megan rolls over in the morning, says, Ben, honey, please tell me.

00:38:53.820 There's no reason for, like, this is really unfair that Michael Knowles has apparently

00:38:57.700 checked the tag on our mattress in our house without my knowledge. But yes, we do actually

00:39:01.980 have a Helix mattress. So anyway, look, the truth is that she says that because she loves

00:39:09.600 California. She lived in LA for, for quite a while. Uh, you know, I'm sure Ben, you love

00:39:14.740 California too, on some base level. You know, I'm not one of these people on the right who says

00:39:19.460 screw them, you know, uh, with their beautiful weather and their relaxed mentality and,

00:39:25.920 you know, everything like that. Uh, it's, it's more that I would like California to be a place 0.92

00:39:31.160 that people could do business again, could make movies again for crying out loud since they can't

00:39:36.000 afford to make them there anymore. Unfortunately, I think they're just going to double down.

00:39:40.640 They're just going to do the same dumb crap again. And they're probably going to choose 1.00

00:39:44.620 somebody like Becerra, who is one of the worst cabinet appointees, by the way, when he actually

00:39:49.880 was at when he was at HHS, something that he had no business being in just because of the politics

00:39:56.260 of the situation, because he was put there basically to screw over pro-lifers and to

00:40:01.180 do whatever the Biden White House wanted him to do.

00:40:04.660 He's one of the most radical pro-abortion members of President Joe Biden's administration.

00:40:10.320 And he was also, you know, Kamala Harris, when she was attorney general of California,

00:40:14.880 she started that whole persecution of David Daleiden, but he really picked it up and carried

00:40:19.640 it throughout the rest of his tenure there and was absolutely part of persecuting David

00:40:24.980 Daleiden to this day.

00:40:26.240 So incredibly radical pro-abortion individual.

00:40:30.800 And, you know, Californians may have forgotten that over the past, I don't know, decade, but it is one of its top issues.

00:40:38.560 Would any of them be better than Newsom? 0.59

00:40:40.260 Frankly, I got to admit, I'm kind of rooting for Katie Porter.

00:40:43.800 I'm a little rooting for Katie Porter because, I mean, just for the amusement sector.

00:40:48.480 This is you putting on the Joker mask.

00:40:50.560 This is like, this is like chaos, chaos, chaos.

00:40:54.480 Exactly.

00:40:54.900 Exactly. Well, I mostly just want to see the creative ways in which she abuses staff. 1.00

00:40:59.420 I mean, like, it's giving me ideas. 1.00

00:41:00.880 I have an image of you on top of a pile of money setting it on fire.

00:41:05.440 It's kind of wonderful. I mean, come on.

00:41:07.960 And then in that commercial, she made her people stand behind her holding whiteboards.

00:41:12.520 And then at the very end, she put a laugh track in when she's like, get out of my shot, guys.

00:41:16.640 And then there's like a laugh track. Did you see her commercial? It's terrible.

00:41:19.540 It's terrible. And I need more of this.

00:41:21.100 Like this is, it's, it's, it's like cocaine to any California resident.

00:41:25.420 It is, it is a, it is addictive wonder.

00:41:27.720 And, and I have to say like Katie Porter is so much more amusing,

00:41:31.340 so much more amusing than Xavier Becerra would be.

00:41:34.080 He would just didn't be another born.

00:41:35.060 You know what?

00:41:35.520 That is fair.

00:41:36.240 As a business person, as a business person, 0.86

00:41:39.080 it would be good for the daily wire to have Katie Porter.

00:41:41.880 A hundred percent. 0.91

00:41:42.520 She's so amusing. 1.00

00:41:43.540 I mean, she'd be like chucking things at people. 1.00

00:41:47.100 She might strangle a man on camera just to see him die. 0.93

00:41:49.780 Like it would be incredible. 0.84

00:41:50.660 I mean, we actually, guys, we have the ad, apparently.

00:41:53.400 Apparently, we have the Katie Porter ad.

00:41:54.840 One of the worst political ads ever cut.

00:41:56.780 Really solid stuff here.

00:41:59.440 I'm Katie Porter, and I'm not like most people who run for governor.

00:42:03.420 I actually get what you're going through.

00:42:05.720 A single mom of three kids, I know what it's like to push the shopping cart.

00:42:09.740 My minivan has almost 200,000 miles.

00:42:13.240 I have a grown kid who may soon be living on my couch.

00:42:16.620 To give Californians what they need, it's going to take standing up to Donald Trump, calling out greedy corporations, and stepping on some toes along the way.

00:42:25.860 Now, could you guys please get out of my shot?

00:42:30.300 I love the laugh track underneath.

00:42:31.860 The laugh track is the best part.

00:42:33.120 It's amazing.

00:42:33.940 And also, I do love that all of our politicians, I remember a time when we used to be aspirational toward our politicians a little bit. 0.88

00:42:40.000 And now, every politician is like, I'm a loser, just like you. 0.98

00:42:43.200 Look at my crappy car. 1.00

00:42:44.300 look at my son who's a complete bum and here he is living on the couch i'm just like you 1.00

00:42:48.520 that's what i think of you you're also a loser who has 200 000 miles on your minivan and a son 1.00

00:42:53.320 who's probably going to crash out on your couch because he's a marijuana addict who majored in 0.98

00:42:57.200 theater arts at csun but like yeah solid stuff there from katie i'm rooting hard for her even

00:43:02.600 right off the top she says she says i'm a single mother and you say well hold on there's some

00:43:07.600 people who are single mothers like the dad runs off or someone dies or something but she's i'm

00:43:12.400 a single mother because i poured scalding hot mashed potatoes on my husband and i physically 0.95

00:43:18.340 abused him enough that he had actually a quasi-moral case to separate from this lunatic

00:43:24.680 i mean and michael michael don't cast aspersions at those of us who pour mashed potatoes on our on

00:43:31.660 our loved ones i'm personally offended i found solidarity there don't don't don't don't yuck my

00:43:38.320 Yum. Stop that. Is there an argument? Look, you've actually, Ben, you have persuaded me

00:43:45.720 that Katie Porter outcome is probably the, is certainly the funniest outcome and probably the

00:43:50.000 best outcome in California. Assuming it's a Democrat, is there a Democrat who could take 0.78

00:43:55.680 over who would be better than Newsom? My worry is, I'll put my cards on the table. Every time

00:44:00.680 you get a new Republican president, the Democrats who called the last guy Hitler come out and they

00:44:04.700 say, you know, I actually really love George Bush.

00:44:06.980 The good old days of George W. Bush,

00:44:08.740 who I called Hitler until 30 seconds ago.

00:44:10.300 Which is going to be really hilarious when they do it to Trump.

00:44:11.760 I don't want to be that.

00:44:13.180 Yeah, they're going to do it to Trump.

00:44:14.860 They're already kind of starting with J.D.

00:44:15.880 Strange new respect.

00:44:16.380 Donald Trump was never this crazy person like J.D.

00:44:19.660 Yes, oh, J.D. is too intellectual. 0.87

00:44:22.060 You already hear them starting to say this stuff.

00:44:24.460 So the question is, are we going to be that?

00:44:27.440 Are we going to say, well, you know, I'll tell you,

00:44:29.080 I have a strange new respect for Gavin Newsom.

00:44:31.060 Or no, is Newsom as bad as it gets?

00:44:33.460 Yeah, no, no, no. 0.99

00:44:34.000 I think you'll get the strange respect for Gavin Newsom because they're psychotic. 0.90

00:44:37.480 I mean, Xavier Becerra is quite terrible.

00:44:39.700 Gavin Newsom, he still has his eye on the presidency.

00:44:42.340 So he actually has threatened to veto some things from the California state legislature.

00:44:46.140 Becerra will just let every single part of it through.

00:44:48.720 By the way, according to our sponsors over at Calshi, the Calshi market suggests 47%

00:44:52.880 of people think Becerra is going to be the governor.

00:44:55.040 37% think Tom Steyer.

00:44:56.900 Man, what the hell is wrong with that state?

00:44:58.360 Tom Steyer, seriously?

00:44:59.600 Yo, can I short that?

00:45:00.220 Only 10% think Steve Hilton.

00:45:01.700 I mean, by the way, the one that...

00:45:04.000 I think would be also very amusing,

00:45:05.740 I have to say, would be Antonio Villaregosa.

00:45:07.980 Villaregosa would be really, really amusing

00:45:09.700 because Villaregosa is legitimately 1.00

00:45:11.940 one of the dumbest people in America. 1.00

00:45:13.540 He is truly a not smart human. 1.00

00:45:15.880 And so the sort of Steve Carell of it 0.80

00:45:17.700 would be incredible.

00:45:19.120 And watching him just bump into walls

00:45:20.620 for four years would be...

00:45:21.720 So basically, I'm rooting for all of the underdogs,

00:45:23.860 all of the underdogs,

00:45:24.880 because I think that it will end up being Becerra. 0.91

00:45:28.220 It'll be terrible.

00:45:29.680 And I feel bad for my friends in California.

00:45:31.960 I really do.

00:45:32.540 And businesses are going to flee. 0.65

00:45:33.420 One of the best parts of the debate is Katie Porter said we need illegal immigration because that's the only way that we've actually received net population increase in California.

00:45:42.280 You're not supposed to say that part out loud.

00:45:44.500 You're not supposed to say that part out loud. 0.84

00:45:45.900 And it's also one of those things where, you know, and this is something that I think Republicans need to be putting more of a front foot on going forward is the only reason these states are holding on to the kind of of flow of taxpayer dollars that they have received through all these programs is because of that is because they they welcome these illegals into their state to replace the American citizens who are fleeing for very logical and obvious reasons. 0.71

00:46:15.900 going to places like Texas, going to places like Nashville. They are moving out of those blue 0.85

00:46:21.160 states because of those terrible policies. But the blue states are able to hold on to both

00:46:25.860 congressional seats and the flow of taxpayer money because they import all of these illegals and

00:46:32.300 basically say, we're just going to run our programs in order to feed more and more people 0.90

00:46:36.340 this type of taxpayer dollars and keep more and more bureaucrats employed.

00:46:40.740 Right. Speaking of bringing people over, filling up the ranks, have you seen this trend? I don't

00:46:48.820 know if it's real or if it's just social media people babbling, but John Fetterman, who was

00:46:54.020 elected pretty left-wing, has consistently moved to the right, at least in his public statements.

00:47:00.380 And so now there seems to be an all-out push to get him to actually flip political parties.

00:47:05.080 Is there any chance that happens or no? That's all just wish-casting fake news.

00:47:10.480 I think that's really, really unlikely.

00:47:12.120 I think there's a possibility that he'd flip to independent.

00:47:14.760 I think he feels alienated enough from his own party that you could see him go unaligned

00:47:18.080 sort of, you know, the way that you saw in the past, I think Jim Jeffords was an independent

00:47:22.740 candidate.

00:47:23.220 Bernie Sanders still counts himself as independent, who caucuses with the Democrats.

00:47:26.780 That you could probably see.

00:47:27.580 And you could see that from Fetterman if, for example, he wanted to avoid a Democratic

00:47:31.220 primary because a lot of the Democratic primary base is psychotic, like truly ambulatory 0.90

00:47:35.980 psychotic. 0.63

00:47:36.420 And they're very, very angry at him that he's not totally crazy about Trump or about Israel or about immigration.

00:47:41.800 And so if he's trying to avoid a primary, then he could be in sort of a Kyrsten Sinema situation where Sinema ended up trying to run as an independent specifically because the Democrats went so crazy.

00:47:51.900 But John Fetterman votes at a plus 90 percent clip for all the Democratic policies.

00:47:56.940 He voted consistently with the Joe Biden agenda when he was when when there was crossover there. 0.92

00:48:01.440 And so the idea that he is somehow a Republican just because he's not totally crazy, that does show, I think, how nuts the Democrats are.

00:48:08.340 You look at John Fetterman, who is a fairly traditional Democrat, meaning that he's very left-wing on economics.

00:48:13.820 He's somewhat left-wing on social issues.

00:48:16.280 And he's kind of middle of the road on foreign policy, but he's still pro-Israel and all the rest of this.

00:48:21.300 And they look at him and they go, he must be a Republican.

00:48:24.020 That's how crazy the Democrats have gotten. 0.99

00:48:26.380 I think, again, that's just an indicator of how nuts they are. 0.96

00:48:28.340 By the way, this is Barack Obama's fault.

00:48:29.780 I know everyone wants to blame Zarmam Dhani or they want to blame Bernie Sanders.

00:48:32.760 This is all Barack Obama's fault.

00:48:34.640 All of it.

00:48:35.280 Okay, but I don't know if you watched that interview that he did with Stephen Colbert

00:48:37.920 last night, this crazy interview that he did with Stephen Colbert.

00:48:41.500 And in this crazy interview, he's talking about-

00:48:43.400 Ben, are you saying that you don't think Stephen Colbert should run for president?

00:48:46.320 I mean, you know-

00:48:46.640 Yeah, exactly.

00:48:48.540 I mean, I kind of think he should be-

00:48:49.760 Mary Margaret, what do you think about Stephen Colbert as our next Catholic president? 0.99

00:48:55.220 Hey, I'm going to date myself again and say that I don't care about Stephen Colbert

00:48:59.020 and none of my peers do either.

00:49:02.600 Wow.

00:49:03.600 She doesn't remember me.

00:49:04.920 Mary Margaret is so young

00:49:06.540 that she, 0.90

00:49:07.660 Mary Margaret is so young 0.74

00:49:09.720 that she most cares about things 0.71

00:49:11.900 that haven't even happened yet.

00:49:13.280 That is like the chasm 0.98

00:49:15.720 between the old men on this panel 0.75

00:49:17.860 and the hip, cool Mary Margaret.

00:49:19.660 But yes, I agree.

00:49:20.820 You know, he did try to wonder

00:49:21.720 why is younger than Mary Margaret

00:49:23.000 that is older than Mary Margaret.

00:49:24.760 Stephen Holder was calling us.

00:49:26.080 That is older than Mary Margaret.

00:49:27.900 But I will say,

00:49:29.020 that the the that that that interview between Obama and Colbert is really telling because

00:49:34.840 Obama is talking about Mom Donnie and he says Mom Donnie is so young and he's so fresh and he's got

00:49:39.660 these great ideas like affordable housing which of course no Democrat has ever run on except for

00:49:43.600 legitimately like every Democrat my entire lifetime and several lifetimes before and and

00:49:48.380 then he says and there's really nothing new about him like this this whole kind of divide between

00:49:52.380 the leftist and the traditional liberals that's really exaggerated well in Barack Obama's mind

00:49:56.260 it is because Obama was always a wild, radical left winger who is masquerading as a liberal.

00:50:02.400 He was never a traditional liberal. He was always an insane leftist with true third worldist 0.94

00:50:07.200 tendencies and his foreign policy preferences. And so this is all to be laid at the feet of

00:50:11.600 Barack Obama. By the way, I do have to mention right now that there has been, as you know,

00:50:16.000 a deluge of leftist tears since our very own Luke Rosiak's uncovering of massive fraud in Ohio.

00:50:21.020 You are in luck. It just so happens. Leftist tears tumblers are buy one, get one free right now

00:50:25.240 at the dailywire.com slash shop.

00:50:27.640 That's right.

00:50:28.240 Buy one of the iconic beverage vessels.

00:50:30.320 You get a second absolutely free

00:50:31.700 and give it to a liberal friend

00:50:32.640 and then they themselves can fill it.

00:50:34.380 The best way you can help support the mission

00:50:35.940 so we can keep doing, you know, awesome things

00:50:37.940 like breaking massive stories about fraud

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00:50:41.380 is by becoming a Daily Wire member

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00:51:00.540 And I think you can shop with Ohio Medicaid vouchers at the Daily Wire shop.

00:51:05.100 Isn't that right?

00:51:05.680 I'm not on the finance team, but I'll bring them on.

00:51:08.760 We'll have the accountants work it out.

00:51:10.160 Money is fungible.

00:51:11.660 Any concluding thoughts before I let you all go in the four corners of the world?

00:51:17.060 Sure.

00:51:17.480 Just one point that I was going to make about John Fetterman.

00:51:20.000 everything that you said is true, Ben, including the fact that it's not like a Joe Manchin

00:51:25.780 situation. Joe Manchin had something like a 75 percent, you know, Democrat vote record in terms

00:51:31.720 of staying in line. So there was a significant, you know, one out of four times he would break

00:51:36.140 with his party. Fetterman doesn't have anything like that. And that just tells you, I think,

00:51:41.100 how scared someone like Barack Obama is of what his party has become, that he has to bend over

00:51:48.560 backward in this interview with Colbert to basically say like, oh, yes, this is what I was

00:51:54.860 about all the time. To me, on a certain level, that's him admitting that his whole neoliberal

00:52:02.060 kind of project of holding the Democratic base together into what I thought I think he wanted to

00:52:10.100 be the future kind of dominant coalition is a failure. And the other thing is, it is kind of

00:52:17.120 return to his roots. Like this is going back to as extreme as he was when he was younger. And so

00:52:23.680 he's kind of doing the hipster play there, right? Where it's like, I was a fan of this all along.

00:52:28.960 You know, I was about this before anybody else was about it. And to me, that's an admission of

00:52:34.460 failure because he wanted to create a permanent, bigger coalition for the Democrats. He failed at

00:52:40.820 doing it. And now his party has been taken over by the most extreme elements within it to the point

00:52:45.920 that someone like Fetterman, who's still with them 90 plus percent of the time, looks like

00:52:50.340 somebody that they want to kick out of the party and maybe turn into, you know, somebody who could

00:52:54.360 be a deciding vote in the Senate going forward. So much for the Coalition of the Ascendant. We're

00:53:00.120 back to the choom gang. Yes, Marie-Margaret? Well, I was just going to say worse than that, 0.99

00:53:05.420 you have, you know, Democrat consultants now who are looking for younger, sexier,

00:53:10.340 better looking candidates. They've literally talked about this and it's been written about.

00:53:13.880 They're so aware of their electability problem that they're recruiting good-looking men.

00:53:19.720 There was one in Maine, I believe, that talked like a robot.

00:53:23.160 I'll send you guys a clip later.

00:53:25.240 Insane candidates who are clearly not very electable but are being chosen based on aesthetics

00:53:30.260 because they know that they're so behind in the aesthetics game.

00:53:33.680 So there's so many different issues Democrats are grappling with right now.

00:53:36.920 That's amazing.

00:53:38.640 I mean, no, they understand this is a problem that they have to deal with.

00:53:42.060 And so, you know, you talk about people like Gavin Newsom.

00:53:44.660 Well, he has the charm factor that so many politicians have always had.

00:53:48.720 The rest of that slot in California, you know, we have some laughable candidates.

00:53:53.100 We have some old faithfuls like Javier Becerra.

00:53:55.740 But there is no one on the left right now who has the bare minimum likability and interest

00:54:01.820 that there are in so many candidates on the right.

00:54:04.560 So for Obama to remember that he was once the charm factor, he was once the darling

00:54:09.600 of the left, and there's no one left, and there's someone like Fetterman, who for all

00:54:14.440 intents and purposes is not a very exciting or likable candidate, who is slightly extending

00:54:20.240 an olive branch to the right, that just must cripple him.

00:54:23.960 And to look at the Democratic field that he once thought was in his possession, to see

00:54:28.920 it completely vanquished the way it has been, I think we'll see more moves from him soon,

00:54:33.840 more endorsements, more pushing on his part, because it's too much of a defeat for him.

00:54:39.600 You know, Mary Morgan, I was really excited because the Democrats called me and I thought maybe this means that I look really good.

00:54:46.000 Maybe they think I'm really good.

00:54:47.560 But then it turns out they were just looking for Rachel Maddow.

00:54:51.040 I was really, I was really.

00:54:52.620 Good to see all of you.

00:54:57.020 Any final words or no?

00:54:58.180 We're out of here.

00:55:00.040 I don't know.

00:55:00.440 You want an I told you so?

00:55:01.840 I like I told you so.

00:55:02.860 I definitely.

00:55:03.700 Yeah, I do.

00:55:04.520 I don't even have my Rachel Maddow glasses on to take one of your.

00:55:06.820 It's not I told you so.

00:55:07.940 Good to see all of you.

00:55:08.600 Yes, and I told you so for some others.

00:55:10.560 No, now you let the door open.

00:55:12.080 The door is open.

00:55:12.660 There's nothing I can do.

00:55:13.600 Now that the door has been open, I must step through it.

00:55:15.520 Here is the I told you so.

00:55:16.700 Okay, some of us have been claiming for quite a while

00:55:18.480 there are a bunch of people masquerading as conservatives

00:55:20.200 who are actually Democrats trying to destroy the GOP from within.

00:55:23.280 And this week they all came out and just said it.

00:55:25.100 Here, here.

00:55:25.720 So that's a note.

00:55:26.700 That is a note, okay?

00:55:28.100 Kenneth Owens openly says that basically the hardcore leftists

00:55:31.540 and the psychotic right ought to get together

00:55:33.360 and they ought to fight the quote-unquote Epstein class.

00:55:35.640 And then you had Tucker Carlson who said to the New York Times

00:55:37.720 that he wanted to form a new party

00:55:39.220 because he is so disappointed

00:55:40.320 with President Trump.

00:55:41.860 They had Nick Fuentes saying

00:55:42.880 that he is basically

00:55:43.640 a just non-woke Democrat

00:55:44.940 who's trying to undermine the GOP.

00:55:46.160 A moderate Democrat.

00:55:47.760 He said he's a moderate Democrat.

00:55:48.680 That was my favorite.

00:55:49.280 So I don't want to hear.

00:55:50.260 Yep.

00:55:50.600 So here's the thing, gang.

00:55:51.960 When it comes to the 2026 elections,

00:55:54.100 if these things don't go the way

00:55:55.340 that you want them to go

00:55:56.180 or that I want them to go,

00:55:57.160 recognize that if the Republicans

00:55:58.740 don't do well,

00:55:59.560 they are going the way

00:56:00.520 that a certain group of people

00:56:01.620 wants them to go.

00:56:03.120 All of the people that I just mentioned.

00:56:04.540 So if they turn around

00:56:05.600 and they blame anybody

00:56:06.480 who is something for the Republicans in 2026 for things not going as well for Republicans as they

00:56:12.120 should have, then we should recognize the splinter faction that was undermining this administration

00:56:16.440 from the very word go in order to divide it and destroy it while claiming that they wanted unity 0.98

00:56:22.300 because that was bullshit from the first day. Well, I think this is really going to disappoint 0.94

00:56:28.600 all our new Muslim fans. Yeah, that one I love because when I saw the moderate Democrat thing, 0.96

00:56:36.000 I thought that was actually this declaration of an actual partisanship, and I really, really like it because it made me think of that Jim Downey meme that sometimes goes around Twitter.

00:56:45.880 It's like, Nick Fuentes, you mean the moderate Democrat?

00:56:48.300 Yes, yes, the moderate Democrat.

00:56:49.880 That's what I'm thinking.

00:56:51.240 Okay, on shifting partisan loyalties.

00:56:54.440 Wonderful to see all of you.

00:56:55.620 I will see all of you on the very next Friendly Fire.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 07, 2026

Friendly Fire： The LATEST Somali Scandal

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