Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and Candice Candice Miller join the show to discuss the results of the Maricopa County primary election and why electronic voting machines should go back to paper ballots. Plus, a look behind-the-scenes at the Democratic National Convention.
00:03:46.380And, you know, also, I mean, on this point, you raise it, Candace, of how everyone's talking about voter fraud,
00:03:52.480whether it's going to be, if the Republicans have a great night, then the Democrats are going to say that we rigged the election.
00:03:57.680And if the Democrats pull out some crucial races, then we're going to say that they rigged the election.
00:04:02.100And that's just a fact, that everyone is an election denier, and it's for two reasons.
00:04:08.240The Democrats say that it's illegitimate when the Republicans win because the Democrats don't consider us legitimate participants in our democracy.
00:04:15.960And Biden says that we're terrorists and fascists, and our very existence poses a threat to the country.
00:04:20.940And then we don't believe it when they win close elections because they rig the elections and brag about it in time magazine.
00:04:28.240The distinction, though, is that Democrats don't talk about voter fraud.
00:05:31.560And we really should talk about how difficult it is.
00:05:34.640The latest one, they say that voters are being starved and not given water because you're not, you can't get, and I kid you, I'm walking to the polls today with sweet little Alisa and she turns to me totally deadpan.
00:06:17.400Like, that's your first, and then he went to a historically black college and university, and he's like, you know, you guys can be just as smart.
00:06:43.100And to talk about throwing him under the bus, the New York Times actually fact-checked him, checked him the other day and said, you know, everything he says is actually untrue.
00:09:12.960And then they treat blacks and Hispanics as a voter bloc.
00:09:15.620And then they treat blacks, Hispanics, and Asians as a voter bloc while simultaneously saying that Asians should not be able to get into college.
00:09:21.500It's like, I can't imagine why you guys are losing.
00:09:23.700Maybe it's because you just keep creating these labels that no one actually can.
00:09:27.500By the way, Hispanics don't even categorize themselves that way.
00:09:29.820If you ask a Hispanic person where they are from, they will say, what country?
00:10:17.480Offer them welfare handouts because they don't have anything.
00:10:19.900By the way, remember that time that Ron DeSantis was going to lose the election because he sent some Hispanic illegal immigrants up to Martha's Vineyard?
00:10:44.720Yeah, I think that part of what we're seeing is that the Democrats starting in the 60s ran a very cynical play to categorize people in the country, divide them off from one another, and then try to build a coalition out of the pieces.
00:11:01.060The sort of not, let's call it non-majoritarian pieces.
00:11:03.460So divide you by race, divide you by gender, divide you by income bracket, take everything that's not majority and build a majority out of that.
00:11:12.540But it turns out people don't like being categorized and people don't like being treated like Chesney.
00:11:18.460And during one of Donald Trump's positive effects on the electorate is that he essentially reached over and just took some of those categories that they had consolidated for themselves and he offered them an alternative.
00:11:31.240And now these blocks that the left created are no longer their blocks anymore.
00:11:36.020And I think what you'll see is that more and more of the Democrats are just going to be the party of college-educated white elites.
00:11:45.300I also think that when you think about how Democrats think about Hispanics or how they think about black Americans or Jews, for that matter, whenever they think of these groups, they think of a single person that they know who is black or is Hispanic.
00:11:57.280And then they think, well, all of them must be like that.
00:11:59.940That Hispanic person, they love illegal immigration.
00:12:02.060So if we run on illegal immigration, we'll totally win all the Hispanics.
00:12:05.220And it turns out that by polling data, Hispanics don't love illegal immigration.
00:12:08.700They actually don't like it very much at all, which is why the big surprise of 2016 is that Donald Trump runs a campaign where he's like, that Mexican judge is terrible.
00:12:15.020And then he wins exactly the same percentages that Mitt Romney won in 2012, running not that way.
00:12:20.240And the same thing is true with black Americans.
00:12:22.460The Democrats, they're like, you know, my black friend also hates the police.
00:12:26.220And my black friend, who I went to Wellesley with, thinks that we should defund the police.
00:12:29.820And meanwhile, they're like, people in Baltimore are like, what the?
00:12:36.560This is not the way that you do this stuff.
00:12:38.420But I'll go back to a point that I made earlier.
00:12:41.340The Twitterization of our politics has hurt Democrats so much worse than it's hurt Republicans because they've created this bubble for themselves.
00:12:46.700The media, their Praetorian Guard, have protected them to such an extent.
00:12:50.980Democrats have no immune system at this point.
00:12:53.140It's basically like the rich kids who would get polio really easily back in the 1920s because they'd never been exposed to mud.
00:12:59.400And then all the poor kids wouldn't get polio because they'd be out, like, playing and they'd have an immune system that had actually developed.
00:13:03.620But they also don't understand how porous the Internet is because toward the end, for the beginning of the Internet age, when TV was basically dominant, they really had sealed off the information system.
00:13:15.380They really were living in that bubble.
00:13:17.000But the Internet is pretty hard to seal off.
00:13:33.620Have you noticed all these big tech companies masquerading as privacy companies?
00:13:37.160Every now and again, Google, Apple, or Facebook will release a security feature in an attempt to convince you that they're not actually collecting and selling off your data.
00:14:47.300Expressvpn.com slash election to learn more.
00:14:51.340I wanted to say something about the Twitter thing, which is really interesting.
00:14:54.060Maybe, Matt, you noticed this as well.
00:14:55.580Because one of the things that boggled my mind before Elon got there and kind of made everybody run and spread some light was that the trends on Twitter never made sense.
00:15:04.560Like, what was the chances that Trans Visibility Day was trending three times a week, right?
00:15:10.180And I would go, these trends make no sense.
00:15:11.740It's so clear that their manufacturing trends aren't actually trends.
00:15:22.920Yes, it's all suddenly very conservative trends all the time.
00:15:26.740So, I thought that was really fascinating, and it's very clear that they were manufacturing those trends.
00:15:31.340It's never been lost on me that the three people, three of the people at this table, Matt, Ben, and Candace, would literally trend three times a week.
00:16:44.820And I used to play this game because I knew they were manufacturing trends, is that when they would force me to trend over something really stupid,
00:16:49.880I would pretend I didn't understand what I was trending over, and I would be like, thank you so much.
00:16:53.840I'm so glad to see that I'm trending over my new documentary.
00:16:56.460And they instantly would kill the trend.
00:31:50.060Again, that's the theme we keep seeing with what they're saying versus what's actually happening out there in the world right now.
00:31:54.200Kind of reminds me of last week when all the leftists were absolutely freaking out about Twitter being, like, you know, the worst thing ever.
00:32:00.240But they're complaining about free speech on Twitter.
00:32:52.380Rhode Island, which hasn't happened since I believe the earth began turning.
00:32:56.060The Rhode Island second congressional district.
00:32:58.740Alan Fung, who is a Republican mayor over there, is about to defeat, it looks like, an incoming state general treasurer, the Democrat nominee.
00:37:17.140I just want to mention on that Rhode Island second congressional district, that district went by, for the Democrat, by 17 points last time.
00:37:34.500The mail-in right now is showing Fetterman only trailing the performance of Josh Shapiro, who's widely expected to win that gubernatorial race, by about four points.
00:37:41.500If that were to hold Fetterman, it would win the Senate fairly easily, or either that or Shapiro is not running that far ahead of Mastriano, right?
00:37:47.500One of those two things has to be true, but there's wide gaps is what...
01:46:50.580That you can't actually effectuate an election successfully is unbelievable.
01:46:56.060But I still think Carrie Lake's going to win.
01:46:59.000I think that we're going to spend all evening fretting about Arizona, and Arizona's actually going to be a bright spot by the time that the evening's over.
01:47:05.080I'm a little bit more concerned about Herschel Walker down in Georgia.
01:47:09.220I'm a little bit more concerned about Dr. Oz over in Pennsylvania.
01:47:12.400I'm a little bit more concerned that we're going to lose races where it isn't because the voting machines aren't working.
01:47:19.660I have a feeling we're going to still fare...
01:47:21.840I mean, I'll be the first to admit if I'm wrong, but I'm hopeful that Arizona's actually going to break our way, even with all these irregularities.
01:47:28.120Well, I agree with you, and I was just talking about...
01:47:30.020You know, obviously, you guys are the political experts.
01:47:31.920I'm just a comedian with a horrible Hispanic accent.
01:57:40.300Like, I think that some of those things have started to, you know, reality has started to creep in.
01:57:44.440Still, it can be a good night for Republicans.
01:57:46.440Listen, Republicans having the House alone means that Joe Biden's agenda is now over and he's not effectively president anymore because he just can't get anything through.
01:57:53.360But with that said, like, my, you know, it's late at night.
02:01:09.620And that's why I see the gubernatorial races.
02:01:11.060You know, I think you guys would probably agree most indicative of where we would be if you were to hold a national election today, because obviously with the House, obviously with the Senate, less so.
02:01:21.240But kind of as you veer more towards governorships, you're talking about local politics, which is why local politics are so important.
02:01:27.620You know, how effective you are with kind of a campaign, right?
02:01:29.840You can have red states that have entirely blue races or entirely blue victories.
02:01:34.380The governorships here and the momentum that we're seeing there is, I think, a pretty strong indicator of where we're going in 2024.
02:01:39.580And I think, you know, the last election that we covered, you know, was a sort of a referendum on legacy media.
02:01:44.780And last we checked here, we're not on YouTube.
02:04:51.820So, instead, we'll get yet another runoff, which is just riveting, exciting stuff.
02:04:56.520There's nothing I love better than a good Georgia runoff.
02:04:58.460They work out amazingly well for all of us.
02:05:00.740Meanwhile, the results have started to come in from Arizona, where all the voting machines are beautifully run.
02:05:05.880And Mark Kelly is right now up against Blake Masters, 56-41, but that's with 38% reporting, so those numbers mean nothing.
02:05:13.960Obviously, the urban areas tend to bring in the numbers first.
02:05:17.440Meanwhile, over in Pennsylvania, we're starting to see some numbers with 49% reporting.
02:05:21.560John Fetterman is up 51-47 over Mehmet Oz.
02:05:25.380Again, the mail-in ballots have not been counted, so you'd imagine the numbers are a little bit better for Fetterman than that at this early stage.
02:05:31.780Again, there's a bit of a blue mirage that happens at the beginning of the night when all of the early towns get counted, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown.
02:05:39.020And then it's a little bit later in the evening when some of the rural areas come in.
02:05:43.160So, you know, right now, if you're ballparking this thing, it's not looking, like, amazing for Republicans in the Senate.
02:05:48.800In the House, it's looking a little bit better.
02:05:51.840They already called Colorado for the Democrat.
02:05:53.340So that race, which at one point was considered maybe a plausible win for the Republicans, with Michael Bennett running against, what's his name, O'Brien, that race has been called, like, right off the bat.
02:06:09.600Rachel Maddow, my doppelganger, is reporting, and just to let you know that it's not only Republicans who are claiming voter fraud and shenanigans,
02:06:18.440Rachel Maddow is reporting that Arizona Republicans are intimidating Democrat voters with guns.
02:06:26.360I assume this is, you know, these are white supremacist Nigerians in MAGA hats, you know, taking subway sandwiches from every Democrat voter in Arizona.
02:06:35.540But she is on air reporting that right now.
02:06:38.120It does look like there has been one reversal.
02:06:39.640I suggested earlier that the networks were calling Virginia second for the Democrat.
02:07:57.940Again, I thought she was great, but there was a broad consensus she wouldn't be strong in a general.
02:08:01.700So a lot of people in the party came out against her.
02:08:03.880But you had, like, Sean Hannity telling people that they essentially didn't have a place in the party if they didn't support her.
02:08:11.680Yes, no, look, I thought the Oz shilling was disgusting, and I don't like Oz, really, at all.
02:08:17.060But the point that you make, Matt, which is that can you believe this guy with brain damage is going to beat Oz?
02:08:23.360Because I think if the situation were reversed, and I'm up against, let's say the Democrat had this fully functioning brain, such as Democrats have,
02:08:31.020but, you know, was advocating for, you know, abortion on demand and transing the kids and destroy the economy and open borders and all the rest of it,
02:08:37.420and then you had a Republican who had suffered a stroke, I would gleefully vote for the Republican,
02:08:41.880knowing that his wife would actually take the seat or they'd just appoint some new guy to take it, or just knowing that his staff would run it.
02:08:47.920So I get why Democrats would do it, because the power of a senator is not what it was 100 years ago.
02:08:53.460You know, 100 years ago, senators had many more responsibilities.
02:08:56.860A lot of that has been outsourced to the bureaucracy.
02:08:59.100Fetterman was always running to be just a rubber stamp for Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden anyway.
02:10:42.720He's a person who was not fully functional trying in public to do this thing.
02:10:46.940Everybody got distracted by the fact, this is crazy.
02:10:48.820We could actually elect a senator who can't speak sentences, and they got distracted by the fact that senator who can't speak sentences is going to vote like Bernie Sanders,
02:10:54.840and it seems like if you're talking about, like, what's more relevant to voters, maybe what's more relevant to voters,
02:10:59.060because how often have you watched a senator speak?
02:11:00.980Well, I think there's also a cynicism on the right that says, because Donald Trump won an unexpected victory in 2016,
02:11:47.700So our friends over at ElectionWire are going to give us an update on some of the races that they've been following throughout the evening.
02:11:53.460We're counting on them to be able to look at their computers while we all stare at each other
02:11:58.740and make Steven Crowder jokes and try not to get canceled.
02:12:02.560So they're tracking the races at a much more granular level, and they're here to give us an update now.
02:12:08.060So we've got a few calls coming in from Decision Desk, which we're using this evening.
02:12:12.840The Oklahoma governor's race we mentioned earlier that had seemed like a toss-up.
02:12:16.660Republican Governor Kevin Stitt has just come out on top there.
02:12:19.580Decision Desk Osco calling the Pennsylvania governor's race for Josh Shapiro.
02:12:23.900In the Pennsylvania race right now, 53% in.
02:13:23.540And we're being joined now from the Manhattan Institute, I think one of the most important journalists in the country today, our good friend Chris Ruffa.
02:13:29.520Chris, what are you seeing from your vantage?
02:14:09.040And I think that that's really what it comes down to.
02:14:10.900People want to know that you're a politician willing to stand on principle, to stand on issues, to draw strong contrast.
02:14:16.860And Dr. Oz, I think, played the role on television of being the doctor that everyone liked.
02:14:22.700But in politics, you have to accept that half of the country will not like you.
02:14:27.100And there's nobody that leans into that more effectively than Ron DeSantis.
02:14:31.320Yeah, it turns out that the quality of the candidate actually matters in these races.
02:14:38.100And you can't be cynical, is what we were just talking about beforehand.
02:14:41.040You can't be cynical as a party going into these races about who can win.
02:14:45.180That cynicism can play out in multiple ways.
02:14:47.220There's a kind of establishment cynicism that maybe you experience some degree of with a Dr. Oz.
02:14:52.500Because, I think, that you experienced with Mitt Romney in the 2016, I'm sorry, Jeb Bush in the 2016 primaries, or Mitt Romney even in the 2012 election.
02:15:03.100But there's a populist version of the cynicism, too, where even as far back as the Tea Party, the grassroots would put up candidates, I think, who were very low-quality candidates, but who kind of had this sort of red meat appeal.
02:15:15.940It turns out in politics, some vetting actually has to happen.
02:15:18.680It's not just about people who you sort of constitutionally resonate with.
02:15:21.820You have to find people who are actually going to be able to go through the rigor of it.
02:15:24.680I mean, you said that politics, Michael, is showbiz for ugly people.
02:15:29.120And that gives me some hope that I might one day ascend in public office.
02:15:33.140But the one thing that I've certainly observed in my time dealing with politics is that the kind of person who can endure the rigors of a campaign and actually thrive in it.
02:15:43.680I mean, this is not a quality that the average person has.
02:15:46.380I know for a fact that I do not have it.
02:15:49.280And, you know, these races are grueling.
02:15:52.240They put these people, they put their families.
02:15:53.980I mean, Ben made the point that he's actually sad seeing Fetterman up there.
02:15:59.020I feel that way every time I see the president of the United States.
02:16:01.120I have an actual sadness, an actual pity that we're abusing this human in the way that we are.
02:16:19.980And I think that the party did not have the discipline that it needed, sort of at the establishment or grassroots level.
02:16:27.180It was kind of interesting, too, with an Oz candidate, because Trump has been pretty good at picking candidates, and he's changed the Republican Party, and there's this new thing.
02:16:37.500And you look at a J.D. Vance, he's obviously moving the party in a new direction.
02:16:40.980But then Oz, as you point out, Chris, Oz was just this old, I mean, the guy was...
02:16:47.280Oz was on TV, but Oz was, you know, he'd go on radio lambasting pro-lifers, and then he goes out, he says, I'm going to vote to redefine marriage in the Senate.
02:16:54.780And you just think, and all I'm going to do is cut your taxes.
02:16:57.220By the way, one common thread with low-quality candidates, I'm thinking of Christine O'Donnell in Delaware during the Tea Party wave, they have really bad ads.
02:17:07.140Their media is really bad, and Oz had terrible ads, and Christine O'Donnell had terrible ads, and that poor woman in California, who I like personally, but she was not a great candidate, forget her name now, she had terrible ads.
02:17:18.480There's just this odd thing that the people who are peddling this kind of old, dated politics, that is reflected in their media.
02:17:45.860He had a lighthearted campaign, a fun campaign that felt frivolous at times, but also felt like it was something that was on the moment, made Dr. Oz feel a little bit dated.
02:17:56.820Dr. Oz felt like daytime television in 1995, whereas Fetterman was able to create this buffer zone around him.
02:18:03.620You have a candidate that can't even fulfill a full sentence, and yet his comms people, I think, were pretty successful.
02:18:09.940And I think that the digital strategy has to get smarter for all these campaigns.
02:18:14.960And I think that, again, DeSantis and other candidates in that vein are showing that actual risk-taking is rewarded in the ballot box, provided that you do it in a sophisticated and disciplined way.
02:18:41.760If we get that majority in the Senate, if we get more than a simple majority in the Senate, what matters tonight and what doesn't?
02:18:48.360I think ultimately what matters is what policies start to get formulated, policies start to get developed, and policy programs start to get mapped out for the future.
02:18:58.500And then I think down ballot, it's really important.
02:19:00.760All of the actual reforms that are going to affect people in their day-to-day lives are happening in state legislatures.
02:19:06.820And so I think what we saw with critical race theory, this blitz through the legislative bodies in 22 states, we're going to see again in Republican-led state legislatures.
02:19:17.640And so I think people have to focus their fire locally to get things done.
02:19:22.040And in D.C., it's about who's going to rise to the top, who's going to take control of the Republican apparatus, and what kind of policy items from people like J.D. Vance, the younger generation, that is more comfortable with this kind of combative culture war politics, are they going to actually translate those political victories into substantive policy proposals?
02:20:13.740Well, remember, the last time that the Senate and the White House splitting made such a huge difference was in 2016.
02:20:20.500When you have the Senate and the White House of a different party, that's really the American people tapping the brakes on what's going on with the presidency.
02:20:27.440Right now, even with the barest majority possible, which is 50 votes, not even a majority, with the tiebreaker, basically the Senate's been putting anyone that the president wants to get across, the board, across.
02:20:40.320He has Donald Trump made records putting judges on.
02:20:45.220So there has been no moderating effect of having any kind of middle ground on this 50 votes because, unfortunately, while Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema stand up every once in a while, they don't stand up on judges and they voted for every single judge.
02:20:58.760So there will be a huge change because, first of all, there will be a chance that maybe there's actually some of the more radical judges you could actually defeat.
02:21:06.960But there's also a lot of control of the pace that the Senate majority leader will have and control of the committee process.
02:21:15.360So there will be an opportunity to really highlight in committee some of the outrageous and radical judges that Biden is putting up.
02:21:22.560Yeah. The courts are the one thing that we still have, right?
02:21:26.120I mean, since 2020, almost the only places we've been able to block Biden's agenda have been at the Supreme Court level.
02:21:32.760If we're able to blunt his ability to appoint future judges, does that set us up in future elections to be able to do more beyond just the Supreme Court?
02:21:42.860I mean, do we have do we have advantages earlier in that process to put a stop to some of the I mean, you know, if he loses the House, he loses the Senate.
02:21:49.920He's going to start using executive orders in a way that, you know, we've probably never seen before the frequency of executive orders.
02:21:57.080The courts are really the only bulwark against that, aren't they?
02:21:59.600Yeah. I mean, I think this shows the wisdom of the last administration putting a priority on that because all of his executive orders are just out the window immediately.
02:22:08.080You know, the legislature has shifted. They're doing everything they can to undo stuff as fast as possible.
02:22:12.520So it's the courts are really the backstop. And particularly when Biden feels backed into a corner and just has to do the pen and phone thing that Obama, you know, so popularized the courts.
02:22:23.740This is why administrative law, which sounds so boring, has suddenly become really important at the Supreme Court, because it's these administrative agencies and these bureaucrats that that the president is going to be deploying to just, well, we can't get this passed in Congress.
02:22:36.060We'll just declare an emergency and do it do it some other way. Right. Or you're stretch.
02:22:40.200We'll find a statute that was passed 60 years ago and decide that it means that we can, you know, delay evictions or something.
02:22:45.920You know, they find all these different things. That's what the courts are here to do is to keep those separations of powers in place.
02:22:52.540And I think, you know, thank God we have the Supreme Court that we do and the appellate courts as well.
02:22:58.240So the fewer of the Biden appointees that are going to be the rubber stance for his his agenda we can have on those courts, the better chance we have of keeping those courts.
02:23:08.180You know, one big hobby horse of the conservatives over the last 10 years or so has has been on this point of administrative law on Chevron deference, specifically this idea that the courts just defer to the administrative agencies to interpret their own regulations.
02:23:21.100Now, conservatives actually, including Scalia, used to be pro-deferring to the administrative state.
02:23:28.500Then in recent years, they've shifted very much against the administrative state and made this big move against Chevron to overrule Chevron deference.
02:23:35.920Now we've got a 6-3 technically, but really 5-4 conservative court.
02:23:41.520So, OK, if this is such a big issue, is the court going to overrule Chevron?
02:23:45.300I think more likely what you're going to see is they just start not applying it in as many cases.
02:23:51.460So Chevron is the case that says the agency interprets the law.
02:23:54.980The law is actually passed by Congress.
02:23:56.540The agency is interpreting the law, sometimes in creative ways, right?
02:23:59.940And the courts, I think Scalia's idea is the courts are crazy.
02:24:05.260It would be better to just defer to the executive agency.
02:24:07.700So I think he was trying to get the activism out of it.
02:24:11.020But, of course, we know that our agency bureaucrats can be every bit as activist as judges, maybe more so.
02:24:17.720So everything we've realized out of the prying pan and into the fire on that.
02:24:20.760I think what you're going to see is the courts just deciding maybe we're not going to use this framework that we have to defer to agencies.
02:24:28.300There's a lot of questions that have been raised constitutionally about how could that even be legal?
02:24:32.420How could that be constitutional to let them decide what the law is?
02:24:35.400So whether they go full overruling it or whether they just decide we're going to stop really applying it,
02:24:41.900I think you're going to see Chevron not playing a big role in the way the court's looking at it.
02:24:47.420Do you think, I mean, we've talked about this a little bit tonight, but with the Dobbs decision,
02:24:52.240with the overturning of Roe, with the Democrats going all in on abortion,
02:24:57.740a new focus on the courts, protests, still to this day, protests outside of the Republican-appointed jurists on the court,
02:25:05.400how is the role of the court changing in American life right now?
02:25:10.340And from a political point of view, it seems to me that the Democrats are demonstrating tonight
02:25:16.840that turning court losses into political gain isn't as easy as it looked
02:25:22.660when the Republicans were doing it after Roe for 40 years.
02:27:09.180It's probably why we had Donald Trump as president was because Leader McConnell made that call and said,
02:27:14.200hey, we're going to all stay together.
02:27:15.760And in their defense, the other Republicans stuck with him.
02:27:20.040I think, you know, obviously it depends on the specific politics of what happens when.
02:27:25.500But I don't think any Republican senator should vote for a nominee to the court that's not going to be willing to interpret the Constitution as it's written.
02:27:34.100They take an oath to uphold the Constitution, too, right?
02:27:36.060So if you're voting for someone who thinks the Constitution means whatever they felt like after, you know, in the morning,
02:27:41.400that is not upholding your oath to the Constitution.
02:27:43.660So I would hope that regardless of, you know, I hope Biden doesn't get any more vacancies.
02:27:48.360Whenever it is, I would hope that they wouldn't be willing to vote for someone.
02:27:51.360You know, there's a dirty little secret here, too, that you're not allowed to talk about.
02:27:54.760But it's late, and we've been talking nonstop for four hours, and we're all getting a little loopy.
02:28:01.100The Democrats' recent appointments to the Supreme Court are humiliating to the court.
02:28:21.460If you can't define what a woman is, I don't mean to disparage.
02:28:25.780The Democrats are essentially at this point putting partisan political actors on the court and not actual legal minds.
02:28:32.820I mean, what impact is that going to have over time?
02:28:35.520If the court is only an extension of a sort of what we might think of as like party rule, political party rule,
02:28:43.960doesn't that weaken the very intentions or weaken the court and change the role that the court plays in our society?
02:28:52.800Well, I think Biden already, we're seeing the consequences of the fact that when he had an option,
02:28:58.020he had several, even within his must-appointed black woman, he had a lot of different options.
02:29:02.020He chose the most radical option he had.
02:29:05.240And I actually think in the long run that's not going to be helpful to him.
02:29:08.140And we've seen her so far on the bench.
02:29:10.320She's much more along the lines of a Sotomayor.
02:29:12.620She's just trying to get in these rhetorical points, not making the kinds of questions and arguments that might be appealing to peel off a swing vote.
02:29:25.180She's not—Lena Kagan is doing stuff like that.
02:29:28.460By trying to go with the most radical nominees you can find, you know, sometimes that isn't a strategy if it's not someone who can make a compelling argument.
02:29:36.440What I think was so great about Trump's nominees, I really do think they're people who can make very compelling arguments.
02:29:42.200And, you know, some justices are immune to rational discussion, but you're someone who can move intellectually the ball forward is what you really should be looking for.
02:29:51.960What effect do you think there will be in the fact that the Supreme Court decision leaked, we've just moved past that, there's been no accountability whatsoever?
02:30:00.740Like, what does that mean for the future?
02:30:02.420It seems like we're never going to find out who did it.
02:30:05.280There's never going to be any kind of punishment whatsoever, so.
02:30:08.620Yeah, I mean, I think that is the worst thing that could have happened after that, right?
02:30:11.380If they had a very short window where everyone was under the same roof, and if they didn't find the person then, they're not going to find them.
02:30:16.880I think this is horrible for the institution because no one knows who they can trust.
02:30:20.580And time will tell whether we have more leaks.
02:30:23.240It used to be that was the one institution in D.C. that did not leak.
02:30:26.180And you knew everyone was going to be professional and it was on both sides of the aisle.
02:30:30.460That's not the case anymore, and I think it sends a horrible message.
02:30:33.640You know, as someone who's raised several kids myself, you don't, if you reward bad behavior, you're just going to get more bad behavior.
02:30:40.340Do you have a sense, though, Carrie, that because there's, you know, gossip all around D.C., I think I not only know who did it, but I think I actually know the person who did it.
02:30:51.900But, listen, there's all gossip, I'm not going to say the name, you know, but there's a lot of scuttlebutt and all.
02:30:57.260Do you think it is the case that the people at the court actually do have a strong hunch of who it is and, for whatever reason, Chief Justice Roberts doesn't want to get involved in all of this?
02:31:09.240Or do you think legitimately they just don't know at the court and so anyone, you know, to the right or left of you could have been the leaker?
02:31:14.900Well, you know, my, when I was clerking at the court, one of the big messages I got from the Chief Justice that he gave to all the clerks was,
02:31:21.140under no circumstances should you ever violate any confidences or you will be dead to us all.
02:31:26.260So it was really shocking to me that he didn't do more to find the person.
02:31:31.260If he knows who it is, then the only reason I can think of they wouldn't be, you know, disclosing it is it's another justice or it's someone in his chambers that's going to be really embarrassing.
02:31:46.060I think if the other justices had a sense, I think it would be hard for them to sit by and let this person just, I mean, look, that clerk is probably out somewhere getting their student loans forgiven, you know,
02:31:56.200while collecting a $400,000 bonus for starting at a law firm somewhere.
02:32:24.720There were not leaks, let alone a leak of an entire opinion.
02:32:28.660The justices weren't even like having very good conversations together for a long time after that, it seems like.
02:32:33.980So it's just shocking to me, obviously it's a really important decision, but that it would result in that kind of a leak and then, you know, assassination attempts, all of this stuff.
02:32:43.540It's just a huge step backwards for what used to be one of the few institutions people could trust.
02:32:48.820I wonder, you know, one of the themes of the night is election denialism, you know, and of course the Democrats have been denying elections for a very long time.
02:32:57.080It's really starting in earnest in 2000 and Republicans have lots of questions about 2020, I think for good reason.
02:33:03.100And so it's both sides just, you know, for their own reasons, don't really trust the elections.
02:33:08.180And then the court was this one institution that was supposed to be kind of above this sort of petty squabbling.
02:33:14.380And then that seems from my vantage to be collapsing as well.
02:33:19.080So is that real or is it just this is the way it always was, you know, stop catastrophizing,
02:33:24.280nostalgia's history after a few drinks or are things really getting quite bad?
02:35:17.440So while they bring in a chair and get Ben Shapiro back on the set, we're going to show you some more of what's going on over at Daily Wire Plus.
02:42:13.520But part of me is walking around thinking the beatings will continue until morale improves, you know.
02:42:17.800So if you get two out of three, there are some things that you can do on offense, you know, instead of just, like, stopping the train.
02:42:26.400I always thought if we were able to get control of the Senate, I think what we ought to do is we ought to put together a number of bills that are constructed in such a way
02:42:37.660that when Biden vetoes them, he basically tanks himself by doing so.
02:42:45.660The Fair Play for Our Daughters Act, for example, of 2023, which basically says that, you know,
02:42:50.840of the millions and millions and millions of young women that compete in athletics,
02:42:54.500it's not fair that one or two people whose feelings are hurt are taking that away from our daughters.
02:44:22.340And right now, it looks like Fetterman is going to win the seat in Pennsylvania.
02:44:25.640It looks as though Georgia is going to a runoff because Walker is an exceedingly weak candidate.
02:44:29.680And a runoff in Georgia is not good for him.
02:44:31.060A runoff in Georgia is very bad because you don't have Brian Kemp to drag you up the ticket the way that you did in this particular election
02:44:35.940because Brian Kemp is a good candidate.
02:44:37.240You can see in that same race, he took Stacey Abrams to the woodshed.
02:44:39.680Stacey Abrams was the darling of the Democratic Party, and Kemp is going to win handily in that race.
02:44:43.860Meanwhile, Waffle Warnock is a disaster area of a candidate, and Herschel Walker is going to end up in a runoff,
02:44:48.340which odds are that he may not end up winning that particular race, and so that's another one you can chalk up to a bad candidate.
02:44:56.860Lauren Voebert right now is on the rocks in Colorado.
02:44:59.540That is not a district she should be losing.
02:45:01.040Right now, she is down by four to five points in Colorado.
02:55:10.620And it's tough, you know, because if your entire political persuasion is we need less politics, you're not going to drop people who are really good at that conversion.
02:55:20.280I think this is the thing with the Republicans, though.
02:55:22.380I think they are in this shift and they have not found their feet.
02:55:25.440I mean, I just believe that this is – I think the Democrats ultimately are dooming themselves, even though –
02:56:38.860You know, when you look at – here's the thing.
02:56:41.140Some of the more radical candidates, the people like Baldick, right, they were talking about some of this stuff.
02:56:45.000The problem is there wasn't a baseline level of understanding that they could even do the job in a competent fashion.
02:56:49.680The same thing is true for Herschel Walker in Georgia.
02:56:51.260If you look at the exit polls, people are saying this is not a person who I trust to actually be able to do the job.
02:56:55.900You can do the culture war stuff, and it's the icing on the cake.
02:56:59.000But the cake has to be competent governance.
02:57:01.360And this is what you're seeing – again, I'm going to use DeSantis as the best example because he's the only one who's winning a huge victory now, like an overwhelming victory.
02:57:32.660And the same thing with DeSantis, except even more so.
02:57:34.920And then you look at sort of – so when we talk culture war, because that's what we do for a living,
02:57:40.400and when we talk about the issues that are really important to America,
02:57:42.180and I think the cultural issues are in many ways more important than the day-to-day in terms of the direction of the country over the long haul,
02:57:48.860when it comes to actually voting, in the same way that people will be polled and they'll say,
02:58:37.820You're going to make sure that everybody hears what you have to say about a particular given topic.
02:58:41.340Well, that may be a great way of building your following.
02:58:43.100It is not a particularly great way of winning elections, as it turns out.
02:58:46.100And we – I think everybody – I think in 2008, and particularly in 2012, Democrats got high on their own supply.
02:58:53.080And I think in 2016, Republicans got high on their own supply and they still haven't come down yet.
02:58:56.260And the lesson that Democrats learned from 2012 is there is a forever coalition of minority voters
02:59:00.640that we can cobble together who will continue to vote for us no matter how stupid and crazy and woke we are.
02:59:04.920And they got smacked in the face by Donald Trump in 2016 on that basis and then smacked in the face in terms of the House over the course of the subsequent years.
02:59:13.000Republicans in 2016 ran Donald Trump and they got high on their own supply, which was we can be as bombastic and break all the rules as we want.
02:59:43.160We were talking about this as a guy coming in and asking for a job and saying my values are the same, but I am going to bankrupt your company.
02:59:48.660No, the first thing, he's got to do the job.
02:59:51.660But if you look at Glenn Youngkin, I think he's the perfect example.
02:59:54.000He's kind of a typical Chamber of Commerce Republican, but it wasn't until he picked up on the education issue that he really started to move forward.
03:00:04.240It's not that, oh, yes, you should have hammered that more.
03:00:07.940You know, Gorka was ragging on him for not being more Trumpy.
03:00:11.620And I was thinking, no, this is a purple state.
03:00:15.220It's a way of looking at the world that Youngkin finally at least imitated that put him over the top.
03:00:20.180And I think that you're right it begins with competence, and you're right it begins with political competence, and you're also right that Obama and Trump were outliers.
03:00:28.840But also, you know, it is part of a way of life.
03:00:32.380You know, you think about prosperity and freedom because you also think that children should learn certain things and not other things.
03:00:41.320And I think that Republicans have just been too shy in the old British sense of cowardice, of cowardly, in talking about their whole vision and in talking about a vision in and of itself.
03:00:52.980So like the two breakout candidates of this election are Carrie Lake and DeSantis, right?
03:00:57.820I mean, DeSantis is already there, but just performance out of the park.
03:01:00.920And to me, the one thing that they both have in common immediately and obviously is not just the conviction of their beliefs, but they have rhetorical dexterity.
03:01:09.860When somebody comes at them with an attack question, they don't just take it.
03:01:13.000And not only do they not just take it, they come back with an answer that backfoots the person who's asking the questions.
03:01:18.300I remember when, just a couple days ago, when Carrie was asked a question about the woman whose son died of a heart attack the next day.
03:01:25.800And I thought, okay, is she going to go after this woman?
03:01:29.060She said, look, you've just lost your childhood.
03:01:59.100The people, the big Hispanic drift and all this other stuff, it's not so much that people are coming to the Republicans as they're running away from the Democrats.
03:02:25.660I understand that, of course, you know, when the economy is bad, when prices are going nuts and all this stuff, that they're going to vote against that.
03:02:33.020But you do have to give them something to vote for.
03:02:40.440Conservatism that is purely no, no, no, we don't want to change is not enough to move people forward because the world changes and things have to change.
03:02:47.580I mean, you and I have talked about this a million times.
03:02:49.520We don't actually want to go back to the 50s.
03:02:51.760We want to have some of those values move into this new world that we're in.
03:02:55.220And I just think that Republicans have been bad at this.
03:03:04.240I don't think he wasn't as good at governing as we wish he had been.
03:03:07.600But he was good at, like, visionary politics.
03:03:10.200And you can say anything you want about him.
03:03:11.940But I understood what he represented when he was on stage.
03:03:15.020And a lot of times with these guys, I just don't.
03:03:17.120And I think that just reactionary gestures and reactionary gestures and basic, you know, all capitalism all the time are not winning ideas.
03:03:26.580Nobody said that all capitalism all the time is going to win.
03:03:29.020And I agree with you that Republicans should engage on social issues, particularly the stuff about kids.
03:03:34.460And that's what Glenn Youngkin showed.
03:03:35.980At the core of Glenn Youngkin was a guy who was not scary.
03:03:38.960Democrats tried to make him scary, and they couldn't make him scary.
03:03:41.220And Democrats are trying to make a bunch of candidates scary, and they're succeeding in making them scary.
03:04:44.160Well, I have to tell you, I haven't listened to the whole thing, but I feel like people got themselves all wound up
03:04:51.540that it was going to be the tsunami, and now they're failing to see that this is a big night, okay?
03:04:57.300Can we just remember that just about four weeks ago, it looked like absolute devastation
03:05:03.000compared to where we were a couple months before that.
03:05:05.420The Democrats had the wind at their back after Dobbs.
03:05:08.540Trump dominated August with Mar-a-Lago.
03:05:11.440The Republicans' numbers were free-falling from astronomical heights back down to really dire numbers.
03:05:18.740And then, like a miracle, in mid-September, things started to change, and their fortunes started to look better again.
03:05:25.700And let's say they don't win another seat in the House, or in the Senate, that they don't win the Senate tonight, which I still think they will.
03:05:33.540But if they don't, and they only win the House, it's huge.
03:05:51.560And at a minimum, it appears that the American people have said, and seen, on the nonsense that we've been witness to for the past two years.
03:06:06.400Whether they win the Senate or not, I don't know.
03:06:08.380But I'll tell you what, I could make a good case, if I wanted a Republican president in 2024, that it is better for the GOP to not be in control of both branches of Congress.
03:06:19.840The more they control, the more they're going to get blamed.
03:06:22.900The more, I've watched this for many years now from the anchor's desk, the more they control, the more the Democrats have their foil to say,
03:06:30.720we were going to do all these amazing things for you, except for that evil Mitch McConnell, you know, and that evil Kevin McCarthy.
03:06:36.980It's going to be a lot tougher if they control the Senate and the GOP controls the House.
03:06:41.860Right now, I'm feeling good, because I think we're getting divided government.
03:06:45.440I don't really care that much about whether the Republicans control both houses of Congress.
03:06:51.000I think you're right about candidate quality.
03:06:53.040But I think we're also learning that the Democrats are truly, deeply ideological on some of these crazy issues.
03:06:59.160And the Republicans are just going to have to get real.
03:07:01.700They're going to have to get in there and get dirty and fight those battles where the Dems are.
03:07:05.340And it was always a bad map for us in the Senate.
03:07:07.940We've known that for the last two years.
03:07:09.780We knew that this would be the hard one.
03:07:11.820And things are more advantageous for us just from a straight map point of view two years from now.
03:07:17.400There is a real opportunity for Republicans to have a great 2024.
03:07:22.560And to your point, if we stop their agenda in the House, if we stop the Biden agenda in the House,
03:07:26.840just that alone will be cause to continue drinking well into whatever ultimate date they finally stop counting votes.
03:07:34.080The only big thing, you know, the biggest thing that would be looming if the Dems controlled the Senate
03:07:39.520would be a Supreme Court retirement or death, right?
03:07:42.920A Supreme Court vacancy of some kind, because obviously the Democrats would control that.
03:07:48.100I don't know of one that is pending on the GOP side.
03:07:53.680I don't think Clarence Thomas has any plans of retiring under Joe Biden.
03:07:57.640Now, God forbid, something worse happened to him.
03:20:30.560Trump has got this ability to sort of charm you and make you want to like have dinner with him and get to know him better and like have a beer with him, even though he doesn't drink, and spend time with him.
03:20:38.280And the people who know DeSantis well have told me this is his weakness.
03:20:41.880Like, this is the thing that the GOP is going to have to work on with him to make him a little bit more sticky, you know, so that people feel they have something to connect to.
03:20:49.900So, look, the Republican Party, America, they'll be done with Donald Trump when they're done with Donald Trump.
03:20:55.720And it is very possible they're not done with Donald Trump.
03:20:59.180And it's also very possible he's the only man who can beat Joe Biden, who, believe it or not, may still be the next nominee for the Democrats.
03:21:09.200So, anyway, it's going to work out the way it should.
03:21:11.820And I'll give you one last thing, referring back to my earlier point.
03:21:16.220If all hell breaks loose and the Democrats wind up losing the House and losing the Senate tonight, whoever the GOP nominee is on the Republican side will 100 percent win.
03:21:27.500It'll be so much easier if the Dems maintain power for the next two years in a uniform way.
03:23:15.120And this thing where he picks candidates according to whether they support his Steele narrative, I don't know how widespread that is.
03:23:23.600So the answer is to take Ron DeSantis, bronze him up, give him kind of a blonde wig, have him tie his tie a little long in the front, and then run him as Trump, but then govern as DeSantis.
03:23:42.980Because DeSantis is clearly a very, very capable governor.
03:23:46.940Also, I would like to put forward the just minority idea that it's entirely possible that he is not going to announce that he's running whenever he's set his new...
03:29:19.900There is actually a not insignificant possibility that Republicans do not take the House, which would just be unbelievable.
03:29:28.200Right now, the famed New York Times needle still says that the Republicans have a 75% shot in retaining control of the House.
03:29:36.380The chance of winning Senate control is starting to lean toward the Democrats.
03:29:41.220That was a 93% shot at the beginning of the night.
03:29:43.960So all these elections, there are a lot of elections that should not be going in the Democrat direction that are going in the Democrat direction.
03:29:49.520I'm also seeing reported by Daily Wire, so, you know, take it with a grain of salt.
03:29:53.480But I just saw on Twitter that Dr. Oz plans to address supporters momentarily.
03:30:21.720I do have one piece of good news, because since I've been like Debbie Downer all night, it started off real positive, and then it just has been all one direction since.
03:30:28.780One piece of good news is that the Republicans flipped New York 17, 18, 19.
03:30:38.060I worked that race where Sean Maloney beat, kicked out my good Republican friend, Nan Hayworth, and then he just took it over, and he's just this slimy Clinton Democrat.
03:30:47.940And then he took over the Democrat Congressional Committee, and he's out.
03:30:51.400The guy who planned the Democrats' House strategy, boom, lost his own seat.
03:31:15.460So you can win almost anywhere if you've got a good candidate, good ground game, discipline on the message, good messaging.
03:31:22.160You know, we were talking earlier about the media, how every candidate who was kind of a shaky candidate in the Tea Party days put together real shaky ads.
03:31:30.040You know, you have to be able to tell people what you're about.
03:31:33.880I think one thing that's worth noting here is that also, you know, there have been a lot of elections where a bunch of crap Republicans kind of got swept into the House on these giant waves.
03:31:42.420Here I'm thinking about 2010 where Republicans picked up 63 seats famously.
03:31:45.360The baseline of them winning the 63 seats before that is that they had like 170 seats in the House.
03:31:51.600They ended up with a majority of about 230 after that 63-seat swing.
03:31:56.860And so what that meant is that necessarily it was almost regression to the mean for the Democrats.
03:32:02.200The Democrats had an oversized majority.
03:32:03.880And so when the Republicans came in and they took 60 seats, they ended up with 230-odd seats.
03:32:07.960If Republicans end up with a bare majority, this is what I was saying at the beginning of the night as far as the red trickle, when Republicans end up winning 15, 20 seats, they still end up with the majority.
03:32:16.540What that means is that they're actually in territory where it's a little harder to win those seats.
03:34:45.920And then they'd poll these issues in Florida.
03:34:47.160And they'd find these were actually real popular issues in Florida.
03:34:49.980But it's a different thing when Ron DeSantis, very competent governor who's able to handle a hurricane, does it.
03:34:55.460Versus when Doug Mastriano, quasi-crazy person, apparently, does it in Pennsylvania.
03:35:00.720When Doug Mastriano campaigns on that, people are like, well, yeah, but that's also attached to, like, all this other stuff that you're saying over here.
03:35:08.000It's an adjunct to sort of the main event.
03:35:11.800But to Bill's point, you know, the press, whatever you do as a Republican, the press are going to ask you,
03:35:16.980well, what about a 12-year-old girl who gets pregnant when she's raped by her father?
03:35:44.440You know, they're supposed to run the thing that they're given.
03:35:47.120But you have to have a holistic, a visionary kind of approach.
03:35:50.240This is where I think that the – I keep coming back to the same theme of competence because I think that the Democrats' pitch on democracy doesn't hold.
03:36:55.800You can even outlast some of the sort of more fringy positions that are perceived, like the election stuff from Carrie Lake.
03:37:02.300You can outlive that if you are perceived as not mean, if you are perceived as baseline competent.
03:37:06.740Ronald Reagan, you could hate everything Reagan stood for, but it's virtually impossible to hate the guy because he just didn't carry any venom with him.
03:37:13.420You know, it just – it was just clearly a good-natured guy.
03:37:37.280I mean, like he's been, as I've said before, a career useless person who's been living on his parents' money while being mayor of a city that has 1,800 people in it.
03:38:03.280A lot of these Republicans, that's the question, what is your campaign actually about?
03:38:08.760What's the national message of the Republican Party?
03:38:11.320Well, so this ties into this question of leadership.
03:38:14.160And we all know tomorrow – well, we know that we're going to get one presidential candidate next week.
03:38:18.400But the question is, who is the kingmaker?
03:38:20.300So just before I came on, I overheard the chatter about, you know, Trump as kingmaker seems to be weakening because some of his candidates didn't do very well.
03:38:29.980Then that raises the question, is DeSantis the kingmaker?
03:38:33.320DeSantis' pick in Colorado, who Trump snubbed, he lost, Joe Odea – I don't even know how to pronounce the guy's name.
03:44:27.760And that resonated with everybody, everybody.
03:44:31.540And so there are people who are still voting Republican because of how much they love Ronald Reagan.
03:44:35.240And the thing about Donald Trump is he has the ability to generate tremendous excitement because people believe he's not beholden to anybody.
03:44:47.420But the one thing that seems to be missing is that kind of almost like that happy warrior commitment to the sunrise instead of this kind of sniping at people.
03:44:57.600Well, I mean, sort of the locus of his attention is not the principle.
03:45:02.640And in 2016, it seemed like it was more to principle because he actually got caught up in it.
03:45:06.680And I think that since then, since 2020 particularly, because of the election, I think that the locus of attention has been inward focused.
03:45:15.320Well, you know, if tonight is not something that you necessarily want to remember, there are still things in life that you do want to remember.
03:45:20.740Fond memories of the past, like that time you thought there was going to be a red wave.
03:45:23.500Like the days when inflation wasn't breaking records on a monthly basis, when we weren't depleting our strategic oil reserves, when our president could occasionally form a coherent sentence.
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03:47:27.640There's also something else that I found that was sort of appalling, but it was interesting.
03:47:31.240At a polling station, this is what it looked like.
03:47:34.280And if you see this picture, it's just a bunch of rainbow flags.
03:47:36.320And I feel like there's one, I don't know, there's one flag that seems to be missing from this photo.
03:47:39.920And it's just crazy thinking about the Georgia voting laws and the fact that, like, campaigns couldn't give people, you know, water, and yet this is allowed.
03:52:49.660Express VPN, all of our best advertisers really weighed in tonight, and we're grateful to them.
03:52:53.600But at the end of the day, it's our Daily Wire plus members who make it possible for us to do all the work that we do and make all of this content that we're bringing.
03:53:00.740You know, you put out great content like What is a Woman or The Greatest Lie Ever Sold, this unbelievable Trump documentary, My Dinner with Trump, which, if you haven't seen it yet, truly must be seen to be believed.
03:53:10.820I think no ex-president in the history of the country has ever given such unfettered access to a meal between he and his advisors.
03:53:22.660How are we able to produce that kind of content?
03:53:24.680Some people will see it and say, oh, well, if you really wanted to save the country, you'd put the content out for free so everyone could see it.
03:53:30.860But I think that's precisely the opposite.
03:53:34.360If you really want to save the country, I would say you have to build an institution capable of self-sustaining and creating more and more and better and better content.
03:53:44.360And you do that with market mechanisms.
03:53:47.040You do, you know, there's a reason that Daily Wire can spend $100 million on kids' content over the next three years and Disney during that same period of time will spend, I don't know, $60 billion on content.
03:57:26.460These candidates, what do they stand for?
03:57:27.960And I just, the curse of the Republican Party has been this way for years now, is these candidates, you listen to them talk, and I just don't, I don't, they're just saying things.
03:57:38.800I don't believe that they believe anything they're saying.
03:57:41.160They're just sort of talking at random and, you know, picking up talking points, whatever works, and they say it.
03:57:47.660I mean, of course, that's, all politicians do that to a certain extent.
03:58:03.020The minute he was gone, I mean, obviously Bush was vice president, but they kind of pushed Bush on him to begin with, and he got this mediocrity.
03:58:09.240I mean, the Bushes, both Bushes were good people.
03:58:13.100I like them personally, but they were not conservatives.
03:58:16.160As Buckley said, they were conservative, but they were not a conservative.
03:58:23.100And I think that, you know, when you think about the Mitt Rom, the John McCains, and the Jeb Bushes, who they would have run if they could have, this is a party without a vision, without any real goal that they're trying to get.
03:58:37.040They're just playing to do not lose good.
03:58:38.740I want to push back a tiny bit with a question.
03:58:42.020There is a question that we haven't asked since the mood turned dour.
03:58:45.440And that is, what role, if any, was played by, in the last week of this campaign, Donald Trump reasserted himself in a major way into the national conversation.
03:59:00.200He held a giant rally last night, which, you know, everyone from Benny Johnson to Seb Gorka was intimating would be him announcing for the presidency on the eve of the election, which makes a voter.
04:00:56.260Okay, Kevin McCarthy led a House that had 212 seats into an election with a historically unpopular president and an economy that's in the middle of an incipient recession and a 40-year high in inflation.
04:01:08.220And he's going to pick up less than 10 seats.
04:01:11.020Does he need to get, like, where's the leadership class of the Republican Party?
04:01:20.560And so the question is, where's the leadership class of the National Republican Party?
04:01:25.300Donald Trump is not the leader of the National Republican Party because the only thing that he leads is Donald Trump.
04:01:29.720He's not leading the Republican Party because he's not interested in the Republican Party.
04:01:32.220He's literally tweeting out against a candidate in his own party who lost and attacking members of his own party in the middle of election cycles who are not sufficiently bending the knee to him.
04:01:42.440So he's clearly not the leader of the Republican Party in any real sense, in the sense that a coach is a person who leads the team onto the field so that they achieve victory as a team.
04:01:49.360That's not something that Trump is interested in.
04:02:55.660So where exactly is the House leadership in all of this?
04:02:59.220You know, McConnell, I will say, he did his best to intervene in, again, this is not me standing for Mitch McConnell.
04:03:05.320I've got a lot of problems with Mitch McConnell.
04:03:06.340McConnell tried to intervene in a bunch of Senate races where Donald Trump basically overruled him in the primaries, and he got none of his favorite candidates.
04:03:12.720He wanted Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania.
04:03:14.580He did not want Herschel Walker in Georgia.
04:03:17.720He did not want Blake Masters in Arizona.
04:03:19.580But then is that not to say that Trump is the leader of the Republican Party in that he overrules the rest of the leaders?
04:04:30.680I'd like to invite on now our good friend Dennis Prager from PragerU, among other things.
04:04:37.200Noteworthy author, noteworthy radio host.
04:04:39.400But I think that PragerU will outlive almost anything on the internet today as far as just being an amazing, lasting legacy of unbelievable intellectual content for particularly young people, but I think anyone, to really understand the world in which they live.
04:04:56.240Dennis, thank you so much for coming on.
04:05:28.100I just want to tell you guys, I have never joined a conversation – and this is rare for me to speak like this – where I have nothing brilliant to add.
04:05:40.800You guys, I'm telling you, you guys have covered this so well.
04:05:45.760I will only say in my own words what a bunch of you have said, and I have said this, though, longer than you because I'm older than all of you, I think.
04:05:56.580And I will tell you, I have said to every Republican that I have ever met, every Republican candidate, every Republican in office, you have no message.
04:06:07.920Your message has to be what the left is doing to the United States, and the Democratic Party is the party of the left.
04:06:13.860Right. That is it. That is your raison d'etre, to stop the damage that they are doing.
04:06:19.700Most Americans, even now, would believe that most of those things are damaging.
04:06:25.120Keeping kids out of school for two years, rendering our schools to be sexualized objects, to make kids aware of their sexuality when they don't even have one,
04:06:35.540to have drag queen story hours in kindergarten.
04:06:40.020These are the issues, and you can win on these.
04:06:44.880But you're right. I don't know what Kevin McCarthy stands for.
04:06:53.760If you don't have a compelling message that you believe in, then you won't win.
04:07:00.280So, Dennis, I do want to ask you about, you know, the questions have quickly turned from 2022 to 2024 as it becomes clear that Republican, the wave just does not exist.
04:07:14.220It may be a reverse trickle, depending on how this evening goes by the end of it.
04:07:17.080But the question has quickly turned to 2024 because one silver lining to me that, you know, since I've been Debbie Downer literally all night, that Democrats will have learned nothing.
04:07:27.700In fact, they will continue to double down on this.
04:07:29.720So they will continue to double down on the woke.
04:07:31.240They'll continue to double down on the transiting of the kids.
04:07:33.300They'll continue to double down on the spending.
04:07:36.080They're going to take this as a repudiation of any critique of any of their agenda.
04:07:39.920They're doing an amazing job is the takeaway here.
04:07:42.040And so they're just going to continue to do exactly what they've been doing this whole time.
04:07:45.900At the same time, hopefully Republicans can learn some valuable lessons like stop running shitty candidates.
04:07:51.100Also, it would be good if Republicans would would start actually moving toward people who are practically good at their jobs and capable of mobilizing serious numbers of votes in favor.
04:08:01.200In other words, get professional about 2024 and start treating it like it's a serious topic as opposed to we can screw around for two years in the hopes that the pure failure of the Democrats will somehow land a bunch of us incompetents in power.
04:08:14.140Maybe the so maybe that's the silver lining is that everybody, all the Republicans get smacked for being incompetent and the Democrats don't any learn any of the lessons that would save them going forward to 2024.
04:08:24.060That's the only possible silver lining for me on this one.
04:08:26.220Yeah, I'll call that a silver lining if we hold the House.
04:09:08.000Yeah, what is there to say they have ruined everything they have touched what they have done to the medical profession that has it's one of the few things that I haven't heard them mentioned and may well have been I didn't hear everything.
04:09:18.280I was on an airplane, but just what they've the American Medical Association announces a few years ago that birth certificates should not list gender slash sex because we don't know what it is.
04:09:31.660The American Medical Association, that the children's hospitals of the country are now united in one voice in saying that it is a good thing for girls who say they're boys to get mastectomies at the age of 18.
04:09:43.480If we can't win on those things, if we can't become, I was just suggested to me, the party of parents that that worked in Virginia, it's certainly a big deal in Florida.
04:09:56.160Just say that we care about parental authority without its society crumbles.
04:10:01.520I mean, they have given us a grand canyonesque size of things to run on, and we don't.
04:10:10.320Yeah, Shapiro in Pennsylvania said, freedom isn't telling your children what books they can read.
04:10:18.220Freedom is telling your children what books they can and can't read.
04:10:21.820I want to know, being of Sicilian extraction, who I can blame.
04:10:25.800You know, I want to point, because, you know, I'm more open than most people to suggestions of voter shenanigans and the late counts that drag on.
04:10:34.040And maybe that's, some of that's going on in Arizona, I guess that remains to be seen.
04:10:37.480But that's not what's going on in a lot of the country.
04:10:39.380I don't think that's what's, I don't think Republicans can point to voter fraud or rigging or things to account for at least the vast majority of these lawsuits.
04:10:59.300Do we blame the RINOs, the House leadership, Trump, the voters, the, what do we blame?
04:11:09.140Well, if it was posed in any way to me, I thought Ben's idea of firing coaches.
04:11:15.620When you should win the game and you lose, then most people would look for a new coach or a bunch of new coaches.
04:11:26.120However, it's so much larger than any one individual.
04:11:29.420If you, why do all of you and I, and we're not alone, why do we understand what is at stake with Democrats and the left winning, and that is not conveyed by the Republican Party as a rule?
04:11:49.900Well, why do we understand and they don't?
04:11:53.040I can take a stab at an answer to that, Dennis.
04:11:56.000It's because Washington, D.C. is on the East Coast.
04:11:59.980It's because the kinds of people who can afford, generally speaking, to make a run for public office have already had success in their life, and most of them in that success have moved to urban settings, they've moved to coastal settings, and their own children don't share the values that the party purports to represent.
04:12:23.480And so you end up in this very interesting situation where, you know, Drew and I talk about this sometimes, it's true for everyone here except Matt, but we're coastal guys, you know, we've all spent 20 years in L.A., or Ben's been his entire life in Southern California, you've spent your entire professional life in Southern California.
04:12:43.580We are not rural Texans, we're not rural Tennesseeans, we're not rural Panhandle of Florida Floridians.
04:12:55.320We, I think part of what distinguishes us, perhaps, living in the environments that we've had, is that we have some sort of character trait which has allowed us to be, perhaps we're contrarians.
04:13:09.980And so in the environment of living in L.A., if it radicalized us, it radicalized us even further to the right.
04:13:16.880But I think that that isn't the reaction that most people in those environments have.
04:13:20.840I think the longer you serve in D.C., the longer you're in party leadership, the more removed you become from the sensibilities of the people that you represent, the more removed you become from the sort of traditional conservatism, we might argue about some of the disagreements, but the general things that we're all trying to promote.
04:13:39.860And the more your kids go to very nice schools, and your kids have very liberal educations, and you're surrounded your friends, your young staff, in all of these ways, you're being pulled leftward.
04:13:52.600And what you're left with is either you're still a conservative, but your suit doesn't fit very well, it's uncomfortable when you put it on, you're a little bit embarrassed in front of your friends, you're a little bit embarrassed in front of your kids.
04:14:05.640Your kids are either themselves questioning their sexuality, your kids are questioning their gender identity, or their friend who they're in school who you've known since they were a little kid and they come over.
04:14:20.080You're just immersed in the world of the left.
04:14:23.620And because you're so immersed in the world of the left, it's not necessarily that you don't believe your own values anymore.
04:14:29.120It's just that they don't, they don't form well.
04:38:12.720But I'll tell you what I'll leave you with.
04:38:16.420And since you don't embarrass people who give dour news, I will just tell you, for the first time in my life, a long life, America is now seen as exporting bad ideas.
04:38:39.780When in Hong Kong they marched for freedom, they marched with an American flag.
04:38:45.780There was no greater sight than an American flag for people who loved liberty.
04:38:49.660And now, you know, they've shut down, in Europe, they have shut down virtually every single children's hospital that was doing the things that we do.
04:39:01.440The affirmation of trans that takes place routinely in American children's hospitals is not happening in Europe, including in socialist, quote unquote, socialist countries.
04:39:20.180And I'll just say to Drew, who said, you know, I think you said the pendulum swings or something to that effect, or Yankee sensibility will return.
04:39:31.360Whenever I hear that, you know, in the long run, truth wins out, or in the long run, the good prevails,
04:39:38.400I always think about what happens during the long run, how many lives are ruined during that run.