The Michael Knowles Show - Daily Wire Backstage： The Presidential Debate

00:00:00.000 Hey, Michael Knowles here, and do I have a treat for you. The latest episode of Daily Wire

00:00:04.020 backstage is right around the corner, and you do not want to miss it. Don't miss me,

00:00:08.920 Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Andrew Klavan, and the God King, Jeremy Boring, as we discuss the latest

00:00:13.340 news and cultural events, all while enjoying some fine whiskey and cigars. It is going to be

00:00:18.320 all that and more. Take a listen.

00:00:30.000 Well, that was 90 minutes. We'll never get back.

00:00:47.220 Truly a difficult night, I think, for President Trump. Kamala Harris accomplished, I believe,

00:00:53.980 what she needed to accomplish, which was just essentially having a pulse, right? Showing

00:00:58.900 that she is at least capable of giving an answer, even if it wasn't ever a particularly

00:01:02.580 competent one, or to any question that was actually asked of her. Whereas, you know,

00:01:07.460 we needed to see Donald Trump take on, it was obviously horribly moderated, perhaps the worst

00:01:13.040 moderated debate in history, but we needed to see that 2016 magic when Anderson Cooper tried to pull

00:01:18.580 that same sort of stunt on Donald Trump in one of his debates with Hillary Clinton, and Trump took on

00:01:23.560 all comers. Here, he was fact-checked, maybe on 50% of the questions that he was asked,

00:01:28.900 he never once.

00:01:30.180 Even when they lied, and they lied explicitly.

00:01:32.060 Openly lie. He never once challenged them. On the whole, I think, a pretty difficult night.

00:01:37.160 So, here's my take on this particular debate. We're going to talk about it a lot today. We'll

00:01:41.840 talk about it a lot tomorrow. In a week from now, it's not going to matter at all. And the reason

00:01:44.320 it's not going to matter at all is because nothing fundamentally changed here. The people of America

00:01:48.500 still don't know Kamala Harris. Donald Trump has not done his job in making sure that the people of

00:01:53.300 America actually know anything about her positions. 30% of Americans say they don't know anything about her

00:01:57.300 positions, and they still don't know anything about her positions, because the moderators

00:02:00.180 never pressed her on any of her positions. And Donald Trump didn't either. On Donald Trump's

00:02:04.940 side of the aisle, Donald Trump did not perform tonight. He didn't do an amazing job calling her

00:02:08.860 on her BS. The best thing he said all night was his closing statement, which is what he should have

00:02:12.300 opened with. He closed with, why didn't you do it? That should have been the very first thing he said

00:02:16.640 in the debate. And the fact that that wasn't what he said right off the top was a mistake.

00:02:21.120 He was also incredibly distractible tonight. He took the bait on nearly every question.

00:02:25.600 Every time she said something that you knew was going to get his goat, he just let it happen.

00:02:30.200 So for example, when she gave him the bait on his crowd sizes, on people are leaving your crowds,

00:02:36.120 they're leaving your allies, he couldn't resist going after her about the crowd size. What about

00:02:40.520 January 6th? About the election of 2020? These are all distractions. The only thing that mattered

00:02:45.180 tonight for Donald Trump was defining her, and he did not define her, which means that I still

00:02:49.680 checked the calendar. It was over a couple months till the election. She is going to have to be

00:02:52.800 defined. The big takeaway from this is not going to be about Trump, who still remains Trump.

00:02:57.340 It's really not going to be about Harris, who performed the best I think it's possible for

00:03:00.140 Kamala Harris to perform, which is to say she was fairly obnoxious. She lied a lot. She said a lot

00:03:04.840 of things that were untrue. She was never called on any of that. The big takeaway is going to be

00:03:09.940 the continued destruction of the legacy media on behalf of the Democratic Party. The legacy media

00:03:14.940 have decided. Full scale, they are now apparatchiks of the Democratic Party. They are so far up Kamala

00:03:20.240 Harris's ass that they're doing active colonoscopies with their eyeballs. It's unbelievable watching

00:03:25.240 David Muir ask questions to Donald Trump like, why are you so bad and orange and mean? And then

00:03:29.360 turning to Kamala Harris and saying, and why is he so bad and orange and mean? It's absolutely insipid

00:03:35.160 and totally insane. The media tonight were beyond the worst expectations that I had for them. I thought

00:03:40.900 that they were going to do like a baseline creditable job because CNN did. Jake Tapper and

00:03:45.200 Danavash, they actually did that in the last debate. They actually asked questions and let

00:03:48.340 people answer them. David Muir became an active participant in this debate. Lindsay Davis became

00:03:52.300 an active participant in the debate. And then they never once fact-checked Kamala Harris, who lied over

00:03:56.800 and over and over. She lied. She said, for example, that Donald Trump was a backer of project

00:04:01.120 2025. A lie. She said that Donald Trump said there were very fine people on both sides of the

00:04:06.820 Charlottesville riots, including the neo-Nazis. That is a lie. It's been debunked repeatedly.

00:04:11.520 They did not say that that was a lie. She said that he had said that he was going to unleash a

00:04:14.980 bloodbath on the country if he lost. That's a full-scale lie. They never fact-checked a single

00:04:18.740 thing that she did the entire night. And actually, that helps Trump. And it helps Trump for a very

00:04:23.320 simple reason. If you are a Trump fan, and if you think that Trump didn't actually perform

00:04:27.680 unbelievably well tonight, which I think is true. I don't think he did an amazing job tonight.

00:04:31.600 The easy out is, yeah, because the media were targeting him. And if you're a moderate watching

00:04:36.000 this, I think that it had to be apparent even to moderates, even to independents, the media want

00:04:40.580 Kamala Harris elected. They're doing their best to make sure that Kamala Harris is elected. And so

00:04:44.440 tomorrow, we'll revert right back to where we were before this debate. We'll revert right back to

00:04:48.940 Kamala Harris is vibes, and she is joy, and she is policy vagary, and she'll never answer another

00:04:54.320 question. She's going to try and get all the way from here to the election without ever answering another

00:04:58.220 question. There will be no more debates. She's going to declare that she won. The

00:05:01.080 media will declare that she won and that Trump lost. Trump really has no interest in doing

00:05:04.340 another debate because I frankly don't think that it's in his interest to do another debate

00:05:07.900 at this point. So that was the last presidential debate of this election cycle. The bottom line

00:05:11.900 is that when all is said and done, it seems like a lot of this is baked into the cake.

00:05:16.040 And in the moment, it's uncomfortable because it was such an opportunity. You know, if you're

00:05:19.440 like me and you're sitting there, you're like leaping out of your seat, why won't he just

00:05:22.400 say it? Why won't he just say it? It's very frustrating. She will say something about how

00:05:26.400 race shouldn't divide us. And you're sitting there going, what the actual living? Like

00:05:31.160 you are a case in point of a person who divides based on race. It's what you do for a living.

00:05:36.740 It's how you became vice president of the United States. She will say things about Afghanistan.

00:05:41.300 They'll ask her about whether she has any regrets, and she'll say no. And instead of him coming

00:05:45.720 back and saying, don't you regret the 13 dead American soldiers whose families you ignored?

00:05:50.340 You're just waiting for him to take the opening. But the problem was that he had been set off

00:05:54.000 earlier in the debate. He was incredibly distractible. He was following every squirrel

00:05:57.440 down every particular rabbit hole. Again, the best moment I thought of the debate for Donald

00:06:01.180 Trump was that closing statement where he finally laid out the big question. If you say you have

00:06:05.160 all these big plans, why don't you do any of those things? But in the final analysis, I can be pissed

00:06:10.200 at the media. I can feel discomfort with how the debate went tonight. This is still a tight race.

00:06:15.540 It's not going to become a not tight race because of this particular debate, which means that tomorrow

00:06:19.500 Donald Trump better get up and he better decide that he's going to do for the rest of the campaign,

00:06:23.380 the thing he didn't do tonight. Define her. Define her positions. J.D. Vance, by the way,

00:06:28.500 is doing an excellent job of this. J.D.'s doing a great job of this. Trump needs to do it. He needs

00:06:32.460 to actually do it. If he does that, he can still win the race and he still has the upper hand. But

00:06:37.360 this debate was a, I'll say it was a blown opportunity at the very least.

00:06:41.780 I think that that part of it is, I seriously agree with you. I think the two things that Trump

00:06:46.900 did accomplish was he got ganged up on, which obviously he didn't do, but I think that was really

00:06:52.280 important. I think the, you, we do not see, we do not see how far the media has fallen in the eyes of

00:06:59.800 the American public. The fact that after that DNC, that ecstatic, loving, that love fest of a DNC,

00:07:07.220 Kamala Harris didn't get a bump, is telling us something about what the American public is

00:07:11.240 thinking about the media. They are watching the media. They get it. They've seen it. All the stuff

00:07:15.760 we all have been talking about all these years, I think that the people whose minds are open now can see

00:07:21.300 it. So that was good for Trump. I agree that Trump could have ended her. She was so, she was better,

00:07:26.840 way better prepared than she's ever been, but only as well prepared as I thought she was going to be.

00:07:30.760 I thought she did a, did the job that she had to do and he could have ended her. And that's

00:07:34.300 disappointing, but he didn't attack her personally. And he did say, I don't agree that look, I, when he

00:07:40.460 goes off the line and he chases the squirrel and he does it when his ego gets involved, it's always

00:07:45.220 really frustrating because you want him to stick to his, his script, but he didn't do it throughout the

00:07:49.880 debate. And for the first 30 minutes, I say, which is the most important part of any debate,

00:07:54.500 he actually stayed on track and said the things that he had to say. They were not as powerful as

00:07:59.340 they would have been. Had you been saying them, they weren't as powerful as they would have been

00:08:02.080 with somebody who could keep from rambling as much as he does. He was his usual self, but a little

00:08:07.720 better. That's what I would say about Donald Trump. And that's frustrating because it would have

00:08:11.360 been great if he had actually done what we wanted him to do. I think you're right that this is not

00:08:16.600 going to change the debate because of the bad behavior of ABC and because the people see this.

00:08:24.200 But, you know, I wish he'd ended her too. But at the same time, I think that if I had to say over

00:08:30.500 the time what we've got left, what the impression is going to be, it's that the media can't be trusted

00:08:35.620 and she is running a media campaign, a completely constructed campaign. I don't think that's going to

00:08:42.120 get us where we need to go. But I think it's going to be exactly as you say, we're going to stay on

00:08:46.880 track where we are now. I think Trump's leading. I think he's leading more than the polls say.

00:08:50.840 Remember, their polls are better than our polls, the ones that we see. And I think he's leading

00:08:55.140 more than they say. And I think he's got a serious chance. This certainly did not destroy that.

00:09:02.040 Sorry, go ahead, Matt.

00:09:03.200 I'll just say that I think the good thing for Trump is that there was not a meltdown moment. There

00:09:08.220 wasn't one thing that'll get clipped. I mean, a lot of things will get clipped, but he didn't

00:09:12.120 it was a poor performance, but there was not one iconic meltdown moment for him.

00:09:18.780 Kamala, I agree with what's been said so far. I think she did as well as we could possibly expect

00:09:23.700 her to do. She also didn't have a great moment. I mean, the media will try to manufacture a moment

00:09:28.640 out of it. She didn't have one. Well, really, she had one. The moment of the debate, if there was one,

00:09:34.640 I think, was when she baited him on the rallies and when she said that they leave the rallies early

00:09:40.480 because they're bored. Obviously, they plan to say that for only one reason, not because that part

00:09:46.160 is compelling to the voters. We don't care about that. If Trump's rallies are boring or not, we

00:09:51.100 don't care. But she knew that Trump just cannot stand that, that you're getting him right where it

00:09:57.920 hurts the most. The idea that his rallies are boring is just you are stabbing him right in the gut with

00:10:05.060 that. And I think he responded to that by rambling and getting very defensive. And from my read of it,

00:10:11.500 I think he never quite recovered from that. He was more visibly angry throughout the whole rest of the

00:10:17.200 debate. His tone was angrier. He was a little bit off kilter. I don't think he ever got quite back to

00:10:22.840 it. But it was kind of spread out throughout the debate. So I think that because there's not the one

00:10:29.320 moment that will just be repeated, it wasn't like with Biden when there was a couple of moments of

00:10:34.840 him not being able to speak. Drooling. That did happen. It means that probably two, three days from

00:10:38.780 now, nobody's talking about this debate. And you could say that even though Trump performed relatively

00:10:45.660 poorly, if no one's talking about it three days from now, then it's kind of a tie effectively.

00:10:51.360 And does a tie go to Trump on this one if he's sort of in the lead?

00:10:55.560 Thank God she didn't attack his golf scores.

00:10:58.120 Of course, right. But the rest of the night. That was the moment when it shifted. So I would

00:11:02.780 say Trump won pretty decisively the first 20, maybe 25 minutes. She was visibly nervous. Her

00:11:09.800 voice was shaking. Physically, she might have been shaking. She was repeating rote answers that had

00:11:14.740 nothing to do with the question and were obnoxiously irrelevant to the question. So he was winning.

00:11:20.320 She shook him up. That was when I felt it was gracious of the moderators to allow her to

00:11:25.540 try to debate for the first 20 minutes. And then they decided, no, we're going to step in.

00:11:29.900 And it was more egregious than Candy Crowley in 2012. It was the most egregious I've ever seen.

00:11:34.180 A complete disgrace for David Muir and that other.

00:11:38.120 Lindsay Davis.

00:11:38.840 Lindsay Davis.

00:11:39.620 What a clown show.

00:11:40.400 A complete disgrace. He won the closing statement. That was a very strong closing statement. Hers was

00:11:45.500 fine, but it was.

00:11:46.840 Are you okay?

00:11:47.860 Are you okay?

00:11:48.540 I have a question. Do you want that from your government?

00:11:51.240 Do you want your government coming to me like, are you okay? How about like, not when you're

00:11:54.880 talking to me, I'm not. Like, go away.

00:11:57.100 The biggest takeaway for me, and somehow it had not occurred to me until that moment when

00:12:01.760 she shook him up on the crowd sizes, Kamala Harris's superpower is that she's quite good

00:12:07.660 at manipulating men. And I don't mean that as a cheap shot or a provocation. She started

00:12:12.180 her political career by manipulating a married man, Willie Brown in San Francisco. Much has been

00:12:15.940 said about that. That's how she got her start. She became vice president. She couldn't

00:12:20.420 win one delegate in the 2020 primary, but she became president because she baited Joe

00:12:27.040 Biden on that debate stage. She called him a racist. She accused him of being the reason

00:12:31.660 she wouldn't be allowed to be bused to school. And she put him in a position where he had

00:12:36.160 to pick a black woman for VP, and she was the only one that he could have picked. And

00:12:39.560 then she laid out that trap for Trump with the question about crowd sizes. She is not great

00:12:46.520 at retail. She's not good at speaking to people. She doesn't know a damn thing about

00:12:49.500 policy. She doesn't have a platform, but she's pretty good at manipulating individual men.

00:12:55.060 And especially when she was backed up with the full weight of ABC News, it allowed her

00:12:59.820 to make up for her deficiencies and land basically at a draw.

00:13:03.820 We're so good. It's so easy to manipulate.

00:13:06.160 That's right. I think that it would be true that a tie, I think it is true that a tie goes

00:13:10.800 to the person who's ahead. I'm not sure that I agree that Donald Trump is ahead. I don't

00:13:16.120 think that the polls have yet reflected that Donald Trump is ahead, although certainly

00:13:19.880 her momentum has abated and he has the opportunity, but he isn't taking the opportunity. And I think

00:13:26.240 the thing I disagree with you the most about, Drew, is this idea that everyone sees through

00:13:29.800 the media. You know, I think Gallup released a poll two weeks ago that said Democrat trust

00:13:34.720 in the media is actually precipitously rising.

00:13:39.340 I'm talking about the people who are going to decide the election.

00:13:41.680 Yeah, well, I don't. The people who are going to decide the election are not Republicans.

00:13:45.860 No, they're independents.

00:13:48.320 Yes.

00:13:48.960 Yeah.

00:13:49.360 And the question is also going to be how many Democrats show up. So I think the big advantage

00:13:52.820 that Trump had against Biden is that Democrats weren't showing up to the polls, right?

00:13:55.420 They were so depressed that they weren't going to show up. They're not going to have a turn

00:13:57.840 out problem. I think that after the performance that she gave tonight, Democrats are in a good mood.

00:14:02.820 You can see they're in a good mood. They're going to be in a good mood. You're going to get a lot

00:14:05.340 more vibes. It's going to be vibes up the wazoo for the next couple of weeks. And this is where

00:14:10.300 I'm, you know, at a certain point, it becomes almost criminal politically to miss as many

00:14:14.860 opportunities as President Trump is currently missing. It is his job not to miss the opportunities.

00:14:19.620 And listen, we got two months to go. Maybe he starts hitting the opportunities. That's the thing

00:14:22.740 you want. But since Biden was swapped out for the brand new coat of paints on the broken up

00:14:28.340 jalopy masquerading as a Lamborghini, since that happened, he has not found his foot

00:14:32.800 footing in terms of actually doing his job, which is to define her in the mind of the American

00:14:36.680 public. And he had every opportunity to do that tonight. And he didn't take any of them.

00:14:40.400 He at the very beginning, the very first question right out the gate, right out the gate for her

00:14:44.160 was, are you better off economically than you were four years ago? Now, his answer, he should not

00:14:49.820 even listen to her answer. He should not even listen. He should as soon as they come back to him,

00:14:53.700 as soon as he realizes what she's doing, which is she's now going to avoid the question,

00:14:56.660 which she did just start wandering all over the landscape in search of an idea for the next two minutes.

00:15:00.680 As soon as they came back to him, he should have said, you know what I noticed? I noticed you

00:15:03.760 didn't answer that very simple question because it has a very simple answer. Of course, you're not

00:15:07.540 better off than you were four years ago. You've done a terrible job. Joe Biden has done a terrible

00:15:11.160 job. You're the current vice president of the United States. And then he should have dumped in what he

00:15:14.760 said at the end. You have all these big plans to change the country. Where are you? Why don't you go do

00:15:19.200 them right now? I noticed you've done none of them, right? I mean, like in the first five minutes,

00:15:22.980 this debate could have been over. And that's the part that really galls me. That's pretty good.

00:15:26.420 I have to interrupt you here because I owe our sponsors to tell people about owing things more

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00:16:49.800 slash backstage. It only takes 30 seconds. That's p-d-s-d-e-b-t dot com slash backstage,

00:16:57.900 pdsdebt.com slash backstage. You know, Donald Trump missed a lot of opportunities. He's been missing the

00:17:04.500 opportunity to define Kamala Harris since she became her party's nominee. He missed a lot of

00:17:10.640 opportunities tonight, I think, as you've described, to clock her. But the biggest missed opportunity

00:17:16.780 of the night had nothing to do with Kamala Harris. He missed the opportunity to run against the media.

00:17:23.460 They fact-checked him and fact-checked him and fact-checked him. They fact-checked him when he

00:17:27.260 was right. They didn't fact-check her when she would outright lie. She wasn't fact-checked, I believe.

00:17:33.000 She has not fact-checked a single time during the debate. And you can say, well, people see that,

00:17:36.580 but only people who are really plugged in, really paying attention, watching the debate all the way

00:17:41.000 through, see those things. You have to tell people. You know, the biggest lie told, I think, of the

00:17:48.040 history of Hollywood was told by the dearly departed James Earl Jones, if you build it, they will come.

00:17:54.660 He didn't actually say it. It was the script writer. It was the script writer.

00:17:57.880 That's a lie. You have to tell people about it before they will come.

00:18:03.460 And Donald Trump needed to, every single time that he was interrupted or fact-checked or corrected

00:18:08.800 or essentially debated by the moderators, he needed to point that fact out. Because you need

00:18:13.940 those sound bites. You need to empower your team to be able to make the montage to show again and

00:18:17.860 again and again what's happening. I think that's the biggest missed opportunity of the night. It's not

00:18:22.720 the opportunity to frame Kamala, although that is a miss. It's the opportunity to frame who his actual

00:18:27.940 opponent is. You know, this is absolutely true. And one of the things about Trump that's different

00:18:33.140 is he's being a little bit more restrained. That has its good side. But the bad side is the press

00:18:37.700 is his enemy and the enemy of the people. And he should be saying it.

00:18:41.280 Somebody obviously told him within the campaign, don't hit the press. Because it's his MO to hit the

00:18:45.840 press. I don't want to gloss over, though, the lie that they told. They didn't fact-check all sorts of

00:18:51.820 lies from Kamala. That's right. But when Trump pointed out that there are prominent Democrats

00:18:56.260 and there are states in this country where babies are killed after birth, and Lindsay Davis came out

00:19:01.780 and said, that is not true. There is no state where this is happening. Not only is that a lie,

00:19:06.180 but Kamala Harris's own running mate, Tim Walz, repealed protections for babies who survive abortions

00:19:12.520 in the state of Minnesota. Survives abortion in this instance means are born. Are born. So they try to

00:19:19.180 kill the baby. The baby is born. There are legal protections in some states that say, if the baby's

00:19:24.940 born, you have to provide medical care as you would to any other human being. And Tim Walz, within the

00:19:30.380 last two years, repealed those legal protections. That is Kamala's own running mate. It is the most

00:19:36.340 egregious lie. It blows Candy Crowley 2012 out of the war. But you know how they get around that,

00:19:41.080 though? Because in that case, what they do is they put the baby to the side and leave the baby to just

00:19:45.380 die. They don't directly kill the baby. And so that's like the game they're playing. Well,

00:19:49.980 if you just leave a child to die, you're not killing them. Which Trump, you know, I mean,

00:19:54.160 it would be a great thing to point out. I will say that on the abortion question,

00:19:57.620 that was, Trump, I thought, had one really great moment. And it was actually one of the best moments

00:20:02.660 I've ever seen from a Republican presidential candidate. I agree. Because I've never seen a

00:20:06.220 Republican, I've been screaming forever, I want some Republican in a debate to do this. It's never

00:20:10.900 happened once that I can remember. And Trump did it. He turned to her and said, okay, we've talked

00:20:16.220 about the extreme cases. Would you support abortion in seven months? Totally agree. I thought it was a

00:20:21.080 great moment. And she didn't answer it. And she kind of, and she pivoted back to him. So he should

00:20:26.700 have stayed there for longer, but that was a brilliant moment. And that's exactly what Republicans

00:20:30.760 should be doing on this issue. I think in our disappointment that he didn't just steamroller

00:20:34.940 as she well deserved, I think we did miss a bunch of moments like that. That was the best. That was

00:20:39.460 definitely the best. Me too. I've always waited for somebody to say, oh, what's the date when

00:20:44.580 you're ready to stop? But he did a lot of good things on immigration. He did a lot of good things

00:20:49.540 on the economy. You know, he wasn't bad. It was just that you sit here and you can see from the

00:20:55.060 outside that a guy with real debate skills, which he has never had, could have just swept her away.

00:21:01.020 And so you're disappointed. But you also, in being disappointed, you miss some of the good

00:21:04.300 things he really did do. In a sort of weird way, there's, you know, what you feel right after you

00:21:08.380 watched the debate. And then there's what you feel in the 24 hours after the debate. Because

00:21:11.320 it's almost two separate processes now. The internet has changed the way that people watch

00:21:15.560 debates. So I'll be curious to see who watched this thing, you know, soup to nuts the way that

00:21:19.120 we just did. When you, when you watch the whole thing, the reason that those things disappear is

00:21:22.760 because he will get in the punch, but it's in the middle of a long rambling thing about a bunch of

00:21:27.920 other things, right? The thing you said is he actually said it clearly and concisely. That's,

00:21:31.520 I think, one of the most clear, concise moments he had the entire debate. But he would throw a punch

00:21:35.820 and for a moment, he'd be like, that's a good punch. But it was in the middle of kind of mush.

00:21:40.160 And so because it's very hard to listen to Charlie Brown's teacher, you know, going on at you,

00:21:45.820 like when he finally throws the punch, sometimes it gets lost in translation. However, this is what

00:21:50.680 the internet is made for. So half the stuff that he says that's sort of memable will be memed within

00:21:56.360 an hour. And so when we look at the internet two hours from now, there's gonna be a bunch of

00:21:59.940 moments where you're like, oh, I forgot that Donald Trump said that. I didn't really remember him saying

00:22:03.660 that because, because again, it all gets kind of lost in the middle of this. Also, again, I think

00:22:08.940 the internet is going to do a very good job of dissecting exactly what the moderators did last

00:22:12.860 night. I think that there's going to be a montage. And if there isn't, then I'm calling on all our

00:22:16.140 fans to make one right now and I'll play it on the show tomorrow. A montage of every fact check,

00:22:19.860 right? I mean, it was minutes of time that they were fact checking Trump. I want a montage of every

00:22:23.600 time they interrupted him. He'd be giving an answer and they would say, I want to move on. David Muir would

00:22:28.360 say, I want to move on. He was in the middle of giving an answer about Afghanistan.

00:22:30.840 And many other things. Hammering Kamala Harris. And David Muir would jump in and say, I want to

00:22:34.700 move on. I have some, I have so many questions. Who gives a shh? Why are you, why are you an

00:22:40.660 important person? What makes you an important human? Did they fact check her once? No. Zero

00:22:44.660 times. Zero times. The most egregious thing on this was in one paragraph, she did the very fine

00:22:49.040 people hoax. She did the blood, the bloodbath hoax. The most ridiculous. She did the, and she did

00:22:54.500 the stand back and stand by, you're in favor of the Proud Boys hoax, which all three of those are

00:22:58.320 nonsense. They didn't fact check that at all. And then when they did fact check him,

00:23:02.420 they lied. So they said, well, you know, the crime rates, Kamala Harris says the crime rates

00:23:06.540 have gone down. And then David Muir repeats like a zombie. Yes, the crime rates have gone

00:23:10.940 down. And Trump says, the crime rates haven't gone down. The FBI has not reported all the

00:23:14.240 crime rates, which is true. He's actually correct about this. But because again, when all the fact

00:23:19.420 checks are directed at one side, the media are clearly attempting to drive a narrative.

00:23:23.040 And the narrative is her narrative. Because her narrative at the beginning was, he's going to

00:23:26.200 tell you so many lies. And they were going to be complicit in all of that. Now, again,

00:23:30.580 he's going to have to go out in the campaign trail. He's going to have to prove it.

00:23:33.040 Yeah. He's got his talking points. But you're making two months left.

00:23:35.020 You're making like a huge point, though, that is really, it really is important. Part of this

00:23:38.600 thing I was talking about before the debate about the way the impression sinks in over time. And it

00:23:44.120 doesn't take that much time. It doesn't, it's not going to take 50 days, but it has to do with the

00:23:48.000 internet now, which it didn't before. Before it was kind of, you'd stick in your head. You'd think about it.

00:23:52.340 Now, there's going to be a constant drumbeat of these memes coming out. And I think a lot of them

00:23:57.560 are going to be in Trump's favor. And I think that it's going to spread. People watch the news a

00:24:02.160 different way that we haven't quite caught up with. Can we say one thing about David Muir,

00:24:05.800 by the way? It's not just what he did, but it's the attitude with which he did it.

00:24:10.980 Yes.

00:24:12.120 Sneering condescension, ashamed of himself to have to be in a room with Donald Trump,

00:24:16.900 proud of himself to show everyone that he was willing to stand up constantly to Donald Trump.

00:24:23.540 I mean, they're, they're, I'm not the most effusive in my Trump praise, I think, person at

00:24:31.220 the Daily Wire. They're disdained for him. They're scorned for him. They can't even hide it. It's not

00:24:36.440 that they can't hide it. They don't even want to try to hide it. They want you to see it so that you

00:24:42.120 know that they are good people, so that you know that they are. This is the thing that Trump is most

00:24:45.600 right about. It's not disdain for him. It's disdain for us, and he's in the way. And he's,

00:24:50.380 it's the people who voted for him that they hate, and they've hated him for 50, 60 years.

00:24:55.520 And ironically, I think the media, it might end up that the media bailed him out, because if the

00:25:00.180 story of the debate ultimately is that it was three against one, and this was the most unfair

00:25:04.520 debate we've ever seen, which it was, then that's automatically a win for Trump, if that becomes

00:25:09.020 the story. It's up to, like, to your point, it's up to Republicans to make that the story,

00:25:12.380 which shouldn't be too hard to do. The thing that's very difficult, I think,

00:25:16.500 about this moment is that because there are no more inflection points, the debates were held so

00:25:21.020 early this year, right? You had the debate that knocked Biden out. That was in June. That never

00:25:24.480 happened. You had a debate in June. That's crazy. And then this debate, normally it would be debate

00:25:28.680 number one, right? You now have two more that were coming, which would give the incumbent time.

00:25:32.800 Trump's not even the incumbent, but the treaty is the incumbent. It would give him time to actually

00:25:36.420 recover. This is going to be the only debate, which means we've now run out of inflection points in this

00:25:39.840 election cycle, right? There are no organized inflection points. Oh, you sweet...

00:25:43.540 I don't know. What I mean by that is, notice how I changed the planned inflection points.

00:25:49.900 There will be exogenous events that occur between now and November, and nobody knows what they are.

00:25:55.540 That's leaving the election to the winds of chance. And that's why it felt like, I think,

00:25:59.640 a little bit of a gut punch to a lot of us who want Trump to win, or from donors who organize

00:26:03.500 fundraisers for him. You know, it feels like a gut punch because it's like, when the opportunity is in

00:26:07.460 front of you, if you would just seize it. It's just right there. It's right there. Just do the thing.

00:26:13.760 So, speaking of opportunities, we have a great discount right now over at dailywire.com. For

00:26:19.960 new subscribers, if you use promo code FIGHT, you will get 47% off of your Daily Wire Plus membership.

00:26:25.440 That gives you access to all of our content, our movies, documentaries, specials, from Judged

00:26:33.120 through the United Divided States of Biden, Ben's wonderful documentary series from earlier this

00:26:39.740 year, back when there was a guy running for president named Joe Biden. You get members-only

00:26:43.140 content. And I think most importantly, you help us do the important work that we're doing.

00:26:48.180 I believe it's important. Nothing perhaps more important than our coverage tonight, having

00:26:53.960 our Daily Wire team at the debate so that they're able to bring real-time information to us. We'll be

00:26:59.740 hearing from Cabot Phillips in only a few moments. And other things like bringing Matt's new

00:27:03.860 documentary, Am I Racist?, to theaters as we will be nationwide in over 1,500 screens on Friday. So

00:27:10.040 please, if you're not a member, head over to dailywire.com. Use that promo code FIGHT to get

00:27:13.860 your 47% discount. And if you are a member, head over and ask us questions because we want to hear

00:27:18.680 from our members throughout the broadcast. Beginning right now with this first question, for the entire

00:27:23.260 group, what are your thoughts on Trump's I'm Speaking moment? I thought it was cute. It was

00:27:28.380 funny. I thought it was good. The I'll Buy You a MAGA hat was good. I'll Buy You a MAGA hat was

00:27:31.960 terrific. Yeah. Obviously, the I'm Speaking moment was planned in advance because, you know, that is

00:27:38.400 Kamala's trick. If you remember from her vice president debate against Mike Pence, she constantly

00:27:42.840 used that line to sort of show that he was beating up on a woman, I think was sort of her. And he just

00:27:47.660 took that right away from her, which I thought was a pretty great... He also, he can't help but put the

00:27:51.600 button on the joke. Yeah, I thought so. Right? I'm speaking. Get it? Get it? Yeah, yeah. Sounds

00:27:56.180 familiar. It would have been obviously a lot more telling if the mics had been on. Yeah. Part of

00:28:01.760 the problem is that the mics are muted. So when she's talking, you can't hear what she's saying

00:28:04.620 back to him. I actually think the mics being muted really helped her tonight because she kept trying

00:28:07.740 to slip in things. You could actually hear it off mic. Yes. For saying things like over and over and

00:28:11.780 over. And by the way, the split screen for her, I don't think was particularly flattering. I mean,

00:28:15.700 she's making a lot of faces tonight. The one thing that she has studiously avoided, I'll give her credit for

00:28:19.500 this. The crazy laugh is gone. Have you seen the crazy laugh on the campaign trail? Yeah. That was

00:28:23.560 like the most indicative tick of every time she was lying for her entire vice presidency. Yeah. And

00:28:27.620 this is a woman who takes stage direction really well. I mean, they told her, do not laugh ever

00:28:32.320 again for the rest of your life. And you will be president. And you'll be president. And she's

00:28:36.140 doing it. I will give that to her. It did remind me a little bit of her mugging on the split screen

00:28:42.520 reminded me a little bit of Al Gore. Remember when Al Gore did that to George W. Bush? Yeah,

00:28:47.400 it kind of, it did, it did, was distracting and ugly. It was unattractive and unappealing

00:28:52.140 as a, an emotional thing, you know, just watching that. I don't know how much that.

00:28:55.640 I do wonder if they, you know, I'm, you process these things sort of as, as you think about

00:28:59.240 them. I do wonder how it appeared to people who, you know, may not be in our financial position.

00:29:04.500 What I mean by that is if you're a blue collar worker in the Rust Belt and you're watching Kamala

00:29:08.540 Harris speaking about the vibes and about Donald Trump and January 6th and all this kind of stuff.

00:29:12.820 And at no point does she ever acknowledge anywhere in the debate that there's any problem for anyone

00:29:19.000 in America. She laughed at inflation. She did put her little smile on. I do wonder if that is a point

00:29:24.600 that needs to be drawn out by the Trump campaign, which is you at no point assumed, I mean, you say,

00:29:32.260 come to us if you're not okay. There are a lot of people in the country who are not okay. And if I

00:29:35.820 were going to cut an ad based on that debate, I would say Kamala Harris, use that clip of her saying,

00:29:39.660 what I'm asking is, are you okay? And then say, America's not okay. America is not okay. And it's

00:29:45.080 not okay because of you. But here's the thing. If you do want to be okay, then you need to be

00:29:50.820 healthier. You know, let me talk about something else I'm passionate about aside from political

00:29:55.000 debate. And that of course is fitness. I've been regularly exercising for years now, as you can

00:29:59.700 see from this chiseled God-like physique has become a major part of my daily routine. We should see the

00:30:05.900 shockingly defined biceps. And you will, if you become a daily wire subscriber. Recently though,

00:30:10.360 I started to hit a wall in terms of the progress that I was seeing. I do work out a lot, but I

00:30:14.080 realized there was a missing piece. The fact is I eat like an idiot. You can see me doing it literally

00:30:18.040 on the set right now. I'm having like jelly beans and popcorn all night long as I nerve eat and all

00:30:23.140 the rest of this. You can exercise all you want, but if you eat like crap, if you don't have the

00:30:26.620 information to eat right, you're making it way harder on yourself. So let me show you this,

00:30:31.540 this device right here. This is called a lumen. Okay. Now what's cool about this thing right here,

00:30:36.480 this lumen is that it's going to help you achieve your health and fitness goals. It's actually really

00:30:39.980 cool. You breathe into it. It analyzes your metabolism and lets you know if you're burning

00:30:44.040 more fats or more carbs at any given time. You can do it in the morning before or after workouts,

00:30:48.240 whatever works for you. And then it designs a nutrition program for you. I use the lumen right

00:30:52.540 before the show. It told me I'm at a level three, which means I'm equally burning fats and carbs.

00:30:56.720 So for today, it recommends a lower carb meal plan because I haven't been able to exercise. So

00:31:00.880 naturally, I immediately started, you know, defying it, but I won't do that tomorrow. It even gave

00:31:04.980 me a personalized nutrition plan for the day based on those measurements. Michael, on the other hand,

00:31:09.160 might use lumen to discover that 97% of the calories he burns come from cured Italian meats.

00:31:14.380 It's important information to have. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lumen is going to help you reach your fitness

00:31:18.960 goals. It makes weight management a lot easier. It can help you improve your sleep and your energy

00:31:22.600 levels. If you want to take the next step in improving your health, go to lumen.me

00:31:26.720 slash backstage. Get 15% off your lumen. That is L-U-M-E-N dot me slash backstage for 15%

00:31:33.000 off your purchase. Can I say, on a completely non-political topic, you're in really good

00:31:40.180 shape and nobody knows it. I know, right? It is one of the real, it is truly one of the downsides

00:31:46.000 of your religious beliefs. I mean, listen, it's only a little gay. There are other downsides of your

00:31:53.180 religious beliefs, which we should talk about off air. The ever-present flaming. In any case,

00:32:01.180 yeah. But the fact that you people are modest really works against you because you actually

00:32:06.420 do work out as much as anybody I know. Yeah. I clock in at a hefty 11% body fat.

00:32:14.300 I don't know if that means that. I don't know if that was good or bad. It means basically I'm an

00:32:18.140 olympian. That's what I'm telling you right now. I am somewhat curious to learn more.

00:32:22.560 We haven't even mentioned the fact that I can still walk. I don't know.

00:32:26.820 You are also incredibly physically fit. Well, I work out a lot. You work out a lot and you walk

00:32:31.380 uphill, straight uphill. Yeah. We've been talking about doing a push-up contest for years now,

00:32:35.540 so it's got to happen one of these days. I mean, the other day we did the pull-up thing,

00:32:38.000 right? We did do a pull-up contest. Pull-ups are hard, man. Can we talk about how sexy I am?

00:32:41.780 Why are we just talking about Drew and Ben? We did do a pull-up contest. Right. I will tell you this.

00:32:45.140 Ben works out all the time. Drew works out all the time. And I used to work out with Michael

00:32:50.120 Knowles. We did Krav Maga for about a year. And you're crumbling in our shoes. I have taken a

00:32:55.080 punch from Michael Knowles. Have you really? Somehow you survived. Why was I not invited to the pull-up

00:33:02.940 contest, first of all? Oh, I mean, what's your top number? What was yours? I'll tell you.

00:33:09.540 We actually have a pull-up bar right off of the set. It was put up by Pavel. Way better than the

00:33:14.500 debate. Yes. Well, anyway, I'm just saying. I appreciate that. I'm like an old fat guy. But if

00:33:19.940 I worked out as much as you, I would look into religions that involve less modesty. That's all

00:33:25.580 I'm saying. Here's another question from our dailywire.com subscribers, people who have availed

00:33:31.320 themselves, perhaps, of the 47% off discount using promo code fight at dailywire.com. Do you think

00:33:36.560 this is all baked into the cake at this point? Or is it all just theater?

00:33:41.100 Hmm. I think that it's like, I'll say 80% baked into the cake and maybe 20% not baked into the

00:33:48.500 cake at this point. It's not 100%. The margins are not moving all that much. It's not as though

00:33:53.480 Donald Trump dropped down to 40% or 35% because we were unhappy with his performance or that Kamala

00:33:58.140 Harris ramped up to like 53% in the polls. What may have happened is that Kamala Harris nationally went

00:34:03.800 from like 46 to 48 and Donald Trump went from like 46 to 45. Right? Like that.

00:34:08.600 It's also a turnout game this late in the race. People are already starting to vote. And so a lot

00:34:12.500 a lot of what's happening now is also just about motivation. Like the fact that we don't feel great

00:34:17.540 today. And we may, to your point, we may feel better about all of this tomorrow. But you need

00:34:21.600 to leave tonight with a good feeling. You need your base, not just your base, but you need all of your

00:34:26.440 potential voters to actually do something about it and vote. Right. I mean, I think that this is one of

00:34:30.120 the problems that Trump has had. And this is true basically since 2016. In 2016, Republicans felt like

00:34:35.960 this is a magical opportunity, not only to get Trump elected, but also to absolutely crush Hillary

00:34:40.320 Clinton's dreams. I mean, that's really so much of 2016 was, we hate Hillary Clinton. She's been

00:34:45.080 around for 20 plus years. She's the worst person in American politics. I will walk over broken glass

00:34:49.220 to vote against that human being. And because Kamala Harris is kind of undefined, I think that

00:34:53.940 there's a little bit less of that. And it's more like, how's your passion level on Donald Trump?

00:34:58.420 And so that's the biggest problem. And so because of that, you know, again, I think that he needs to

00:35:02.540 ramp up the passion level for him or against her. And that's why, again, I just keep coming back to

00:35:07.440 when are we going to get the full takedown of Kamala Harris we so richly deserve? When is that going

00:35:13.140 to happen? He started it tonight. I actually want to interrupt because I have something.

00:35:17.800 There's actual breaking news, which rarely happens to us. Kamala Harris's campaign is calling for a

00:35:23.220 second debate. Of course they are because they think she won. Vice President Harris is ready for a

00:35:27.940 second debate. The American people, essentially, I'm paraphrasing, now quoting, should see a second

00:35:37.000 debate in October. And it's smart because they know he's going to say no. Right. So they just

00:35:41.040 want to make him, put him in a spot to say no. I don't think he will say no. He's going to say no

00:35:45.380 because what's going to happen is that he's going to say where? And she's going to say NBC. And he's

00:35:50.140 going to say, did you see those moderators? Are you out of your mind? I don't think he'll say no.

00:35:53.820 I think he says yes. Because first of all, ABC is the most leftist bias network. They hired the

00:36:01.080 former top propagandist for the Clinton White House to be their chief political anchor. And you saw

00:36:05.580 those jokers tonight. So anything is going to be more moderate. That's risky for her. I'm kind of

00:36:10.840 surprised a little bit. I'm a little surprised that she did, but I think he will take her. I'm happy to

00:36:14.480 hear it. He might even get away with getting at least one person, you know, like Brett Baer in there,

00:36:18.980 which would, which would be fine. I mean, well, I mean, I should, I don't think he should do another

00:36:23.600 one. So he can't directly say no, but I think exactly what you just said, like, here's what

00:36:29.440 he could say. I'm not doing another one of those. There's no way. I'm not doing a three-on-one thing

00:36:32.400 again. That was, it's a setup. It's ridiculous. I'm not doing that. So we could, you know, we could do

00:36:37.160 one on Fox or we could do it somewhere. What he should do is he should propose no moderators.

00:36:41.440 No moderators. He should say no moderators. He should say there's a question. The question pops up on the

00:36:45.480 screen. We each get to talk for one minute with a clock. And then we move on to the next question

00:36:50.180 with rebuttals for 30 seconds each, like set a series of rules with no moderators because the

00:36:54.760 game now is a game of chicken, right? She's going to say, I offered you the debate. Why aren't you

00:36:58.760 taking the debate? She did this earlier. And then he's going to say, well, because your moderators

00:37:02.620 suck and that was awful. And she's going to say, because you're chickening out, right, man? You're

00:37:06.120 chickening out. And so what he needs to come back with is he needs to say, absolutely no moderators

00:37:11.080 because you shouldn't have your aides in the corner helping you out. Yeah. Another piece

00:37:15.060 of breaking news right now, the biggest surprise, perhaps at the political season, if you're,

00:37:20.200 you know, been living under a rock for the last four years, Taylor Swift just officially endorsed

00:37:25.120 Kamala Harris. Wow. But who did Travis endorse? That's a woman who's never gotten men right.

00:37:32.040 What I love about Taylor Swift is that she's always super late on everything. Yeah. Have you ever

00:37:37.080 seen the movie Popstar Never Stopped, Never Stopping? So there is a great number from Popstar

00:37:40.740 Never Stopping. It's an Andy Samberg Lonely Island film. It's pretty fantastic. It's wildly

00:37:46.200 inappropriate, not appropriate for children at all. But there's one song that is aptly titled

00:37:51.940 Not Gay in which Andy Samberg explains why gay marriage is awesome, but that he personally

00:37:56.480 is not gay in the song repeatedly. And the punchline is that everybody reacts to it and they're

00:38:01.880 like, gay marriage became legal in the United States like five years ago. Why are you even

00:38:05.300 talking about this anymore? And that is Taylor Swift in a nutshell. It's like she waits until

00:38:09.200 it doesn't matter anymore. And then she signs in a chat. Six months, all the media could

00:38:12.700 talk about was whether or not she was going to endorse. Yeah. Well, and again, it's just

00:38:16.980 bait, right? Because we're all going to say what we're going to say. Like right now, what

00:38:19.580 I'm about to say, which is if you vote based on who Taylor Swift is voting for, you are one

00:38:24.000 of the stupidest people alive. I'm insulted now. It is the stupidest thing in the world to

00:38:30.060 say who is this 36. She's the same age as my wife. My wife's a doctor with four kids.

00:38:35.080 This lady's acting like she's a 17-year-old girl traipsing around singing songs about the

00:38:38.680 latest dude she broke up with. And we're all supposed to take our voting advice from

00:38:41.540 her? Okay, now you can clip that. You can put it on media.

00:38:43.920 Hater's going to hate, hate, hate.

00:38:45.540 The significance of the Taylor Swift endorsement is they're going to go for, well, can we have

00:38:52.380 the largest political campaign rally of all time?

00:38:54.860 Right. Vibes, vibes, vibes.

00:38:55.840 Because, you know, if it's really a Taylor Swift concert, they can get, you know, a million.

00:38:59.180 A hundred thousand people.

00:38:59.900 Right.

00:39:00.180 Easily. Yeah.

00:39:00.780 Um, so that's the, you know, that's the point.

00:39:03.420 Well, no more breaking news, but we do have news, uh, original news coming from our very

00:39:08.840 own Cabot Phillips, who is live in Philadelphia right now. Uh, Cabot, what do you have for us?

00:39:15.320 Well, the second the debate ended, the spin room behind me was flooded with surrogates.

00:39:19.620 It was very different than the Atlanta debate. Democrat surrogates were rushing out. They were

00:39:25.240 jubilant. Uh, I heard from a number of them, the campaign press secretary saying Harris was

00:39:30.500 strong and optimistic. Trump was angry and weak. They said it was a clear cut win. As you mentioned

00:39:36.540 earlier, they won another debate in October. They said that they would even settle for multiple

00:39:39.900 debates. The Democrats were very excited. Now it's worth noting also the moderators are getting a lot

00:39:46.940 of discussion about the bias. They're sitting here in the room. I was with a thousand reporters

00:39:50.560 watching this debate. You could also feel the bias in the room. There were multiple moments

00:39:55.140 throughout the evening where Trump begins to speak and there was a loud, uproarious laughter

00:40:00.220 from large groups of members of the press. They were not even trying to hide the fact

00:40:04.720 that they were having fun. They were mocking Trump pretty openly worth pointing that the

00:40:09.480 worth pointing out that the moderators are not the only biased folks in the media. Now the Trump

00:40:13.080 campaign, they're not trying to spin this as a win. Um, guys, I talked to a number of them. I

00:40:18.900 heard from a number of surrogates. I talked to Tom Cotton, Tim Scott, the campaign, um,

00:40:23.180 communications director, Brian Hughes, all of their talk was not necessarily on Donald Trump's

00:40:28.200 performance. It was on the performance of the moderators. All of them use the language. This

00:40:32.000 was a three-on-one debate. They're saying, however, that the American people can see through the fact

00:40:37.280 that the media wants Kamala Harris elected and that the substance of the debate, whatever the

00:40:43.420 performance of Trump or Kamala was, will actually be secondary to the poor performance from the

00:40:48.300 moderators more broadly. I will say that I've never felt better about Donald Trump's chances

00:40:53.240 than hearing you say that they were openly mocking him in the spin room while watching the

00:40:59.100 debate. The absolute disdain that the media class has for the American people, uh, is not just the

00:41:06.980 biggest story of tonight. It's probably the biggest story in the country and has been for a number of

00:41:11.120 years. You can't talk about it enough. Uh, and so, you know, may their hubris, uh, do for them what

00:41:17.320 it did for them in 2016. Cabot, who do you, who else are you hoping to talk to tonight? Sorry.

00:41:22.700 Sorry about that. Had a little bit of audio trouble there. Uh, JD Vance has just recently

00:41:26.540 made an appearance. We're going to be talking to Tulsi Gabbard in a bit, but I did want to also point

00:41:29.860 out the Trump surrogates. They were saying that once the American people actually get real, not real

00:41:35.940 time fact-checking, but fact-checking after the fact, they will realize just how often Kamala

00:41:40.060 Harris was lying. For example, she said that she had never called for decriminalizing illegal border

00:41:45.120 crossings in 2019. She said it is wrong to suggest that undocumented immigrants are criminals. Being

00:41:49.720 an undocumented immigrant is not a crime. Later, she said that she had never supported mandatory

00:41:53.360 gun buybacks in 2020. She said, we have to have a buyback program. I support a mandatory buyback

00:41:59.340 program. And perhaps most notably the Trump campaign here in Pennsylvania was talking repeatedly about

00:42:04.440 the importance of fracking. And they said, Kamala did want to ban fracking. And we actually have a

00:42:09.500 clip despite her saying she'd never wanted to ban fracking. Here's a brief clip of her talking about

00:42:14.340 that in the 2020 campaign. Will you commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking your

00:42:21.140 first day in office, adding the United States, the list of countries who have banned this devastating

00:42:26.460 practice? There's no question. I'm in favor of banning fracking. So yeah. And starting with what we can

00:42:34.260 do on day one around public lands. Right. And and then there has to be legislation. But yes. And

00:42:39.400 this is something I've taken on in California. I have a history of working on this issue. And to your

00:42:43.100 point, you know, that we have to just acknowledge that the residual impact of fracking is enormous in

00:42:50.100 terms of the impact on the health and safety of communities.

00:42:53.100 Hmm. So the Trump campaign saying they're having to do the job of the moderators who only showed

00:42:58.960 interest in fact checking Donald Trump. They are trying to blast that message out. Expect to hear

00:43:03.480 some of those conflicting quotes of hers from 2020 versus last night in TV ads. They said they're

00:43:09.360 going to have new ads up and running in the next week, especially here in Pennsylvania.

00:43:13.280 Hey, Cabin, it looks like Donald Trump just walked into the spin room behind you.

00:43:20.960 We're going to go get there right now if he is.

00:43:24.040 We'll check back in with you in just a few minutes. Good work.

00:43:26.300 Yeah, they're in my ear saying, you see the people running behind Cabin, Donald Trump just

00:43:34.500 walked into the spin room, which is the thing you do have to love about Donald Trump.

00:43:38.380 Oh, he has. He's fearless about this.

00:43:40.360 The tenacity of the guy is unbelievable. Yes.

00:43:43.260 Well, you said there is one factor that can help Republicans. So there's a lot of talk about

00:43:48.000 how we were talking that you have to be excited to go to the ballot box.

00:43:51.420 Yes. Or you have to be super pissed.

00:43:52.680 And if it turns out that they just keep spitting on everyone and just spitting on everyone,

00:43:58.020 then it may be that you took off enough people and stuff like these debates don't really matter.

00:44:03.400 Like in the end, it's just a giant pulsating middle finger. And so I think that's what

00:44:06.780 Trump is going to be banking on going forward. Again, every single state, every single one

00:44:12.420 is within margin of error right now. So trying to pretend that this is going to like

00:44:15.260 blow the waste wide open or radically, seminally change where we are in the race. I mean,

00:44:20.520 this race has been extremely stable really since the beginning of the race. And the only thing

00:44:24.740 that changed was everybody realized that Joe Biden was senile. And then as soon as she was put in,

00:44:28.800 it kind of went back to status quo ante from like September, October of last year. So I'm not sure.

00:44:34.980 There's a big difference too between the fact checks and the fact checks of the fact checks

00:44:38.260 now compared to 2012. I remember 2012, I was watching that debate. Romney said, Obama,

00:44:44.340 you did not refer to the Benghazi attack as a terror attack for a day or two or several days

00:44:49.060 after. And Candy Crowley lied and said, yes, he did. And then way after the debate was over at

00:44:55.660 the end of the broadcast, she said, oh, by the way, I got it wrong. And everyone had tuned out at that

00:44:58.500 point because everyone in 2012 was watching that debate on TV, myself included. Now my father doesn't

00:45:05.660 always watch this stuff on TV. People are watching this on the internet. The media landscape is very

00:45:09.880 different than it was 12 years ago. And so sure, the real-time fact checks were frustrating. We

00:45:14.600 were going to pull our hair out here. But when you get those montages of all the fact checks,

00:45:18.800 and then what Cabot was talking about, the fact check of the fact check. Kamala says,

00:45:22.320 I never said that, spliced with on all of our shows probably tomorrow, spliced with Kamala saying

00:45:27.040 that. I don't know. Then to Drew's point, the debate settling in the days afterward, I'm not sure

00:45:33.320 that this is so great for Kamala. I'm not sure that this is so bad for Trump.

00:45:36.400 The thing you said before is really important because if I have a concern, it is that the

00:45:41.660 vibes for Harris are very powerful. The enthusiasm for her is very powerful because she's not Joe

00:45:46.600 Biden, because she's a fresh coat of paint. And Trump has been around a long time now. He was a

00:45:51.300 breath of fresh air when he started. We all were shocked by him. We didn't see him coming. It was

00:45:55.520 like a train just bowling over the opposition. But anger is also a kind of enthusiasm. And I think

00:46:02.680 you know, if you're not angry at a media complex that is so huge, so dominant, so powerful,

00:46:09.980 that hates your guts, if you're not angry about that, you're just not paying any attention at all.

00:46:15.180 And getting back to the fact that, look, Democrats aren't going to change their vote. Republicans

00:46:18.640 aren't going to change their vote. It's all in the hands of independents. At some point,

00:46:21.980 some of these independents have got to be looking at this and saying, you know,

00:46:24.940 I'm tired of being hated. That's what gave Trump his power in the first place. People are tired.

00:46:28.900 This is not 10 years, 20 years. This is 60 years of being told their country sucks,

00:46:34.200 their religion sucks, they're racist, you know, their religion, everything about them is bad.

00:46:39.300 People got ticked off. And Trump was a gigantic middle finger to all those people. They're still

00:46:43.960 here. They're still saying the same stuff. Trump has gotten, you know, we've gotten used to him.

00:46:48.080 He's lost that kind of shock that he had before. But I don't know if the anger wears off when you're

00:46:52.760 being treated like these people treat us. You know, the way that you could tell the moderators were truly,

00:46:56.800 you know, horrifically awful tonight. And there were a million ways. What's the number one issue

00:47:01.200 in the country right now? Clearly, like with a bullet, inflation. Number one issue. Not one

00:47:06.480 question tonight. Not one question on inflation. We got several minutes on Trump's tariff policy,

00:47:12.520 his proposal for tariffs. The implication, of course, being that that's going to be inflationary policy.

00:47:16.640 At no point did they go to Kamala Harris and say, you presided over the worst 40-year inflation spiral

00:47:20.780 that we've seen. So what's the deal? Instead, they went to Trump's tariff policy. Then they asked

00:47:26.200 her about Trump's tariff policy. And then he responded to her responding, which gave her a

00:47:29.980 chance to respond. And again, I think that that was a mistake by him because I think he kept taking

00:47:33.400 the bait. She would respond to what he was saying. And then instead of him letting it go and letting

00:47:37.240 them move on to a topic that was maybe better for him than, say, tariffs, he would fall in love with

00:47:41.480 the topic. And then he just had to respond. He had to go. But again, the questions, I am absolutely

00:47:47.320 bewildered and shocked at those questions. They were truly, truly egregious. And I agree with you that I

00:47:53.540 think that the takeaway is going to be you can never trust the media again. Media trust is at

00:47:57.080 all time lows. Whether Trump can translate into votes for him is another question. But I think

00:48:02.200 that for future election cycles, Joe Biden killed the election debate process, right? He killed the

00:48:07.680 presidential commission. And so now I think that if you're a Republican, you should never again walk

00:48:12.260 into a debate that is organized by your opponents. Never again. And in fact, you know, I'm going to say

00:48:17.740 moderators at all. And if you are going to have moderators, I'm going to oppose the Jewish

00:48:20.900 solution to moderators. There's like an actual Jewish law solution when you have to form like

00:48:24.200 a court. What you do is you pick one, I pick one, they pick one. Right? That's the way that you end

00:48:28.880 up actually forming a court. That seems like a pretty good way if you're going to have moderators

00:48:32.360 at all. You can have three and you have one from my side, one from your side, and then the two of

00:48:35.440 those people pick the person in the middle. That seems like a better way of doing it than we

00:48:39.020 currently are. You know, I do want to say something. They pick one, they pick one, and they pick

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00:50:21.400 today. You know, Knowles and I had a conversation. I don't think you'll mind my saying this, where you

00:50:27.040 mentioned the fact that you had checked on the price of eggs, what you were spending on eggs.

00:50:31.640 Because my wife is making me spend $11 for eggs.

00:50:34.000 And you were shocked. And I said, the thing is, the fact that you had to check shows what the

00:50:39.240 media, and that's us, is like. We have to check to see what we're paying for eggs. If you don't

00:50:45.660 have the kind of money that people in the media have, you don't have to check what you're paying

00:50:49.860 for eggs. You know, when you walk in, what you're paying for eggs and what it's taking away from all

00:50:54.080 your other expenses. That's the gap. That's the big gap is that's why people don't see what a

00:50:59.720 disastrous administration this has been in the press and why Trump. You know, Trump is the first

00:51:04.760 president who narrowed the gap between rich and poor, narrowed the gap between black and white.

00:51:10.700 He never talks about it. He probably doesn't even know it. But he's the first guy to do that in 60

00:51:15.380 years. And he is the first president in my lifetime to have his finger on the pulse of the price of a

00:51:22.400 Fabergé egg. He has two on his airplane. One issue that right on this point, Drew, that didn't

00:51:30.380 come up tonight, and it's a scandal that didn't come up, pertains to mass migration, which should

00:51:34.260 have should have been the lion's share of the debate. And the moderators tried to gloss over

00:51:38.400 that. But what what especially they could have focused on was the drug crisis and fentanyl deaths,

00:51:43.760 because this is something that affects it actually does affect people even in the media,

00:51:47.860 even in the fancy clubs who know somebody or at least know somebody who knows somebody who has

00:51:52.720 died of a fentanyl overdose. And certainly people in the forgotten parts of the country know a lot

00:51:58.260 of people who have experienced that. You know, there was a report that came out just today that

00:52:03.920 Kamala, while running in 2020, signed a candidate questionnaire calling for the decriminalization

00:52:10.420 of fentanyl. Wow. Not marijuana, not cocaine, not fentanyl. Yeah. And just this past year,

00:52:17.180 what was it, 75,000 or thereabouts, Americans died of fentanyl overdoses, many, many more of

00:52:22.540 drug overdoses overall. I don't think you should categorize fentanyl as an overdose. It's a

00:52:27.820 poison. Yeah, it's a poison. It's a poison. Yes. Not an overdose. And so the numbers are ticking

00:52:31.440 up again. This is the poisoning, the permitted negligent and intentional killing of Americans

00:52:38.120 doesn't come up. But here's the thing. In the end, the magical power that Donald Trump has above

00:52:43.060 all else, and this has been true since 2015, is he has a camera magnet, right? Wherever he goes,

00:52:48.220 the cameras follow him. And what that means is that the only person who can really prosecute the

00:52:53.540 case is going to have to be Donald Trump. It cannot be J.D. Vance. It can. I mean, we're all

00:52:57.640 watching J.D. and J.D.'s doing a great job in a lot of these interviews. He watched me in these

00:53:00.680 rallies. He's doing media. And it doesn't even make a dent. And the reason it doesn't make a dent is

00:53:04.140 because the cameras can just ignore J.D. Vance. Unless he's saying something about Tucker Carlson and

00:53:08.200 his friendly relations with Tucker or something, in which case they can use it against J.D.,

00:53:12.300 they're not going to talk about J.D. Vance. He's just not going to break through.

00:53:15.820 The thing that Trump had that I think is the underrated superpower of Donald Trump is that

00:53:20.860 he had broken through before he was ever running, right? He was one of the most famous people in

00:53:23.880 the country before he ever declared for the presidency. And because of that, it meant that he

00:53:27.520 had layers of insulation against whatever the media could throw at him because everybody already

00:53:31.720 had a preconceived notion of who Donald Trump was. He still has the capacity to do that,

00:53:35.600 but it means that no surrogate can do the thing. Surrogates can do the thing for Kamala.

00:53:40.380 She can send surrogates out there because she's a nothing. She's a nevish. She really is. She's

00:53:44.140 just an empty suit. She's a nevish. She's nothing. And what that means is that she can send out

00:53:47.440 surrogates to go change her positions willy-nilly or go on the morning shows with Morning Joe and

00:53:52.340 jab her about what a vibes candidate she is. And she can go into spice shops and hug people,

00:53:56.360 and that'll be her entire campaign. No one on the right can do the job for him, which means the

00:54:00.720 challenge is his. And so in a very singular way, this election will be won or lost,

00:54:05.180 by Donald Trump. Either he is going to singularly, in his own personage, prosecute the case against

00:54:10.720 Kamala Harris, or it ain't going to get prosecuted. Because the other problem that you got is that he

00:54:15.480 can toss hundreds of millions of dollars into TV ads. And the question is, who watches local TV

00:54:20.420 anymore? Seriously, this is a major problem. You can throw that money down a rat hole, but the

00:54:25.940 reality is the amount of money that's spent on local TV in, say, Pennsylvania on these TV ads,

00:54:29.900 what's the ROI on that? It's not as easy to reach people as it once was, and the internet is super

00:54:34.420 fragmentary. And so their ballot harvesting operation better be top-notch. Their get-out-to-vote

00:54:39.580 operation better be top-notch. I mean, let's start putting the pressure inside for those of us who

00:54:43.980 want him to win. It's time to start actually putting the pressure where the pressure needs

00:54:47.360 to be for him to win. And in order for him to win, we can pressure the media. We always do that,

00:54:50.980 and we should. That should not let up. The pressure should be on us from Harris. We'll do our job,

00:54:54.820 right? That's our job. Our job is to keep the pressure on them. But the only people who can run the

00:54:59.460 get-out-the-vote effort are the people running the get-out-the-vote effort. You can't do it. I can't do it.

00:55:02.420 None of us can do that. The get-out-the-vote effort needs to be top-notch. No excuses.

00:55:06.840 Donald Trump needs to personally prosecute the case. No excuses. Because in the end,

00:55:11.720 ain't going to be excuses. Because if she's elected, she's going to wreck the country.

00:55:15.060 She really will. It's actually one of the questions from one of our dailywire.com

00:55:18.400 subscribers is, will the VP debate have a significant impact? And it sounds like you're

00:55:22.660 saying no. Nope. Not one iota. Does anybody remember Kamala Harris from the Mike Pence debate?

00:55:26.980 She was talking. They remember the fly in that debate more than they remember Kamala Harris.

00:55:31.600 Great, though, the fly. The fly was one of the big stars of our modern politics.

00:55:35.520 I mean, J.D. Vance will do very, very well. He'll be great. He'll be spectacular. And it

00:55:39.100 won't matter at all. Not one iota. Not one iota. The one thing that'll be hard for him now is that

00:55:43.460 Tucker has created this issue for him, right? I mean, like Tim Walls will for sure hit him on his

00:55:48.720 friendship with Tucker because Tucker had this schmuck pseudo-historian on who did this dumb routine

00:55:53.460 about how Churchill was the villain in the Second World War. And that's just like,

00:55:56.440 that's just an easy hit for Tim Walls. He'll go out of his way to do it. It was a dumb move by

00:56:00.080 Tucker. It was damaging to the Republican cause for whatever that matters. And, you know,

00:56:04.320 J.D. will be asked about that without a doubt during that VP debate. Is that going to make

00:56:07.180 any difference? Not really. He's the VP candidate. Who cares?

00:56:09.700 Yeah. Another question from a DailyWire.com subscriber. And you can become a subscriber

00:56:14.140 at DailyWire.com using promo code FIGHT for 47% off. That's 47 for 47. Obviously, we want

00:56:20.500 Donald Trump to be the 47th president. Simple yes or no from the entire group. Do you think that the

00:56:25.880 people of the United States actually believe her lies? What lies? What lies? You know,

00:56:30.440 they believe she wants to kill babies. She wants to kill babies. They believe that she'll adjust her

00:56:34.900 policies based on whatever's convenient. She will do that. You know, I don't think she cares that much

00:56:39.000 about fracking. I think she just says what she thinks she needs to say. So power. Yeah. And so

00:56:44.040 she says that. They believe it. And they're all right. I guess. I think that they don't believe her

00:56:50.580 lies because they don't care. But what I would say is that I think the Democrats and right now,

00:56:55.060 I see it with like Mark Cuban, for example, I think that a lot of Democrats have the same feeling

00:56:59.620 about her that for a long time Republicans had about Trump, which was take him seriously,

00:57:03.680 but not literally. Right. So they're taking her vibes seriously. And her vibe is, I'm not Donald

00:57:08.460 Trump. I am. I'm a lefty. I'm a typical lefty. I'm going to do exactly what a typical lefty does.

00:57:12.640 Doesn't matter what she says. I mean, they openly say this. Right. I mean, they'll go on TV and

00:57:15.440 they'll be like, sure, she's lying about all of her positions, but she does have to get. Bernie

00:57:18.760 literally said this this weekend. Right. Bernie went on national TV. She's being pragmatic.

00:57:22.220 Yeah. Right. She's changing all of her positions. She's being pragmatic. And that's what she should

00:57:26.520 do. As a good Marxist, she should lie about everything. And then once she's elected,

00:57:29.520 she can execute the kulaks. Right. Like that's the. I mean, a lot of voters, let's face it,

00:57:35.260 are NPCs. They're non-playable characters. Yeah. You know, and in some ways that's kind of healthy.

00:57:40.020 You know, they grew up with in the Democrat or the Republican Party. You stick to your family.

00:57:44.100 You stick to the people around you. That's kind of the way it should be in a country that's not

00:57:47.920 on the brink of good life like this one. But normally that's not a bad thing.

00:57:52.000 Yeah. But they're the people who decide the election because of that are the playable

00:57:55.760 characters. And I don't think I think a lot of the playable characters will not believe who lost.

00:57:59.800 I do wonder if the people in the middle are just going to are just exhausted. I'll bet

00:58:02.120 you the voters turn out for people who are independents is like zero. Seriously, because

00:58:05.660 because like I mean, independent voters, independent voters. Yeah. Yeah. Like because if you're a

00:58:10.300 Democrat, you're jazzed because Kamala and vibes and all that. And if you're a Trump voter,

00:58:13.720 you're jazzed because you got to stop Kamala and vibes and all that. If you're an independent,

00:58:16.740 you're like, when is all this shit just? Seriously, I think that that was that that has

00:58:22.200 been the vibe in a couple of elections straight where it's like Americans are just like, can

00:58:26.460 we just be left alone? Like a little normality. Yeah. And so, you know, I think that is what

00:58:31.180 people vote for. I agree. And that's kind of why I was hoping that there would be a little

00:58:35.040 more normality. I think in a way, if there if Kamala goes on to be president, the historic

00:58:41.660 thing about this debate retrospectively will be that it's a bit like Bill Clinton's the era of

00:58:46.820 big government is over moment that she really ran as the the government should leave you alone

00:58:53.720 candidate tonight, which is, of course, absurd because she is the vice president.

00:58:57.920 Trump was right about this, right? He said, I'll buy you a MAGA hat. That's right.

00:59:01.680 It's an amazing pivot that at least says that some of our actual policy preferences do resonate with

00:59:10.000 the American people. We've stopped advocating for some of our the government should leave you alone

00:59:13.900 positions. Yeah, that's a that's a I think become a weak spot for conservatives and in the last six

00:59:19.580 or eight years. And I think Kamala is showing us that that that does. She's running to the right.

00:59:24.640 Well, that that coalition that you're describing, Jeremy, which is that Reagan slash sort of Bill

00:59:31.940 Clinton slash sort of Tony Blair slash short sort of Dave Cameron. It's not even just in America.

00:59:37.680 It's in the UK, too. It we kind of mock it now as passe and neoliberal and squishy. And it is it is

00:59:45.140 all of those things. It also does still seem to kind of resonate with the voters. Because words like

00:59:50.460 neoliberal and what most people just hear when they hear neoliberal is I have no idea what you're

00:59:54.120 talking about. Do you mean that you're going to leave me alone and I'll just be able to go to the

00:59:56.900 supermarket and things will be cheap or what? Like, what do you mean? Seriously, you think most people

01:00:00.580 have any idea what the hell the word neoliberal means? No, who use the word neoliberal have no idea what the word

01:00:04.600 means? Well, I mean, we know what it means and we probably don't like a lot of it. We don't like,

01:00:09.320 you know, just totally laissez faire cultural hands on that. You know, we don't want to have much more

01:00:15.100 migration. We don't want to have some weak middle ground where we kill some babies and not other

01:00:19.300 babies. We don't want to give up the meaning of marriage. You know, we I don't like it. I would

01:00:23.060 like a more coherently conservative policy. And I'm sure Bernie and comrade Kamala and her heart of

01:00:28.380 hearts wants a more leftist policy. But a lot of those voters that we're trying to reach,

01:00:32.840 they don't have the most coherent and consistent political philosophy. And if you can appeal to

01:00:37.180 them, that can be very powerful. I wanted to just follow up one thing, Ben, you said that I think

01:00:42.140 you're Bernie Sanders impression is your best one. I appreciate that. You know, I got a few that are

01:00:48.120 kind of weak, but that one was good. Thank you. My Trump is not great. My Obama is quality. You have a

01:00:53.180 good Obama. Kamala Harris has a good black woman. I don't think it's that good.

01:01:01.560 I did love Trump's answer on that. If she wants to be black, she can be black.

01:01:06.980 If she doesn't want to be black, she doesn't have to be black. Does it really matter?

01:01:09.940 It actually was kind of a sophisticated answer. They just weren't letting him have it.

01:01:16.640 Okay. Okay. From dailywire.com subscriber, this one for Ben. Do you think the Jewish men and women

01:01:22.380 around our country fall for the lie that she loves Israel? Okay. It's time for my answer. You ready

01:01:26.320 for this? Let's go. Here we go. Most Jews are not Jewish. Okay. Let me explain this thing about

01:01:31.100 Jews. Whenever we see a poll of Jews, what you mean are people who identify as Jews, which, and

01:01:36.020 Jews, unlike other groups, you know, people who identify as Jews, they're not doing so religiously.

01:01:40.420 If you poll people like, are you Catholic? Typically the people who say they are Catholic

01:01:44.040 are Catholic. You know, like they go to church, like they actually pay attention to the things the

01:01:47.900 Pope says. They were at least baptized. They probably don't go to church. Okay. Okay. They take the

01:01:52.760 religion seriously enough that when they are not Catholic anymore, they call themselves lapsed

01:01:56.840 Catholics or atheists. Okay. Jews don't do that. So for Jews, they'll be like full non-compliant,

01:02:02.880 God is stupid, like full on atheistic, anti-Israel kooks. But for those Jews, the reason they say Jew

01:02:10.260 is because what they mean is intersectionally not white, right? And that is a serious share of like

01:02:14.960 the American Jewish population who identifies as Jewish because it means that they're not part of

01:02:19.000 the white Borg. And also we're not part of the like old anti-Semitic, you know, white people in

01:02:23.880 country clubs thing. Right. And so I always differentiate between Jews who care about

01:02:28.040 Jewishness and people who don't care about Jewishness. So for those of us who actually

01:02:30.900 have a dog in the being Jewish fight, we're going to vote like 110% for Donald Trump. In my synagogue,

01:02:37.020 there are, I can name, I can name them. I think there's one to two, this is a synagogue of 400

01:02:42.060 families and maybe one to two Kamala Harris supporters, maybe. Okay. And that's fairly consistent

01:02:48.100 around the Orthodox community. Like we, we all see through it. I mean, we all know it.

01:02:52.520 If you, if you go down to Florida, every Trump fundraiser is filled with people with yarmulkes,

01:02:55.840 like every single one. It's, there's a reason for that. But one of the great, and by the way,

01:03:01.120 you can tell us in the polls, there's a poll and it shows, it was a Pew poll, it came out recently

01:03:04.820 showing what various religious denominations think of people of other religious denominations.

01:03:09.380 And so every religious denomination says they don't like atheism, except the Jews who are pro-19,

01:03:14.500 they're plus 19 on atheism. Why? Because it turns out that a huge number of people who had

01:03:18.040 identified as Jews are in fact atheists, right? And so I think it's important to make that

01:03:21.840 distinction because people get caught up in the like Jews as solidarity club for, for people who

01:03:26.860 all think alike. And it's like, well, no, they're the ones of us who actually take the Bible seriously

01:03:30.300 and care deeply about what happens to Israel. And think Kamala Harris is awful on Israel, awful.

01:03:35.700 Her answer tonight was sheer, absolute, unmitigated trash, absolute trash. If she says one more,

01:03:41.300 she keeps saying over and over, what we're searching for is an end to the conflict in which there is

01:03:46.280 a hostage deal and all the hostages are freed and Israel is still safe. And also there will

01:03:50.800 be a two state solution and unicorns will fart energy. And like, what the, what are you talking

01:03:55.240 about? You're talking about negotiating with a terrorist entity to maintain its dominance of

01:03:59.580 a portion of the land in order so that you can then give them a state and then peace will break out.

01:04:04.160 Like it's, it's, it's awful. And Tim Walz, by the way, is way worse than Kamala on this.

01:04:07.840 It's an awful ticket on Israel, a truly awful ticket.

01:04:10.020 I want to know, you know, on the right, we've got these clowns who are anti-Semitic and they're

01:04:14.100 always coming after me and yelling terrible things. And I want to know if Jews are so bad

01:04:18.880 for America, why is it the people who say death to America want to kill the Jews?

01:04:24.480 I've never quite understood that.

01:04:26.580 Just asking questions.

01:04:28.460 One of them, I forget it was some picture of you, Drew, and one of them was making some

01:04:33.000 argument about how terrible you are. And, but it was being presented as very objective.

01:04:38.160 But then I know, I looked at the picture, I said, wait, what's that? And they drew a little

01:04:40.860 yarmulke on your bald head.

01:04:42.120 They didn't, they didn't, they didn't.

01:04:43.540 No, it was just there?

01:04:45.220 No, no, no.

01:04:45.580 I didn't, I had no idea.

01:04:46.740 Listen, I, we all saw the picture. It was from Backstage Live.

01:04:50.540 Okay.

01:04:50.960 And it's, it's all of us sitting in this format, Drew right there. And he's, and he,

01:04:54.400 for the life of me, is wearing a yarmulke.

01:04:56.560 Yeah.

01:04:57.160 And Drew and I had a conversation about this a few days ago over there.

01:05:00.060 And he's like, did you see the thing where they put that yarmulke on my head?

01:05:01.860 I mean, it's kind of funny. They didn't put the yarmulke on his head.

01:05:05.060 Was that just Providence?

01:05:06.160 The geniuses at the Daily Wire, where I work, put a Daily Wire, a DW watermark on the video

01:05:14.860 that is a translucent black circle. And it just happened that in that exact, and this

01:05:21.460 is where the anti-Semites are hilarious. I wish it wasn't true. The Groepers are funny

01:05:26.640 as hell.

01:05:27.120 They're really, yeah, yeah.

01:05:27.680 They're evil.

01:05:28.240 Evil and hate are funny. It can be funny, yeah.

01:05:30.660 Yeah. They believe in a demonic ideology, but they are hilarious. And they found the

01:05:37.620 one frame of the whole show where the watermark landed on Drew's head.

01:05:41.820 Dude, they're super funny. They made a Hispanic gay guy the leader of their movement.

01:05:46.240 From now on, now I'm wearing this outside my shirt.

01:05:50.560 Like a bishop.

01:05:51.840 Now I look like a bishop.

01:05:52.940 And when you're a bishop, you actually get to wear the hat.

01:05:54.360 I get to wear the hat. Exactly. Then I get the yarmulke.

01:05:56.780 You come full circle.

01:05:58.240 From another DailyWire.com subscriber, what do we do? We should be serious. This is actually,

01:06:04.140 I think, on the hearts and minds of a lot of people. What do we do if Kamala wins?

01:06:09.520 This genuinely feels like we're on the verge of losing the country if the left takes the White

01:06:13.760 House and Congress. So how do we stay calm in the event that Trump loses?

01:06:18.340 You know, I was at a fundraiser for Republicans in Virginia the other day, and this was on all of

01:06:23.520 their minds. It was, you know, what do we do? First of all, they may not believe that

01:06:28.020 he lost if he did lose, but I think there's obviously a possibility that he could lose.

01:06:33.820 And I just think, you know, this is the kind of country where things go a lot slower than

01:06:39.340 people want them to go, hopefully. And it really just depends on what happens to the Congress.

01:06:45.140 Because we could lose the White House, but hold Congress and hold the Senate and win the Senate.

01:06:51.340 So there's a lot of different outcomes, and I think not panicking would be a good idea. You know,

01:06:56.080 I got asked once recently, somebody on one of the all-access shows, you know, should we revolt?

01:07:03.520 Should we get our guns? And I thought, could you volunteer to serve at a polling place first before you go

01:07:08.800 for your guns? You know, I think there are a lot of things to do, to be active in, in American

01:07:13.780 politics that still work, that are still there, that we should start to take advantage of.

01:07:17.280 And also, you know, this election is very, very important. They're all really important.

01:07:24.840 You're not going to win every election from now until forever. Like, you are going to lose

01:07:28.940 sometimes, no matter what. That's just a reality. So that's all kind of baked into the cake of the

01:07:35.640 way the system works. So the way I look at it is, I mean, it's, I mean, it'll be terrible if she wins.

01:07:41.260 And if they win everything, which I don't think will happen, even worse. I mean, really devastating

01:07:45.660 consequences. But what do we do? We, what do we just, what do we give up and move? Where are you

01:07:51.020 going to move to? Right. You just, you get ready for, for 2028. You get ready for the midterms.

01:07:56.600 You focus on your own family, your own community. You just, you keep living and fighting.

01:08:00.940 Donald Trump would say fight, fight, fight.

01:08:02.480 And Americans, I feel we have a ton of really great virtues and particular skills. But one

01:08:08.240 area that we lack in is we sometimes lack in historical sense because we're a young country

01:08:12.980 and we were founded in a unique way that had all these ramifications for the rest of the

01:08:18.400 world. And we kind of forget how history works. I just happened coincidentally, providentially

01:08:23.880 to give this lecture on my favorite Italian poet, Dante. It was specifically on-

01:08:27.480 Who?

01:08:27.900 I don't know if you heard of him. He's this guy-

01:08:29.600 Tell me all about him.

01:08:30.440 Well, I, no, I-

01:08:31.060 Two hours.

01:08:31.820 Actually, well, I-

01:08:32.680 He's recite his cantos.

01:08:33.560 You, you can get that if you listen to my lecture on the ISI YouTube channel. But it

01:08:38.700 was on his politics because this is a guy who rose to the highest level of the Florentine

01:08:42.460 government and then immediately lost everything. He got, the Pope attacked him, killed his

01:08:48.700 friends, the Pope's army guys, killed his friends.

01:08:52.400 Took his property. Yes, sent him out of his city. He never returned. Civil war was the recurring

01:09:00.160 theme in his political life. And Dante had to make sense of this. And he's not the only one.

01:09:04.780 Great political thinkers have had to make sense of this, going back to Boethius and before that.

01:09:08.260 If you are Christian, though, you believe that there is a meaning to history. You believe that

01:09:16.240 there's a beginning to the story, the creation. You believe there's a turning point, which is the

01:09:20.320 incarnation. And you believe there's an end. And we know how the story ends if you're a Christian.

01:09:24.380 You believe that this world, this fallen world of politics, is subject to principalities and power

01:09:30.620 and spiritual wickedness in high places. You believe also that rulers are here for our own

01:09:36.680 good and that a civil order and justice and law is here for our own good. And we need to

01:09:40.480 do our very best to establish those conditions for justice. But it's going to be really unpleasant a

01:09:47.400 lot of the time. And I fear sometimes, because we have a short revolutionary view of history,

01:09:51.640 we think that it's all going to be roses. And it's weird that Christians who have a God

01:09:57.160 who was crucified by the religious people, the political people, by the crowd, by his friends,

01:10:04.440 you know, that they believe that everything's going to come up roses. That's not the way it

01:10:08.920 works. I mean, I think that on a very practical level, there are a few things. One, the Senate

01:10:14.260 matters an awful lot. And people who are not paying attention to the Senate races, bad mistake.

01:10:19.100 Right now, the Republicans basically have guaranteed 50 seats because of Jim Justice in West Virginia.

01:10:23.920 They're very likely to win the seat in Montana where Tim Sheehy appears to be

01:10:27.020 running away with that race. That means 51, which is great. You're going to need a little bit more

01:10:30.740 than that because you want some sort of cushion because we've had situations in the recent past,

01:10:34.620 actually, where Republicans had a 51 vote majority and you get one person to peel off and join the

01:10:38.280 Democrats in a complete, Jim Jeffords did this when George W. Bush was president, actually. And you

01:10:42.640 could see something like that. You really want more than that. I, on a personal level, have actually

01:10:46.760 been doing something I've never done before, which I'm actually going out and actively

01:10:49.700 campaigning with a series of Senate candidates in swing states. I already went and campaigned with

01:10:54.380 Captain Sam Brown over in Nevada, who's a wonderful person and a real American hero.

01:10:59.420 I'm going to be campaigning in Pennsylvania with Dave McCormick. I'm going to be hopefully

01:11:03.980 campaigning with Eric Hovdi in Wisconsin and Mike Rogers in Michigan and with Bernie Moreno in Ohio.

01:11:09.140 Like, that's my hope. I want to go campaign with all those people. And if you can, you should go

01:11:12.440 work for those Senate candidates because the worst thing would be if the Democrats get a triumvirate

01:11:16.620 here. If they get all three, if they, Congress and Senate and the presidency, they will do damage

01:11:21.380 that is, in fact, permanent in nature. They will add two states to the Senate of the United States

01:11:25.320 and stack it with another four Democratic senators, making their majority near permanent. They will

01:11:29.600 kill the filibuster. They will make changes to the actual system of American government that are

01:11:33.420 incredibly dangerous. And so the question becomes, OK, let's say all that happens. Then what? And then

01:11:37.640 the answer becomes what always was the case, which is you're going to see individual states that just

01:11:43.080 refuse to take the mandate to the federal government. That's going to be the next step. And you're

01:11:47.360 already seeing it. By the way, when the left protests this, it's like, well, you guys have already

01:11:50.740 done this. It's called the sanctuary state. You do it all the time. You did this with regard to

01:11:54.340 marijuana enforcement. You guys are constantly ignoring laws that you don't think ought to apply

01:11:58.040 to you. And so you'll just see that from the right. The right will just say, listen, you want to come

01:12:01.560 enforce your garbage tax law? You come down here and try it. See how it goes for you. You're already

01:12:05.980 seeing this with the immigration laws in Texas and what Governor Abbott has been doing down there.

01:12:10.060 So that'll be the next step. The nice thing about the United States, it's really big. It's really

01:12:13.940 decentralized. States do have an enormous amount of power. And I think that I was a lot more

01:12:17.880 pessimistic about these sorts of solutions when I was living in a blue state. When I was living

01:12:21.220 in California, it's like, oh my God, there's no place to go. And then it turns out there are,

01:12:25.000 in fact, a lot of places to go. You can take your whole company to Tennessee. You can move down to

01:12:27.860 Florida. And that will give you a base from which to fight back using the mechanisms of the system.

01:12:35.100 So the thing that I hate is when people say, this is the last election. If we lose this election,

01:12:38.980 it's all over. And invariably, the people who are telling you this are totally lying.

01:12:41.860 There's never a last election until the end of the world.

01:12:44.220 You know, it's a thing that I noticed. I noticed that literally everyone who said that if

01:12:47.220 Biden won in 2020, it would be the last election and everything didn't matter and the world would

01:12:51.760 end. They all went on the air that after the election, they were still on the air. It was

01:12:54.500 super weird. None of them quit their jobs and decided to go to farming. Literally not one of

01:12:58.860 them. It was amazing. Conservatives say this in the same way that Libs say that if a conservative

01:13:03.000 is elected, they're going to move to Canada. That's right.

01:13:04.700 But you don't know the future. No one knows the future. If Kamala Harris wins,

01:13:12.100 we certainly know it will be bad. There will be policies that make life worse in the country.

01:13:19.100 There'll be policies that damage particularly our values. It's possible that there will be

01:13:24.140 policies, Ben, to your point, that actually reorder how the government works in this country. That

01:13:29.380 could certainly happen. That much is certain. It will be bad from a policy perspective if Kamala

01:13:37.940 Harris wins. Beyond that, the extent to which it will be difficult is completely unknown.

01:13:45.120 It could certainly be the case that Donald Trump losing the presidency in 2024 could be

01:13:50.200 the beginning of something really good in the country, a reorientation. Donald Trump has been,

01:13:56.160 this is our third presidential election. We've marched into battle behind Donald Trump.

01:14:00.040 If he loses or, and even if they cheat, his job is to ascend the presidency. If he fails to ascend

01:14:07.460 the presidency, if he loses, then it will be a good thing not to follow him into a fourth

01:14:11.960 presidential election. Is it possible? You say there's always a next election. To the extent that

01:14:19.220 you mean history continues, of course that's true. Maybe there's not a next election. I mean,

01:14:23.220 systems of government's completely changed.

01:14:25.160 They're talking about gutting the court? We could go into a Soviet-style great terror

01:14:29.260 where we spend 50 years under a dark cloud. The worst thing can happen. I don't think that it's

01:14:35.040 likely that it will happen. I think that's the smallest percent chance of what the outcome could

01:14:39.560 be. But it's possible. It's possible that Donald Trump losing could be the beginning of something

01:14:44.620 very good that happens. You can't be cavalier about that because what we know for a fact is that

01:14:49.240 bad policies will happen and you don't lose by, you don't win by losing. It may be the case that you

01:14:54.540 accidentally do every now and then win by losing. But as we say often, luck is a bad business model.

01:14:59.800 Sometimes you lose with Goldwater in a 64 and then you get Reagan in 80. But there's an awful

01:15:03.520 long 16-year period and a revolutionary period. And you can't be so cavalier as to not do your

01:15:09.300 job in the moment. Our job in the moment is to support Donald Trump for president. Our job in

01:15:12.960 the moment is to do everything within our power to try to stop the left from having the White House

01:15:16.760 for four more years. Should that fail, though, it is important to remember that at the extremes,

01:15:22.380 things can be very bad. Most likely what will happen is we'll all get back up. We'll all go

01:15:28.520 back to work. We'll all have to start reorienting. We'll have to start adapting as we always do as

01:15:32.840 human beings. We'll have to find a way, Matt, to your point, to focus on our family, to focus on

01:15:38.660 our faith, to focus on the smallest units of government, which in the end are the foundational

01:15:43.780 units of government. We'll have to remember to be optimistic, not because the future is promised to be

01:15:48.320 good. The future might be very bad, but because belief in God is a fundamentally optimistic act.

01:15:54.340 And we'll have to figure out where the fight is and go fight it.

01:15:56.800 And we have to make more movies like Matt so that we can change people's minds.

01:16:00.820 That's right. The battle is ultimately a cultural battle.

01:16:04.460 It's always a cultural battle.

01:16:06.040 You know, a lot of people are very upset about abortion. I'll end the night with this. People

01:16:10.220 are very upset about the fact that the abortion situation in the country has changed. We didn't

01:16:14.260 have a plan for what would happen after Roe v. Wade. Or for when the abortion pill became the

01:16:19.660 chief mechanism of abortion. That's right. And now that we're on the other side of both of those

01:16:24.660 events in rapid succession, abortion is a much more complex political issue. It's not a more complex

01:16:31.280 moral issue. The moral issue hasn't changed at all. Abortion is a true horror, a true blight.

01:16:36.900 But the political situation has changed dramatically. It used to be the case that you could have a

01:16:42.840 politically absolutist view of abortion, which is not the same as a morally absolutist view. I have

01:16:48.160 a morally absolutist view of abortion. But politics only allowed us to have an absolutist political

01:16:54.060 view because of Roe. And what I mean by that is we could elect people who were proponents of abortion,

01:17:01.740 like Donald Trump. People who've been pro-choice their entire life.

01:17:05.400 Before he ran.

01:17:06.200 Like Donald Trump. But it didn't matter because in a situation with Roe v. Wade, as long as he

01:17:11.000 opposed Roe v. Wade, this one concept, then he was pro-life. And now on the other side,

01:17:17.460 we have this complicated moment where the very person who secured us the greatest pro-life victory

01:17:21.600 of all time now isn't morally advocating positions that make the pro-life community happy. But that's

01:17:28.100 the nature of the new political reality. And people want to know, how do we win? How do we win now?

01:17:32.480 Do we get rid of the people who don't have the absolutist moral view that we have?

01:17:36.040 You know, do we have to, is it better to lose elections standing for what's right? And those

01:17:39.660 are, it's easy to kind of be glib about that. Those can be, in certain moments, very complex

01:17:45.040 questions. There will be times where we may have to choose to lose political power.

01:17:48.300 And even Trump is making this point where he's got to win elections, guys. Just let me go, you know.

01:17:52.400 But the ultimate point is this. It took half a century to overturn Roe.

01:17:58.240 Well, it will now take half a century to fight the next battle for abortion, which is,

01:18:03.420 I believe, fundamentally a cultural battle. We actually have to change the way people relate

01:18:07.220 to the issue of life, which is different than changing the way that they deal with the issue of

01:18:12.120 the Supreme Court, Lisa v. Roe v. Wade. We figured out how to fight that battle. We won it. We're

01:18:16.880 going to have to figure out how to fight this battle and win it. Some battles can't be won immediately.

01:18:21.600 And so whatever comes of this election, we're going to have to steel ourselves for the fact that

01:18:26.520 every day that we're alive on this earth, we have to fight for our values.

01:18:29.900 That fight will never, that fight changes for a moment.

01:18:32.440 Which is why panic is always the wrong thing.

01:18:34.220 Panic is always the wrong thing.

01:18:34.960 We have to play the long game. We have to play the long game.

01:18:37.180 That's right. And it's why Matt's movie matters, because he's fighting in the cultural sphere.

01:18:41.200 This movie, Am I Racist, comes out in theaters on Friday, nationwide. If you looked for tickets

01:18:46.260 maybe three weeks ago and it wasn't playing near you, we're up to 1,500 screens, starting at only 200

01:18:52.220 four weeks ago. So if you checked the internet and the movie wasn't playing near you three weeks ago,

01:18:56.280 it probably is playing near you today. If you look today and it's not playing near you,

01:19:00.180 it almost certainly will be tomorrow. The movie is now in wide national release and the movie

01:19:06.780 matters so much. And it matters because it isn't a classic documentary. It is a true culturally

01:19:14.480 relevant piece of entertainment content that uses tools cultivated by the left when they weren't in

01:19:20.720 hegemonic power. Tools like mockery. Tools like trolling. Tools that people like Sacha Baron Cohen

01:19:28.960 or Stephen Colbert or early Jon Stewart really pioneered. And Matt is the first and only person

01:19:36.540 in our movement to figure out how to effectively turn those tools now that they're the ones in power

01:19:41.540 and we're the ones outside of power. He's figured out how to use those tools to the same great effect

01:19:46.920 that they were using them 20 years ago. And for that reason alone, you must go see this film.

01:19:52.960 Agreed.

01:19:53.440 And because the culture is where we have to fight the fight. So go to miracist.com, grab your tickets,

01:19:57.900 head over to dailywire.com if you're not a subscriber. Promo code fight gets you 47% off of your

01:20:03.700 subscription, which is how you can support all of the work that we're doing and engage with all of our

01:20:07.880 wonderful content. If you haven't registered to vote, go register. If you haven't volunteered at your

01:20:13.200 polling place, go volunteer at your polling place. If you haven't talked somebody else into going to

01:20:18.060 vote, talk them into going to vote. Put one foot in front of the other. Keep doing the work. Lift up

01:20:23.080 thine eyes. Fix them on the things that we have been promised and don't worry so much about the

01:20:28.140 things that we haven't. And just know that what a beautiful thing that we get to live and we get to

01:20:33.060 breathe and we get to fight for our values. The fight changes, the values don't. Thank you guys for

01:20:37.740 joining us tonight. We hope to see you next time.

The Michael Knowles Show - June 28, 2024

Daily Wire Backstage： The Presidential Debate

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