Ep. 1122 - Democrats Survive ＂The Red Wave＂
Episode Stats
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Summary
The election is dead, long live the election. At least we know that, at least for now. And that's a good thing, because there's not much else to be worried about other than the results of Tuesday night's election.
Transcript
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While the Georgia Senate race remains neck and neck,
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and Arizona continues to make a mockery of our electoral process,
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the rest of the country has finished selecting its politicians for this cycle.
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The night seems like I hope it will technically be a win for Republicans,
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Either way, even if Republicans do take the House,
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But we won't be talking about that for very long,
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because even though the Maricopa County voting machines
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the GOP has already moved on to the race for 2024.
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My favorite comment yesterday is from Aaron Levitt,
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The Dems are telling us that they have managed us so well
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in Biden's economy to just go eat Chef Boyardee,
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There's still some great stories from election night,
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who is just constantly catastrophizing everything
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tax cuts and ignore the culture kind of issues,
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not the old rhino establishment kind of campaign.
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had positioned himself as a working man's Democrat.
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Good, seemed like a decent Republican candidate,
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I don't want to beat up on Lee Zeldin too much.
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as of some minutes before this show began today,
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But Herschel Walker had problems as a candidate,
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I mean, just got absolutely blown out of the water.
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Republicans are just being absolutely merciless
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which we will get to a little bit later on in the show.
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Thank you. Thank you. John Fetterman, I am not really sure what to say right now.
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Truer words have never been spoken by a victorious Senate candidate. Now, this one did not surprise
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me. This surprised a lot of Republicans. Didn't surprise me. I was predicting Fetterman would
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win going into the election. That's because, well, one, it's because Philadelphia is known
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for some shenanigans, especially in close races. But even more than that, because Dr. Oz was a
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terrible candidate, and I've made no bones about that fact. I think he's just awful. I think he's
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a total loser. And so I'm not surprised that he lost. And it was unfortunate that he was the
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nominee. And then he lost to a man who had an absolutely horrible record, no professional
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accomplishments in his life, a radical vision for the country, and brain damage such that he
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couldn't even really campaign. Nevertheless, he won. And that's a real gut punch for Republicans.
00:09:59.300
Now, again, I don't think the fact that Republicans lost to a guy with brain damage, as is the headline
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right now. I don't think that's actually the big issue here. Okay? Because if it were me,
00:10:10.860
if I were a Pennsylvania voter, and it were reversed, and it was the Republican who had
00:10:15.080
had some health problem, and he wasn't really functioning, he wasn't on the campaign trail,
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versus some articulate Democrat, I would still vote for the Republican. I don't really care.
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I want the Senate majority. I want a guy who's going to reliably vote for the right stuff.
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And so I'm not really surprised by all that. The health issue doesn't bug me nearly as much
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as his just insane policy agenda. Now, I mentioned this question of fraud and irregularities and
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shenanigans and all of that. I don't think Republicans can blame these losses on voter fraud,
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because we did get most of the results last night relatively quickly. Now, you might still say
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there's a big problem with widespread mail-in voting. I do think that's a problem. I do think
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that's open to abuse. I do think there's a problem with ballot harvesting. I do think
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there's a problem with early voting. I think all of these things are absolutely awful and have no place
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in a stable, sacred democracy that we are supposed to be. And I do think it opens up the possibility
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of fraud. That's not my crazy conspiratorial view. That's the view of Barack Obama. That's the view of
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basically everybody with two brain cells to rub together. So yeah, that's all a problem. But we
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did get most of the results last night. And so there are other problems. There are other political
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problems. Why did the Republicans not do nearly as well as we were supposed to? We'll get into that.
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In terms of the issues where, the places where fraud really may have been a problem,
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the top of that list, is Maricopa County. Maricopa County, early in the day,
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we're talking about a county that had problems in 2020 in a state that was hotly contested in 2020.
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There were lots of questions about voter integrity. And early in the day, one-fifth of the voting
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machines in Maricopa County malfunctioned. Here's a poll worker explaining what happened.
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So I pulled my ballot in, but so it didn't, it got misread, but then what was happening?
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Put it in there. Yeah. And tonight, a Republican and a Democrat will sit and go through all of the
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misread ballots all over the county. Okay. And count them. And it will get counted. Okay. Okay.
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And both machines were not working, yeah? No, nothing's working in the last half hour. Nothing.
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Thank you. Nothing's working for the last half hour. Sounds like the people who,
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not that nice sounding lady, but the people who set up those machines, the people whose only job
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it was to run that election, sounds like probably Arizona should have hired some better people for
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the smartest way to hire. Lots of problems in Maricopa County. Some of the poll workers made
00:13:59.580
it sound even dodgier. Take a listen. So what happens if we have two tabulators?
00:14:05.220
One of the tabulators is not working, okay? The other tabulator is taking about 75% successful.
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So 25% of them are being misread, and it could be a printer issue, or it could be the tabulator itself.
00:14:20.920
So when it's misread, you have an option to put it into what's called box 3, and it gets read,
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whether it goes downtown and gets read manually, or whether it gets refed in into our tabulator.
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You don't want to adjudicate. It gets read, okay? So no one's trying to see in any way.
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Of course not. Not on election day. That would never happen, right? No. That would never happen.
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If I get up there, and that happens in my ballot, can I take my ballot with me and go somewhere else?
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You do not need premises with the ballot. Sorry. And there's not even a...
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Because I don't trust you going to box. The box may never make me down there.
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So you hear this poll worker, and he says, listen, yeah, it's true. A huge number of these voting machines
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just don't work for some reason in this hotly contested county, in a swing state, in a oopsie-daisy.
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But no one's trying to deceive anyone. And you hear the guy filming. He says, oh, yeah, right.
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Yeah, no one's ever trying to deceive anyone on election day.
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Which brings me to this question of election denial and questioning the integrity of our elections.
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There has been this ironic attack from Democrats since 2020. The attack of the election denier.
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You're an election denier. And they use that phrase because it reminds people of Holocaust denier.
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The event denier formula is meant to direct your attention to Holocaust denier. That's why they
00:15:51.440
sometimes do it with climate denier as well. And so it's just a disgusting sort of a smear.
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And it's ironic, of course, because Democrats have been denying elections a lot longer and in
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much greater numbers than the Republicans have. But now are we really to believe that there are
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no questions ever on election day, that no one ever tries to deceive anyone on election day?
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What are you talking about? Everyone is trying to deceive everyone on election day. That's why we
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have poll watchers. That's why we had such serious rules in place to prevent this kind of stuff from
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happening. The conspiracy theory is not election denial. The conspiracy theory is election denial
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denial or election fraud denial. That's the conspiracy theory because there has been fraud.
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There have been shenanigans in every election going back at least to Pericles and probably much further
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back than that. That's why we need rules in place to prevent this sort of stuff from happening.
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You hear the guys come out who are in charge of this in Maricopa County, and they just sound
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absolutely feckless. They say, yeah, there's some problems. Don't worry, we're working on it.
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We had all 223 vote centers have opened. We've already had over 45,000 people who have checked in
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and already voted today. We did want to come out and discuss one issue that's going on out there
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in about 20% of the vote centers. Again, we have 223 vote centers across the county. In about 20% of
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those, when people will go and they try and run the ballot through this tabulator, maybe one out of
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every five or so of those ballots, they're not going through.
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So it's, yeah, it's, you know, it's not, look, everything's going great. It's just that one out
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of five votes are not being counted properly. So what's the solution to that? The solution,
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as this guy explains, and it's funny, his name is Bill Gates. I assume no relation, but for those who
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are a little more skeptical of the established powers that be, that's kind of a funny coincidence,
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lots of coincidences. And so anyway, this guy says, okay, if your ballot's not being printed or
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being processed correctly, then here you go, just put it in this random box.
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We've got about 20% of the locations out there where there's an issue with the tabulator,
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where some of the ballots that after people have voted them, they try and run them through the
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tabulator and they're not going through. But the good thing is, is we do, first of all,
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we're trying to fix this problem as quickly as possible. And we also have a redundancy in place.
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If you can't put the ballot in the tabulator, then you can simply place it here in where you
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see the number three. And this is a secure box where those ballots will be kept for later this
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evening, where we'll bring them in here to central count to tabulate them.
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So this will function much like early voting functions.
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And there we go. I bet it will. I bet it will. This will function, this redundancy that's in
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place for 20%, what an implausibly high number of the ballots in Maricopa County.
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This will function largely as early voting. Right, I'm sure it will. And the reason that
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Republicans are crying foul over this is because early voting, one, is more open to fraud than same
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day voting than proper register, get the count by the end of the night voting. And because
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mail-in voting and early voting both favor Democrats. So I have no doubt that that's how
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the redundancy would function. But that's a big problem. Carrie Lake, who was looking great,
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the Republican candidate for governor, Arizona, she was looking great early yesterday. And now it's
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very unclear if she will win. Carrie Lake decided to go vote in a liberal precinct. She said no problems
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there. We switched from a Republican area to vote. We came right down into the heart of liberal Phoenix
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to vote because we wanted to make sure that we had good machines. And guess what? They've had zero
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problems with their machines today. Not one machine spit out a ballot here today. Not one in a very liberal
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area. So we were right to come and vote in a liberal area. They got to fix this problem. This
00:20:01.120
is incompetency. I hope it's not malice, but we're going to fix it. We're going to win. And when we win,
00:20:08.020
there's going to be come to Jesus for elections in Arizona. There's going to be a come to Jesus.
00:20:13.860
So I hope Carrie Lake wins. But the point she's raising here is, yeah, it's one in five
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poll centers, poll machines in Maricopa County, but it's not evenly distributed.
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Her claim, at least, again, we don't know. We're kind of in the fog of war on this election night.
00:20:30.880
But her claim is that the liberal precincts did not have the problems. It was the conservative
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precincts that did, which would explain how Maricopa County, which is pretty liberal,
00:20:42.420
would be the epicenter of some of these problems. Well, yeah, if it's only affecting the conservative
00:20:48.220
precincts, not the liberal ones, again, that's an if based on what Carrie Lake is saying,
00:20:53.460
then that seems a little strange. One place where there was no ambiguity,
00:20:58.900
this was the bright spot of the night, Ron DeSantis absolutely destroyed in Florida.
00:21:05.680
He destroyed his opponent, Charlie Crist. Ron DeSantis won re-election 59.4% to 39.9%.
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Ron DeSantis barely won his first election as governor of Florida. He absolutely crushed it
00:21:19.860
in his re-election. Why did that happen? Well, in part, let's not forget, he did tighten up
00:21:26.360
election laws. I don't think that's the chief reason. That's part of it. Why did he? Because
00:21:30.540
he's been a great governor of Florida, and everybody loves the guy down there. And he just led the way
00:21:35.600
in the nation, especially among the governors, on COVID and on education and on dealing with woke
00:21:42.120
corporations. And he's just been a fabulous, fabulous governor. And so as a result of this last
00:21:48.340
night, Ron DeSantis has a very credible case to run against Donald Trump for president.
00:21:56.460
Going into last night, a lot of people would not have said that. They would have said Donald Trump
00:22:01.160
is so far up in the polls, it's 70% plus. DeSantis is somewhere around 10%. It's just,
00:22:07.260
if Trump decides he's running, he clears the field. No one can credibly run against him.
00:22:14.380
After last night, especially where a lot of Trump-endorsed candidates did not do very well
00:22:19.160
for whatever reason. And Ron DeSantis not only destroyed in his re-election campaign,
00:22:25.860
but really brought Florida very firmly into the Republican camp. Ron DeSantis now could very
00:22:32.760
credibly come out, even if Donald Trump announces that he's running for president next week.
00:22:36.880
And it's, I think, unclear that he will do that. He had implied that he would do that,
00:22:41.960
but after last night, after the Republicans did not do nearly as well as we thought we would,
00:22:46.500
it's unclear if he will do that. But even if he does, Ron DeSantis, I think, could announce a run
00:22:50.800
against him. And he could have, he could have a very serious campaign. And if Ron DeSantis runs on his
00:22:58.640
record, runs on the election wins in Florida, runs on the underperformance of the Republicans
00:23:04.320
nationally, particularly some of the Trump-endorsed candidates, that's a good case.
00:23:08.940
Now, there's one candidate in Florida who is a Senate candidate there, Republican,
00:23:14.080
who Trump did not endorse, who Ron DeSantis did endorse. And that candidate lost. So some people
00:23:19.060
are going to say, well, look, it's not just that Trump's endorsements weren't that great,
00:23:22.400
but DeSantis' endorsements nationwide, that one guy didn't do that well. And on the rest,
00:23:27.460
DeSantis and Trump were basically agreed. Okay, yeah, I just think that gets wiped away when you look at the
00:23:33.120
massive shift of voters to the Republican Party in Florida. Now, again, is that all thanks to
00:23:39.900
DeSantis? Is part of that thanks to the coronavirus? Is part of that thanks to the lockdowns and people
00:23:45.020
voting with their feet? So you just see an influx of Republicans into Florida. Now, is that thanks
00:23:50.300
to Ron DeSantis? Because Ron DeSantis was covering in a good way. There's a little bit of a chicken and
00:23:53.920
an egg here. But the upshot of all of it is, we now have, now that the 2022 midterms are over,
00:23:59.100
we now have a much, much more competitive 2024 Republican presidential primary than we did
00:24:05.820
two days ago. How is Donald Trump reacting to the much more competitive Republican presidential
00:24:13.580
primary because Ron DeSantis did so well in Florida? He is threatening him. So Trump comes out,
00:24:22.720
says in an interview with Fox News Digital, quote,
00:24:25.000
quote, DeSantis shouldn't run. You know, I don't think he should run. It would not go very well
00:24:30.320
for him. And then he says, this is a direct quote, I would tell you things about him that won't be very
00:24:36.140
flattering. I know more about him than anybody other than perhaps his wife. So there's a threat.
00:24:45.320
Trump is, and I don't think it's an idle threat. I bet the Trump campaign has pretty good oppo research
00:24:50.200
on DeSantis because DeSantis has been the chief threat to Trump on the right for months now or
00:24:57.400
more than months, even over a year now. And so I'm sure he's got some oppo on it. What is the threat
00:25:02.300
here? The threat here seems to me, Ron DeSantis, I'm going to say that you've got woman problems,
00:25:08.840
right? I think that's why he includes that line other than perhaps your wife. And that's one of the
00:25:15.660
lowest hanging fruits in politics is to accuse someone of having an affair or whatever. Obviously,
00:25:20.520
Trump has been accused of this many times. And it was an issue in the 2016 campaign.
00:25:25.100
So I think that's what he's saying. He said, I got a lot of dirty laundry on you.
00:25:28.100
Now, maybe he's, Trump is also insinuating, I've got, you know, more political scandals,
00:25:34.240
or I've got financial scandals, or I've got this, or I've got that. But I think from this threat here,
00:25:39.060
Trump is clearly insinuating that he's got a sex scandal up his sleeve. Now, is Trump bluffing?
00:25:45.200
Trump has bluffed many times before. But what you can see is this is starting to get
00:25:50.220
nasty. Now, all the nastiness is coming from Trump. You'll notice DeSantis is not attacking
00:25:55.240
Donald Trump at all, which does seem to suggest that DeSantis is feeling very confident right now.
00:26:01.760
Trump is feeling less confident. The fact that Trump attacked DeSantis the other day,
00:26:05.980
called him Ron DeSanctimonious, was evidence, I think, of Trump feeling a little insecure here.
00:26:12.840
Because Trump, whatever you want to say about his attacks, and they can be brutal and they've
00:26:17.900
destroyed people. Trump, to my knowledge, has never started a fight. Someone always attacks
00:26:25.980
them first, and it might just be a mild offense. And then Trump comes in and clobbers them.
00:26:31.060
But Trump, as a rule, does not really seem to attack first. In the case of DeSantis,
00:26:36.440
he attacks first. Why? Because I think he realizes he's got to sideline Ron because Ron right now has
00:26:44.000
a ton of momentum. And coming out of these midterms, he's got a ton of momentum. Again,
00:26:48.700
though, everybody seems to be going into camp. So I'm still a Trump guy. Well, Ron DeSantis is the
00:26:55.700
greatest thing since sliced bread. Every other Republican's got to go away. And the reason we
00:27:00.780
were asked last night on Backstage, Trump or DeSantis, who do you pick? And everyone's going
00:27:05.220
around and they say, I'm, you know, I guess in that case it was uniformly DeSantis. But they said,
00:27:09.960
I'm, and we're, I'm totally committed and basically signed me up for the campaign.
00:27:12.960
And it got to me and I said, guys, one, I don't make endorsements in primaries as a general rule,
00:27:19.120
okay? But two, it's 2022. At this time in the 2012 election cycle, do you know who the frontrunners
00:27:28.680
were? Mitch Daniels and Haley Barber and Bobby Jindal, okay? Do you know, I mean,
00:27:36.480
they were the ones who were being talked about. In 2016, who were the frontrunners?
00:27:41.480
It wasn't Trump. It wasn't Cruz. It was the guys who were some of the first ones out. And so I just
00:27:49.440
think, I love Trump. I'm not willing to throw him under the bus, not willing to trash him and blame
00:27:55.920
every problem on him. I love Ron DeSantis. I think Ron DeSantis has done a fabulous job as governor of
00:28:00.760
Florida. What he's done has absolutely been incredible. He had a huge win last night.
00:28:04.440
Love a lot of other Republicans too, who, who could run. And so I'm just not willing to,
00:28:09.840
I just think it's silly and frivolous to, to come out and make an endorsement this early.
00:28:15.980
Also, if Trump manages to be able to run and clear the field, then it's pointless to,
00:28:25.140
to play this horse race game. And if Trump can't clear the field, if other people run against him,
00:28:32.100
or if he doesn't run at all, then it's also pointless to jump on board with the candidate right
00:28:37.840
now. Because that, that means that everyone's going to get in. If Trump is not clearly clearing
00:28:42.440
the field, you're for sure going to get DeSantis. But think about all the other people who have run
00:28:50.200
for president, who could run for president again. Tim Scott has, his publisher said he was running
00:28:55.280
for president. Remember that Nikki Haley's clearly intimating she would run for president. Ted Cruz was
00:28:59.980
the number two guy last time. He could mount a very credible campaign. Josh Hawley is intimated that
00:29:04.260
he might run. Rand Paul could easily run. I mean, I just think it'll be everybody.
00:29:08.480
I think everybody will jump into that race. So what happened last night? What do we blame?
00:29:14.640
Do we blame voter fraud and rigging and shenanigans? I'm not saying there's no role for that. And that
00:29:22.380
could be playing out a little bit, especially in Arizona. And I think it could be playing out less
00:29:28.260
from the batches of ballots coming in, in the middle of the night, and more from the,
00:29:31.920
look at this. They've turned election day into election season. And people were voting in
00:29:35.780
Pennsylvania in September before they realized that John Fetterman doesn't have a properly
00:29:40.580
functioning brain. And that is, and there's ballot harvesting in a lot of states. And there's all
00:29:45.280
sorts of, and there's all sorts of corrupt practices. Yeah, that does play a role. And
00:29:50.000
Republicans need to get serious about tightening that up. You don't need to be an election denying
00:29:55.980
conspiracy theorist to say that two months of voting, it favors Democrats and it's wrong and
00:30:02.120
it has no place in a proper republic. And we need to get rid of it. Republicans need to stop just
00:30:07.100
talking about the fixing the fringes of these electoral problems and get down and say no early
00:30:12.100
voting except for rare exceptions, no mail-in ballots except for rare exceptions. People vote on
00:30:17.700
election day. We get the results by nighttime. Okay, that would be good. But I don't blame election
00:30:22.440
fraud for the Republican weak performance. Do I blame Trump? Some of the Trump picks were pretty
00:30:28.960
bad. But again, I'm not even willing to blame him too much for Oz. I think Oz is a total loser.
00:30:33.640
But David McCormick, who was the chief rival to Oz, and he was more the establishment pick.
00:30:38.640
David McCormick was a socially liberal hedge funder who wrote an amicus brief to the Supreme Court on the
00:30:44.180
Obergefell case and who was vocally in favor of gay marriage. And it was, I think he wrote an amicus
00:30:50.620
brief. He was very, very strongly in favor of gay marriage. And he's not exactly Attila the Hun.
00:30:58.360
Okay, he was not much more conservative than Dr. Oz. And then Kathy Barnett, people felt,
00:31:03.020
couldn't make a credible general election play. And they may have been right about that. She was
00:31:06.700
the conservative in the race. So again, you blame Trump for the Oz endorsement. Okay, but
00:31:11.300
would McCormick have done much better? I'm not totally convinced of that. Maybe he would have,
00:31:15.820
but I'm not totally convinced of that. And I think a lot of people who just hate Trump are looking
00:31:20.440
at this as an excuse to attack Trump. That said, Trump's record last night just wasn't that great.
00:31:25.940
So it does hurt his presidential prospects. And I think people are going to cool on him just as a
00:31:32.580
result of it. Do you blame Biden because Biden's doing such a great job? No. Obviously, I think that's
00:31:37.400
insane. Do you blame Roe v. Wade, the overruling of Roe v. Wade? No, I don't think that really played
00:31:42.020
any role in the race at all. I don't see that reflected in the polls. I think that's kind of
00:31:47.800
silly. But one place that people are not really talking about, and it goes a long way to explaining
00:31:54.440
why Republicans couldn't quite put it over the edge in New York, why they couldn't really get it done
00:32:00.180
in Pennsylvania, why nothing really happened in California, why Florida was just so overwhelmingly
00:32:06.700
Republican. Why Texas had an extremely good night for Republicans, and that is that people have
00:32:12.720
voted with their feet. I'm one of the people who voted with my feet. I moved out of Mussolini's
00:32:17.080
hellscape of California, came to the free state of Tennessee, which is fabulous. And a lot of other
00:32:21.880
people did that to Tennessee and Texas, and especially Florida. But one of the consequences of voting with
00:32:27.140
your feet is then you don't vote at the ballot box in the state that you left, and it becomes harder
00:32:32.860
for Republicans to win. So that's another macro trend of the night that you can't just blame on
00:32:37.320
Trump or just give credit to some other candidate for. You have to say that's a macro trend in
00:32:41.300
politics where it's, yes, Republicans are going to do better in the red states. The red states are
00:32:46.640
going to get redder, but that means the blue states are going to get bluer, and it's going to be harder
00:32:49.400
to have those purple kinds of wins. Now, I mentioned Texas. I mentioned Beto O'Rourke got destroyed.
00:32:55.940
And usually I say, okay, let's take the high road. Let's not rub it in anybody's face.
00:32:59.540
But Beto, he just bothers me, okay? And so Alex Stein, who has become one of the absolute
00:33:06.620
top trolls in America, and he's just, he just seems, you know, completely unleashed and like
00:33:14.500
a dog with a bone. And I had him on the show, you know, and he just does things that are so
00:33:18.140
vulgar and mean. And you just say, I could never do that. Well, anyway, he did it to Beto and it was
00:33:22.460
very, very funny. Do you feel guilty about the millions of dollars you wasted on your campaign,
00:33:26.740
Beto? Why do you want to protect trans children? How are you going to protect trans kids by cutting
00:33:42.820
off their genitals? How does that protect trans kids, Beto? Beto, how does that protect trans
00:33:49.140
kids? Beto, how are you protecting trans kids by cutting off their genitals? Let's do it.
00:33:57.820
Let's do it. Beto, you know you're going to lose, Beto. This is how many losses in a row?
00:34:02.380
How many more losses are you going to take, Beto? Let's move forward. Beto, how many more
00:34:08.120
losses are you going to take? Are you going to quit? Where's your campaign money going?
00:34:12.960
Beto, are you quitting after this failure? Are you going to quit after you fail today?
00:34:17.140
Do you want to give back the money that you have? Beto, do you feel guilty that you're
00:34:22.000
a loser, Beto? Beto, do you feel bad about losing? Beto. Hey, get out of my shot. Come on,
00:34:28.760
get out of the way. Let's step out of the way. Back up. Back up. Beto, do you feel like
00:34:32.480
a loser, Beto? You know, the election night, it was a little bit, I just feel like I'm getting
00:34:38.760
a little sick. You know, I just, I was so excited. I thought I was going to be popping champagne
00:34:42.980
and now I'm feeling just a little down, you know, like I've got, oh, I'm just a little
00:34:47.020
worn down. And that video of Alex Stein just yelling at Beto and calling him a loser and
00:34:53.220
asking if he feels bad for wasting millions of dollars on another failed campaign. It's
00:34:57.400
just like a nice bowl of chicken soup. You know, it's just like a nice warm broth. I just
00:35:00.980
like, and then people are trying to pull Alex Stein away and pull, you know, kind of hit him
00:35:05.140
in the head with, with signs. But he's just kind of a big belligerent madman. And so he doesn't
00:35:09.740
even care. He just doesn't, just a dog with a bone doesn't even stop. Beto, you're a loser.
00:35:13.980
You want to chop off kids' genitals. Why are you such a loser, Beto? So it was a nice,
00:35:18.660
after the kind of headache and aches and pains of election night kind of set in, that's just
00:35:24.760
a nice little, nice little bit of chicken soup. Are you still giving your money to woke
00:35:30.520
razor companies that hate your beliefs and see masculinity as toxic and think that you should
00:35:35.460
teach your daughter to shave her beard? There is a better way. Jeremy's razors are 100% real and
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100% woke free. The premium matte tungsten handle has more heft than the left. The razor head pivots
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without caving and has six blades that are sharper than truth. Who writes this stuff? Those other razor
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companies keep virtue signaling to the totalitarian left and using your money to do it. You don't have
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to let them. When you buy Jeremy's razors, you are not just making Jeremy richer, you're making
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40% off your Founders Serious Shave Kit today. That's jeremysrazors.com. Jeremy's razors, shut up
00:36:17.380
and shave. Okay, I've got to get to a little non-election news. I've got to get to the really
00:36:22.480
important stuff, okay? The really important news, like how Jennifer Lopez is now Jennifer Affleck.
00:36:29.500
Did you know this is a New York Times essay on why it matters that J-Lo is now J-Aff. I'm not joking.
00:36:40.400
And I actually agree with the writer, Jennifer Wiener. It does matter. It actually does matter
00:36:46.500
that Jennifer Lopez is calling herself Jennifer Affleck. Jennifer Lopez was asked about this.
00:36:53.620
She said, of course I changed my name. It's romantic and traditional. Now, this lady who
00:36:59.380
wrote the op-ed says that it's cringey. Such a long, long, I don't recommend that you read this
00:37:05.760
entire article. But she says it's cringey and peak patriarchy. And says Ms. Affleck, by the way,
00:37:13.900
she's not Ms. Affleck, she's Mrs. Affleck. Ms. is a feminist prefix invented in the 1970s.
00:37:23.160
Miss or Mrs. Those are the proper terms. So Mrs. Affleck may be surrendering to the power of love
00:37:29.620
with this, her fourth marriage. But given the cringey history behind the practice, a woman
00:37:34.140
doesn't take her husband's last name. A woman taking her husband's last name feels to me like a
00:37:39.340
submission, a gesture that doesn't say I belong with him so much as I belong to him. And at this
00:37:46.880
fraught moment for feminism in America, a woman like the former Jennifer Lopez deciding to change
00:37:51.780
her name feels especially dispiriting. Okay. Well, yes, in part, it is a submission. Yeah,
00:37:57.700
it is a wife submitting to her husband. And in turn, the husband is called to love his wife. And
00:38:03.660
the two are not separate. And it's not this domineering relationship where you've got a master
00:38:09.460
and a slave. But it's two people becoming one flesh. That's at least the idea. Again,
00:38:14.360
she mentions fourth marriage and all this craziness in Hollywood. So I'm just speaking
00:38:19.160
in principle about marriage and a wife taking her husband's name. But the reason this is such a
00:38:26.200
stupid essay, the reason it's such a stupid point that the left makes that women shouldn't take their
00:38:33.080
husband's last names is because inevitably a woman is going to have a man's last name. A woman will
00:38:42.360
either have her husband's last name or her father's last name. But either way, the patriarchy wins.
00:38:51.880
And if you're in a marriage, it seems kind of weird for the wife to have her father's last name.
00:39:00.160
Because marriage is when people leave their mothers and their fathers and they come together,
00:39:05.680
a man and a woman come together and become one flesh. And the man is the head of the household. And so
00:39:11.300
it would stand to reason that the woman takes the husband's last name. If the man took the wife's
00:39:19.320
last name, that would be weird because then he would have her father's last name. And that just
00:39:23.940
gets very, very confusing and complicated. Now you might say, well, Michael, what about the case where
00:39:28.000
a feminist has a child and the feminist does not take her husband's last name. And the feminist gives
00:39:35.380
her daughter her last name. And then the daughter gets married and she doesn't have her father's
00:39:41.320
last name. She's got her mother's last name. Well, that's true. But hey, you just go back up one
00:39:45.960
generation. Guess whose last, guess whose name the feminist has? Well, no, the feminist has her
00:39:52.020
mom's like, well, guess who has, guess whose name? And at a certain point, you go up the line enough,
00:39:56.400
you're going to get to a fella. And so really what this is, is not an attack on the patriarchy or
00:40:01.880
whatever. This is an attack on family. It's an attack on marriage itself, which is what the left
00:40:07.200
is always after. And it's a sort of a stupid, frivolous attack. Now, speaking of transitions,
00:40:14.800
this turned out to be a big issue, I think, in the 2022 midterms. I think it's turned out to be a big
00:40:20.680
issue even before that, going back to the Glenn Youngkin race in Virginia. The establishment
00:40:27.040
Republicans think that transing the kids is a sideshow. It's a fake issue. It's contentious.
00:40:34.020
It's culture war. They should avoid it. Dr. Oz doesn't really talk about it. The establishment
00:40:39.140
kind of hack, rhino candidates don't really talk about it. You know who does talk about it? Ron DeSantis.
00:40:45.140
You know who does talk about it? Glenn Youngkin. You know who does talk about it? The conservative
00:40:48.580
Republicans who do very well. Well, this is backed up by polls. So a recent poll found that more than
00:40:55.740
70% of American voters in the 2022 midterms said that they are not likely to vote for a candidate
00:41:02.320
who supports allowing minors to undergo gender transition procedures, sexual genital mutilation.
00:41:09.260
Nearly 80% of independents and 43% of Democrats joined the Republicans in opposing candidates who support
00:41:17.620
allowing kids to transition, transing the kids. That's a huge number. Obviously, yeah. Basically,
00:41:26.660
all the Republicans are on board. 80% of independents. That's bad news for Democrats.
00:41:31.280
43% of Democrats are with the conservatives on this. So if you're just looking at those numbers,
00:41:37.460
the GOP going into the midterms should have been hammering this issue. Not as a sideshow,
00:41:42.620
as a matter of justice, but also as an important political matter. This is a uniting, good, serious,
00:41:49.480
important political issue. And by the way, an analysis of voter registration done by the AP in
00:41:56.040
June found that more than 1 million voters across 43 states, especially in the suburbs,
00:42:01.580
where the swing voters often sway the election results, switched to the GOP over the last year.
00:42:06.460
And one of the issues that's driving that, yes, it's the misery index. Yes, it's inflation. Yes,
00:42:12.140
it's the economy. But one of the issues is this insanity where Democrats are chopping off kids'
00:42:16.320
genitals. So Republicans, I think, failed to deal with that as well. It was a bit of a rough night.
00:42:27.940
And it's hard to figure out exactly what the takeaway is. Now, I will say, I try not to make
00:42:34.180
predictions. You'll notice, I usually do not make these firm predictions about election night. In
00:42:40.140
fact, in as much as I did make predictions, I said, you know, guys, I actually don't think we're
00:42:43.560
going to really win Pennsylvania. I don't think Mastriano is going to win. I don't think John
00:42:47.500
Fetterman is, or rather, I don't think Dr. Oz is going to beat Fetterman. I think Fetterman is going
00:42:51.840
to be an upset. I did predict that Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the DCCC, would lose in New York's
00:42:57.280
17th Congressional District. He would lose to the Republican, Michael Aller. I was right about that one,
00:43:01.680
too. So I made very particular predictions where I felt that the evidence was relatively clear.
00:43:10.960
I did not make grand sweeping predictions. And even other than, you know, maybe advertising copy
00:43:15.860
for the election show, I didn't say, you know, it's guaranteed we're going to have a red tsunami.
00:43:20.600
I'm going to be drinking leftist tears all night. I tempered expectations because I said, you know,
00:43:24.200
there's going to be some questions. People have been voting since September. There's lots of,
00:43:28.020
there's some not great candidates out there. And so I just think, as Drew Klavan says,
00:43:33.520
you can't predict the future. The future is the future. That's why it is the future. And so
00:43:37.800
there is this funny thing that goes on, which is that the pundits and the prognosticators
00:43:42.700
who make it their job to say, I know exactly what's going to happen on election night. And
00:43:47.440
they get all the predictions wrong. Then the next day they come out and they tell you precisely why
00:43:51.860
their predictions, precisely why things happened as they did happen. And they kind of ignore the fact
00:43:56.600
that their predictions were all wrong. That happens across the aisle and it happens all
00:43:59.600
the time with political pundits. Being a political pundit is never having to say that you're sorry,
00:44:03.940
especially if you're the kind that just tries to predict every single race.
00:44:07.500
And so you're going to see a ton of people today say, well, this is exactly why the Republicans
00:44:12.260
didn't do very well. And you're going to see a coincidence here that the reasons why the
00:44:17.720
Republicans didn't do as well as they were supposed to is going to totally line up with all of the
00:44:22.200
pundits' priors. It's going to affirm every premise that the pundits had going in, even if
00:44:27.560
those premises did not result in accurate predictions for election night. And that's just
00:44:32.060
what happens. That's just politics. But I've got a less popular, but I think more accurate take,
00:44:37.700
which is there are a lot of factors here. And you can't just blame it on the fraud. And you can't
00:44:41.980
just blame it on Trump. And you can't just blame it on early voting. And you can't just blame
00:44:47.560
it on Roe v. Wade. And you can't just, there's a lot going on, especially when you look at two
00:44:53.100
races. You look at J.D. Vance and Blake Masters. J.D. Vance in Ohio, Blake Masters running for Senate
00:44:58.720
in Arizona. They ran the same campaign. They're basically the same candidate. They've got the
00:45:03.820
same background. They've got the same backers. They ran on the same platform. J.D. wins. Blake
00:45:09.320
very likely will lose, or it's just very unclear, at least at the moment. Why is that? Well,
00:45:14.880
Ohio and Arizona are different. That's part of it. There's just a lot. There's just a lot in there.
00:45:20.740
And so what you're going to see now is the battle over what happened. And the battle over what
00:45:27.740
happened is nothing more than a proxy for the battle for 2024. When I say the election is dead,
00:45:36.000
long live the election, this is not the second day of counting the votes of election day 2022.
00:45:41.560
This is the first day of the 2024 Republican presidential primary. And so all of the commentary
00:45:48.120
that you're going to be seeing today is a facade, a thinly veiled facade for a campaign for one
00:45:58.600
candidate or another in 2024. And because I actually have not picked a candidate and I'm not endorsing,
00:46:05.280
certainly not at this stage, in a presidential primary, that's why I am just trying to present
00:46:09.340
all of these sides and all of these factors that went into the midterms last night.
00:46:16.700
Though I am very interested in hearing from you as well and what you think happened in what you were
00:46:22.460
seeing in your polling places. I mean, the listeners to this show are spread not just all around the
00:46:28.380
country, but all around the world. And we know that people all around the world are watching the
00:46:32.660
American elections as well. Most of the people here at the Daily Wire have coincidentally just
00:46:37.700
been overseas in Europe or the Middle East within the past month. And we know that people overseas
00:46:44.160
everywhere follow the American elections. But especially for those of you who are listening
00:46:48.020
from the United States right now, what did you see in your precinct at your polling place with your
00:46:52.760
candidate, with the Republican congressional candidate in your district? Some races that we thought we
00:46:58.720
were going to win. My friend Bo Hines was running in North Carolina. He lost. Lauren Boeber, really,
00:47:03.720
really on the ropes. Republican congressman, another friend of mine in Colorado. So what happened? What
00:47:08.560
did you see? And especially as everyone is just looking to be so vindictive the next morning,
00:47:14.620
who do you blame? Let me know. You can let me know on Twitter or in email or whatever,
00:47:19.980
comments and mailbag, but you can especially let me know in the member block of this show.
00:47:24.460
So the rest of the show continues now. It is Woke Wednesday. We've got an ad from Fetterman that my
00:47:29.120
producers tell me is one that I actually didn't play. I haven't seen this one. So I guess they
00:47:33.600
just want to rub salt in the wounds of Senator Fetterman coming out. You don't want to miss this
00:47:38.700
part of the show. If you're not a member, click on the link in the description and join us.