Can Republicans Beat the Midterm Odds? Sen. Hagerty Weighs In

OK, first, before we give you the facts of the day, Run Hide Fight in Fadelles is streaming now only on Daily Wire. It's an ode to the great action movies of the '80s and '90s. There is even a love story which nobody expected. And you can support Daily Wire's mission to continue making movies that people actually want to watch. Go check it out. Imagine setting your makeup. Then for getting, it's even theirs. Meet new Grippy Setting Mist from Mavily, New York. Jelly Miss technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just clump to a hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new Grippy Setting Mist from Mavily, New York. Maybe it's Mavily. [MUSIC PLAYING] Midterms are quickly approaching and Republicans are hoping to buck historical trends to hold the Senate. Both parties are scrambling to respond to voters growing concerns about affordability. Tennessee Senator Bill Haggerty joins us in studio to discuss the upcoming midterms. And while he thinks the old wisdom about the party in power losing seats no longer applies. I'm Daily Wire executive editor, John Bickley, with Georgia Hal. This is a weekend edition of Born Wire. [MUSIC PLAYING] You know those pieces in your closet that you find yourself reaching for over and over again? The sweater that somehow works with everything, the jeans that you know always fit, or the bag that you carry everywhere. These are the pieces that earn a permanent place in your wardrobe, and that's exactly what Quince does so well. Quince makes elevated everyday essentials using premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and premium stretch denim. The designs are timeless, thoughtfully crafted, and made to be worn again and again. As the weather gets colder, Quince has everything that you need to round out your wardrobe. 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Hormuz straight is still more closed than we want it to be. What reason do you have to believe that the Republicans can keep the Senate? Well, people always cite history and say, "This is typically the case and you're right." But you don't have to go too far back basically to 2022 when Joe Biden was in office. The United States Senate was at 50/50 at that point in time. Joe Biden had driven inflation through the roof. Oil was much higher than it is now $130 a barrel. Inflation, running a muck, the failure in Afghanistan, perhaps the worst national security failure, the worst foreign policy failure we've seen in certainly my lifetime. I would have certainly thought we would have seen a major shift at that point in time. In fact, I believe that. I thought we would probably be at 53/54 seats in the United States Senate for Republicans. I thought we'd pick up three or four seats. We wound up losing a seat. So I think conventional wisdom has changed. It really gets down to resources and it gets down to having a pragmatic ground game in place and really fighting to win. When we went back and analyzed what happened in 2022, it turned out that the Democrats had changed a lot of the rules. State by state, they changed the voting rules during the pandemic. And they played to those rules. We complained about it might like. We don't like early voting. Ballot harvesting, all the things they did. Well, that's exactly what they did. So we have a much more robust ground game in place now. And also we fought very hard to put the genie back in the bottle of you will to get some of these loose rules out of place back in order. And we're watching these elections very, very closely now. So some of the irregularities that have been witness in the past don't happen again. So I think what we're looking at right now is a situation where if you just look at resources, Republicans have more resources at a national level. When you look at it on a candidate by candidate basis, that's not the case. Democrats have outraged at a candidate level. And the reason I think they're focused there is because they can spend those dollars more efficiently. Those are called hard dollars. Those can be those benefit from a discount, if you will. That's afforded those that want to advertise on television. People that are running for office are able to use those dollars or discount. When you put the money into some type of pack structure what they call soft dollars, you're just buying, you're competing with everybody else in the marketplace. And often those rates can be double, can be triple, can be tenfold depending on the market. So I think you need to look at the specifics in terms of how these candidates are able to spend their dollars. And that will know later those numbers haven't come out. But they have something called Act Blue, which has always been very suspicious. It looks to me like a big money machine that they put soft dollars into and somehow hard dollars crank out whatever the case. I think the challenge for Republicans, again, given the fact that history usually does make it more challenging, is that we have to make the case. And that's the point I think you'll see coming out over those next six weeks, next five weeks. And that is Republicans are the only party that have actually delivered real policy solutions. There I'm talking about the Working Families Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the Big Beautiful Bill, putting in place incentives to invest capital here in America, like we've never seen in our lifetimes, delivering incredible new innovations like Trump accounts for new kids, new retirement accounts, no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes on social security. If you look at what the Democrats have delivered for us, you don't have to look very far, two government shutdowns, the longest shutdowns in history, by the way. And if you look at where they were prior to this, inflation, or collapse border, crime run amok, I think we need to make the case, and the contrast actually is quite distinct. So I'm confident that we'll be doing that. We'll have the resources to do that, coming into these next several weeks. And the American public will see the difference. - I'm glad you mentioned resources. We've started to see spending in Texas and Michigan on, you know, from the GOP, Taloriko in Texas and El Sayed in Michigan, a lot of the focus nationally to polarizing candidates that do have a shot at winning and flipping a seat. What are Republicans doing in general to combat those potential upsets in those states? - Well, I'll just remind you that we've heard Democrats talk about flipping Texas time after time after time. I think it's gonna be very difficult to do that. And a candidate like Taloriko is gonna make it extraordinarily difficult. Again, once he's defined and he's being defined right now, I think people will see that the socialist policies that Taloriko is behind are not gonna fit well with Texas. Let's go to Michigan. El Sayed, again, you mentioned divisive candidates. Perhaps one of the most divisive that we've ever seen. He, Graham Platten, or some of the ones that the Democrats have come out with this time, the whole Democrat Socialist Party of America platform. I think it's frankly a shock to most Americans once they begin to understand it. So I'll go back to the original point. We will be defining these candidates and letting the public know what they stand for. So instead of, you know, standing on the street corner, shouting, you know, free ice cream vote for me, we're gonna get down to the details of what these candidates have actually advocated for. When you look at an El Sayed, it's absolutely radical. And the people that support him, beyond radical. I mean, incredibly shocking that someone like this could get to the point that they have to be the party's nominee for US Senator. You can be careful about what you post online and still leave a much bigger digital trail than you realize. I don't publicly share things like my phone number or home address, but that doesn't mean that those details aren't already circulating on data broker websites. That's the part I find unsettling. Privacy isn't only about what you choose to post. Those details can give stalkers, scammers, and hackers the information that they need to make a threat feel personal and convincing. If you've been meaning to protect yourself, but you weren't sure where to begin, start here. Go to www.joinedelateme.com/wire and enter code wire for 20% off. DeleteMe removes your personal information that's being sold online. It can track down listings connecting your name to addresses, phone numbers, and relatives. Then handle the removal requests for you. 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President Trump is more than concerned about it. I've had numerous discussions with him about this. The war in the Middle East, the situation there is having a direct impact on this. He's taken some very-- and just look at this past weekend. He's taken some very strong positions. I think we're going to see the situation resolve itself very quickly. Again, I'll remind you. Oil is trading around $100 a barrel this morning. It was $130 under Joe Biden. The media have amplified the pain, but I certainly understand it. I do think this is a transitory issue, one that will be more short-term, longer-term. You look at the largest components of what people have to afford. It's housing. It's their automobile. That's affected by interest rates at the Fed. Bringing inflation down, which is what we're in the process of doing it again, once the war is over, the situation in the Middle East has resolved. I think we'll see a dramatic drop in inflation. We're moving in the right direction. In the meantime, what have we done? We've gone through numerous exercises to deregulate the U.S. economy. We've put America back on the map in terms of producing energy here on our own. We're going to continue to do that. My own bill, the Freedom to Build Act, will go directly at the permitting cost and the local compliance cost associated with building a new home. If you can believe this, the average home in America to build a new home, this is not an entry-level one with the average home, $100,000, a permitting and compliance cost. Getting at that is exactly what my legislation does, and I'm on the right committee to do this. We're trying to find ways to get the government out of people's lives to streamline and make things more efficient rather than more cumbersome. In the past, the government has done a good job at making things more cumbersome and taking these costs out will be inherently deflationary and will address the cost to the American public. I think the biggest issue, though, confronting us right now, is going to be the situation in the Middle East, and I'm optimistic that that gets resolved. I do think that Iranians probably are holding on tight until the November elections. They hate having President Trump in a position of power, but after the elections, he will still be the President, and I think this will be over very soon. President Trump is saying he thinks this is the last leverage or perceived leverage point and he's not going to give in for the political concerns. I think that's exactly how they're playing. If you look at how the Iranians, though, have been trained, you don't have to go very far back. Back to 2020. I was US ambassador to Japan in the first Trump administration. One of my jobs was to get the Japanese to stop buying Iranian crude oil. That happened around the world. We had the Iranian economy again in a very tough situation, not nearly as bad as it is today, but a very tough situation. They were ready to deal. What happens? John Kerry, former Secretary of State, pleads with the Iranians to wait till the election is over. Let's see what happens if something favorable might happen with the election. That's precisely what happened. As soon as Joe Biden came into office, they immediately stopped enforcing the sanctions. That was in January of 2021. By May of 2021, the 11-day war is broken out in the Middle East, the Houthis have already fired on the Saudis. You know what happened, October of 2023, October 17th, one of the most unbelievable attacks that we've ever seen, all funded by, trained by the Iranians and the IRGC that would not have happened had Joe Biden not released the enforcement. So they learned a very bad lesson, watch the American political cycle, but this time I don't think it's going to pay off for them. Like all elections, they're all crucial, a really crucial midterm coming up. And I know you're off in a couple of weeks, you're on recess in two weeks. So I'm sure you've got lots of work to do. Well, I'm up for reelection myself. In working hard, I certainly don't want to take anyone's vote for granted here in Tennessee and I'll be out asking for people's votes here in my home state. I'll also be traveling around the country to help some of my colleagues that will be in tougher races to do my best to help them as well because I think it's absolutely critical that Republicans retain control of the Senate. Despite the word in the news, despite what you might see in the betting markets, I really do believe Republicans will maintain control of the Senate. It's going to take a lot of hard work. We're not going to take it for granted, but I think we have the right messaging and the right candidates to do that. Keeping focused and it seems like the Republican Party really has coalesced, particularly after the RNC on a message in a mission. I was there for the convention and the grassroots energy was very, very strong. Our Tennessee delegation was super excited about it and I think everyone's focused. I think it also caused our donors to focus on the elections to see what's at stake and again back to the advantage that we enjoy right now. I think that is part and parcel to the fact that President Trump decided to get everybody focused and Dallas here a couple of weeks ago on what we've got to do to get across the finish line and I feel confident we'll do it. Senator, thank you so much for stopping in. Thank you so much to be with you. That was Tennessee Senator Bill Haggardy and this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Maybelline New York. Salad mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue, just plump, dewy hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Maybelline New York.