District Club: Did Vivek Ramaswamy's Ad Go Too Far?

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For a free consultation and use code Daily Wire to get 10% off your first order plus free shipping. That's code Daily Wire at mod.com to get free shipping and 10% off your first order. 153 million driver's license scans are for sale on the dark web right now. A breach like that doesn't wreck your life by itself. But when someone uses your information, the cleanup becomes your job. Unpaid. Hours on hold with banks that won't help you without an accountant. That's what Aura is for. Aura alerts you fast if your info shows up in a breach and then locks your credit and provides U.S.-based fraud support 24-7. You may not be able to stop all of it, but you can stop doing it alone. Get started at aura.com slash dailywire. That's Aura, A-U-R-A dot com slash dailywire. President Donald Trump rallies the faithful in Iowa, but with Republicans defending ground in states that he won easily, is he moving boats? Or just playing to save crowds? Meanwhile, the polls everyone's been quoting may not be worth the paper that they're printed on. In Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign unloads on Amy Acton with a hard-hitting new ad. Is it true? Is it fair? And will it work? In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed and Mike Rogers squared off one last time. Rogers came out swinging on El-Sayed's socialist agenda and alleged terror ties, but Michigan hasn't had a Republican senator since the turn of the century. And with some fearing, a less-than-phobic, photo finish in the midterms, the knives are already out for party leaders and committees calling the shots. Republicans are asking why campaign money is pouring into ruby-red states like Kansas, South Carolina and Texas, while Mitch McConnell's longtime right-hand Josh Holmes says the blame game is aimed at the wrong people. We've got a lot to get to. This is The District Club. I'm Ben Domenech, happy to be joined today by my colleagues Tim Rice and Mary-Margaret Olihan and to welcome back Amisha Cross. It's wonderful to have you back here today. We have so many things to talk about going into the final stages of this midterm election, but I think that we have to start with something that really roiled the conversation this week in a way that I think we haven't seen happen, in a concentrated way in a while. There's always controversies about polls in the closing days of any election, especially with the engagement that we see not just from political activists, but from people who are just following the things that are going on. And this week we saw not one but two pollsters actually tagged as being essentially completely fraudulent, that they created polls out of thin air in order to perhaps advance an idea more. Maybe if you're a little bit more like me, you think that they were trying to play with the gambling markets, perhaps? Prediction markets. But that's something that has really kind of cut to the core of this conversation about whether we can trust any of these polls to begin with. We've seen the reactions from Nate Silver. We've seen the reactions in The New York Times and others who have said that they have cut these polls out, that they are taking them out of their indexes. But this still has an effect, and it had an effect earlier on in a number of different primaries. I'm curious, you're all experienced observers of this. What is your attitude toward polling and toward the fact that this has now become kind of a public show as opposed to being something that is insider focused and the potential there for it to be manipulated in ways that actually change races? No, absolutely. I stand by the quote "polls don't vote, people do." In the last four election cycles, we've seen polls that were dramatically off. And I do think that, you know, that doesn't necessarily shape voter behavior. It does drive conversations like these. It does drive news. It can be frustrating. It can be hard for those running. And it also can diminish their fundraising. If you see a poll and it's, you know, it's got you behind multiple percentage points, people stop giving you money. I do think that there is an effect in that sense. But when it comes to actual Election Day, when it comes to being able to predict who's actually ahead, we have seen time after time and again, most recently, in the four subsequent or previous elections we've had, the polls have been way off. So I do think for campaigns, it's hard for them to strategize sometimes, because unless you're actually talking to people regularly, those polls don't necessarily necessitate anything in relation to how an election and its outcome is going to be. I think that it becomes extremely difficult, especially in races that we presume are going to be close. And then come election night, they're absolutely not. At this point, and I hate to say it, but the investment that campaigns put in polls, the investment that news puts in polls, we may have to wind a bit of that back because a lot of them have become very, very questionable. Well, other even further than that, I think that it's time to maybe consider just dropping the entire enterprise short of like going back to one or two very, very trusted outlets as just a barometer, because I agree. I probably gave polls a second chance in twenty two and then haven't really cared much about them ever since, because that was that to me was the biggest one of just, you know, I can't even remember which wave it was supposed to be a different polls. It was it wasn't a wave, whatever it was, it wasn't a wave either way. And so, yeah, the uselessness of them and the fact that they don't drive turnout is one thing. But now we see again these this scandal scandal light half scandal of these fake pollsters where, you know, they say they want to oh, it's a social experiment. It's this that or the other thing. But to your in terms of how it's affected things, it clearly in Michigan seems to have driven money and institutional support to El Sayed. And whereas in Wisconsin, it sort of it failed to do the same thing for Francesca Hong, even though it was those fake polls were trying to put her up. So it's not even that it seems to be this sort of progressive gambit to manipulate them. But if if pollsters. Are doing this, if pollsters are at this point just openly admitting that they're fabricating things and kind of playing with it, I think it's not even a matter of, oh, we can't trust these things, we shouldn't put stock in them. It's this is to a certain point, just get them out of the conversation entirely. I mean, it's pretty insidious when you think about it. We've talked about this for years. I mean, if not decades, how oftentimes when a poll is manipulated, it is for manipulative reasons, it's because people don't want the public to understand that certain candidates have support. And I think we've talked about this for a long time, but the president has always said that he's experienced this, that, you know, the polls are never necessarily in his favor. And he's talked about this a lot this week. But I think when you look at these situations like this, it makes Americans distrust the media and it makes Americans distrust polling more than ever because why should they trust them? Why should they trust anyone except, for example, the president's internal pollsters that maybe he should listen to or internal pollsters on each of these campaigns that would provide more significant statistics than the public polls? That might be depressing voter turnout, even if they're not driving turnout, they're going to depress voter turnout if they're if they're signaling that a certain candidate isn't going to. And I think that that's a really important thing. And let me just run through three examples of this. You know, one of these pollsters so that we have five different cases of this. One of these pollsters earlier on, it turns out, was taking money in order to boost the cause of James Fishback in Florida. Another pollster had had has had a run of Tallarico being significantly up on Ken Paxton. And a third example of this was the El Sayed example, which seems to have driven Mallory McMurrow played some role in driving Mallory out of that race, you know, in a situation where, you know, maybe she had a better shot than we could have considered, isn't there don't we reach a point where this becomes more than just like a media problem and becomes a what is this actually doing to drive money within the context of these elections, endorsements, et cetera, in a way that manipulates the public when they're paying a lot less attention than they are in the final weeks of a midterm campaign? Well, I think that. There is an oversized reliance on polls specifically for fundraising. McNamara dropped out because she lost money, a lot of money. She just didn't have enough to keep going. She didn't have enough to take her to the end of that week, much less the end of that race. I think that for a lot of individuals who have been watching races across the country for years, many of them around this around this, I was going to say table, but there's no table who've had this conversation. When I look at races like the one that's currently happening in Texas, if you know anything about Texas, your belief that this race is extremely, extremely close or that, you know, there's going to be a toppling based on Tallarico's polling, I think says that you have never paid attention to a race in Texas. So for some of these, I question I question the people who are looking at the polls because history tells us that that's just not likely to happen. But also that polling is big business. We're talking a multibillion dollar industry. And when you have races that we always say this race is the race of our time. Like we say that every election cycle, this one, I do think, is that a lot of people are paying attention to just because of the economic strength rain that is happening across the country. So there is a much higher relevance to what these polls mean, specifically because they drive funding models. They don't drive turnout, but they do drive funding models. And they can suppress, to a certain extent, specifically diverse voters. They have been shown to suppress a lot of diverse voters in some of our most, I would probably say, important battleground states. Do you think that's simply because they take the idea that this candidate, there's no point in voting for this candidate because they're that far behind? 100%. Because diverse voters are known to be what we call pragmatic voters. So if they see a certain number, it says this candidate is basically in the hole. A lot of them are going to stay home because they don't think their vote is going to matter. I think that would probably be true across the board, though. I mean, I know many people who wouldn't go to the polls merely because they don't think that their candidate is going to do well. And I don't know that necessarily it has anything to do with the color of their skin. It's just more perhaps that if that candidate isn't performing well in the polls, they think, why would I matter? On the flip side of all of this, though, and I think that's a good point, too, is that I think that's a good point. I don't know the answer to this. I'm just wondering. I'd be interested to hear everyone's thoughts. What is to be done about this, though? I sort of feel the same way about the fake polls as I do back. This hasn't been too much of a thing since 2016, I feel like, but a lot of the troll farm Facebook accounts, you know, oh, Election Day got moved to the second Tuesday of January. You know, Donald Trump is going to send you to prison right away. Hillary Clinton's an alien. I mean, look, is it good? No. Could maybe the companies themselves not to start the Facebook conversation. But, you know, is there a conversation about what sort of content moderation? Sure. But at the end of the day, if a given voter is going to be swayed to or from the polls or to or from a different candidate because of a meme or a poll, whether it's real or fake, like what, you know, it's not illegal to make fake polls. Polling is supposed to be a science. And if we are to believe that because that was the basis of it, then the ones who are intentionally creating things where they're lying, they need to go out of business. Remember the one in Iowa during the 24 race that basically had Kamala up in a very, very strange. I don't know who believed that poll, but it had her like really up here. And what was it? Two days later, they just quietly disappeared. Not only were they wrong as hell and a lot of people questioned it when they saw it. They're like, this is Iowa. This looks a little fishy. But they they didn't have to be pressed on disappearing. They just disappeared. But is that it? I'm genuinely wondering, is there something is there is there another step short of just waiting for the first? Broadsters to pack up, pack, pack up their wares and get out of town? I actually think that there is. And and I will say, Tim, you know, you're definitely underrating the number of those twenty five thousand people who saw the the Facebook meme that Russia created that the pope had endorsed Donald Trump the way that it affected their vote. I actually think that we saw kind of a first step on this from Brendan Carr this week. You know, he came out and basically the FCC chair and said, you know, the networks, the broadcasters. The broadcast networks have as part of their license, you know, a requirement that they cannot participate in a in a hoax or fraud, you know, and that's something that can be brought against them on a licensing basis. So what I think you could see is maybe not something that shuts down these pollsters, but maybe something that forces the networks to sort of say, we got to be really confident of the poll numbers that we're throwing out there. And even for the commentators, even for people like us who go on these networks that we have. You have to be very confident. I always think it's very weird that some people will run with a pollster that they've never heard of to make a point. I'm always skeptical of that. If I haven't heard of you, I just assume, well, you know, who is this? Like, is this just a guy in a basement doing an A.I. based thing? And I think that people are going to have to do that because there could be consequences for the network. I totally agree with you. I think you have to be very aggressive and cracking down on this sort of thing, because, again, we're talking about, you know, whether it depresses or encourages votes. But I don't actually at the end of the day, you should not be lying to the public. It doesn't matter what kind of impact it's having. If you're lying to the public and misrepresenting how candidates are doing, that's gravely irresponsible. And for people to end up talking about it on a network, for, you know, world leaders to see these sorts of things, to be digesting them. I just think it's incredibly wrong and incredibly manipulative. Yeah, well, I agree. Mary Margaret, people shouldn't be lying to the American people. But it will be, you know, we've got a little bit of a ways to go, I think, before we get lies out of politics entirely. But Amisha, you brought up Iowa in the Kamala context. But Mary Margaret, you. We're just there with the president. And so aside from the dirty soda that you had on site there at the rally, which I'm sure we can talk about later, I think everyone very much wants to hear about that. What was it like? Give us a quick, quick recap of the speech. And what were the vibes? What are you seeing? Well, the speech was very much like the other speeches that he's been giving every single night this week because the president's been on the campaign trail every single day this week. I actually don't really know how he does it. You know, disagree with his politics all you want. But the man stays up till one thirty in the morning. Every single night giving a massive stump speech and firing up this crowd. And I actually was particularly taking note, you know, looking at people's faces when I was in Iowa a couple of days ago because I thought it was so interesting to see how these people are still interacting with Trump. You know, we hear all of this rhetoric about how people are disillusioned. The prices are too high. It's changing how they feel about the president. But the people that I saw in Iowa, they were just glued in, dialed in on the president. They're filming his every move. They're watching his Trump dance. They're just looking at each other. They're so. They're so charmed by him. And granted, again, obviously, this is the MAGA base that is out there for these for these rallies. But there's something very untouchable there that I think the president will always have with this MAGA base. And I spoke to a couple of these rally goers and one of them told me I pulled him aside and I said, I keep hearing in D.C. that no one likes Trump anymore because of the economy, because of the gas prices, because the grocery store prices. And this man grinned at me. He didn't have all his teeth. He's the nicest man. And he says. Too many dirty sentences. He's the nicest man. And he said, that's not true. And I said, what about your friends? Do they feel the same way? He said, absolutely. We're all behind him no matter what. We're all loyal. Now, granted, this is a random man that I encountered in Iowa. But I think it's a good reminder to the rest of us, even here in the swamp, that we may know we may find the specific Trump voter who's disillusioned, but he still has a massive base out there and they are going to come out for him. He's the president has really been leaning in. I mean, obviously, he hit the campaign trail. He started spending money. And in the past couple of weeks, we've seen him explicitly. Say, please pretend like I'm on the ballot. Just pretend like I'm on the ballot. Do you think this is having an effect? Or should Democrats start getting a little bit worried? Like, is there going to be a little residual Trump effect this time? Well, he's not on the ballot. And the question was never whether or not his base voters still support him, because I think that that is true. I think that there are base voters who love Trump, who are going to love Trump no matter what. Unfortunately for the Republican Party, Trump is not at the top of that ticket. His name's not on it anywhere. Will that transcend to the places where it matters most? Because, yes. And Trump. In places that, you know, voted for him, plus 30 percent. Those places, of course, Republicans are going to do better in. But he's not worried about those places. He's going to those places because he knows they're going to love him. It's basically a self-fulfilling prophecy to hear people shout you out in Mississippi and Alabama. However, when you go to some of these other states, some of the more competitive races, he's not appearing on purpose. And I would argue that that's not something that is untoward for Democrats. There are places that Kamala can't go and actually raise support either. And there are Democrats who have asked her to stand. By and large, a lot of people across this country are very upset about their current economic conditions, whether it's housing, whether it's health care, whether it's child care, whether it's basically being able to afford food. Those people are really, really angry and they want some level of change. Many of them are blaming Trump. Many of them are just, you know, naturally going to blame the party in power, whether it is, you know, them looking towards Trump or just saying Republicans as a whole. And those people, a lot of them were, you know, undecided. Voters, for lack of a better term. I hate that term because I think most people are decided. They just don't want to tell pollsters who they're going to vote for. The economic anxiety is real. And it was real during Biden's administration. And we saw flips then. It is real now. And I believe we're going to see a flip again. It's not a question of whether the wave is going to happen. It's how strong it will be, how many seats they will lose. The problem, I think, from the Republican side, the MAGA side of this analysis that we've seen play out over the last couple of months, which I always felt was the lack. The lack of awareness on their part about the gap between that core MAGA base that you're talking about, Mary Margaret, and the number of people who voted for Donald Trump, not because they liked him, but because they liked him better than her. And I think that that is just such a significant portion of the reason that he became president again and that Republicans continually discount that category when you have such a portion of the American electorate that basically looked at the two of them and said, I've got a binary choice to make, and I remember the economy under him, and it was better, and I don't like her, and I don't trust her. I think that that's something that, you know, was a massive motivation. And so for them to turn around in this election and discover that those same people are not particularly motivated to come out and vote for a guy who they feel like hasn't really done as much as they thought he was going to do, and especially for all these other random Republicans who have done even less, I think that that's not really a surprise. And so because of that, look, you know, you said it's about how big the wave is. Or how big of a trend it is this time, you know, versus whether that trend exists or not. I think that that's the real question that people have to evaluate when it comes to a lot of these races that are on the margins where we already see kind of people saying, why are you spending money here? Shouldn't you be spending it there? You know, that kind of internal D.C., you know, pre-knife fight that we see going on. I think that that really is the question that afterwards people are going to look back on and say, man, we could have probably motivated more voters in this state versus that state. Well, I would dispute your point just a little bit in just saying that the president is making this personal. He is making it about him. He's literally going to every single one of these rallies and saying, make it about me, pretend I'm on the ticket. And I would also dispute what you said earlier, you know, to the effect of that the president's just going kind of for the praise and for the laudatory nature of these rallies. He's going out there and saying, if you don't vote for these candidates, then you're going to have to deal with the radical left. So make this about me, pretend I'm on the ballot and vote for these candidates. And in a way, he's actually making this more of his problem than he needed to. He could just sit it out and say, all right, let's see how they do. You know, I'm president, so my party's probably not going to do as well. He could hang out in Mar-a-Lago and watch how it goes. But instead, he's out there until the middle of the night, every single night up until election day saying, make this about me. So I think that we would be remiss to not note that and note that the president, you know, who has gotten a lot of criticism for how he handles midterms, he's really giving it his. But the Democratic Party is making it about him. The other candidates are making it about him. They're saying, the war in Iran shot your gas prices up. They're saying your utility bills, you can't afford to pay. They're saying the food, you can't afford to eat it. They're saying like they are making it about him based on the policies that he stood for, the ones that he not only campaigned on, but the Big Beautiful Bill Act, the one that he got passed. They're talking about the things that he has done up to and including the tariffs that have caused people to have shrinking pocketbooks at home. So making it about him and his policies is actually a net negative for the president, more than it is a positive. I see where you're coming from. But I also think, and I think this is sort of not to put words in your mouth, but I feel like this is where you were getting at a little. I also think that this is not what you said. I'm saying I think the president has found his footing a little bit better going through this cycle. Like at first it was more, yeah, they're going to make it about me. I'm great. Abdul El-Sayed's a communist. He's gotten more into actually campaigning. This is the thing I think you were saying. Make it about me, not in the negative way, but in the positive way. So getting back, having the policy discussion, not just the personality discussion. And I think the stuff about immigration in the Iowa speech which you reported on before the speech too you had obtained, not just talking about his successes of immigration, but framing it in opposition to what's happening in Europe, what's happening in France, which we've talked on this show before about how the immigration issue has sort of become, it's the snake that's devouring itself because they got the first rave of illegals out. And then all of a sudden it was ICE trying to figure out exactly what this looked like. And maybe voters don't like this as much, but taking it out of that context and saying, look, what's happening here is not what's happening in France. Right. That's what would have happened if Kamala had won. That's what's going to happen if you vote for Democrats. I thought that was a very strong message. And I think he's doing more and more of that type of messaging. My thing is Trump has two more years in office. And he could have, if he wanted to, because you hear the cries of the American people, you're hearing from people in Florida, you're hearing from people in various other states that do lean Republican, who are saying, hey, I can't afford this, that, and other thing. If he wanted to do something short term, acknowledging that the election is literally just a few weeks away, he could have. He chose not to. There were policy remedies that he could have done that would have been able to, I'm not saying absolve all of the disastrous economic decisions that have been made, but could have allowed for people to feel a little bit better about their personal economic situation. He can't blame that on anybody else because he's the person in office right now. That's not. Nobody wants to hear two or three presidents ago. He's not out there trying to make people feel a little better right now. I mean, that's not the kind of what you do as a president. Well, that's the problem. And it's not about feeling better as well. It's also about their heads are not above water. They want some level of a solution. And he's the person in power. You cannot blame that on anybody else. Well, you're coming at this from the perspective of, you know, everything that Donald Trump has done is bad. And I think that we've got to take a step back and look at everything that he's done. I mean, his base, obviously, is with him. But there's a whole plethora of Americans who are really happy that he has taken steps to protect kids from irreversible child gender transitions, that he's keeping woke ideology out of schools and academia and medicine. Then why is he falling on every single poll we can look at? Horrible. No, I don't trust all polls, but I'm saying if all of them are equal in looking at his approval rating, there isn't one that shows a strong growth. I know. I actually agree. I agree with you. And I think that the White House and the president specifically very much botched the messaging on affordability and on Iran with regard to the midterms. And there's nothing at this point. They're in too deep. They can't change the only way out is through. But in the last three weeks of the election, of the campaign, if the president had come out and said, I am doing this to bring relief at the pump, like he tried to, I mean, let's actually, he tried to do it. He did the diesel deal. And everyone on the left said, oh my gosh, he's cooperating with Russia. It's also not even that much diesel. It's not going to do anything. He talks about rebates and it's, oh, he's trying to bribe people. So do you really think that if the president in the last month of the midterm cycle came out and said, these are the things I'm going to do to relieve the pressure and put more money in your pockets, that that wouldn't have just then become another thing that Democrats used against him? I think party would have talked about it, obviously. Do I think that it would have helped on the campaign trail for actual voters? Yes. Because the voters want relief. It's the party, the opposing party's job to go against you. Like that is literally how it works. I think Amisha has touched on something that is the fundamental problem here, which is that Republicans don't know what the hell they're running on. They don't actually have a message about how they're going to solve your problems if you send them back to Washington, which is the actual decision that voters have to make in all of these races. It's not even about the president at that point, because the president, the president is going out there on the trail. He's getting that 36 to 40 percent that he's always in the in the middle of those people. He is going to get them out. He really is. They love him. They're dedicated to him. They will. The tooth lacking guy that you met in Iowa, he is there is he will crawl over broken glass to go and vote for his president and for his president's party because he believes in the president. The problem is all those other people that are between that 36 to 40 percent and actually winning an election. And that, I think, is the population that Republicans needed to have a message for this cycle. And I don't know what their message is. And if I don't know what your message is, that's a problem because it means that the average voter definitely doesn't know. The message that I'm hearing at the White House and maybe this is not translating to candidates. In fact, it probably isn't. The message I've been hearing is, do you want two more years of us working for you trying to bring success to the public or do you want radical Democrats? And I think the problem that they're encountering and we've all been honest about this is that the Iran is going on. It's impacting affordability in a massive way. And so for the president to say, yeah, I know this war is going on. We can't just minimize it for the midterms. We're going to continue carrying this out regardless of the midterms. These lawmakers have to grapple with that. And not everyone is handling it very well. So, you know, in Iowa, for example, Ashley Hinson says she wants the war to come to a rapid close. That was an interesting dynamic because it didn't come up during the rally, obviously. She never would criticize the president. She thanked him for being there. She was very promotional of him and the other candidates were as well. But she said that out in Iowa to get votes, to get voters out for her. So it's a dynamic that everyone's grappling with. And I think the vice president did a good job in his messaging, again, really repeating, look at all these things we've done. Do you want us to keep doing them or do you want the radical left to come back and erase all this progress? That's the dilemma here. And I think if people had taken a page out of Vance's book on this messaging, it could be helpful, but it really depends on the theme. Another issue is that to the extent that Republicans had a message going into this cycle, it was that they were going to run explicitly on the left is crazy. Democrats are crazy. You don't want to put crazy back in control. And that was more effective against somebody like Kamala Harris or Joe Biden, where they presented normal enough that the expose of the radical things they wanted to do shocked voters into voting for Trump. I think one of the things that happened this cycle was that Democrats out-crazed Republicans' message about them. So when you have Abdul El-Sayed out there basically saying, I kind of love the Muslim Brotherhood, Trump getting up and saying, Abdul El-Sayed loves the Muslim Brotherhood, it takes the oxygen out of that argument. So there are two massive flubs, I would say, this week that we have to talk about, one on the left and one on the right. I would say that I think that El-Sayed experience and the fact that he wanted to blast out this interaction about the Muslim Brotherhood, I do not think that helps him at all at this stage in terms of the voting. So I think that's one of the things that we have to talk about. Parts of the electorate that he lacks in Michigan, maybe you have some thoughts on that. The flip side, of course, is what the hell happened in Ohio. And we can talk about that too. But first, why does El-Sayed, why can't he just say, like, hey, you know, my family believes some crazy things. I love my family, but I don't believe them. I've never believed them. Even if he's signed onto letters and things like that in the past. But like, why can't he just say that as opposed to trying to turn this into some, well, you just are racist for things that you don't think that I love the Muslim Brotherhood. There are a few things that are happening that are rather unfortunate in Michigan. I think that it is very clear that there is rampant Islamophobia from the other side there. And it is very frustrating. Is it only from the other side? With that being, no, no, no, no, no. I think there's Islamophobia writ large. But I am saying when it comes to the ads, to how this is being narrated, to the debates, there are things that are said that would not be said if he was not Muslim. That would not be said if he was not of the Islamic faith. We saw some of the same attacks on Zoran Mandani. I think he was from, at the time, a Democrat who was running in the primary. So I do think that there is this very insidious Islamophobia that exists. Though, when we look at the, and I hate to bring it to the polls, but also when we look at a lot of the conversations, particularly with the Black community in Michigan, and in Detroit specifically, there has been a longstanding rift between the Muslim community and the Black community, specifically of those who are from Middle Eastern backgrounds. And that has existed for generations. That is a very hard hurdle to climb. And a lot of it is because of a certain level of discrimination and fights with, between, or inner community there that, again, has existed for a while. It is not on El Sayed to try to clear up all of history. But you don't think that his like ads that he's been putting out that these like these attempts on his part to reach out to the black community, they all seem very clumsy. And like, I don't know, it just seems odd to me that he's struggling with this so much personally. Am I wrong about that? Well, I think that there was an assumption that that relationship was stronger than what it was. And I think that that hurt him. And in part, it was because this is a guy who has been in public health for a long time in the area. And a lot of the patients and a lot of the people that came into the clinics, as well as, you know, who were provided by by the county that he worked for, a lot of them happen to be black people. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to have an embedded voter group that just happens to be back, especially older black people. What we know across the country when it comes to a lot of Democrats who lean more to the far left is that older black people do not. They are a lot more in the moderate wing of the Democratic Party. So it is extremely difficult to run as a far left candidate for older black individuals. They don't support it. Well, I'm just going to ask, I guess, why was there an assumption that black Michigan voters would vote for El Sayed? Because he's been a contributing factor to the health care crisis and are solving or attempting to solve the health care crisis in Michigan, particularly for black communities for quite some time. So he is a name and a brand that black people know whose families have visited and who understand his leadership. However, that doesn't necessarily translate to individuals who automatically will vote for you. Once it became clear that he. He didn't have that demographic in his pocket and that perhaps the biggest chunk that he needed to win over, as you were just saying, were the older, more moderate ones. Why not just come out right away, as Ben said, and say, look, my mom, a little bit of a loony tune. I'm not in the Muslim Brotherhood. The Tommy video that he was so proud to blast out. He was treating that like it was a Barack Obama in 2007 telling some voters somewhere that just because my middle name is Hussein doesn't mean that I don't have loyalty to the Constitution. This is like, dude, you wrote a letter eight, 10 years ago telling the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. They needed to purge the media like that is. That's not that's not Andrew Cuomo trying to say that Zoran Mamdani is a terrorist because there's a picture of him wearing a keffiyeh when he was. He tried to link the man to 9-11. No, I mean, I know, I know, I know. No, he did. No, he did. But I'm saying Cuomo's attack was clumsy because Mamdani then came out and was like, Andrew, come on, man. I'm obviously not a terrorist. It's more than you can say about being a weirdo freak. And that's why Zoran Mamdani is the mayor of New York. And people have kind of stopped talking about his. Now it's just about. About how he's a commie and not about how he's a radical Muslim. There's obviously a playbook here. Why is El Sayed not doing it? He could just do it with Mamdani. Why is he not just doing that? It's a great question. The tactic is not going to work for him because he's not in that style of a candidate. But the other thing is, again, the moderate older black voter in Michigan is the overwhelming turnout voter. So it's going to be very, very difficult. Difficult for him. And it's not because of the Muslim Brotherhood. That's not the reason why all of that that conversation resonates on the right, the left and the voters as he's trying to get there, as well as some of the ones who are, again, black voters in Michigan are not necessarily going to run and vote for his opponent. What they are very questioning is, again, the historical fight between the two communities there. And that's something that, you know, El Sayed shouldn't have to carry. But unfortunately, he is. And again, this has nothing to do with Muslim Brotherhood. This has nothing to do with a conversation about what his mom did or didn't do, who he wasn't raised by anyway. This is a question of and a push against communities that have been in fighting for years and discrimination. Why is that? Because is it not possible that there are black voters in Michigan that don't like his ties to the Muslim Brotherhood? Is it not possible that there are black voters in Michigan that are furious about 9-11, are really hesitant to embrace anything to do with terrorism or jihad and are hesitant to vote for a candidate that has those ties? I mean, I think that is very possible that there are many black Americans who are very hesitant to vote for El Sayed. Because of those ties and nothing to do with some of the ties that you're talking about. There are black voters in Michigan who have experienced extreme discrimination much more recently in their communities that affect them directly from groups of people who happen to be Middle Eastern facing. And that to them is a very big deal. But so this is why I do think that it is has a little bit to do with the Muslim Brotherhood, because I think another way of saying what Mary Margaret just said is wouldn't him very earlier, stronger and better. Denunciation of all of the Muslim Brotherhood and radical Islamic claims levied against him prime some voters to think of him less as a member of the Muslim community and more just as the Democrat public health official who's been beneficial in their community. Wouldn't him nailing that and doing it better and earlier and more forcefully? Couldn't that have changed that conversation? Doesn't it get back to this a little bit? I think that the personal relationships black community members have with the Muslim community is a lot bigger of a hurdle for them to climb. Maybe that might be so. But I just I do feel like in addition to I think that some of the things that he has put out policy wise, again, older black voters are a lot more pragmatic. They don't believe a lot of that can get done. So I think that there are two things that are operating against him at the same time. One of the one of the stats that Mike Rogers campaign has pointed to is just like the sheer amount of things that are on his website about foreign policy versus the amount of things that he has that have to deal with a black community. So I do think that that I think it's a weakness. And I think it's actually if he ends up losing, I think it will be something that is pointed to as like this was the aspect that he didn't get if Vivek Ramaswamy ends up losing. I think we all know what people are going to point at. Hey, guys, it's Tim Rice here to talk to you today about Free Spoke. Free Spoke is rapidly becoming my favorite search engine and go to tool to help me break down the news. So it is a search engine. It's safe and secure. It allows you to search things without having your data tracked by big tech. But it's so much more than that, because in addition to helping you follow the news, Free Spoke helps you get involved, get inside the story. And break things down. So if you search something, for instance, like I did getting ready for today's episode, I searched Abdul El-Sayed and it breaks down not just the top stories about his debate with Mike Rogers. It lets me know the partisan leaning of the outlet. It lets me know the consensus, what most commentators thought about the debate. It gives me relevant social media posts and podcasts with relevant parts of the transcripts broken out and highlighted. It is so important to get involved in the news. And Free Spoke really helps you stay on top of things as we get closer and closer to this election week. To that end, I want to highlight specifically their election hub, which is a really incredible tool if you're interested not just in your own state, but also in what's going on across the country. So it gives you all the top news about polls, about stories, but you can also you can hit explore perspectives and then it'll give you that breakdown of some conservative, some liberal, some centrist. But you can also really get into it about your own state, look at a sample ballot for elections in your state, get polling breakdowns about your candidates, background information on ballot initiatives. All of this is free. Free Spoke is free today. Free to download right now. You can download it at the app store or you can go to Get Free Spoke dot com slash Daily Wire and use the code District Club 30 for 30 percent off a premium subscription. So premium subscription is the best money that you can spend on news or political app, anything like that. In addition to everything that I just mentioned, it'll give you unlimited podcast highlights, specific polling insights for every key race, full perspective breakdowns on ballot issues and all of that completely ad free. So whether you go premium or not. Free Spoke is an invaluable tool, not just for the election season, but and not just about politics, but about sports, news, media, entertainment, music, all of the above. So go download free spoke now at the app store for free or go to Get Free Spoke dot com slash Daily Wire and use the code District Club 30 for 30 percent off your premium subscription. I promise you won't regret it. Mary Margaret, you made your case for how well the vice president was doing on certain fronts. Make the case to me, please. As as the president. The number one fan of the vice president who is sitting on this on this platform right now. Why the heck did he need to endorse that ad as vociferously as he did? Well, you're right. I do have a lot of opportunities to cover the vice president and get to see him up close. I was puzzled by his response to the ad. I also was puzzled by the president's response to this ad, because right before we went to Iowa, the president was out taking questions. He started talking to the media about how his mother, who he repeatedly said is in heaven, how if she put out an ad like that. He literally looked at Caitlin Collins and said, you would be so excited. You'd be showing it on your show all night, which is not wrong. But I saw this ad. I was in a group chat with a number of people who were dissecting it. I thought it was interesting because a couple of the men in the chat were like, oh, this is wow. This could be a really powerful ad. And myself and several other women were immediately saying. Can confirm. He wasn't myself and several of the women immediately said, oh, whoa, because I'm imagining if my mother said those things, something must have been real wrong in our family for my mother to go out there and say such things like that. My mother would rather die than say things like that about me publicly and attack my campaign. So obviously, from the get go, something's very wrong with this family. Something is quite troubled. But then to defend the ad, I would have steered far clear of it. On every level. I thought it was disturbing, disgusting. Let's say I thought it was upsetting. And for everyone involved, it just made me sympathetic to her daughter who's having her mother out there. Let's hold on. Let's also you've you've you've touched on a lot of things about the ad affair, except the one big thing, because, look, there's probably like a 30 percent chance that my mother would cut an ad for my opponent. That's not this is not exclusively ever cleaned up his room. This is not. This is not. And the reason I say that partially is it's funny, but also because this is not just about a mother saying that I'm not going to vote for my daughter. There is the elephant in the room, which was that. Amy Acton is estranged from her mother because and her mother lost custody of her and her brother. Yes. Her her mother's husband allegedly raped her when she was 12 years old, which makes it even worse. This is not just a simple matter of of the grossness of politics coming between family, which we see with Bobby Kennedy, which we see with J.D. Vance, with every with everybody. Right. That's that's crazy. Yeah, I'm not one of those families are off limits people. But I do think that when you have a situation like this where a young child, because by by state court records, this was a child who was sexually assaulted from the age of eight to the age of 12. And for the state, you know what the burden of proof is for the state to take a child away from its mother. It is extremely high. So for the state to do that, to take both of her kids at the same time, every kid in her home was removed because of the danger they felt that that kid had. And as somebody who is a court appointed special advocate, I am a cost of four foster kids. That is one of the top reasons that children are removed from their mother. It is typically a drug addiction that they somehow cannot overcome or it is because there is extreme sexual abuse happening in the home. So I felt really bad for Amy Acton, somebody who has had to go through this process. And like that leaves residual emotional, social development issues for a long time for her to have to watch this in the world to see it at the same time. First of all, her mom's a scum of the earth. I don't know. Like even watching that video, there's something that is just not clicking with the mother. Yeah. There's something going on there. But in addition to that, I don't know whether she was paid to do it or she wasn't. But it is very. Very, very problematic. And for the president and the vice president, because initially the president tried to stay as far away from this as possible. And his response, I thought, was strong. Then he came out Thursday and said something that kind of doubled down on what J.D. Vance said. I think I was more upset with J.D. Vance because I'm obviously not a J.D. fan. I did love Hillbilly Elegy. I thought it was a great book. However, he spoke so vividly about the things that happened to him as a young child. Yeah. And I thought that as somebody who had gone through that himself. And a very, very, like, unfortunate home situation to where his grandmother was basically his savior in that case, that he would be somebody that was a little bit more feeling to watch him come out in the way he did. Again, this woman was a child when this happened. She had no wherewithal to save herself. And if the state has to come in and do it, this should never be a part of it. It just showed me that Vivek was lower than dirt and that he was very afraid of his campaign. So I think you're absolutely I think you're right about Trump originally. Nailer Vance originally having a better response. And I agree with you that it would have been. Nice to see the vice president say, look, based on my experiences, I can't countenance this. However, two weeks till the midterms, president and vice president, they're trying to get Vivek elected in Ohio. It's easy. We can we can figure out at least it's not a good reason, but it's a reason why they would do that. Well, we still don't know it. And Ben, I wonder what your thoughts are. Why did they cut this ad in the first place? Who thought this was a good idea? How did this get great? They had to at no point between coming up with the idea, putting a camera in this woman's face. Cutting it and releasing it. No one in the Vex camp said, hey, guys, what if we did literally anything else about women? But was there no woman in the room? So my answer was going to be, I don't think they showed this to a single woman because I think any woman who saw this ad would say, no, what are you guys thinking? I mean, this is this is the worst. Like, how many tears of decision making did this have to go through that happened this week other than the Atlanta Falcons apparently endorsing the Bird Reich? But here's the thing that I think is psychotic about this, this ad to think if you're going to lose, like if you if you look at the internal polling and you think you're going to lose, lose in a way that allows you to run again. Yeah, we've seen this over and over. Like there's there's always when people are running for office, sometimes, you know, the the mercenary, most scurrilous, you know, campaign consultant will come to you and say, we've got this thing and it's gold. And trust me, it's going to change. The dynamic is going to change the election. You're down by four, but you can change this overnight if you only do this really dirty thing that makes you feel bad when you look at yourself in the mirror. And it's almost always completely wrong to go down that road. It's just it's always a backfire. And the thing is, he's not that old of a guy. He could run for state office again. Totally. And we've seen this happen, by the way, in Ohio before with the wine making a comeback and everything like that. Why on earth would you go out in a way like this? That says everybody is going to remember this is the reason you lost, whether it actually was or not. And you know what was interesting in Iowa? The president said that Vivek called him and said, everyone's freaking out about this ad, which I'm not sure if the president has said publicly yet. But I thought it was really interesting because he told the whole world that that called him. And that was really, I think, what changed for the president's demeanor on the ad, because, you know, he likes to put up a fight. So Vivek called and said, what do I do? And the president literally told the crowd, he said, well, it's an. It's an interesting ad, but, you know, anyone could have made it. So why not? And his argument was really, if you guys could make that about my mother, you would and you would use it. And that was the hill that he wanted to die on. So I think this one will be really interesting, Ben. I think you could be right. This could be something that everyone remembers for years to come. Much like what was the ad that you flagged for me the other day? Oh, Christine O'Donnell. I'm not a witch. I'm not a witch. I'm like you. Yes. That was my first thought. But that was in Delaware. That was like not. That was not. Ohio, Ohio, red Ohio. So, yes. But to that point, like, we haven't heard from Christine O'Donnell. No, no, no. You're right. Like, that was that was even like, you know what I'm saying? I'm still questioning if she's a witch. That mistakes were even lower and it still became a definitive thing that we still remember. Totally true. The point is, I just think that I'm making is like, we're used to like fringe candidate. Oh, sure. Yeah. Super blue skates doing crazy ad, you know, late in the day kind of thing. Nothing will ever top that. That Carly Fiorina goat ad or whatever. But anyway, it's bizarre. But it's bizarre that in Ohio, of all places, you feel the need to do this. And from my perspective, kill your political. I mean, I'm sure you could find another thing to run for. But it's like this is it leaves a sour, sick taste in the end. And the people who have that campaign on their resume, they're going to go. I didn't have anything to do with that. Like, just so you know, Republican Party to their credit and to Mary Margaret, no matter what conversation we have here, like the protection of children is always a very strong. And I think that when you have a candidate who comes out and he is absolutely fine lambasting a somebody who is a former child and an abuse victim, that says something. So to the Republicans who have stood out and said that this was wrong and the ones who have denounced it, like the credibility given where credibility is due. It is very frustrating to watch somebody who is a member of a party that has gone out of its way. And I would say strongly in support of some of the horrendous things that are happening to young people decide that that type of ad was going to be cut and not. recognized or not caring what residual effects it would have on now adults who have been abused as young people, young people who are currently being abused. That's just not the tack you want to take. One thing that I do think that we have to talk about here, you know, sort of in the closing days of this election is a month ago on this show, we were talking about the massive investment that Republicans were going to make when it came to advertising and everything like that, this giant money bomb that was going to come down and explode all over the country, and it was going to turn things around or potentially turn things around for Republicans. Not to go back to polls, but the indications that we have that things have turned around for Republicans after spending an enormous amount of money in all these different places is very little. And the argument that has been made by some of the people who I referenced earlier here in D.C., including Josh Holmes and others, have advanced this is basically we've had to defend ground that we didn't think we were going to have to defend in Kansas, you know, in Iowa, in, you know, races essentially that have prevented us from spending in places that could potentially expand the map. In his case, he used the example of Minnesota, where a lot of Republicans feel like Michelle Tafoya, you know, could pull off an upset if maybe there had been a little bit more investment in there. Why do we think that that money bomb didn't work, unless you do think it worked. And what does that lesson potentially tell us about the way politicians and political campaigns should spend money in the future? Because it does seem to me like it just skipped off the top of the pond. Well, I think, first of all, we don't know whether it worked yet and we won't know until Election Day. And I think that's really key to this conversation is we can predict all we want, but we truly won't know what's going to play, how things are going to play out until we get to election day. Um, with that whole poll conversation in mind, with a lot of the duplicitous media coverage in mind, I just don't see a way to properly evaluate that until after election day is over. I think, I don't think it's going to work. I don't think it has worked. I think maybe, you know, we'll see it moved things a little bit, you know, you know, they could have ended down 20 instead of they ended down 10. Uh, I don't think it fully moves the needle in a meaningful way. I think what it tells candidates, and this is going to sound a little bit like a non sequitur but i mean it in a non non sequitur way uh i think that we finally hit a point of social media saturation and a level of kind of american engagement with politicians on social media that the the the essential things going forward are candidate quality and message discipline which have obviously always been and always will be but you can't you can't buy your ads yeah you can't you can't supplement a bad candidate or a lack of a message with ad buys or leaflets or get out the vote, or money. You can't buy your way out of it anymore. When 10 years ago you could, in certain cases. - At least y'all had the money to spend. Democrats are in trouble on the money front. - Many consultants. - However, I think that you can't outspend people's attitudes. And at this point, the economic suppression, I think, is going to trump any amount of funding, whether it was spent on social media ads, whether it was spent on rallies or other activities, whether it was spent on doors, if people are just mad as hell, for lack of a better term, as to what their cost of living is, as to not seeing a way out, regardless of the party in power, because if Democrats were in power right now, they would be F2. It's just one of those things that you cannot outspend people's personal experience. And that is a very difficult hurdle to climb. So, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, depends on the candidate. At this point, it is going to be extremely difficult, because I hear people continue to call and want, you know, more of, you know, Trump's war chest to be spent in these races. If you are already in a place where you're running and you're running against the wave of people who just they don't know where their next rent payment is going to come from, there isn't a thing that you can message your way into to make them be able to find money for the first. So there has to be something else. And I think that because the economic conditions are so rough for so many people in this country, regardless of how they typically vote, that is driving decision making more than anything else. I love my party, but it's not that we are having the best candidate experience of this cycle either. It is more so that people are really, really frustrated about their current condition and they want to find a way out. All right. Well, I think we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you, guys. This has been another edition of the District Club. Thanks, as always, to Amisha for joining us. Thank you, Ben and Mary Margaret. Always a pleasure. We will see you guys back here next week. Bye. 24-7. Get started at Aura.com slash Daily Wire. That's Aura, A-U-R-A dot com slash Daily Wire.