Ep. 1869 - This Is The Path Forward For Taking Back The Country

Without fail, every couple of years, we're told that we're in the midst of the single most important election cycle in the history of the country. It's good marketing, for one thing, a handy way for media outlets to generate some interest in their election coverage. Plus, it plays on our natural human bias to believe that everything that's happening right now is more important than anything that's happened before. After all, no one wants to feel like they're living through a boring period of history, so we're all very familiar with this kind of hyperbole, and as a result, because we hear it so often, we generally tune it out. We're told it's the most important election cycle ever, over and over and over again, and we just ignore it. Well, after what happened on Tuesday, we have to get out of that habit effective immediately, because there is no doubt that 2028 will indeed be a pivotal election cycle, unlike anything else we've ever seen. It will be make or break, for the United States as we know it. I know we've heard that a million times, but this time, it is actually true. And for the next two years, Donald Trump can use the veto power to shut down the Democrats' worst legislation. After that, our future is entirely in the hands of the next president. Should a socialist Democrat win, there will be nothing stopping Democrats from packing the courts, adding new states, nationalizing critical industries, opening the borders, all of which they have promised to do explicitly the moment they return to power, and they will do. And if you doubt any of that, take a look at this exit poll. 33% of voters had a strongly or somewhat favorable view of socialism, and virtually all of them were Democrats. 12% of voters had a somewhat unfavorable view of socialism, meaning they saw some value in the ideology. 73% of those voters were Democrats. And meanwhile, among the 41% of voters who had a strongly unfavorable view of socialism, 85% of them were Republicans. So it's not an overstatement to say that the Democrat Party is the party of socialism at this point. It is. And when they take power, they'll do what socialists always do. They will destroy the economy and eliminate their political opponents, among other things. The nightmare scenario at the moment is that we go into 2028 with an unpopular president, and then we face a similar wipeout to what just happened on Tuesday. I'm talking about a wipeout so substantial that Democrats won't even need to abolish the filibuster to assume complete control over the government. There is precedent for this, of course. Those of us who experienced 06 and then 08, we know that. And in this nightmare scenario, the Democrats would win the White House with a supermajority in Congress. And in that scenario, they don't need to nuke the filibuster. They can add DC and Puerto Rico as states, which happens with majority votes. It's surprisingly easy to add a new state. And they will. And then they become politically invincible for all intents and purposes. It's over. The Republicans will never win again. They'll pursue federal cases against conservative politicians, activists, and public figures. People will go to jail. Because when they have power, they wield it. This is a new New Deal kind of revolution that's brewing. It'll be unlike anything we've seen in American politics in our lifetimes. It would be utterly catastrophic in every conceivable way. So in the meantime, over the next two years, the Democrats will get into office and immediately start investigating Trump and his officials and anyone else they can think of. There will be impeachments. At least a few Trump officials are probably going down. Already, they're talking about issuing subpoenas to the DHS secretary and every ICE official who enforced immigration laws. The harassment will be relentless. They'll bankrupt as many Trump officials and advisors as they can. They'll run up the legal fee, just like they did after January 6th. It'll be a reminder of just how weak and ineffective Republicans were when they had control of both houses of Congress. Republicans had the chance to root out Democrat corruption, but they chose to do nothing. They had the chance to systematically dismantle and destroy left-wing radicals and their networks and funders, and they didn't. Charlie's murder should have led to a ruthless nationwide crackdown on left-wing extremism, but it didn't. So Democrats will turn around and do all the things that Republicans were too scared to do. And if they win the presidency, they're going to finish what Charlie Kirk's assassins started. They're going to imprison, kill, or otherwise neutralize any conservative who would challenge them. And it's really worth harping on this point for just a moment. Charlie was murdered, the most shocking and consequential political assassination since JFK. And this was not far off the heels of Donald Trump's, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. And this was even worse. In some ways, because many Americans spent the following months openly celebrating the murder, Republicans had the opportunity to respond to these events by rooting out the murderous leftists and the networks that fund and support them, but they didn't. If Democrats had been in office when one of their most prominent leaders was assassinated in front of a live audience on camera, the ruthless crackdown on right-wingers that followed would have made their January 6th prosecution seem like a walk in the park. But, you know, because that's how they operate. And Republicans don't. They're also going to break every norm that idiot Republicans in Congress decided to honor over the past two years. And if you need evidence of that, here's Tallarico, the incoming senator from Texas, making it explicit. Listen. He says in the Senate, you would vote to abolish the filibuster. Yes. I believe that the majority has the right to govern in this country. And the filibuster, which is not in the Constitution, it's a Jim Crow relic. It is it is leading to gridlock in our nation's capital. It's why we can't bring down the cost of groceries and gas and utilities and health care. It's why we can't get this economy back on track. And so I believe the majority, whether it's a Democratic majority or Republican majority, should have the right to govern. Well, we all knew this was coming. Republicans in Congress pretended otherwise. And now Democrats are making it explicit. So hearing this. Give me one reason why John Thune and the GOP majority in the Senate don't abolish the filibuster and pass the SAVE Act right now. They're still in power for a few more months. They can get a lot done. You know, they don't have to stop with the SAVE Act. Republicans could pass a nationwide ban on funding for child sex, sex change operations, which we've been demanding for years. No reason why they can't just do that. They could codify every single one of Trump's executive orders. They could block state-level attempts to interfere with Elon Musk's companies and any other company owned by a conservative. They could punish sanctuary cities, expand oil and gas development, cut funding for DEI, pass nationwide legislation to protect gun owners from arrest as they cross state lines, et cetera. There's a lot they could do. The Republican majority in Congress, until it's gone in January, can pass all of this by a strict majority vote if they abolish the filibuster. So why aren't they doing it? Why aren't they even attempting to do it? Why aren't they calling on Alito and Thomas to resign immediately so we can appoint replacements as soon as possible? Republicans simply don't have any interest in fighting. They have no agenda, no purpose. And Democrats are, on the other hand, very interested in fighting and winning. They're ruthless, violent, more empowered than they've ever been. And they'll tear the country apart piece by piece until no Republicans are left, if they're allowed to do it. If we allow 2026 to be a precursor to something worse in 2028. But we don't have to, and that's why we're here. We're here because we're here. And that's what we're going to talk about. They are also, we should say right now, the Democrats focused on at least one important issue that Republicans are all but entirely ignoring. Yesterday on the show, I said that, you know, AI did not show up in the exit polls, but by 2028, it'll be the top issue for a majority of voters. I was actually wrong. I hadn't seen the NBC exit poll, which found that already, even as AI has only just started to wipe out jobs, it's a major factor for a majority of voters. Now, 56% of voters said that AI and data centers were a crucial or major factor in their vote. 56%, already. And most of the people who consider it a crucial or major factor voted for Democrats. So I was wrong about the exit polls. It did show up. But even more right about the overall point than I realized. AI is a central political issue right now. And this will be even more the case in coming years. Republicans have been nothing short of abysmal on this issue. You can't, you can't punt on this issue. To call Trump's handling of it tone deaf would be far too generous. Voters are extremely worried about the mass unemployment that has already started due to this technology. If your only response is to suggest a fun little new nickname for AI, you will get obliterated in every election now and forever. Pro-AI cultism is not a viable political position. Okay. It just isn't. Here's a post from Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari of Arizona the other day, just to show you what they're doing on the other side when it comes to this. And there were a lot of conservative influencers responding to this and in a very critical way and kind of mocking it. Well, here's what she said. Quote, top of the democratic agenda on day one needs to be a pause on advanced AI development, regulation of this out of control industry and a political super intelligence. Now, I don't know anything about Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari, but I guess with a fair amount of confidence that I disagree with almost every position she has ever held on any topic. And yet on this topic, there are two things you need to understand if you're a Republican. First, this is a winning political message. What I just read to you, that's a winning political message. That's a fact. You may not like it, but it's true. The inverse of this, don't regulate AI at all. Don't slow down its advancement at all. Don't put any controls in place. Embrace super intelligence without hesitation. Data centers are wonderful and we should build a billion more of them, is a political message that will get you trounced in every election from now to kingdom come. That's the political reality. And that part of it's not up for debate. That simply is what it is. An AI maximalist presidential candidate will not win in 2028, period. But the other thing about this post from this congresswoman and this is something that we'll have plenty of time to expand on in the future. And this is the part that will be really hard for some of you to accept, but you need to, is that the post I just read there is not just a political winner. It's also mostly right on the merits. Okay. Now let's go through it briefly. Should we regulate the industry? Okay. She laid out three things. One of them was regulate the industry. Yes. I mean, obviously. Are there Republicans actually suggesting it should have no regulations? What's the other option? No regulations? Just let Sam Altman and his trillionaire friends do literally whatever they want with no rules governing them. That can't really be anyone's position, can it? I mean, that's an insane position. We can debate what the regulation should be. I'm sure Democrats have some terrible ideas for regulations. They usually do. Not every suggested regulation will be good. Okay. But clearly there need to be some regulations. Okay. A platform that says we need a totally unregulated trillion dollar AI industry is madness. I mean, that's political suicide. That's totally crazy. So yes, of course there need to be some regulations. Republicans need to be the ones to come up with the sensible and rational regulations. Okay. We're going to, I know if you're a Republican or you're a conservative, the word regulation makes you really, it makes you, you tummy hurt. It makes you really upset. You don't like to talk. But obviously there are regulations. There can be too many. There could be bad ones. All that is true. But, but the idea that there should be zero is, is childish nonsense. And so it's up to Republicans to come up with a sensible, rational, sensible and rational regulations or else Democrats will impose unsensible and irrational ones. But again, don't regulate them at all is the crazy delusional position of someone who thinks we should just sit back and let trillion dollar tech companies have their way with our civilization, our country, our lives, and our children's futures. Clearly that can't be it. Okay. What about pausing AI development as she was one of the things she suggested? Well, an across the board pause on all AI development is a bad idea. That is also childish and silly. But slowing down certain types of AI development is probably a good idea. That's a debate we can have. But Republicans need to be the ones to come up with a reasonable and rational solution. Republicans need to be in the debate. That's the point. And as for what types should be slowed down, well, that brings us to our third point, banning super intelligence. Should we do that? Well, this is where Trump's insistence on rebranding AI as SI is not just superfluous and stupid. It's also harmful in a material and significant way because it confuses the conversation. This is a very important conversation that, and the terms need to be clear to people. People need to understand what we're talking about. And so, you know, I think it's a very important conversation to understand what we're talking about. We can't afford for people to be confused. But a lot of conservatives don't know what's meant by super intelligence because Trump insists that all AI is already super intelligence. That's not the case. So when they hear ban super intelligence, they think it means ban chat GPT. But that's not what that means. Okay, so chat GPT is not super intelligence. Super intelligence is not artificial intelligence itself. Super intelligence is the hypothetical final stage of artificial intelligence development where it becomes cognitively superior to human beings in every conceivable way and is recursive in that it can improve and develop and remake itself without human involvement. Okay, at the point where super intelligence emerges, that's what super intelligence would be. And at the point where it emerges, the technology by definition is outside of human control. Because it will be smarter than humans and developing without humans. And so there will be no way to put any reliable controls on it. So should we ban big tech companies from creating, not AI, but creating specifically a self-perpetuating alien super mind that evolves on its own and would be by definition out of our control, leaving us at its mercy and helpless to program or meaningfully guide it in any way? Tell them they can't do that. Yes, clearly we should. Okay, tech companies should not be allowed to fundamentally alter the course of human civilization and create a species of intelligence that could enslave us if it wanted to. Why should they have the right to upend and possibly destroy human society itself? Which, by the way, these companies are openly saying that that might be the result. Like who died and appointed these Silicon Valley weirdos to be emperors of the universe? Can we at least have a, can we have a say in that? You've got these AI trillionaires who are sitting there just pontificating about all the ways that they are currently going to completely alter your life and your children's lives and potentially for the worse. And we're supposed to sit back and say, well, okay, do whatever you want. Make the world into whatever you want it to be. We're a giant video game for you people to play. Is that what we're supposed to say? If Republicans are going to take the opposite position, which I think is political death and maybe more than just political death, they better have a very, very compelling argument. But so far they don't. Shouting about China is not a compelling argument. Okay. Telling us that this technology might destroy civilization, but it's going to happen anyway. So, oh, well, also not a compelling argument. So this is an issue we can't escape. And if Democrats are the only ones taking it seriously and trying to come up with solutions, even if you think they're bad solutions, and ultimately their solutions will be bad, we'd be pretty confident about that. If they're the only ones doing it though, they will win. Okay. And when we talk about Democrats winning, we don't just mean on the national level. To understand the total picture, you need to consider what happened on Tuesday at the state level. But before we get into the bad news, we'll, I mean, get back to the bad news, I suppose. We'll start with one note of optimism that I can find. You know, pretty much the only bright spot is that in various ballot initiatives, and then we'll get back to the bad news. And then we'll get back to the bad news. And this is significant. Voters made some good conservative decisions, even in places where you wouldn't expect it. So voters in Washington state, Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska voted to ban so-called trans athletes, meaning male athletes in women's sports. Although Colorado and Washington are still counting votes. That's where it looks like it's headed right now. 52% of voters in exit polls said that trans rights, quote unquote, have gone too far. Meanwhile, voter ID requirements passed by landslide margins in Nevada by 25 points. North Carolina, by 20 points. Ohio, by 31 points. So even though Republicans lost major statewide races in all three of these states, there was still overwhelming support for the same ballot measures that conservatives have been demanding in some form or another for several years. In fact, Democrats won the Senate race in North Carolina by 20 points, but a constitutional amendment requiring voter ID passed by the same large margin of 20 points. And the amendment specifically requires all voters, not just those presenting to vote in person, to send photo identification before voting. It passed overwhelmingly along with amendments to cap property taxes and income taxes. These are all conservative ideas that are passing with strong margins, even as voters went for the Democrat candidate, which not to bring us back to the negative part of it, but that also makes it all the more frustrating that the SAVE Act was never passed by Republicans because you see how overwhelmingly popular it is. That is a major piece of legislation, would be a major victory that they could have done. And it would have been, hugely popular on both sides of the aisle. And they didn't even do that. They didn't even pass a popular piece of legislation with bipartisan support. Maybe not bipartisan support in Congress, but bipartisan support among normal people. They didn't even do that. Along the same lines in California, of all places, voters overwhelmingly rejected a wealth tax on billionaires, which the socialists had been demanding. The vote was something like 55 to 45 against the wealth tax. That was Proposition 40. And not only that, by the same margin, voters in California also passed a ban, Proposition 42, on new state personal property taxes and certain retroactive state taxes. Basically, Prop 42 would prevent any wealth taxes in the future, including new state taxes on personal assets, including retirement accounts, investments, and business interests. So this was a total loss for the socialists on a major part of their platform in a very left-wing state. Meanwhile, voters in Wisconsin voted to end DEI, A measure passed 56 to 43 that, quote, "prohibits government government entities from discriminating or granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicities, or national origin in public employment, education, contracting, and administration. So this is all very good news. On a day that was disastrous overall for Republicans, even in a massive blue wave election where Democrats completely dominated Republicans and flipped Texas and even a seat in Mississippi, voters still made it clear that they don't like taxes. They don't want to cave to the insane demands of trans activists. They don't want DEI. They don't want voter fraud. We've reached the point where ordinary household objects require more supervision than the children. 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Well, now that fan base has dwindled to some degree, which it was always going to. You can't maintain that level of political enthusiasm indefinitely. Nobody can. And so, but without that, he's now left being the most despised politician of our lifetime. I mean, he is. Now, on the one hand, that's a pretty demoralizing realization. A lot of people, myself included, supported Trump. We had very high hopes for his second term in office. We took him seriously when he said, at the inauguration, that we would enter a golden age, one where, quote, our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent, and totally unpredictable. And even if we didn't actually believe that he would literally end all wars and usher in a utopia, the general idea of, well, he's not going to start new wars, things will generally get better. I mean, that's why he supported him. And we were listening when he said, quote, we will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. Watch. Like in 2017, we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into. We will be a nation like no other, full of compassion, and we will never get into war. We will never get into war. Compassion, courage, and exceptionalism. Our power will stop all wars and bring a new spirit of unity to a world that has been angry, violent, and totally unpredictable. America will be respected again and admired again. So that's what we were promised. What we got instead was an extreme degree of unpredictability along with a new war. We got new tariffs every other week, sending the stock market crashing. We were told about new ceasefires with Iran every couple of days, even though none of them meant anything. By my count, I think we won the war about 500 times since it started. And here's the important thing. The states, by rejecting Trump, also empower Democrats to a degree that most people don't comprehend at the moment. These state-level takeovers are a much bigger deal than people realize, and they could dramatically change the way elections are conducted going forward. It's true that Democrats didn't totally dominate every state. Republicans have kept their majority in the state senate in Texas, for example. So the new Democrat governor won't be able to do that. He's going to have to do that. He's going to have to be able to destroy the state overnight. But their victories in states like Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Nevada, in addition to Texas, lay the groundwork for a major change in our elections going forward. Pretty much every presidential swing state is now controlled to one degree or another by Democrats. And here's one way to count it, which was posted by Nate Silver. It says, if the remaining results go as expected, Democrats will hold governorships in states totaling 392 electoral votes. So put it another way. Around 75% of America will have a Democrat governor. That is a staggering takeover. And the implications are massive. For one thing, Democrats are going to gerrymander every congressional district to ensure that they never lose the House majority ever again. They're also going to change how elections are administered, since that generally falls within the authority of the states. That means they're going to push the adoption of mail-in ballots and absentee voting everywhere, along with the ballot harvesting and late voting. Remember what we saw with Cam Higbee and James O'Keefe earlier this week when they walked into a polling place in Minnesota? They're going to push the adoption of mail-in ballots and absentee voting everywhere, along with the ballot harvesting and late voting. they will probably be willing to surrender their state's influence in exchange for the greater good of the party. So we should expect that this is going to happen. There are other major consequences of the Democrats' takeover of the states. The public school system is going to get even worse, without a doubt. Even though it may seem physically impossible for it to get worse, it will. This is the new governor of Texas, a woman named Gina Hinojosa. And listen to this. And we will work tirelessly to repair the damage of the Texas voucher scam. And add an era in which our schools are sold for parts. This is a victory for the parents of Texas. We are taking our children's education back from a government that has failed them. Schools will not be taken out of our control. They will not be shuttered or suffocated. Being a parent is hard enough without carrying the burden of a government's failures. To the children of Texas, your schools will not close. You will be invested in and you. So she's describing vouchers as a scam, which makes no sense whatsoever. Vouchers are actually the opposite of a scam. They allow parents to make the choice to send their children to good schools or to homeschool their children instead of sending them to the crappy public schools in Texas, which rank near the bottom of the country. The only reason Democrats oppose vouchers is that they recognize that when parents have a choice, they generally don't prefer to subject their children to the unionized, illiterate schools. So now the unions are just going to shut the vouchers down and force parents to send their children to those non-competitive, dilapidated, useless schools. Or by the way, the children will be encouraged to adopt fake genders in lieu of learning to read. And this is going to play out all over the country in the states Democrats have just flipped. For some historical context, the last time the South was solid blue, Democrats held Congress almost continuously for the first time in the history of the United States. From the 1930s until 1994. From 1952 to 1992, they were counterbalanced with an unusually high number of Republican presidents who checked their power. Though it's worth noting that the parties weren't really ideological back then to the same degree. The exception was in the 1960s, obviously, which ended up being transformative and not in a good way. And we're in for another transformative period over the next few years. There's no question. So what could a Republican administration do? What could a Republican administration do in 2028, assuming Democrats retain control of Congress and assuming the composition of the Supreme Court stays the same? Well, their main tool would probably have to be executive powers, which is the current administration, you know, that's what they have been doing and using effectively. For example, Trump has capped legal immigration through executive power and implemented successful border policies through executive order. Ten years of low immigration will actually have a major impact that could be very significant electorally. And we shouldn't discount that. But to win, it's going to take someone really good, okay, to state the obvious. Someone who understands the moment we're in. Okay, someone who has not just the right policy ideas, but the skill to communicate them in a compelling and authentic way. It has never been more necessary for politicians, especially those with national ambitions, to be or at least seem authentic and articulate. And persuasive off the cuff. Now, this new generation of Democrats does include a number of people who, even though they're totally wrong on the issues and also evil, are able to speak and engage with the public in a way that, to most people, feels genuine and unscripted. You know, there's a number of these younger Democrats who are very skilled politicians and communicators. Any Republican who lacks that skill, no matter how right they are on the issues, is not a real contender. You know, you might have been able to get away decades ago with being a successful politician, even a president, who can't communicate that well. You know, we had a Republican president in the early 2000s that applied to. And then we had another one in the 2000s that it also applied to. But things are changing now. And timing matters also. Timing is everything in politics, as they say. Some of the Republicans who might rush in to claim the mantle are just simply too late. You know, they had their chance and missed it. And that list includes, but certainly is not limited to, and we just have to be honest about this, as we are, because the task right now is to find who's going to carry the mantle, who the leader's going to be. And we've got to be very clear about this. So, John Thune. No. He's our worthless leader in the Senate. It's not going to be him. It's not going to be Ted Cruz, who I like, but also was an architect of the Iran war, is closely tied to the Trump brand, had his chance in 2016. It's not going to be Thomas Massey, who was rejected by his own primary voters. And also, it's not going to be Donald Trump Jr., who has about as much chance of winning the presidency as Jeb Bush did. The public is moving on from the Trump brand. And that would be true even if we hadn't just gotten blown out. The Trump name has dominated the political discussion and steered the Republican ship for the past decade. It's not going to steer it for the next decade. And it shouldn't. Okay? Because this is America. We don't do dynasties. You know, we don't do monarchies. So, we're moving on now. The problem is that at this stage, there aren't a lot of obvious contenders. Maybe more will materialize. And if that's going to happen, it better happen soon. The battle for 2028 starts officially right now. J.D. Vance is clearly a contender. Although he faces the extraordinarily difficult task of presenting himself as a new leader with a new vision, distancing himself from Trump's failures while not alienating Trump's supporters, not going to be an easy tightrope. It's not impossible. Vance is a talented politician, so he could pull it off. Even as his task is complicated even further by the fact that Trump will happily throw him under the bus if Vance goes too far in trying to draw distinctions between himself and Trump. So, the high wire act for Vance is even higher. And the rope even thinner than it first appears. And yet again, I certainly wouldn't count him out. Another contender is Ron DeSantis. Now, in the case of DeSantis, you could make the argument from a political perspective that he missed his window, too. You know, timing is everything. And he had his shot and didn't do it. And now it's not your time, you know. And maybe that will ultimately turn out to be the case. But it's also true that he was the best Republican governor in the country and is perhaps the best Republican governor in the country. And he's perhaps the only legitimate Republican success story in the entire country right now. Whether he's able to seize the moment or not remains to be seen, but he clearly understands the moment. And we're going to play two clips here to show that. But watch. Let's just be clear about what happened last night. This is close to an extinction level event for Republicans in many parts of the country, as we have seen probably in the last hundred years. In January, when everyone in office leaves, who were either term-limited or got voted out, of the ten largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control of their state, the state of Florida. Well, you know, here's the problem that when people would say that, and if you're going to do huge conservative things that are going to reorient the country for a generation, fine. But I saw. I saw no indication that the current group of Republican senators were interested in doing that type of bold conservative change. I mean, why haven't we done immigration? Shut off H-1B visas. Why haven't we codified Trump's immigration executive orders? There's so. Why haven't we stripped jurisdiction from the federal courts over deportation cases? There's so many things that could have been done. They didn't even attempt it, Laura, to say, oh, if only we needed 50 votes, we would have done it. You don't have 50 votes for doing conservative things. You've never shown that you'll do conservative things, even with 50 votes. So I hear you. I'd love to see all this great stuff being done. I just never saw an indication that they did it. And look, this midterm, no question, was a rebuke of the president and the Congress by Democrats, independents, and some Republicans that crossed over. But a lot of our voters who stayed home, they stayed home because they were frustrated with the election. They were frustrated with the lack of productivity from Republicans in the House and Senate. They didn't have a record. That's just a fact. I think it was. They were promised big things. I think it was. And they didn't deliver it. So it's really both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue. It's not just one. So Ron DeSantis, a real contender. This is the approach we need to adopt if we're going to have any chance of bringing this country back from the brink. Republicans have to actually demonstrate the same level of commitment as Democrats. You know, we don't really need any more. Uh, trolling. We don't, we don't need any more like we don't need. a president, we don't need leaders on the political scene who we think are funny and entertaining. These people are not here to entertain us. There's enough entertainment out there. We don't really need that from our politicians. I don't need you to be funny. I don't need you to entertain me. I don't need you to be relatable. I mean, you do need to come off as authentic as we talked about. But I don't need to feel like you're my friend. I don't need you to be a troll. We need a candidate who understands the stakes and takes them seriously. And for his part, J.D. Vance put out a surprisingly honest and comprehensive assessment of the election. Here's part of it. It's worth going. He posted this on X. It's worth going and reading the whole thing. But he said, the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. Another pollster, one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday, we lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all the responses, were one, end the war. Two, focus on cost of living slash inflation. Three, put America first. Four, change our relationship to Israel. In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement by focusing more on business than businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance, but anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next six years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost. Now, this is maybe the most thorough and honest diagnosis of an election defeat that we've ever seen from a politician at Vance's level. And he's right. Now, you can quibble with some factors Vance left out, the terrorists, for example, but it's a diagnosis that even Trump himself seemed to agree with. Now, at the same time, we can't underestimate the extent to which Democrats will undermine themselves in the interim. The president usually gets the blame when things go wrong, but given the scale of the Democrat takeover, they're going to be in the spotlight to an unusual degree, and they've taken on some jobs that they clearly can't handle. Does anyone seriously think Keisha Lance Bottoms is going to be a competent governor in Georgia? Yes, exit polls and referendum outcomes show that this wasn't ideological confirmation of Democrats, so much as it was just a total rejection of Trump. But Democrats aren't going to see it that way. Okay, they're going to think it was a validation of their agenda, and they're going to enact it ruthlessly, as they do, as we've established, and there's a high chance they overplay their hand. Will Texas try to ban AR-15s? Maybe they will. But it's important to point out that in the past, Democrat self-immolation was largely the result, at least on the national scale, of frivolous and baseless investigations and impeachments, targeted mainly at Trump. The investigations and impeachments will happen again. Will they all be frivolous and baseless this time? I guess not. I guess we're going to find out. One way or another, if Democrats are able to coax Republicans into spending the next two years circling the wagons around the Trump administration, and defending whatever they dig up, we're going to lose. We have to look forward. Meanwhile, the administration can deal with its own messes. That's not really our job, and we shouldn't be focused on that. Now, it is weird, for example, that's the only thing we're going to focus on. Now, it is weird, for example, that the Trump family has made hundreds of millions of dollars on a crypto scheme while Trump is in office. Democrats are going to have a field day. They've already made this clear. They've already announced this. They're going to have a field day ripping that to shreds. That's going to be one of the first things they do, is look into this crypto stuff. Looking for any laws that may have been violated. I have no idea if they'll find any laws violated or not. I'm not a lawyer. But it's not my job to defend the president's crypto scheme. And I won't, and neither should you. This is another thing that could go wrong for Republicans over the next two years. Because there are a lot of conservatives saying, oh, yeah, they're going to go way too far. They're going to investigate, and they're going to turn people against them. Maybe. But what we have to be careful about is that as they start doing that. Because there are a lot of conservatives saying, oh, yeah, they're going to turn people against them. Maybe. But what we have to be careful about is that as they start doing that, conservatives get distracted by feeling like they have to defend, oh, no, it is okay for the president to have a crypto scheme. We don't have to defend that. He can deal with that on his own. That was his choice. Profiting to the tune of hundreds of millions on a secretive and volatile industry that your own administration regulates is really weird. It doesn't look good. Even if it's legal, it might be an issue for Trump. It's not our issue. We have to focus on the future. He's got his own lawyers. They'll figure that out. But we're not going to spend our time defending that kind of thing. We don't have time for that. Hosting for the holidays is largely an exercise in pretending you were made to command an army. There are meals to prepare, rooms to clean, schedules to coordinate, and relatives who will immediately ask where you keep something that they are standing right next to. All of this is easier to manage when you're actually sleeping well. And then since switching to Helix, I'm sleeping much better. And no longer starting the day feeling like I'm already several hours behind. Helix offers more than 20 mattress models, and their two-minute sleep quiz matches you with the right one based on how you actually sleep. Every Helix mattress ships free in the U.S. and comes with the Happy with Helix guarantee and a 365-night sleep trial. 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It's what the Democrats have been doing for decades. And most importantly, on a related note, we need to find a way to get Texas back in the Republican column. For many years, Democrats would openly talk about their plans to flip Texas. Here's Julian Castro in 2013, for example. Watch. In a couple of presidential cycles, you'll be on election night. You'll be announcing that we're calling the 38 electoral votes of Texas for the Democratic nominee for president. It's changing. It's going to become a purple state and then a blue state because of the demographics, because of the population growth of folks from outside of Texas. Well, he was right. The party had a goal. And for more than a decade, really, for several decades, they pursued it. And they won. And I'm firmly in the camp that the GOP has no future as a national party without Texas. You know, I'm aware of the fact that in 2024, Trump would have won the presidential election without Texas. But that's only because Democrats ran the weakest candidate in a century, an alcoholic who could barely speak English, who spent half of her campaign talking about coconut trees and the urgent need for taxpayer-funded sex changes for illegal aliens in prison. If Democrats had run an actual candidate, Trump would have needed Texas to win. It's an essential part of the political map for the GOP. Now, I'm not prepared to say that Texas is now permanently blue or necessarily will be blue in the presidential election. If it is permanently blue, then the Republican Party is done. We just can't accept that reality because if it's permanently blue, then the Republican Party is done. It really is over at that point. You cannot be a legitimate national political party if your only path to victory is hoping that the other team runs the world. You can be the worst candidate in the history of the universe and then hoping the map works out exactly correctly and you can squeak out a win with a razor-thin margin, which, again, is the only way Republicans can win without Texas. This is not a viable long-term strategy. We need, then, a comprehensive plan as quickly as possible for how to win. win Texas back. And based on the fact that Hispanics went overwhelmingly for Trump in 2024 and broke sharply against them on Tuesday, it's fair to conclude that the showy public ice enforcement theater wasn't a good political strategy. You know, sending Kristi Noem out, face caked in makeup, dressed like the Tomb Raider to call as much attention as possible to your deportation efforts was a very stupid political move. So as Vance said, it's probably a good idea to try some alternative approaches, starting with going after businesses that hire illegals, which is something we've been talking about for months on this show. Doesn't mean amnesty. And it doesn't mean we stop deporting illegal aliens. After all, Trump won the Hispanic vote in Texas in 2024, and his entire platform was deporting illegals. Tom Homan stood up at the RNC and told illegals to pack their bags, and it didn't hurt Trump in Texas at all. But there are smarter and more strategic ways to go about it. Continue the deportations. Don't call attention to them on purpose. That's one change that should happen immediately. And while we're at it, we need to lift any tariffs that are currently affecting Texas in any way, including tariffs on automobiles, copper, steel, aluminum, Canadian imports, lumber, et cetera. We should obviously end the war in Iran, cut off Ukraine unless they stop bombing Russian fuel infrastructure, which is raising the price of fuel for everybody. These are all steps that might help get some voters in Texas back on board. It's clear the Greg Abbott in the White House took Texas for granted, and that simply can't happen anymore. The Trump era ended in disaster because of apathy. And Trump gave up, and he's not even hiding it anymore, which is why he's still talking about his ballroom. Yesterday, hours after the worst Republican midterm defeat of all time, Trump was busy giving reporters a tour of his White House renovations. It's baffling until you're realizing that Trump isn't at all concerned about securing the future of the Republican Party or the conservative movement. So what's needed now is a Republican candidate who is not 80 years old, who has some connection to everyday Americans who are suffering in this economy, who actually has something relevant to say when he starts talking. You know, there was some charm to Trump's kind of rambling, discursive communication strategies in the early years. But nowadays, when Americans hear the president on stage talking about some guy's ass, they're tired of it. They're not amused. And they want a leader who takes the job seriously and communicates like an adult. And believe it or not, these are not unattainable wishlist items. They're actually very achievable goals. But we're on the clock. We have less than two years to find the polar opposite of John Thune. We have two years to find an America first candidate who actually understands what America first means. We need someone new to come down the escalator and put an end to the Democrat-American conflict. We need someone new to come down the escalator and put an end to the Democratic-American conflict. But what we have, which Democrats don't, is a coherent understanding of what America is and who Americans are. And to win, we need to do what Donald Trump promised to do all the way back in 2016. We need to oust the establishment politicians without becoming them. We need to protect our job and housing markets from the foreign flood. And ultimately, and most importantly, we have to be able to look every American in the eye, particularly all the white guys that have been demonized for the better part of the past century, and explain to them how we can help them get a job and afford a house. And if we can do that, we'll win. If we can't, we won't. And we won't deserve to. Before we wrap up, I also want to mention that next week, Confession, the movie Confession, comes out on Daily Wire. It's a legitimately good movie. It's exactly what we need to be making, especially in a time like this. And if you're a member and want to see it with an audience, you can go to Daily Wire and claim your free ticket to watch it in theaters. It'll be available in theaters, I think, for just one day. So make sure you go and claim those tickets. And we will talk to you on Monday. Have a great weekend. Godspeed. Father, I used to feel Christ. I cannot feel anything here. They take me out of my bed and they brought me here and they tell me nothing. What have I done? - Article 58, counter-revolutionary activity. - That is all I know. They have to deal with so many enemies of the state, all of whom claim their innocence, who protest, who cry. - There are no answers here other than the ones they put in your mouth. - Your break. Today is your opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty to the people. You'd like to know why I'm here? Of course. But you already know, don't you? You must believe in something greater than the party. You will remember your duty. I've told you I know nothing. They growled like a feral animal. You stink of failure. You want me to lie? -Still a drunk! -Damn you! They all break. Maybe.