Speaker 1I've talked about SimpliSafe before. What I appreciate is that it's designed to help stop a break-in before it ever happens. When it comes to your family's safety, that matters. Right now, you can save 70% on a new system with professional monitoring. It's their biggest savings of the year. SimpliSafe's smart, AI-powered outdoor cameras watch for potential threats and alert a live, U.S.-based security agent. That agent can assess the situation and intervene through the camera in under 30 seconds, letting the person know they've been spotted, requesting urgent 911 dispatch when necessary. If somebody's approaching your home, you would like a response before they ever get inside. And that's why I recommend SimpliSafe. Head on over to SimpliSafe.com slash Shapiro. Save 70% on a new system with professional monitoring. That's SimpliSafe.com slash Shapiro for their biggest savings of the year. Please write in the Ben Shapiro store checkout to let them know we sent you SimpliSafe ahead of crime in real time. Again, you don't want a security system that only tells the cops, you know, too late when all your stuff is gone. Instead, you want the system that protects you before anything happens. That's SimpliSafe. Check them out right now. SimpliSafe.com. SimpliSafe.com slash Shapiro for their biggest savings of the year. That's SimpliSafe.com slash Shapiro. Last night was, um, well, that sucked. That was a total and utter blowout. Yes, a blue tsunami. Basically, all of us, the Republicans who wanted to win, we were like Richard Chamberlain in the last wave waiting on the shore for our doom or for the Gen Xers in the crowd. Tia Leone and Maximilian Schell on the beach in deep impact, just watching that gigantic wave come at us. Yes, brutal and pretty unprecedented. The big question this morning is very simple. What the hell happened? Well, I'm going to start with what didn't happen, what this wasn't about. So you're going to hear from legacy media that this was about endorsement of Democrat policy. That's not true. It's not true, like at all. It is not that Americans suddenly turned in favor of Medicare for all or for transing the children or for the Green New Deal. The CNN exit polls show that 54% of voters had negative views of socialism compared to 33% who are favorable. 57% of Americans, by the way, favorable to capitalism in that polling. How about support for trans rights? This takes sort of the big title issue for many radical Democrats. 52% of people polled said that the support for trans rights had gone too far, 52%. So in California, there was a ballot measure in California in a blue tsunami year to impose a wealth tax, which was a lot of money. On people who are worth over a billion dollars. It didn't pass. It failed. Over in Washington, there was a restriction on boys playing in girls' sports, and that is set to pass. So in other words, the American people didn't radically turn to the left. That's not the thing. That's not what happened last night. And you can tell that because, again, if you look at the Democrats all over the map, many of them are more moderate. Some of them are DSA, and they all won. And the results last night, were catastrophically bad. Democrats flipped Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Maine. Right now, we are still awaiting results in Mississippi. Mississippi? Like M-I-double-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I. Like Mississippi. Alaska, we're still waiting on. So Democrats could be up to 56 seats in the Senate. And in the House, they may have picked up as many as 40, 43 seats. Again, we were talking about like the outside terrible election for Republicans would be 25 seats. You're talking 43 seats for Democrats. So just a blowout. And here is a county-by-county net swing, 2024 to 2026. You remember there was something like this in 2024, but it was all red in favor of Republicans. Here, I mean, it looks like a tsunami because that's what it was. You're looking at a huge number of counties that shifted D plus 10. And basically, a couple of places that shifted, are like literally, I think, two red arrows on this entire chart. So just a brutal, brutal night for Republicans. It was undoubtedly the biggest swing in the modern era in a midterm election. More Senate seats flipped this year than back in 1974. At least seven Senate seats, maybe more. So here, for example, is a chart. It shows what we might have predicted based on sort of past data. We used a regression chart here to show how each race might have ended up based on 2024 presidential vote and Trump's approval rating and incumbency. The hollow circle is where history said each race should have ended up. And as you can see, that is not where each race ended up. So it was a giant wave. That wave was not predicated on Democrat policy. Okay, so myth number one, this is Democrat. No, it was not. This is not a justification for Medicare for all. It is not a justification for a vast spending program. It is not a complete embrace of the crazy, the craziness of the left. Okay, myth number two, this was candidate quality. This is the one that was coming out of the White House. So President Trump came out and suggested that it was not him. Here he was on Fox saying that this was not a hit on him. It was not really about him at all. Here was the president.
Speaker 2Congratulations to the Democrats. They did a good job. They've been looking for this one for 11 years and they finally got it. But I don't view it as a hit on me. I think we've done. We've had the greatest two years in the history of the presidency.
Speaker 1And Mary Margaret Olihan spoke to officials at the White House yesterday. One of them said, quote, President Trump was not on the ballot. And it's proven that Trump voters show up when he is on the ballot. Also, candidate quality matters. And President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves. Also, anyone who voted Democrat today is going to have a serious case of buyer's remorse when gas prices come down quickly, when the Iran conflict is solved, but they're still stuck with a list of liberal extremist Democrats. And the White House then blamed candidate quality. OK, this was not a candidate quality issue. It was not. In some races, candidate quality might help at the margins. But Susan Collins, who's a really good candidate in Maine, right? She is the ultimate political survivor, a cat with nine lives. She lost. Ken Paxton lost in Texas, but he lost like 12 points, 12 points, 12 points in Texas. OK, even if John Cornyn had been the nominee in this wave election, he probably would have lost. Ashley Hinson in Iowa. Lost. Very good candidate. Mike Collins in Georgia got blown out. So did candidate quality make a difference? Maybe in the margin of victory for Democrats, but it was just a wave, like a tsunami. And again, I have proof positive here. Angie Nixon in Florida, my home state of Florida. Angie Nixon is an ambulatory psychotic DSA member, a person who probably should be in a straitjacket. Angie Nixon came within two points of winning a Senate seat in Florida, in Florida. Again, so this was not about candidate quality. Annie Andrews, one going away by like six points in South Carolina. Maybe Ralph Norman would have won the seat, but I kind of doubt it. According to our friends and sponsors over at Cal Shee. Again, the forecast is that Democrats will win at least 53 seats. I mean, they already have. They've already won. And we should mention here about the prediction markets. The prediction markets did a really good job of predicting last night. It turns out that when people put their money where their mouth was. Virtually all the races were favoring Democrats going in. Many of us were doubtful. We didn't know. We didn't know what the vibes were. We didn't know how reflective the polling would be. The polls, it turns out, did a good job. And so, by the way, did the prediction markets. Well, not all of the candidates were quality, but I'll tell you what actually is quality. And that is Bowling Branch. Bowling Branch is great. See, I'm on the road right now. I brought my Bowling Branch throw blanket with me because I can't sleep without it. It really is that good. And on election night, Michael Knowles and the team at Bowling Branch gave me a gift for my youngest. A blanket from Bowling Branch is beautiful. The product is awesome. All of it is extraordinarily comfortable. I mean, so much so that all of my kids. I can't sleep on Bowling Branch. So, of course, does my wife. Right now, you can get early access to Bowling Branch's best sale of the year. Be the first to shop 25% off plus free shipping and extended returns at BowlingBranch.com slash Shapiro with code Shapiro. That's BowlingBranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, Branch.com slash Shapiro, code Shapiro for early access to 25% off. Exclusions apply. Go check them out right now. That's BowlingBranch.com slash Shapiro. It is the best product. I'm just telling you, you're going to love it. You're going to not just want their sheets. You're going to want their blankets and everything they have to offer. It is all top quality. It all gets softer when you wash it. It really is the kind of stuff you need so you can sleep better. BowlingBranch.com slash Shapiro, code Shapiro. Get early access to 25% off. Okay, so the final myth here, and again, this is the biggest myth of all, is that it wasn't Trump. You heard that. Where Trump says, it's not me.
Speaker 3It's candidate quality. That's not true. It's not true.
Speaker 1Simply put. Very simply put.
Speaker 3Like in one sentence,
Speaker 1this midterm election was a repudiation of President Trump. Period. End of story. That's the whole thing. Look at President Trump's approval ratings and what you see is a presidency that basically since the outset has been the story of a steady and devastating decline in approval rating. There are people who are looking for sort of step functions here. What I mean by that is clearly iterated points of inflection. Like things were going fine and then they were going really poorly and then he recovered and then they went really poorly. But that's not actually what his approval rating looks like. What President Trump's approval rating looks like is pretty much from the time he became president, a slow and steady decline, liberation day really hurt him, a mild recovery, and then a slow and steady decline from a high of 52% all the way down to 38.3% in the Nate Silver average of approval ratings. If you take this chart all the way back to the beginning of 2025. Again, what you see here is not some sort of like gigantic jump in any way one point when you look at joe biden's approval chart what you see is that he was in the high 40s and then afghanistan happened and he dropped into the low 40s high 30s and then he just stayed there what you see with president trump is just a slow and steady and unremitting decline so this right here is a chart of the generic congressional vote dating back to election day 2024 to yesterday and what you see is again a slow and steady increase in the margin for democrats it's not a gigantic jump here or a gigantic jump there it's just a slow steady bleed out for republicans which again the gap begins pretty soon upon his presidency and then it just kind of grows and grows and grows and grows it was already north of five points in april of 2026 but it was north of five points in late 2025 and then sort of continued to grow so what actually happened here right i can say that you know this is a referendum on trump and it was but what happened and the answer is we need to actually think how voters vote so i understand listen i'm into politics at a granular level that pretty much no one else in america cares about and a huge percentage of our listeners are very into granular level politics and so we look for sort of the chicken entrails which is the policy that did it how what was it the way that he articulated this particular thing was it if he had just done this differently that is not typically how people vote people vote based on the gestalt meaning like the whole ball of wax the generalized sense that they have of president trump in this election the gestalt of president trump fell apart again in the aftermath of an election the pointy heads and big brains and people like me we will attempt to find the one jenga piece that if we just moved it here or replaced it there it would fix everything but that's not how people vote they based on a generalized feeling they have about everything so was it the execution of the iran war yes was it tariffs yes was it the reflecting pool yes was it truth social statements and threats against the iran war yes and yes and also yes and also yes it was all the things because that's how people vote and that's how people think that is how people act but we can't we can break it down further so let's break it down into what the three big things that happened here three big things have happened since president trump 2.0 took office unaffordability chaos corruption now by every metric unaffordability was the top issue in this election with a bullet by a long shot there was no second if people believe that their lives are unaffordable you're going to lose your party is going to perform poorly and by the way again this is sort of the generic way that things work in a midterm election people believe that all the problems will be solved by an election they don't get solved then they're mad about it and then they revert to the other party during a midterm that's normal and that's particularly true in the second term of a president's midterm like 2014 for barack obama or 2006 for george w bush if people feel that their lives are unaffordable your party is going to get hit and in a second we're going to get into the policies that made things more unaffordable but mere unaffordability doesn't mean what we saw last night there's a difference between an l and a wipeout if you're talking about electoral catastrophe a wipeout like we saw last night you need more ingredients and here are the other ingredients chaos and corruption so if you have a things are not going well and then on top of that you layer in a feeling of chaos a feeling the person just doesn't care about your issues and is distracted and then layer on top of that corruption you're looking at electoral doom and that's what happened last night and again here's the thing it's all the gestalt of all of these things all at once right it's all the things all at once everything everywhere all at once it's not just for example the tariffs right which i think are bad policy it's how they were rolled out it's about how president trump talked about them it's the taco wing it's the vacillation the confusion the insanity the unwillingness to back off of them even while he was the special carve-outs even where president trump's policy is correct in my view the rollout has been pretty bad pretty much every time from the epstein files to the execution of the iran war to tariff policy and as a result i tend to agree large scale with 80 of president trump's policies but i also tend to disagree with 90 of the way he actually does it and i think that's true for a lot of people i think that's true for independence i think it's true for some democrats again the rule in politics and this is true for enormous number of politics pretty much all is that your strength is also your weakness it's true just in life very often a person's greatest strength is also their weakness is for the basis for greek tragedy so president trump's allure what makes him a unique personality is the fact that he is totally impervious to criticism totally impervious to it you can go after him with a hatchet in 2015 2016 he will survive you can try to prosecute him in 2023 he will survive he can lose he can come back he can survive he is totally impervious but there is a thin line between being impervious to bad criticism and being totally out of touch because if the way that you react to criticism is by building yourself a bunker and then by having all your friends around you basically trying to enable you to do all the things you end up even more out of touch and that's why when president trump speaks about policies that are unpopular and he says listen everyone i know is telling me they're great or he says that he's just going to keep doubling down on policies that he doesn't particularly like or when he tries those policies in the first place and there was no one there to tell him it was not a great idea you end up with a lot of putting your hand in the fire pulling the hand out but insisting that none of that ever happened and turns out americans don't like that feeling of chaos and that being out of touch that is the definition of what is going on right now regardless of how you like his policies as i mostly do or if you hate
Speaker 3his policies the the data here are very clear
Speaker 1the exit poll from nbc asked which one of these six issues is the most important issue facing the country by far 39 percent the economy 39 percent now of course the economy covers a wide variety of things ranging from tariffs to the impact of the iran war that's obviously true 32 percent said the state of democracy this is tied to issues of corruption and chaos 14 percent said immigration almost all republicans 8 said health care 4 foreign policy 3 said crime right so it is very clear what americans were concerned about again unaffordability chaos corruption that's what they are concerned
Speaker 3about very clearly and when it comes
Speaker 1to the economy
Speaker 3according to those cnn exit polls
Speaker 165 percent of voters said that president trump's policies worsened economic conditions overall 75 percent of voters three quarters were dissatisfied or angry with how things were going in the u.s and in what has always been kind of the litmus test for a successful candidate does the president fight for people like you ask that question and this has always been trump's strength is that trump had a connection with people where people felt like he was fighting on their behalf right he would say the attacks on me are not an attack on me they're an attack on you asked if trump fights for people like you 62 percent of voters last night said no and it's all the things yes it's it's policies that are in some cases wrong-headed or poorly pursued but it's also the feeling of chaos a feeling of disconnect i mean the president spent the day before the election at the reflecting pool talking about the reflecting pool which again the the symbolism of the reflecting pool of narcissists being the thing that you are standing at right before an electoral blue wave blue tsunami why is it like why just why for republicans for for anyone who's looking at their life on a day like no one cares about the reflecting pool can i explain no one cares no one the fact is a major issue in american life is a problem for president trump whether you like what he's doing at the reflecting pool or you don't like the paint on the bottom of the reflecting pool this is not a top 500 issue for americans the president spent the day before the election at the reflecting pool talking about the grout the pool is now
Speaker 2better and more beautiful than it's ever been before and we're very proud of it we went through a lot with vandalism the vandalism was unprecedented people don't like talking about it but built more than a century ago in nineteen twenty two this is the largest reflecting pool in the world it's almost as tall as two empire state buildings laid on its side and it's uh really amazing again it's this
Speaker 1feeling of disconnect and this feeling of chaos that is a problem you know learned this lesson early on was elon musk right so even again things that i like were pursued in a chaotic way and americans rejected them so for example elon musk came in and he did the department of governmental efficiency and the idea was use tech methodologies in government move fast and fast and fast and fast and fast and fast and fast and and break things but here's the problem our government is designed to move very slowly and with consensus it is a tangle of a thicket of complications and checks and balances you don't get to run roughshod into the government just start smashing things and not cause chaos on the other side elon learned this right here is elon acknowledging why doge didn't work the way he wanted it to well i
Speaker 4really actually the thing is i came to the conclusion that um that there was no way to solve the deficit from within the government impossible um you know maybe if the president made that his primary goal we could do that but but the problem is if you if you try to solve the deficit and and stop wasteful spending um you get you make a lot of enemies in that in that situation and if president trump is not you know he he likes to be liked he's not um you know he doesn't he doesn't calling him being upset about what some funding being stopped type of thing.
Speaker 1Again, the kind of vacillation. But also the fact is that, again, if you go into these programs and you start breaking things apart, even the stuff that's good ends up presenting poorly. And then layer on top of the chaos. Again, unaffordability, chaos, corruption. Layer on top of that the corruption and you got a massive problem because the American people don't just feel like you're disconnected. They feel like you are getting rich while they are getting poor. I've been calling this out since literally January of 2025 with all of the content surrounding the world liberty financial of it. I mean, it's not a great look when the president has to condemn his ex-lawyer, Alina Haba, over an alleged $50 million deal to broker pardons.
Speaker 2What did you make of Alina Haba's $50 million deal? I thought it was terrible. I told her and I said I don't want her paid. I thought we had somebody speak to the people that did it and she used her relationship to do that and it was far too much. It's one thing for a person to get paid legal fees or whatever. She's a lawyer. I thought it was totally obnoxious and outrageous and it's not acceptable. Not acceptable at all. Do you expect her to make a donation to the library? Not her. I expect maybe the people, I don't know if anybody wants to make it, but it's unacceptable what she did.
Speaker 1Unacceptable. Now again, the fact that even that conversation turned into something about like should people then give money to the Trump library. Like it doesn't have to be illegal to look improper. So when the vice president comes out. And he's talking about corruption and he says, DC is corrupt, but president Trump, no one around president Trump participates in that. Like it doesn't, this is from October 17th. It doesn't wash.
Speaker 5You're asking, has Donald Trump's decision-making been influenced by his, I've never seen anything like that from anybody inside the way. I've never seen anything like that from the president. Certainly. I mean, look in Washington, DC, people are constantly trying to get an edge. It's something that I've complained about in Washington, DC for a long time. You see cases. I've had, you know, there have been a lot of street lobbyists who have tried to get meetings with me to advocate for a particular issue and I will take the meeting where the president will take the meeting. So yeah, you certainly see evidence of corruption in Washington, DC. Do I see evidence of corruption from the president of the United States from the administration the administration is taking? No, Tony, I just don't.
Speaker 1Okay. But the width of impropriety that surrounds an enormous number of people in the administration, that's quite real and people can identify it again when it's widely reported that president Trump's net worth has increased $2.2 billion. Since. He took office, people start to get a little suspicious, Trump coin, Trump watches, world Liberty, financial, special access to truth, social, special clubs in Washington, DC from people associated with the family and with the administration that are pretty clearly attempts to provide access to people with access to power, family linked mining ventures in places like Kazakhstan, right? All of that jets from Qatar, right? All of that. Put that patina, put that patina on top of the chaos and put that on top of policy that makes people feel like things are unaffordable and what you have is the recipe for a wipeout. So to go back to policy for a second. Okay. And again, the reason I'm talking about this all together is because it is a gestalt. You need all of those things. You need all those ingredients. You need the chaos and the corruption and the unaffordability. All of that is what leads to a tsunami. Unaffordability alone would not do it. Okay. So let's talk for a second about the policies that create unaffordability.
Speaker 3Again. According to the NBC exit poll. The number one factor in voting was cost of living.
Speaker 149% of voters said that it was crucial. 40% of voters said it was a major factor. That was far and away the highest number. So what are a couple of things that president Trump has done that have made things more unaffordable? One, of course, is the tariffs. According to the national bureau of economic research. The pass through costs on tariffs, meaning like. The United States government charges people to bring goods into the country. That's then cost that that that cost is passed on to the consumer as part of the cost of the good. The average 2025 tariff rate was about 27% in practice. Importers paid only 14% due to shipping delays, exemptions and weak enforcement. Whichever tariffs were actually collected were passed on almost completely to the American importers and buyers. And again. If you look at the polling data, people did not like the tariffs. They did not. According to that NBC exit poll. 65%. 65% of voters said that Trump's tariff policies hurt the national economy. Man, that is that's not going to be kind. Not only that. Remember, it's not just the unaffordability. It's also the chaos and the corruption. So the rollout. Thing in terms of images, which is really how most people kind of walk through life. I have images in our head. If I say to you, Trump tariffs. What is the first image that comes to mind for me? And I think for most people, it is this image of president Trump holding up that giant poster board. This had reciprocal tariffs that had nothing to do with reciprocality and that tax the penguins on the Solomon Island, right? It was a chaotic rollout. It was a mess. He had to walk part of it back and then add on to that's the chaos. And then add on top of that, the whiff of corruption, right? Certain firms that are getting special treatment or government investment, right? The fact that if you visit the white house and you, and you make nice with the president, they, you know, they're not going to like it. You get better treatment, right? All of that, wrap that into a ball and it pisses Americans off. You take the Iran war. Okay. So obviously the conduct of the Iran war, the execution of the Iran war has raised gas prices. Obviously, duh, right? Here's the president of the United States saying this yesterday.
Speaker 2I think a part of it was Iran, but at the same time, people understood the importance of what I've done with Iran. I think historically it's going to be much more important than this. Yeah. Evening because you can't let the number one state sponsor of terror have a nuclear weapon. You know, it's the most dangerous country in the world that we wiped them out practically.
Speaker 1Now, obviously I agree with the president's take on the importance of taking action against a nuclear armed ballistic missile armed enemy of the United States. Obviously I agree with that. The execution of the war, however, combined with lack and discombobulation of, of rollout leads to unpopularity. Of course. So if you look at the, the polling in the exit data, 34% of people said that the war in Iran was important to their vote, right? It's not 49 as it was with, with cost of living, but 34 is a significant percentage, obviously. And yes, of course, the fallout from the execution of the war in Iran contributed to oil prices. And you notice I'm distinguishing between quote unquote, the war in Iran as sort of why it was initiated and the execution of said war. Right. And the execution contributed to oil price increases. And that of course damaged Republicans. Because of course, higher oil prices always damage the party in power. But war is always economically damaging to you. That is how war works. Again, the problem with the war in Iran was not the rationale for the war. Iran cannot have a nuke, should not have a nuke. We as the American people have a right to be protected from that eventuality. We have a right to be protected from an Iran in total control of major chokeholds in the world economy. The president's totally right about all of that. Iran is a threat to our neighbors. They are a threat to our allies. They are a threat to us. They've been a threat to us for 50 years. But when it comes to the execution of the policy, when you claim over and over, there's going to be no cost. That's overpromising. And when you stop for no apparent reason, as you might recall, back in April, the president of the United States, with the help of the vice president, negotiated what I thought at the time was a terrible memorandum of understanding that basically delayed the end of the war by now seven months and counting. I was working under the impression that the president was going to pursue war in the same way that he had pursued. He was going to pursue war in his first administration and also in Operation Midnight Hammer, meaning go fast, go hard, finish it fast and achieve your ends. That is a way to actually win a war. But if you decide that you're not going to win it because you want to slow down, because you're worried about oil prices, and then it turns out the oil prices just bite you right in the ass again, and you exacerbate the domestic pain with no strategic explanation, it's chaos. It's discombobulation. And so, again, think in terms of images. If the image of Liberation Day is Trump with the poster board, the image that people have of the war in Iran is just gas. Prices, which are everywhere, literally the most, the most posted price that you will see in your daily life is a gas price. You will drive past it seven times today. There's no other product in your life that you will look at the price of as often as the gas price, even if you're not filling up your tank. And people know that. So layer on top of, again, a policy that does drive up prices. I think there are other good reasons to do it. But bringing down prices is not the reason to do it. There are other good reasons. And conflating that and pretending that the Iran war was done, for example. With the intent of bringing down oil prices, as opposed to with the intent of defenestrating a longtime enemy of the United States. That's a category error that people are doing. But fine. When half your administration is doing business with the other countries in the Middle East, including places like Qatar, you're taking an airliner from Qatar. Or when your negotiators and their families are cleaning sacks of cash in Dubai or Saudi or Qatar or Kazakhstan for that reason. People start to think, what is this really about? Again, the disconnect, the disconnect. And it's true with regard to interest rates, where the president has been railing publicly against the Federal Reserve himself. Or pushing bigger government spending while claiming that you're cutting around the edges. And when you combine all of that with billionaires who are largely disliked by the American people showing up at the White House. What you get is dyspepsia. I warned at the time of the inauguration that the picture of the president alongside Jeff Bezos and Elon and Mark Zuckerberg. That. that would not end particularly well the president or for any of those people. Because again, if that's your image, if your image of president Trump's economy is Trump with a bunch of tech billionaires, you're going to come away with the feeling that, you know, he cares about those people. He doesn't necessarily care about me. And as I say, it is, I can even agree with the policy and disagree with the rollout and understand why people are upset with it. This is true of immigration. According to him, according to that CNN exit poll, again, Trump's immigration policy has always been the most popular part of his platform. And he's been totally consistent on it for legitimately decades. But according to CNN, 57% of voters said that Trump's immigration policy had gone too far. Again, what's the image that most Americans have of the immigration policy? It is not some MS-13 guy being arrested by ICE. It's Liam Ramos in his blue hat while his dad was being detained by ICE. And sure, you can explain what's happening here. You can explain his dad is an illegal criminal immigrant, apparently, and that he was with the kid and they're trying to take care of you. Like you can explain all of that, but images are images and images. And when you trot out Greg Bovino for a while in Minneapolis as your guy, rather than say Tom Homan, that has an impact. 57% of people in the NBC exit poll said the Trump administration's actions on immigration enforcement have gone too far. Okay. So again, this is why we are where we are. That combo, unaffordability, chaos, corruption, that combo. Okay. So now we need to talk about what comes next because obviously the Democrats just wiped out the Republicans in the Senate. They wiped out the Republicans in the House. They have a significant House majority. They have a significant Senate majority. So what comes next? Well, the Democrats are vowing to abolish ICE and pass universal health care and all the rest.
Speaker 5Must unrig this economic system that only benefits the top 1%. We must pass universal health care. I will fight to abolish ICE.
Speaker 6And we will rip ICE. And we will rip ICE apart. We will end Donald Trump's reckless war in Iran. We will pass Medicare for all, once and for all.
Speaker 7Money out of? All of it. Money in your? All of it. Medicare for? All of it.
Speaker 1Okay. So again, what you're watching here is the Democrats, and this is the hope for Republicans, is that Democrats are going to overstep. This is what keeps happening over and over. A party wins, the person in charge of the party or the people decide. There are no limits on what they can now do. And they run as hard and fast as possible at the thing. And then it turns out that American politics is loosey with the football, and there's backlash to the backlash to the backlash to the backlash. But understand that the most extreme crop of candidates in American history just entered the House and the Senate. Abdulrahman El-Sayed is the new senator from Michigan, a full-on terror sympathizer. And here he was championing it last night.
Speaker 7My name is Abdulrahman Muhammad El-Sayed. And I am so proud and honored to stand here as your senator-elect from the great state of Michigan. Up until right about now, you might have noticed I always say, inshallah, or God willing, whenever the outcome of this race was mentioned. But today, tonight, we can turn that inshallah into alhamdulillah.
Speaker 1And get ready. This is what's coming. The American people just wanted to repudiate President Trump. And what they're going to end up with is they're going to look around, they're going to find themselves in bed with the most radical people in America. Daria-Liza Chevalier is a new congresswoman from New York. She gave her acceptance, speech in Spanish while dressed in the Palestinian terror garb, the keffiyeh. Ilhan Omar, who is currently under investigation for immigration fraud, she gave her victory speech, but not in English. Zahra Mamdani, the mayor of New York, who was not on the ballot last night, but who is the spiritual godfather of the DSA. He's out there saying that he's going to continue to lead the movement towards socialism.
Speaker 8The work that we began here on the streets of New York City is being carried forward tonight all across our country. On campuses in Detroit, Washington, to that final door, by phone bankers at home in Maine persuading neighbors near a bar, and by volunteers driving older voters to the polls in a muggy heat of terror. Let us continue to build the party we deserve with gratitude for the work completed and hunger for all we still have left to do. Because now, two years later, the air feels different. The moment feels urgent. And the opportunity was in our grasp. Two years later, the air feels different. Two years later, the air feels not only that we have a city to win, not only that we have a state to win, but also that we have a country to win.
Speaker 1Again, this is where the Democrats are going. Representative Ro Khanna, who is a radical congressman from California, he's out there saying, don't worry, guys, DEI is back. I told you, you know, woke was always in a sort of soft form of remission, but it's kind of come back hotter than ever.
Speaker 9Tonight, DEI is back as America celebrated diversity and inclusion, likely three black governors, the first Latina governor in Texas, the first Muslim American senator, the first gay senator. I love this America.
Speaker 1Barack Obama put out a tweet that, yeah, again, he is the great liar of our time. Tonight, the American people sent a clear message. They want a politics that brings people together rather than divides them and leaders who offer concrete solutions to the challenges they face. He says, well, this administration has another two years in office. Our job now is to roll up our sleeves, make changes wherever we have the power to do so, prevent further damage and lay the groundwork for the future. And what does that mean? It means the normie Democrats will move in the direction of the DSA. Hakeem Jeffries, he's out there already making nice with them.
Speaker 10And so let me just simply say, so the communities that raised me back at home, we made it. Brooklyn, we made it. House Democrats have taken back control of the United States Congress. We're going to fight for an affordable America. We're going to end this national nightmare, and we're going to continue America's long, necessary, and majestic, march toward a more perfect union. God bless all of you. God bless our amazing candidates. God bless the United States of America.
Speaker 1And again, what is that actually going to look like in practice? Well, it's going to look like prosecutions. Congressman Robert Garcia, who's going to chair the Government Oversight Committee, he put up a tweet saying, lawyer up. He's already prepping.
Speaker 3Scott Galloway on the pivot pod. I mean, I like Scott, but this is pretty wild.
Speaker 1Here he was yesterday saying that Elon Musk should be executed. "We have
Speaker 11begun believing through this ridiculous, unhealthy, and dangerous idolatry of innovators that they get to live by an entirely different standard. Elon Musk is a traitor to the West. We lined up the Rosenbergs against a wall. This is a traitor to the West, and he should be held to the same standards as every
Speaker 1other traitor in the West." If this is the direction Democrats move, they will overstep. So let's look forward to what this means for 2028. So Elon Musk jokingly tweeted that data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now, meaning Elon spent an awful lot of money on this election. Texas was a total wipeout for the Republicans. They lost all four Texas Supreme Court seats. They lost the governorship. They lost the Senate seat. They lost the Railroad Commission seat where Beau French made an ass of himself. Okay, but what does this mean for the future? Well, I want to start with this. It's dark, man. It's terrible. Terrible day if you're a conservative. Bad day. A lot of deep red states that went blue last night. South Carolina and Kansas and Texas and even places that didn't quite go blue came shockingly close to doing so. Tennessee, Florida. But this is not the end of the story. There's a tendency whenever your side loses to think, that's it. It's over. It's all done. And then when your side wins, you think, that's it. It's over. It's all done. It is not. I've been in politics for too long for that. Yeah, I'm old enough to remember in my childhood when Bill Clinton won in 1992. And two years later, the Republicans, for the first time in 40 years, took over the Congress. I'm also old enough to remember in 2000, when after eight long years of the Clinton administration, the Bush administration came in. And I'm old enough to remember when George W. Bush won a victory in 2004. And by 2006, the Democrats had taken over. And by 2008, Barack Obama was president. And I remember when two years after that, the Republicans blew him out in the Congress. and I think we're all old enough to remember. When in 2016, Barack Obama left office having to hand the keys to Donald Trump. And then when Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden, and then when he won again. So in other words, this is not the end of the story. It hurts. It's really bad. There are a lot of twists and turns here. And there are a lot of players in the game. Our friends and sponsors over at Calche, they're looking at the U.S. presidential election winner. The favorite right now is John Ossoff from Georgia. Ossoff had a really good election night last night. He's a good looking sort of Obama-esque figure in Georgia. I still have my doubts that Democrats are going to nominate somebody of Jewish extraction for their nomination. But Ossoff is leading at 18 percent. But J.D. Vance is at 15 percent. And the vice president of the United States and Republican. So a lot of uncertainty out there. It's still really, really, really early, in other words. Well, here was the vice president talking. He's talking about his own low approval rating and the approval rating of the administration.
Speaker 12Your approval rating is currently underwater. Do you think you have enough time in the administration to turn that around? I don't think that too much about that stuff. First of all, that stuff's all based on polling that we found a number of times in the past have been untrue. But I just try to do my job. And obviously the American people can make the judgments they're going to make. We just need to do good things for the American people. And if we do that, I think the politics will work itself out.
Speaker 1OK, well. In order for the politics to work itself out, you're going to have to look at the actual demographics on the ground. The biggest issue for the Republicans going forward is not a state level issue. I think in a presidential election, again, presidential electorates look different than midterm electorates. In a presidential election, Texas is unlikely to go blue. It's possible, but it's unlikely. What you have to look at is the demographic swings and you have to form a coalition where the votes are. And this means taking different tacks. So just to take an example, the Hispanic vote last night went heavily against the Republicans. Hispanics voted Harris plus six in twenty twenty four. They voted Democrat plus twenty seven in twenty twenty six. That swing consisted of two point seven million net votes. And those were heavily concentrated in Texas, which is why Texas went blue. Gen Z men who everyone is very focused on. They voted D plus thirty three last night after voting Trump plus one in twenty twenty four. But they are a shrinking percentage of the electorate. There aren't that many of them. So that swing was about two million. Net votes. Millennial men. They swung to the left as well. They went Trump plus twenty in twenty twenty four and R plus six in twenty twenty six. So they shifted fourteen points to the left, but still majority Republicans. Again, there are places for Republicans to fish. And the electorate is aging. So, again, everyone likes to focus on the young in the elections. But the reality is that thirty five percent of the electorate in twenty twenty six was
Speaker 3over the age of sixty five. And so. Again, is this the end of the story? No, but there's not a lot of room for error.
Speaker 1I'm going to show you a very scary map now. This is a map of what a presidential election could look like if Republicans don't figure things out. OK, this is if Texas turned blue, this is assuming Arizona turns blue, Georgia turns blue, North Carolina stays blue, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Hampshire all go blue. If that were to happen, Democrats. But have a three eighty two to one fifty six electoral college advantage, which is scary. I get it. I'm it's terrifying because the Democrats are a party that is out of control. There are there's a permission structure for pretty much every piece of radicalism. And but listen, I have faith in the Democrats are screwed up. I have faith in them. They do it every time. I have faith that they will do a bunch of dumb things that make them more unpopular. But that's not enough. That's not enough. The GOP can't just be the anti-democratic party party. That's that's not enough. We tried that in this election cycle. It turns out that unaffordability, chaos and corruption is a bad formula, even if you're running against a pro terror candidate like Abdul El-Sayed or a kind of nutty person like James Tallarico. So Republicans need to offer something new. Here's the thing. We are we're reaching the end of the age of Trump. Trump still has two years in office. He's still the president with all the power that entails. And that means he's going to have an awful big say in what happens for the next couple of years. But. The conversation that's being had. In the halls of power right now. And I think homes across America is what ought the conservative movement to look like. If there is a conservative movement. I was fragmented by the Trump years for sure, because Trump is a non-ideological president and a non-ideological person. But what must Republicans do? Well, why don't we start from what we know? If this election was, as I suggest, about unaffordability, chaos and corruption. We have to be not chaotic. Let's start with that. You start that. We can't be chaotic. There was a time in American politics where dignity actually mattered. It doesn't mean you have to be inauthentic, but it does mean that randomly bouncing from place to place while pretending that the laws of political gravity do not apply. That is not a way to build coalitions that have durable and lasting effect effect. You can't you can't do that. You actually have to have a policy. You have to calmly implement that policy. You have to make people incrementally buy into that policy. There's a sort of conservatism of character. That has been lost over the course of years, largely because, of course, the radicalism of the left has driven people to the idea that you in this moment, we must do everything all at once. Right now, the problem is the American people rebel against that, and then they undo everything that you just tried to do. Incrementalism. Gradualism. Building of consensus. These are things you have to do. You have to be solid about how you approach policy. You can't just bounce from tree to tree, picking every. Apple from every tree. On affordability. We have to actually talk about what creates affordability, not a basket of policies and not a bunch of bull about how you're going to soft sell. Welfarism, but just Republican version. We have to actually talk openly about what creates affordability. What creates affordability on planet Earth is private property and equal rule of the law and free markets at home that generate new wealth. We have to actually talk openly about what creates affordability on planet Earth is private property and equal rule of the law and free markets at home that generate new wealth. Not gigantic social welfare systems, not ignoring long term debts. It means on the foreign policy front stability. It means moral decisiveness. It means you're going to enter a war. You win it and you win it as fast as humanly possible. It means that we do have an interest in maintaining the freedom of the seas and the lanes of commerce. Right. That's the stuff that creates affordability. It means not inflating the currency because you wish to spend or because you're too cowardly to take on social programs that are already bankrupt. And on corruption, it means that you have to wipe it out completely and fight it everywhere you see it, even when it's on your own side. You can't wink and nod at it just because
Speaker 3pursuit of power. So you might put those these way. Truth. Freedom. Virtue. You could do that. You could do that. That is what Republicans need to do. Someone needs to articulate these messages. The president is a gut check patriot.
Speaker 1And that gut check patriotism was a wonderful antithesis to Barack Obama's gut check anti patriotism. Barack Obama had a sort of articulate worldview that he would never quite say about America's place in the world. And President Trump came in. He said, listen, I love the flag. I love apple pie. I love America. I love motherhood. I love baseline America. And you know what? That impulse is a good impulse. But whatever comes next has to explain why. What about America is good? What about America is the thing that matters? Not just that the left is threatening. Sure. What is it they're threatening? What is the thing we have to maintain? You cannot challenge socialism with softer socialism. You cannot challenge foreign policy cowardice with slightly lesser foreign policy cowardice. You cannot challenge. A. Bizarre social policy that basically values libertinism by saying that the real problem is our economic system. You can't. That is not. It's a dog. It's not going to hunt. Now, maybe that's a conversation we'll be at. Listen, everyone will argue about it. I really yell about it. But the reality is that what the American people are crying out for, and it's you can't take this election out of context. I described earlier how we're bouncing place to place in the elections. We are every couple of years. We're just bouncing. Like a ping pong ball. What the American people are seeking, what they are seeking from their political class is predictability, stability, and abiding belief in basic American principles like freedom and truth and virtue. That is what they are asking for. They are begging for it. And if they don't find it here, they'll shift over there. And when they don't find it there, they'll shift back over here. And that will continue until morale improves. The beatings will continue until morale improves. So to all the Democrats who think this. It's the end of the road. It is not. Don't worry. You guys will screw it up. And there will be a backlash to that. But to my fellow Republicans and conservatives who actually care about the future of the country and care about America's place in the world and care about what we look like, not just a year from now or six months from now, but a hundred years from now. It's time to get real about the things that ought to motivate us to be in politics in the first place. What are the values that we hold dear? What are the truths that we hold to be self-evident? You know, in the Declaration of Independence. It talks about truths. It says we hold these truths to be self-evident. That does not mean that the truths of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are in fact self-evident. That's not what that means. It doesn't mean that anyone at any time can reason their way to the principles of the American Declaration. What it means is. That for our country to function, there are certain principles that must be held in such high regard that violation of them would be to violate the sacred. And those principles, again, I suggest are truth, freedom, and virtue. That's where it is. And if you're not preaching those things, if what you're preaching instead is venality, casual Schmittian oppositionalism, if what you're preaching is corruption for my friends and the law for my enemies, if what you're preaching is cowardice against our enemies abroad and claims that that cowardice is somehow enriching to Americans at home, if that is the stuff that you're preaching, that is not, maybe you'll win power on that basis. People win power on a lot of bases. As we saw last night, there are a lot of awful people who can win high power in the United States. But the whole point of politics is to preserve the things that matter. What are those things that matter and how are Republicans going to stand up for them? That's the big question. Already, folks, the show continues right now. I'm going to take some of your questions in the mailbag. I know, disappointing. But we're going to talk about all of it. You can only get that if you're a Daily Wire member. And let me just tell you, with the Democrats winning yesterday, with that day, I'm just telling you, you're going to want to be part of the opposition because let's be real about this. The fight continues and it's going to have to be stronger than ever. We are fighting that fight every single day here. We have great content, new hosts that are coming. Please join the fight. It's really important. If you're not a member, become one. Use code Shapira. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.
Speaker 13We'll see you next time. 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. You'll break. Today is your opportunity to demonstrate your loyalty to the people. We'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.
Speaker 1Maybe. Maybe. SimpliSafe's smart, AI-powered outdoor cameras watch for potential threats and alert. A live US-based security agent. If somebody is approaching your home, you would like a response before they ever get inside. Head on over to SimpliSafe.com/SimplySafe. SimplySafe.com/SimplySafe. That's SimplySafe.com/Shapiro for their biggest savings of the year. Please write in the Ben Shapiro short checkout to let them know we sent you SimplySafe ahead of crime in real time. That's SimplySafe. SimplySafe.com/Shapiro for their biggest savings of the year. That's SimplySafe.com/Shapiro.
PodcastTranscript AI