The election results represent a seismic shift that surpasses even the speaker’s worst forecasts, with Texas flipping blue and a dramatic surge in Democratic gains across key swing states. This outcome underscores a deepening political realignment driven not by ideological purity but by economic pain—especially rising gas prices and inflation—along with a significant generational shift among young white men who have decisively moved toward the Democratic Party. The speaker reflects on the enduring power of personality in politics, noting that Donald Trump’s success stemmed from his disruptive, transgressive style and his ability to break political taboos, such as open discussion of immigration and trade. However, this model is now challenged by the Republican Party’s inability to produce a viable ideological or leadership successor. The political system appears to be fundamentally broken, with voters prioritizing emotional resonance over policy coherence, and parties failing to offer a shared vision of American identity. The speaker warns that the Democratic majority may overreach, leading to a backlash and renewed political instability. Meanwhile, a broader trend of populist resistance—seen in Europe and emerging in the U.S.—suggests a movement toward conservative values and a backlash against mass immigration and political leftism. Ultimately, the future of American politics hinges on whether leaders can move beyond personality-driven politics and instead establish a clear, unifying set of values that reflect the nation’s enduring hopes and fears.
I thought that it was going to be, you know, like a punch in the face, and actually it was like being kicked directly in the crotch repeatedly by a robot. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> You, Drew. >> No, I think, you know, I always feel that hope is a better strategy than despair. So I thought I left open the possibility that things might go well or might go less badly than I thought. This is worse than my worst expectations. I thought we were going to get a 50, you know, this is going to be bad. >> It lasts until we don't cry. >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> It was not bad, was it? >> But also, oh. >> Yeah, it was, I was expecting to be bad, I'm always expecting everything to be bad, and I usually am right. So that's one way, one way to ensure that you're usually right is just to expect everything to not be good, because it usually isn't. But I didn't think, I mean, look, Texas flipping entirely blue was not something that I thought was going to happen. >> Yeah, I can. >> So it was even worse than I thought. And listen, if there's any consolation in all this, and I think you have, you get a little desperate searching for consolation in these moments. So this is, and this is consolation that cuts both ways. However, things change quickly. We do know that. And so, I mean, you look at, like at 2024, I mean, we were in this, we were here. And the jubilation that we all felt, and that's, many people in the country felt 2024. And you look at how quickly just this thing, just fell off of a cliff, collapse. So what that tells you is that, you know, it could happen the other way. I mean, this moment, this blue tsunami, and it feels like the Democrats have taken a stranglehold on the country, and they have Texas and they have everything. I mean, it's possible that in 2028, we're going to look back on 2026 and be like, that feels like it was 200 years ago. I said, always looks darkest just before it goes pissed like this is friendly fire. You know, I think we have to go back though, this is a huge transitional moment, and it's going to last another 10 years, at least. This is the moment, first of all, my generation is dying, you know, I'm afraid they might take me with them, but hopefully, hopefully, they'll leave me behind, who knows. But I think, you know, it's going to be realignment and moments like this radical show up on both sides. I hate to make the comparison because I don't think we're in that situation, but this is what happened in the 30s in Europe, you know, when there's this opening in the middle, the socialist rise on one side and the fastest one rise on the other side in our country. They're both the same people, but still, you know, that's the thing that happens in usually the center reforms. How it reforms, is it reforms around an individual, an individual comes along, the people are not going to give you a vision. The people cannot give you a vision, leaders give you a vision, you know, the leaders can only lead the people where they'll go, but it's the leaders who provide the vision. Trump's vision was too chaotic, to, you know, centered on himself, but it was urgently important. He was God-sentent, as we know, God-sentent is the weirdest people when he wants to help out. I mean, he broke, when we talked about the border that he fixed, we've talked about other things that he did, but the main thing he did, and if he did nothing else, he would still be an important man in a good way, is he broke the stranglehold on speech, and he did it with our help, you know, he did it with the help of the new media, but he broke the stranglehold on speech. And that means that a lot of people are saying things that they couldn't say before. So you have people making jokes about retards again. I think that's a good thing. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think we should always be joking about everything, but you also have people saying, hey, socialism might be a good idea. And, you know, you have these 20-year-olds who don't know crap from Shinola. You know, they're sitting around going like, yeah, socialism might be a good idea. You know, and so we're going to go through this stuff. It's going to, it's going to go back and forth, but you hope that the center reforms around somebody that we can tolerate who loves America. I think the biggest thing that's happening, and I think this is, you know, across all parties right now, is that President Trump was, and remains, and has always been a gigantic middle finger to whatever it is people were pissed off at. In 2016, it was just, we don't like him at a Clinton, we don't like Barack Obama, we don't like what's going on. Here's a giant middle finger. He had no policies to speak of in 2016, I mean, who's literally on pretty much every side of every issue. And then he sort of formed a series of policies almost by happenstance and because of the people surrounding him and largely because of oppositionality to Democrats coming after him and him reacting to that. And then from 2020 to 2024, you got the backlash against Trump one is the Empire Strikes Back. And then you got sort of the return to the Jedi moment here, but you know, the story just, it never ends that way. And so it was a rejection of the rejection of the rejection. And at no point has anyone in the last, I would say, you know, maybe 30 years in American politics provided a sort of cohesive version of what our politics ought to look like. How we ought to approach politics. It feels like a grab bag of policies built around a person now, and you're right. The great sadness of my life, it truly is a saddest of my life, is the recognition as I came into my forties that people don't follow policy. They follow people. Yeah. It's a very, very sad thing. They don't follow ideas. They follow humans. And that's a difficult thing to reconcile with what we do every day when we're talking about policy and ideas. But that's why I think it's easy to over read an election like this and read it in a wide variety of ways, right? People like me where I was supportive of the initial Iran war, even though I was not supportive of the MOU and the delay in the Iran War after April. I'm going to say what was the tariffs? And people who hated the Iran War, I'm going to say it was the, the tariffs were great. It was the Iran War. And reality was like all the things and none of the things in a certain sense, it was all the things and it was the perception that President Trump is disconnected from the American public in a way that he was not in 2015, 2016, and that he is, and that he's sort of lost touch with the public that wanted to give him the ability to do the things. And that's why, you know, what I think is that it's not so easily corrected, because I don't think it's a matter of just you pull this lever, you change this policy and suddenly your popularity springs back into being, I'm struggling to think of a time when a president dipped into the authorities and then rose back up into the 50s, certainly this has not happened in the last half century. And so what does that mean? It means what we're really talking about here, which is what comes next. And that's the open question is really sort of what comes next and part of what's going to define that is how crazy the Democrats go. If there was one silver lining here, it's that the Democratic victory was so overwhelming and so large that I'm not sure they can talk themselves into moderation. I think they're going to go for a bit. I'll make a prediction on what comes next. I don't think that Trump is done as the leader of the GOP. I think he remains the leader. I think he'll remain the leader through 2028 and even after. I think that he can plausibly at least say I wasn't on the ballot and so don't blame me, blame these other guys. And you can say, well, he was campaigning for them and well, it was your policies. I think he will credibly be able to say that. So I think he's the figure, he still sucks all the oxygen out of the room. I think there was this in those early days, in the kind of incoherit crazy days of 2016. Everyone said people just voted for Trump for his personality, not for his policies. But he did differ from the GOP. When the whole GOP was ideologically free trade, he was proposing protectionism. And the whole GOP was in favor of legal migration. He was calling for immigration restriction and calling migrants rapists and murderers in that resonated. So I still, I do think he offered this policy alternative in a way that was more coherent than people give him credit for. So I think he continues to hold that. I just wonder if there's a structural problem now that you see it in the UK too. How many prime ministers is the UK? That's like something. Like a billion in the last 20 years. You think in the United States, we had a Democrat House of Representatives for 40 years. Now it seems to switch back and forth all the time. We had Ronald Reagan win two terms, followed by a third term for George H.W. Bush. Now we go from the end of Obama to Trump for a term, then Biden for a term, then Trump for a term. And who know, right now it's not looking very good for the Republican in 28. I wonder if there's just this deeper structural issue where we're not getting what we want. What we want is cohesive societies with that are high trust, with economic flourishing that we got used to at the end of the 20th century. And that just isn't happening anymore. Anywhere in the Anglosphere, really anywhere in the West. And I just wonder if political instability is the inevitable consequence for the foreseeable future? I think, first of all, Trump, by default, will remain the leader of the Republican Party for now. But if that remains the case into 2028 and beyond, as you said, then the Republican Party has no future. The leader of the Republican Party cannot be in the future in 80-year-old, lame-duck, unpopular president. It just can't be. So the process now has to be finding who the new leader is going to be. And as I said, on the other show, I mean, even if we had performed well during the midterms, I would still be the case. But as to people follow ideas and not people, I think the answer is kind of both. I think people follow people who have ideas they believe in. But the ideas aren't part of it. It's not just the person. And so Trump, in 2016, people were rallying around, yeah, there was the personality, there was Trump himself, the blustery personality, and all of that. He was funny and all these things, and he could speak separately, and the rallies are really entertaining. But he did have very simple, understandable, intuitive ideas, drain the swamp, build the wall. That's probably the two big ideas people rally behind. And so it was this guy with these simple, understandable kind of eloquent in the
their simplicity, good ideas that people were rallying around and I think I totally agree to that. But I think that the problem is trying to abstract Trump. So you're right, it's a combination of the person, but the person is a combination with their own ideas, which is why Trump is sort of one of one and any attempt to either abstract a philosophy from him and then map it onto another candidate is likely to fail. And so that's going to be the question for the next person who is the leader of the Republican party or of a conservative movement and not only what policies are Americans likely to believe, but what are, who is the person who best reflects that in his own person? And Trump was because he was a throbbing middle finger, the ones that tended to reflect were the things you weren't allowed to say, right? Don't open the borders wide and just let tons of people in here. That's bad, you shouldn't do that. Or maybe we shouldn't trans the kids, like all those things where you would say sort of the obvious thing that was transgressive, that united with Trump as a human. And I don't know if there's anyone in the Republican party who's sort of capable of capturing that in the same way. And so I think that what you're getting is a bunch of kind of nerds in the back room trying to recreate the Trump from a bunch of like spare parts and I just don't, I don't know that that's going to work. But you know, there's an expression in England, you come at the hour, come at the man. And I think, you know, it's really Tolstoy and it's really about Leo Tolstoy, you know, like Tolstoy said, that men do nothing, it's the age that raises the man. That's not true. There's a way that both things happen at once. An Napoleon comes along, when an Napoleon is called for, you know, and I used to tell Andrew Breitbart, he used to say, I would be nobody, if the internet hadn't been invented. And I'd say Fred Astaire would be nobody, if the American musical hadn't hit that point when he was dancing. And so I think that that's the thing you're looking for. You can never see it coming, nobody saw Trump coming, nobody saw him coming. And you know, the one thing I disagree with you about though, Trump has been saying a lot of the things he's saying now for 50 years. I mean, you know, that we're getting bad deals, we need to make better deals, we need to get rid of NAFTA. You know, all those things. No, I'm not just really bad. The only point that I've made about his policies is that when you try to, say, look at tonight, which was, it is Astaire area. And you say, okay, let's look at the things that made him unpopular. Everybody is now going to pick and choose the thing they like. Of course. They made him. It wasn't that. I agree with that point. I personally don't like this thing, it must have been that thing that made it happen. And that's why I say like in the end, the way that voters think about things is I just don't like this. Right. Like all of this. Like I just don't like all of this. And so, sitting there and sort of pulling strand out by strand and being like, okay, I'm going to pull out this piece of the Django tower and I'm going to put this piece back in. That's not the way that actual politics works, which is something that Trump always understood, right? That is something that Trump understood maybe better than any politician in my lifetime, is that you can't, that politics is not the art of stacking Django blocks. It's the art of just being all of the things it wants. Yeah, you know, I didn't wonder because we've talked about the Iran war obviously a lot tonight. But one part we haven't touched on, yes, okay, the Iran war raised oil prices and diesel prices and it has all these downstream effects. But there is this kind of semiotic aspect to it, which is I wonder if voters saw in the very fact of the Iran war, an image of the Iraq war, which America is all this political trauma. Like to what, to what degree did that just lift something in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan, you know, you forget like 20 years in Afghanistan and then it ends in this disaster. I mean, when I went over to Afghanistan, I came back and said, this is terrible. We've got to get out of here. There's no country here to save and all this. The Iraq war was overstepping, even though I thought many good things actually came out of that weirdly enough. But I still thought, you know, we got hit really badly and it was traumatic. And I think we overreacted. I think we thought we could do more, you know, the W idea that we were going to go over and turn, you know, the Middle East into a flowering democracy. It was just absurd, you know, and we were so upset and we were so angry with what had happened. You know, I guess it made sense to follow that, but these are the sorts of things that do have to turn back. If America first means isolationism, you can forget it. You can forget it. We're an empire. We're never going to be isolationist ever again. That's not happening ever again until we're not an empire anymore. And I think so, so you got to forget that. But really, we need strategic alliances where people do the things we need them to do. We need to be a new kind of empire. We've never wanted to conquer people. We've never taken over their countries, but we need to at least know that they will go out and fight for the things that we care about. And one of the things that is truly dangerous right now is I think we're losing Europe. I think Europe is dead and I think really it's just being devoured by the creatures that come and devour the dead. But then we have to know who is going to stand for us against Russia and Europe, against China and the China C's and against Iran in the Middle East. I think all of that's true. I also think that there's a fundamental disconnect in the American mind as to what we think is possible in war, how it's fought and how you won. And so in the same way, I think this is also happening and this is sort of your question about systems and the fact that we keep bouncing party to party. The case I've been making for a long time on the show and elsewhere is that the reason we're bouncing party to party is because you've got a bunch of politicians who are running their mouth and delivering promises that no human can keep in the system that is built to not keep those promises. Right. Meaning we created a system of checks and balances to prevent specifically harsh, fast-moving action. I'll go even further though, because this is a very important point. The politicians are promising they're going to fix the migration problem, but you can't fix the migration problem when you have a welfare state with zillions of dollars of entitlement. Right. This is right. So, yeah, so you just can't have all the things it wants. And so I feel like the same thing happens with regard to the Iran War. And I thought that President Trump had a fundamental, different understanding because of his opposition to the Iraq war, which is, as you say, a major factor in why he won in 2016, which was at the time a very taboo position, was that this is why I, when he went in and did we didn't Iran. And he said, like, I'm going to move fast, I'm going to break things and then I'm going to get out, which is essentially what he did with midnight hammer the year before. I was figuring that it was going to be a campaign that was much along those lines. And I think that the reality is that if you're trying to deliver an outcome, like say, for example, the toppling of regime, which was always, I think, the sort of Satovote thing you're not supposed to say that we were trying to do, but we weren't really trying to do, but we're kind of trying to do, like, if you're going to do that, then you have to be actually respectful of the way that certain events come about and what your actual goal is. And if you don't do that, the American people are not wrong to be disappointed in you for not achieving all of that. And so, to me, that's the mistake of the, like, if you're going to do it, win, move fast and win. By the way, I apply that critique to literally every ally of the United States as well. This is my critique, actually, even if anyone in Israel is, if you're going to go, go hard, go fast and win and don't take two years to drag it out. But the same thing is true, is true with regard to this. And so, so there's a question on the consequences of your policy, Kalshiav, will Trump be impeached and removed from office? 31%. Yes. That's to the first part, no to the second part. Yeah. So, I mean, that seems like easy money. Then the only way that you could possibly see something like that happening is if they really have a major corruption scandal and you get a bunch of Republicans who are now scared to death that they're about to lose their seats in a swing state. But who are you going to get? Yes. They aren't that many swing states. Right. Susan Collins goes down. I don't know if we've had an update. Murkowski. So you could probably pick up Murkowski. Yeah. Now you're 56. You know, Kornin had Kornin held on in Texas. You could see him being swayed on something like that. But he's out. And one of these guys are out. So Johnson's not going to do it. No chance. Yeah. So I just think. Not to mention they removed Trump. They're putting Vance in office. Yeah. But they give you the presidency to Vance. Yeah, right. Right. So I don't think they'd be thrilled about that. Other one from Kalshi. Will Trump resign during this term? No. 27% chance. That's easy. That feels like easy money. Yeah. That's right. That production market. Take the under on it. No way. No way. No. So we've got decision desk HQ has called the Minnesota race for Peggy Flanagan and Democrat nice feeding Michelle to FOIA. So just a reminder for people who forget Peggy Flanagan, she was the one who wore the t-shirt threatening transgender terrorism against all normal people. Like that. We are talking about actual Antifa levels of now elected. Yeah. Again, I think that this is the biggest thing here is that Democrats will undoubtedly overreach. And so all of the pessimism of today is based on the fact that tonight was just horseshit. It was just terrible. But like, I've been, we've all been around long enough to remember several, as you said earlier, Matt. To remember several cycles of this. I remember in 2004, I thought Republicans were never to lose again and by 2006 Nancy Pelosi was speaker. And then I remember that Barack Obama in 2012 wins. Yeah. And by 2016 Donald Trump is president. No. And so like, it feels like we're never going to win again. And that's not true. We will win again. It's just going to take the Democrats completely going off the reservation. Well, here's the problem with the problem and it's true that they'll definitely overstep the hope then is that they will face a political consequence for it. But I'm not sure if that's true because the really dark reality here is that, look, what have Democrats and what has was the left done for the last year? I mean, they have been more extreme than we've ever seen them. They have been openly celebrating the death of one particular conservative Charlie Kirk, but that's the murder. That's the murder. Yes, the murder of Charlie Kirk and calling for the deaths of many more conservatives. And they've been doing that. And apparently there is so far no political consequence for that whatsoever. Now I've been awarded with this. I think I think we're missing though. I do think we're missing this bigger movement. The West is moving to the right. If you see what could have fooled me tonight, I get it, but they're not voting. I don't believe that they are voting for leftist policies. I believe they're voting against what we have in this moment. And if you look at Glenn Beck was the guy who brought it up, what happened in Poland.
You know, the reason that happened in both -- what happened in France? I haven't heard anybody else say this, but I know it's true that what happened in France was a reaction to the visit of Pope Leo. He came and 800,000 people said mass in the symbol of the revolution, the Plasdola Concord, and the left moved in on these minor demonstrations and turned them into a riot because they saw that there is a movement moving toward religion, moving toward tradition. And I think that's what's happening in Poland. This was basically a coup in Poland, which is not like Guatemala, it's like Poland. And they know they know that the people are moving to the right, they're doing everything they can to shut down the AFD in Germany, to shut down any -- to Marine Le Pen in France. Yeah. It's not happening here in the United States. What's that? It's about to. The United States moving to the right? Yes. Oh, yeah. What's here? I mean, what are the indicators of that? It's moving to the right in terms of the populist right. But what are the indicators that we're moving to the right? Because the indicators I see is everything's pointing to the left. No, I don't mind. I think this is an interagnam, and I think the best historical analog right now is the recent history of Great Britain. So I think that what you watched in Great Britain was the conservatives' war and power. They got -- for a long time. And then they got sclerotic and not particularly good at their jobs. And then labor, radical labor, wipe them out, wipe them out, and within a year, labor was radically unpopular. And now the conservatives in Nigel Farage are on the rise again. And I think that that is very likely to happen here. The real reason why Democrats want tonight is because they don't have power. That's the reason they want tonight, because none of their policies are being implemented. They -- right now, whoever is in power gets relaxed. If people are pissed off, they punish the party in power. And so this couldn't have happened, I think, in a non-midterm election. In fact, it didn't happen in a non-midterm election that was two years ago. And midterm election is always a referendum on the party in power. And because this is a referendum on the republicans, and people are pissed off, you get this. And maybe that referendum lasts on for another couple of years and sweeps into democratic term number one for somebody in 28, but I have no faith. Like, right now, if I had to put money on 28, I'd put money on the Democrats. If I had to put money on 32, I'm not sure that I'd put money on the Democrats. >> And it won't be worth anything at that point. >> But what you said before is really important. People were voting for in Britain again and again, was stop bringing in the immigrants. They can't stop bringing in the immigrants, because they need them to support the welfare state. Nobody wants to give up the welfare state. So what we need is a vision of what we do with the welfare state. And I think I was talking, again, to Henry Olson, who, by the way, really needs to be talked to more. I think we should hire him practically, but he's a brilliant guy. And one of the things he invented Donald Trump before there was Donald Trump, he said that the Republicans have forgotten that Ronald Reagan was a man of the people, that he was a man who actually supported a welfare state that would keep people from falling through the cracks. And I asked him, so what does that look like now? And he said, well, it looks like reforming the welfare state, so it takes care of the truly needy and lets the rich take care of themselves. >> Right. >> I mean, I'm collecting Social Security. I deserve it. I paid into it. But that's not the way it should work. I mean, I don't need Social Security. And I love it because it's just somebody sending me money, but that's not right. We need to reform. We need to stop talking about this ideal world where we get rid of the welfare state because it's not going to happen. >> You know, I spoke to a billionaire about 10 years ago, and he was complaining about the same problem. He said, every single month, the government sends me a check for $700, because I'm a parent he had younger kids, he was, you know, he was a hacker guy. He says he sends me a check for $700. I'm a billionaire. I spent $700 a month on tennis shoes. I do not need the government to send me $700. Now, of course, the left never wanted that, the entitlements to be means tested because then it would make it a welfare program and it would be easier to cut, rather than one that we've all paid into. So, yes, look, all of these things are going to be on the table. President Trump just spoke to Fox News, said, first line, a part of it was Iran. So, this is Trump acknowledging, to my knowledge, for the first time that Iran would- >> Well, he said he didn't care that it was going to do this, but he said it was going to do it, yeah. >> A part of it was Iran, he says, I don't think it was the war. So, he says, a part of it was Iran, the next ends, I don't think it was the war. I think it was the gas prices, meaning the consequences of the war. I can work with them on a lot of things, the Democrats, or the Iranians, what's the difference? So, immigration is a big deal, and this is President Trump's thing about the Democrats. A lot of Democrats have called me in the last 20 minutes, actually. I've already spoken to certain leaders in the Democrat Party. We will work with the Democrats, I will consider doing whatever is good and appropriate for the country. >> Interesting. >> Well, he always makes this over, so he made this over, after he won in 2016, that he would actually work with the Democrats, and they proceeded just like that. >> Yes, yes. >> Like it gets, by the way. >> But it was great for us, it was great for us. >> No, they've learned nothing. And they're based demands, they not learn anything. And so, it'll get bad, again, by the way, that analysis is not wrong. The truth is, when he says it's the war in Iran, but it's not the war in Iran, it's the gas prices. He's correct. I mean, gas prices were at $2.50, no one would give a crap, right? That's the reality. Just be a thing happening far away that we don't really care very much about. >> And it is a big deal in rural areas with gas prices, and that's where our strength is. >> Of course. But, you know, again, when you look for, this would be like a normal evening, except for the fact that a bunch of truly red states that should not be in play now have to be considered in play. And the map for Democrats in 2028 becomes a very, very wide map, right? That's the problem, is that for the Republicans, they basically had to run an inside straight in the last several elections, right? You got to win Arizona, Georgia, we all know the map, and when Wisconsin and Michigan and pencil two of the three, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. That's a very narrow map, and there weren't a lot of other states that were opening up. Now, Democrats have about 8,000 ways that they can win in 2020. If Texas is open, if North Carolina is solidly Democrat, if Ohio is open again, and Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania are all open, Democrats have combos there that are just extraordinary. They have like an extraordinary number of combos there, and that's the real danger for whoever decides to run further, and then this puts, listen, I don't envy JD has position. I really don't. I was just going to ask, what is your advice now for any of the guys, whatever it is, four or five guys? I mean, so I think that there are certain guys where it's like they're only going to be able to get the nomination if they run this time, right? And they're, you're thinking about Governor DeSantis and Florida who already ran once. If he waits another four years, then he's been out of office for too long, and it's not really relevant. So Ron is going to run. The vice president, I just don't see, I think that there is a not unintelligent play where he says, listen, you know, this is, I've got a young, he makes an excuse. I've got a young family. And he's so young. Kids, he's a kid. He's a year older than I, he's a younger than I, I mean, he's a baby, he's a kid. And so he could easily, you know, again, we have the Cal sheet numbers here saying that JD is the favorite of 30% Rubio at 23 and DeSantis at 12. He should absolutely short sell Rubio. Like Marco is not going to run. He's not going to run. Why do you, why do you say that? Because, because number one, 2028 is likely a poison chalice, number two, if he runs against JD and JD runs and he loses to JD, he's toast. Yeah, he won't. Number three, if JD wins the nomination, he could still pick him as his VP, JD could lose him. He would still be the heir apparent. Number four, if JD runs loses and doesn't pick him, he could still be the heir apparent. So if you're Rubio, every math ends with, I'm not going to run. And so, you know, if, but if you're JD, that's a, that's a very hard call because you look at that map. You say, I'm running on the back of a president who's endorsement makes me the guy. But the only way I become the guys with his endorsement and he has a 32% approval rating. And he's got a bunch of policies. I don't necessarily agree with that I'm going to have to quasi own, but also quasi separate from him. And the minute I separate from him, president Trump is going to bop me on the head of the stick. That is a, that is a rough road. And so my, you know, I don't have, I wish, I wish I had an easy solution for the vice president. But, and the issue is we can sit here all day and say, well, actually, here's the reason why JD should wait for four years or eight years of this, but you know, the thing is, he's this close to the president. If I were, if I were the vice president, I'm running. Of course. Of course. Now we're never for him. Yeah. Look, he's young. He's very talented. He's very intelligent. His rise in politics is astounding, actually. And so I don't know that it's now or never, but it's kind of now, you know, I mean, it is, he was the vice president. I think the president actually just spoke to the Wall Street Journal, but they took the quote away from me. There it is. President Trump just spoke with the Wall Street Journal and hold on. Stop scrolling so much. Yeah. I want to read the report. He says, the president said he had no plans to make personnel changes inside his administration and he expressed support for defense sector bdegset who has led the war effort. I think he's terrific. Actually, President Trump said it's just the way the ball bounces. Sometimes Trump said of Tuesday's primary results, or sorry, the midterm results. So far. I think this is true. Yes. It would be, it would be, it would be, this is an important issue is getting you that lighter. I mean, it's just the way the ball bounces sometimes is not with regard to the ball is not supposed to bounce in this direction. But you can't. The ball is not supposed to bounce and make Texas blue. But to Trump's point, I think this is a good point. You cannot blame Pete Hegset because I agree with the Ron war. I mean, I actually think it would be wrong of him to fire Pete Hegset. I mean, I agree. Yeah. It has worth works for him. I mean, and there is a case to be made that let's assume for a second. Since the Ron war is obviously the big subject that everybody is talking about tonight, I think again, that the big underplayed subject will be the tariffs, which dramatically increased prices across the board and everyone pretends don't exist even though they are wildly unpopular. But we'll put that aside because nobody wants to talk about that. They were largely struck down, so it became kind of an
>> Yeah, but it didn't really, like the exit polls show 64% of Americans didn't like the tariffs and 63% set an effect in their business. So like not not great, but let's talk about the Iran more since it's more interesting in people like talking about it. >> So the tariffs did kind of affect Mayflower cigars too. We were able to eat the prices and maintain burrito prices for the consumers, but they're a problem for people for sure, but with regards to the Iran more. The question, let's say you're JD or let's say you're the president, is what you do now, right? Because nobody has a time machine. And it's fine. I mean, it's totally deserved and what happened happened and we can now analyze where we are now. Maybe we reverse the recommendations if things go well over the course of the next two days or something. >> Right. >> But if you're the president or you're the vice president, you have to start from the presumption that the Iranians are not going to sign any sort of deal because they clearly are not. I mean, they clearly are not interested in signing some sort of deal. And then the question becomes how do you get to a quasi-successful conclusion as fast as humanly possible? >> Yeah. >> It really is what it is, and because the faster the better, obviously, and the more successful the better, because Americans don't like losing wars. I know this is something that we tend to forget. And again, a lot of people who are sort of in the America first movement, so to speak, will say that just ending the war is sufficient. Just ending a war is not sufficient. If you end it and you lose, you become Joe Biden with Afghanistan. It doesn't actually, like ending it, you don't get credit for ending it. Just get credit from winning. >> You know, it's general patent during World War II gave this great speech to the Third Army, where he says America never can and never has lost a war. And the funny thing is, immediately after he said that, immediately after that war, with the exception of desert storm, we lost like every war that we've engaged in. >> I mean, imperial wars will like that, unfortunately. >> Yeah. >> You have to remember, even in the World War II took Adam Bombs, and we're not dropping them Adam Bombs on Iran, it's not happening. And I think the idea, the definition of the loss in a war changed or when a war changed, because no one will surrender anymore. >> Right. >> There are no regimes who are willing to get on the deck of an aircraft carrier and just be like, okay, you know what, I'm giving up the ghosts right now. >> I'm not fighting nations in the Middle East for fighting like weird moves. >> Tribal, yeah. >> Constellation, yeah. >> For sure, that's true. >> Yeah. >> And the truth is that in Korea, basically, we wanted to the extent that there is a South Korea. >> Yeah, right. >> It was a draw. >> It wasn't a tie for the South Koreans, it was a win for the South Koreans, it was a loss for the Norricks. But, you know, the reality is that the thing that we got out of World War II, in the same way that we have a unique and weird view of how the 1950s work, we're like, oh, that should be the normal. >> Yeah. >> And actually, that's very, very abnormal. >> Exactly. >> People look at World War II, they're like, ah, that's how a war should end. And let me explain, almost no wars in human history have ended the way World War II ended, with the full scale surrender of your opposition, and they just give up the ghost, and you actually just sort of manage their transition into the next thing. >> Right. >> That is not what happened at the end of World War I. There was an armistice at the end of World War I, and then total hell broke loose in all of the various countries ranging from Germany to Russia. >> No, no, no. >> There was World War II at the end of World War II. >> Yeah, that's exactly right. And before that, there was an Austro, there was a war in 1870 between the French and the Germans. And before that, there was a gigantic war at the beginning of that century, with the Napoleon running rampants across the continent. And so, I think that we have models in our head of how things should work that are based on absolute outliers that's true of World War II, it's true of the 1950s economy, which is not real. It is not a real economy because in order for that to happen, we have to destroy the rest of it. >> That's right. >> We have to destroy the rest of it. >> That's right. >> That's right. >> That's right. >> Where the union worker gets paid a days wage at $90,000,000. >> But there was a question, there was a question about Imperial America that really troubles me. I mean, in the old days, you went and you fought a war with the country, and then you installed the people you wanted to run it. We never do this. >> This is correct. >> And that's one of the wonderful things about us. I think it's a beautiful thing that the only thing we left, the only thing we left in Europe were our dead. That's what we left there. But at some point, at some point, we're now dealing with a Europe that is really not Europe. It's not, you know, I mean, the speech that Vance made and the speech that Rubio followed it with, we're right, you know, they're not, I mean, they're arresting more people for speaking in the UK than they are in Russia. And I think that that's like, how do we deal with that? This is our mother country. It's still our greatest anglosphere ally, but it's not a recognizable country in terms of its values. So I mean, we are, we stand alone at this moment. And we have to look to Asian, we have to look to, we have to keep the territory of Europe. Really Poland and Hungary and, you know, all of those eastern countries are the only people who are aligned with our values at all. And look what's happened there. Yeah. You know, I mean, obviously Hungary fell last year. And so it's kind of, and he's arrested, he's arrested his enemies too. Of course. Totally as predicted. As predicted. You know what? You're absolutely right. You said it at the time. I hate to say I told you so. No. But, but all to say, it's a rather bleak picture for the West. And now, you know, it's come here in a very acute form. But again, I just don't, I just don't, I also don't think that anyone on either side has made a robust argument for Americanism as an argument, as a fully fleshed out argument. President Trump makes an extraordinary emotional peel to Americanism, right, that just the love for flag, the love for country, just the kind of root patriotism, that for sure. But what are the actual values that make America America? President Trump can't do a paragraph on that. I agree. And you've seen it. You're one of the best spokesman for it. Right. And everybody hates you. Except for me. Except for me. I like notes. I think so. You're not. You should be careful. But I think there's a reason for that. And the reason for that is the minute you try to define a thing you create controversy. And until the American people are willing to get serious about defining the things that they actually are willing to do and want, they're not going to get those things and they're going to be perennially disappointed. If you refuse to define what you want from a war, you're not going to get it. And if you're refuse to define what sacrifices you're willing to undergo, you're not going to be able to make those sacrifices. And if you're not willing to acknowledge what economics is to me, you wish to live under. And whether it is good or not, then you're not going to get it. Yeah. If you want to say that you want to cut spending, but you also want an endless welfare state where we just pour gushers of money at you. And then we fund that by bringing in a bunch of illegal immigrants to work at low rent wages. Well, that gets a lot better. But isn't that the issue? You know, when it comes to even the idea of Americanism as an ideology, that creates a big problem because the big anxiety that we felt throughout, not only the Anglosphere, but Western Europe as well, well, all of Europe, actually, is mass migration, that the actual like people of our country have just changed radically. And we don't have kids anymore which ties into the welfare problem. And so I would say, look, I want to preserve the American nation. You know, I love my country. I love our way of life. Not just the values that I like those two, but I like hot dogs on the 4th of July. I like fireworks. Yeah. I don't know. No, that's important. The ineffable kind of stuff that we just do. And because of mass migration, that is changing in our country and elsewhere. People have a deep anxiety about that and they're right to have that anxiety. So then you try to distill the nation down to a set of ideas or some ideology. But the problem is one, I don't think nations can be reduced to that. And two, our opponents aren't signing on board. So even that doesn't quite work. That's the key thing, you know, I'm sure you know, Hillar, Bellox, theory that the Germans came, that Rome didn't fall, the German, it simply became the Catholic Church and the Germans came in and everybody said, oh no, the Germans are here, but the Germans wanted to be Romans. We're letting in people who don't want to be Americans, which is just a real big mistake. I think the huge problem here that we're just ignoring is a lot of Americans just don't want to be Americans. Yes. I mean, it's not just the problem of immigration. There's a problem of we've educated several generations of people, not to believe in America. And to hate America. But because nobody, nobody in authority, nobody in power is doing what you just said. Nobody is defining what it is America is. It's socialism is anti-feminist. And by the way, this is what the founders meant in the Declaration of Independence. When they said, we hold these truths to be self-evident. They were not saying that the truths were themselves self-evident. They're saying we hold these truths to be self-evident, meaning this is not up for debate. This right here is the stuff that's not up for debate. And if you don't agree, you should get out. Yeah. Right here. And so, yes, obviously a nation is the people that live in it. But that's not enough. And it's also not the idea, I'll agree. The ideas aren't enough. It has to be combined with the people who are willing to live by those ideas and join in the tradition and all those things. But the ideas are the fundamental because people change, people, their kids turn into socialists. They can be good Americans and their kids turn into little jackass socialists who vote for Abdul Al-Sayyad and Michigan and James Talorat go in Texas. Gen Z voted plus 48 for Democrats in the cycle. The vast majority of the people who voted in that cycle, I promise you, are children of Americans. Okay. And so, you've got right now that the Republican Party needs to, and someone needs to articulate what exactly are the principles that are supposed to bind us and do so in muscular fashion. And without the kind of like, what if we just soft sell what the Democrats are selling but a little bit less? Yeah. That's the problem. That is exactly the problem. Well, you know, there's also, we just find things in version. We define things negatively all the time as what we're against. We know what the conservatives are against, but they never really come out and say what they are saying. You know, our intrepid breka, breka from Michigan, she was reporting in Michigan at Abdul's campaign at course, she's interviewed a Muslim couple on the street today and that you can check it out on our social media channels. And they said, who do you vote for? We vote for Abdul Al-Sayyad. Okay. And what do you make of his view that men can become women and women can become men, he's gonna run a transit. The Muslim said, what do you talk about that men can be men? No, no, no. He supports transgenderism. Is it?
No, he cannot believe that, he's Muslim. He cannot believe that. And it was this beautiful video. I mean, so hilarious, but though dark. And you say, well, you know what? It's gonna be very easy to blame Muslims and Dearborn or whatever for Abdul Al-Sahed. That you can actually, 'cause his deepest base is like college educated whites. - Yeah, of course. - And he actually does it by the way. - It's both. And also the Dearborn Muslim is totally right. Abdul Al-Sahed does not believe in Trans English. - Yeah, that's right. Muslim who is lying to make common cause with people who want to trans the kids to destroy the civilization. - Well, this is the other way. - They're both right, in other words. - People want their leftist who's pretending to be a religious Muslim. - Yeah, for him, he's a religious Muslim. - If he's a Muslim, pretending to be a leftist or a leftist, pretending to be a Muslim, I actually don't know which is worse. We do, unfortunately, have more bad news. Some more calls to report CNN. - Yeah, there it is. - It's called "The Main Senate Race" as I. - Oh, no. - "Fear and Predicted." - Well, it's more of a name. - "Troy Jackson, who has defeated Susan Collins." - Wow. - And "Amazing Political Survivor." We all got irritated with a lot of her votes because she was playing a game. - Brett Kavanaugh would not be on the Supreme Court if they're not interested. - No, no, no. So I'm like a Susan Collins enjoyer and defender. She played a game very, very well. And even she, a total pro, like the varsity superstar athlete of playing politics, went down to Troy Jackson, who has two kids with his cousin. And B. Sue News also calls Pennsylvania's first district for a Democrat, Bob Harvey defeating Republican Congressman, Brian Fitzpatrick. - Yeah, I don't like Brian Fitzpatrick, but he was a huge squish in everything. - It seems hard to dismiss this as a sort of fleeting. Well, this is just how midterms go. It feels like something far more significant than that. And maybe it won't be. But I mean, as you pointed out, this is, there's a generational problem here. Gen Z is falling to the siren song of socialism. And so how does that play out in the long term? I'd like to think, as I said at the beginning, things change quickly. And so, you know, Trump was the most popular thing in the world of 2024 and now look at it and maybe it'll swing back the other way, pendulum swing. But the far more pessimistic view is that what we are seeing is the beginning of a generational shift that is only just beginning. And you hardly even want to consider what that means. - But the reason I'm hopeful is something because of things I've seen. Direction is all important. The way the country's going is all important. Reagan turned the country around. He actually succeeded a lot of what he wanted to do. But he gave us 25 years of prosperity. That entire Clinton administration was just riding the wave of Reagan's prosperity. And in New York, I lived in New York when I had to run to get a cab, to go to work. So I wasn't killed. That's how bad the crime was. And I'm not even exaggerating about that. I couldn't go out for a pack of cigarettes without worrying that I was not going to come home. And Julia only turned it around simply by coming into office, it started. And that's just the beginning. But the way the country's going means everything. If the country's going left, leftism doesn't work. It's the only thing we have going for if the leftism doesn't work. And so I think that if someone came into office who was a free trade person, who was a capitalist, who was a freedom person, things would turn around. All those guys who were in the bonfire of the vanities in that Tom Wolf book, who went into the stock market and started making a billion dollars. Five years before that, they were long-haired hippies at Woodstock, same people, same people. So things really do turn around. And they turn around because of prosperity and peace, you know, that's what makes people. >> I also think that, you know, they turn around in some cases faster than you would think. >> Yes, much. >> Nixon gets impeached in 75, or it was about to be. And he's out of office and you have Gerald Ford. And then he loses to Jimmy Carter. And it feels like the end of the world for Republicans and four years later, they're so bad. >> They're about to get ready. >> Yeah, well, with Reagan. >> Infectively, three terms plus Clinton. CNN is also releasing some of their exit polling. Joe's Democrats winning young white men by 17 points tonight. Trump won young white men by 28 points just two years ago. Also from the exit polls seven. >> It's true that the Iran War is the economy. >> Yeah, I think that shift with white men is astounding, I think, male. Because God forbid you ever specifically support white men as a group. And if you're not willing to speak to white men and acknowledge them specifically as a group, the way that politicians have on both sides have no problem talking to specifically any other group. Women, black people, anyone else, Asians, whatever. But with white men, they don't want to do that. >> So I defended Sarah on that ad because the policy was good. And she felt that it was expedient to scapegoat white men that that was the only way to sell it politically, even to white people. And so I defended her tactically on it and I think she's doing a good job. However, there's this Pew Research Survey that came out that shows you this problem. Every racial group has majority racial identity. So if you look at black people, those who say that race is a very or at least somewhat important part of their identity, it's over 70%. If you look at Hispanics and Asians, it's over 50% for white people. It's 15%. >> Right. >> Now those numbers are a little out of date now. I think they're eight or nine years old, maybe older, probably white racial consciousness has increased as the inevitable consequence of the racial identity politics of every other group. So to your point, Matt, it remains to this day taboo to speak to the young white men who just totally flipped over to the Democrat side, to speak to them as an identity group. Do you think that will change as a result of the midterms? >> I don't think that that will change as the result of the midterms. I think that there's another factor there, which is that there's a downside risk to speaking, because that poll, no matter how much it's moved, would still, I would assume, show a minority of white people not identifying as white identitarian. So even on just a raw political, besides the morality of all groups identifying on the basis of ethnic identity as opposed to religious identity or ideological identity or political or anything like that, put that aside, just in raw political terms, what you do by doing the white identity organism is the Beau French thing. You look at the alienate everybody else, including most white people. So that turns out to be a mistake. That's not what's happening here. I think what happened with young white men is that there was a misread by Republicans that because they voted for Trump and they shifted from kind of Bernie Sanders land to Trump land, like the Joe Rogan Theovon guys, and they moved into Trump's camp that these were now like a core part of the constituency that would not go away. And I've been saying for a while, that's not true, like these are, there's a very, there's a variable group of people, white people overall voted for Trump, and they voted for Republicans in this election. They have some poll shows the only racial group that voted in favor of Republicans in this election cycle, which was, which was dire. Young white men are incredibly variable, they are incredibly reactive to whatever is sort of the transgressive narrative of the day. And so, I mean, Joe Rogan was basically endorsing James Telerico in the middle of the race. Right? Treating Joe Rogan as though he's sort of a fellow traveler on the right. And just an erstwhile Republican voter is a category error. And the same thing is true for Theovon, who's been doing the same thing with Democratic candidate. So again, like those those votes for very much up for grabs, by the way, again, you do have stats in that exit poll, we got points for my memory even though it's late at night. I did say a cost of living was the number one issue with a bullet at 89%. That was right. And those voters voted Democrat. And Ron is part of that too, but it's not the whole thing. Ron is part of that, but interest rates are part of that. And you know, that the dysfunction in the housing market, which President Trump has talked about and invades against for quite a while, that's very important too. The other issue on the white people voting Republican, the only racial group that did, white people voted Republican, whatever, 52, 48, 51, 47, 51, yeah, okay, 51, 47. The other racial groups voted Democrat in a much more decisive way. Oh, it's 88 to 9 for black people, but the one that shifted and this is where Republicans again, if you're going to do what Trump wanted to do, which was build a multi-racial coalition of blue collar and working class people, right? This was the Henry Olsen goal. If you're going to do that, I'm sorry, but you can't put out Studio Ghibli of ICE officers handcuffing fat Hispanic ladies out to the bus. You can't. That's just bad politics. You may want those people, meaning like that lady was a criminal in real life, but optics matter in politics. Trump should know this better than anybody because he actually isn't optically intelligent. But the fact that the ICE operations, and this is why Red Bull Media was terrible at his job and Tom Homan is good at his job, right? Like you do the thing quietly without bothering people. That's the way you actually do policy, you do things quietly without bothering people. When you just yell from the rooftops, you mean to people, it turns out that you're people who are Hispanic, oh God, that's not what I meant. It would be nice though. You know the famous line about Churchill that he mobilized the English language and sent it to war? It would be nice if we could elect somebody who could speak. It's not a small thing. No, I've long defended Trump as having actual poetic diction in the bar field, he does have poetic diction. But the problem is that political diction. Something happened with Trump. I don't know what it is exactly, but it seems like in this term, he's. He totally lost touch with the base completely in a way that, I mean, like you were saying earlier that it seemed like with Trump in 2016 that he kind of would figure out the policies as he went. And there was a little extra, it's also true with Drew said that many of the things he talked about, he'd been talking about for decades, I think what actually happened was this like dialogue, he was in with the base where he would say something that was a little bit wild and kind of out there. And then the base through like Twitter would come out and say, well, I think what he really means is this. And then he would read that and go, yeah, I meant that. And so there was this back and forth. And through that dialogue, he actually constructed a really good set of policies. And in 2024, it's been completely severed. And I brought this up on the other show that to me, the giant red flag that something major had changed was with Epstein, because no matter how we feel about Epstein, that was really important with the base and the Epstein's really on that. Yeah, it was the first, it was the first time, Epstein was the first time when Trump seemed to be totally wildly in a baffling way out of step with his own base. And it seemed like he didn't even know it. Yeah. And so I don't know what that is exactly. Maybe a lot of it is truth social rather than just being on Twitter. I think that might be hard to put. I think I know a lot of it was he convinced himself because he has unique capacity, convinced himself of things, which is why he's authentic. He believes the thing he's saying in the moment. When he says 2024 was a great historic victory that has never been paralleled and every Republican is still with me, he actually believes that thing. And so when he said, the vast majority of Republicans are still with me after the whole Epstein thing, which was true, statistically it was true, but you're right. The rollout was out of touch. And he didn't bother to kind of go out and there were people in the administration, including apparently Dan Bongino telling him like, you need to go out and like explain exactly what it is. You know, I was just about to bring Dan up because. Hold on, before we get into Dan, we do have a few more updates. On the bright side, it's a bright side. There's a bright side before we go to bed. The AP calls the Louisiana Senate race for Save Louisiana, great. We save Louisiana. The Republican wins Louisiana by two points currently. Yeah. Oh my god. Currently by two. But okay, so Republicans win Louisiana bad news. Now, not as good. It's actually not. Democrats are currently leading by a solid margin at this point. All four contested Texas Supreme Court. Whitebatten Texas. Whitebatten. But Dan Bongino, I think, is a real straight arrow guy as far as I can agree. Yeah. And he left the administration. And the minute that happened, I thought, what did what did he see that he could not bear? There was something he saw that he couldn't bear. He's been loyal enough not to come out really. I mean, like, I won't speak on behalf of Dan. Yeah. I kind of think that you don't have to read the tea leaves very well to understand that there was significant conflict inside the administration about the level of transparency that was being provided around the investigation. And, and, you know, Pam Bondi did a horrible job. I mean, she did a horrible job. Everyone knows she did a horrible job. And so there was this disconnect. It kept emerging. Listen, the first time it truly emerged for me was, you know, Liberation Day, I think I will maintain and the polls show was a disaster. It was a terrible, terrible idea. It was the moment I know that everybody is rolling their eyes. Yeah, I know. I don't know that it was. It could have been a bed. I just don't think that really is when that streams crossed. You can look on it. It is that day. You can look where he went from net approval positives to net approval negative and then he never stopped. You know, and that and when you walk out and you start terrifying penguins because it's just stuff that you can do. Like, if you wanted to do tariffs, again, I'm not arguing against all tariffs. I'm saying that you can't declare trade war on the entire world in the middle of an affordability inflation spiral. And then claim that your top priority is quashing inflation. But I think it was a structural thing that Matt was getting out. It was really true that this dialogue that Trump was in with his base that I was at a cigar night in Virginia. You know, they have this Republican's gather once a month for the cigar night. And my friend Sebastian Gorka was there and somebody said to him, you know, what went wrong basically with the Trump one. And Sebastian then spoke for an unbroken 45 minutes about how the Republican party said about people in the administration with people who hated Trump and were working against him. And that when he and others sat down and thought, well, who can we enlist who will join us? And actually, they came up with like five names and they had nobody else. Trump solved that problem during those four years and surrounded himself with people who agreed with him and who were pretty good, I think, you know, I mean, you say what you will about PTA. He said, he, you know, he brought the military back. So the people were actually going to say, yeah. No, no, I will say this. I think that someone, but it cut him off. I just have finished with the thought. It cut him off from that dialogue. He was surrounded with people with the S-Men, but also supporters. But it cut him off from that dialogue with the people who could disagree with them and also move him. I certainly think that it is true that he created a bubble around himself in this White House. And I think that there's no one in the way it went from let's talk with the president about what should be done. And maybe in most case, obviously, we're going to always defer to him. He's the president, but we'll push back. And it went to how do we effectuate the thing that he says he wants to do right now? Right. And how is it? And let's race to do it. Let's like, let's run to do it. And so the sort of, you know, by the end of the administration, I'll just take as an example, William Barr versus Pan Bonnie. There is no question that William Barr, who's the attorney general, is a far superior attorney general. I love William Barr was great. Okay. And William Barr was doing many of the things that Trump wanted, but he would always, he would also say like, Mr. President, this is a bad idea. Probably just shouldn't do this thing. And he was abiding by the law in doing that. And Palm Bondy was kind of running around like checking with her headcut off to just effectuate the world of the president. You do need people. I mean, this is true in everybody's life. Forget about politics. You need people in your life who you trust and want the best for you, but who are also capable of saying to you, you know, this one is not a way. You know, it's curious in this administration, in the second Trump administration, I'm basing this just on reporting, but a lot of the reporting comes out and says, especially on the Iran War, that you had figures who were urging caution in Iran, probably the most prominent is JD Vance. So it's helpful when the guy who is providing some, you know, alternative views is in a position where he can't get fired and is, you know, elected by the American people. He's in a good, good state. But there were other figures in the administration too. There was some reporting about John Ratcliff and Marco Rubio and other people pushing back on some of these ideas. So you, you do have some of that disagreement, but probably the rest of the staffing of the administration, you have less, so thinly staffed. They're, also, they are just unbelievably thinly. And he go below the top level. There's almost no one. They're right. At the top, they're very, very good. There are two more updates for tonight. The votes are coming in from Alaska, showing a very tight race with only 21% reporting so far. Democrat Mary Peltola is leading with 54% over Dan Sullivan at 45%. But Dan Sullivan, this is two of them. This is, yeah, right. On the bright side, CBS is now calling the Tennessee. Thank God for you. We finally take that cabinet all night. Cabot. Well, you know, the Tennessee government, I said, but if Marsha Blackburn's not the next governor, like we got to move. I don't know. Like there's no place to move down to Florida. Right. That's right. You guys are going to be in your own country. So all right. So that's good. That much closer than you thought, though. Yes. 45. Oh my God. It's, I can't see the 45, 43, but she's, wow. That's totally insane. Yes. By the way, it's insane. By Reynolds, one by two points against David Jolly. Yeah. Ashley Moody won against a psychotic Democratic Socialist of America candidate named Angie Nixon in that center race by two points. Yeah. Just not. No, this is, this is a tsunami. There's no question about it. It's as bad as, you know, this is bad as it can be. Okay. Does anyone want to say anything happy before we go home? No. It's the end of the night. Yeah. I'm happy about that. I enjoyed your cigar. Thank you. Thank you there. One silver lining. Wonderful to be with all of you. Who was it? Who earlier said? I guess it was Glenn Beck who said, you know, God is sovereign over history. He's not. He knows that he has a forehead. You know, spirit doesn't fall with that is knowledge. So that is the, the consolation and the comfort we take for tonight. And probably the only one. Thank you for watching Friendly Fire and our election night coverage. We'll see you tomorrow.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The election outcome exceeded even the speaker’s worst expectations, with Texas flipping blue in a dramatic shift that undermines prior political assumptions.
Voters are responding to economic concerns like gas prices and inflation, not just policy, indicating that economic pain drives political decisions more than ideology.
The current political landscape is marked by a deep generational shift, especially among young white men who have moved decisively toward the Democratic Party.
Trump’s appeal lies not just in personality but in offering a radical, oppositional vision that broke the silence on taboo issues, reshaping political discourse.
The Republican Party faces a structural crisis in leadership and vision, with no clear successor to Trump who can embody the same disruptive energy and authenticity.
There is a growing skepticism about political leadership’s ability to deliver on promises, as voters follow personalities over policies and see political outcomes as inconsistent.
The Democratic Party’s overwhelming victory may lead to overreach, potentially triggering a backlash and political realignment in the future.
A key unresolved issue is the lack of a shared, definable American identity—both parties struggle to articulate values that unite the nation beyond opposition or emotion.
Summary:
The election results represent a seismic shift that surpasses even the speaker’s worst forecasts, with Texas flipping blue and a dramatic surge in Democratic gains across key swing states. This outcome underscores a deepening political realignment driven not by ideological purity but by economic pain—especially rising gas prices and inflation—along with a significant generational shift among young white men who have decisively moved toward the Democratic Party. The speaker reflects on the enduring power of personality in politics, noting that Donald Trump’s success stemmed from his disruptive, transgressive style and his ability to break political taboos, such as open discussion of immigration and trade.
However, this model is now challenged by the Republican Party’s inability to produce a viable ideological or leadership successor. The political system appears to be fundamentally broken, with voters prioritizing emotional resonance over policy coherence, and parties failing to offer a shared vision of American identity. The speaker warns that the Democratic majority may overreach, leading to a backlash and renewed political instability.
—suggests a movement toward conservative values and a backlash against mass immigration and political leftism. Ultimately, the future of American politics hinges on whether leaders can move beyond personality-driven politics and instead establish a clear, unifying set of values that reflect the nation’s enduring hopes and fears.
FAQs
The speaker felt the results were worse than expected because they were not just disappointing but fundamentally unexpected, especially given the shift in Texas turning blue, which was not a prediction they had made.
The speaker believes people don't follow policies but follow leaders and personalities, noting that voters are driven by emotions and identity rather than abstract ideas.
The speaker sees Trump as a figure who broke the stranglehold on free speech and represented a radical, transgressive vision that resonated with people who felt politically marginalized.
The speaker believes Trump will remain a central figure in the GOP through at least 2028, and that the party must find a new leader to replace him, as an aging, unpopular president cannot lead the party into the future.
The speaker points to political instability, a lack of cohesive ideology, and a failure of institutions to deliver on promises, which leads to constant party swings and voter disillusionment.
The speaker believes Democrats will likely go too far in their policies and rhetoric, especially after a sweeping victory, leading to political backlash and a shift in public sentiment.
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