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Oct. 26, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
42:47
John Fetterman Gives The Worst Debate Performance In History | Ep. 1597
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John Fetterman demonstrates that all the questions about his health were well-founded.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul gets slammed by Lee Zeldin.
And Tudor Dixon takes the wood to Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
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Well, Democrats' midterm prospects are looking grimmer and grimmer as the days go by.
We already knew that it was about a 50-50 shot that Republicans were going to retake the Senate.
But governors' races all over the country look like they're starting to swing in the direction of Republicans.
And this is because Democrats have nothing to run on.
Remember that over the past several years, Democrats shut down their states.
Democrats shut down their schools.
Democrats created green passes for people who are vaccinated and discriminated against people who are not vaccinated, all on the basis that the unvaccinated were spreading the disease in a way that the vaccinated were not.
All of that was, of course, predicated on very, very faulty or non-existent data.
And what we saw last night in a series of debates across the country is the fact that Democrats have no defense for their own governance.
You're seeing it in the polling data today.
If you look at the polls all across the country, what you are seeing is that Republicans are basically now in striking distance in every major state.
If you look at the polls in the Senate, for example, right now, according to the Real Equal Politics polling average, Pennsylvania is dead heat.
That is before we get to the debate between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, which was just one of the saddest things I've ever seen in my entire life.
Because John Fetterman is clearly not well, is clearly not healed from his stroke.
His family, his campaign, decided to put him on the campaign trail for some God knows why reason.
I would imagine that can't be good for your healing process because this did not look like a well person on the stage last night, as we'll show you in just one second.
In New Hampshire, Maggie Hassan is now running about a three-point race against Don Balduck, which means that the National Republican Senatorial Committee is now pouring money back into New Hampshire.
They think that that seat is in striking distance.
In the Senate, you have North Carolina.
Bud is running away with that race.
In Nevada, Adam Laxalt is widely expected to win his race in Nevada.
In Arizona, Mark Kelly and Blake Masters are now running a dead heat.
In Georgia, Raphael Warnock is now falling behind Hershel Walker as this race closes.
And you would expect, by the way, that in both Arizona and Georgia, the strength of the Republican at the top of the ticket on the governor's side is going to help drag those senatorial candidates across the finish line.
People are going to go into the polls and they are going to see that they're going to vote for Brian Kemp in Georgia, for example, and Raphael Warnock is on ballot.
They're going to vote against him while they're there.
Same thing is going to happen in Arizona if Carrie Lake is doing well, which she appears to be doing over there.
J.D.
Vance looks like he's finally pulling away in Ohio.
Ron Johnson, who is widely expected to lose his race at the beginning of this particular cycle in Wisconsin, is now pulling away.
And Marco Rubio, who is expected to be running a competitive race with Val Demings just a few months ago, is now pulling away from Val Demings in Florida.
So what does that mean?
I mean, if Republicans were to sweep, which is a possibility, because in politics, when there is a wave, the wave tends to move in one direction.
It tends to overwhelm everything.
If there is a Republican red wave, you could see a Republican pickup of a wide variety of states.
You could see Republicans pick up three, four, five seats in the Senate.
When you move over to the House, the RealClearPolitics polling average right now says that their average projection is Republicans picking up 29 seats.
That's their average projection.
That is with them assuming a generic ballot advantage for Republicans of about three points.
I don't think it's three points.
I think it's going to be five to seven points.
And if that happens, Republicans could be picking up on the order of 40 seats in the House, which would give them a historically large majority in the House.
In the governor's races, there are too many races that are just dead heat for Democrats to sleep on this thing.
Real clear politics is currently projecting at least three Republican gubernatorial pickups.
Races that were supposed to be competitive.
Races like Georgia.
Brian Kemp is running away with that race against the vaunted and sainted Stacey Abrams.
Texas.
You remember that there was a brief moment in time where Beto was finally going to take down Greg Abbott.
It turns out that Abbott is now winning that race by almost 10 points.
DeSantis in Florida is winning his race against Charlie Crist by 10 points in the real car politics polling average.
And that's not even getting to the super competitive states.
The super competitive states.
Wisconsin.
Dead heat.
Minnesota is a two and a half point race.
Carrie Lake has a slight advantage over in Arizona.
Again, she was widely expected by the media to fall apart against Katie Hobbs.
She has two advantages.
One, she's good on TV.
And two, Katie Hobbs is the actual physical embodiment of the color gray.
It's like they took the color gray and they somehow managed to condense it into human form.
And Katie Hobbs is that candidate.
The latest polls have Lake up variously by three or Hobbs up by one.
But it appears that Republicans have momentum in that particular race.
Again, governor's races in Nevada.
It looks like Lombardo is going to win that race.
That's the Republican in Nevada.
So Laxalt and suddenly Nevada goes from purple to red.
New Mexico is shockingly a possible win for Republicans.
That race, according to the Real Club Politics polling average, is now at three and a half points.
People aren't even polling that race, really, because that was widely expected to be a hold for Lou Anne Grisham.
Oregon, the Republican looks like the Republican is up in the Oregon gubernatorial race, which is a shocker.
Like every single poll that has been taken currently has Drazen winning that race.
These are bad numbers for Democrats.
And what that means is that if you start to stretch the boundaries a little bit, you end up looking at Whitmer in Michigan, who is only up in some of these polls by three points, two points, some of them are up six.
But again, those tend to be Democrat leaning and slightly older polls.
Or maybe New York, where Kathy Hochul is up six points.
But again, the polling data in New York has been growing closer and closer.
That race seems to be a little bit under-polled.
And remember, in New Jersey, Jack Ciatarelli nearly beat Phil Murphy by spending $7, and he was losing by like 13 points in the polls going into that race.
There's the heavy possibility that a bunch of New Yorkers are just not all that enthusiastic about, say, Joe Biden and the Democrats.
And at the same time, they think that there's a really good shot that they're going to end up winning that gubernatorial race.
They just don't show up to the polls.
And so Republicans end up flipping a seat like that.
That is my sleeper pick, is that Kathy Hochul goes out to Lee Zeldin.
If you're doing, like, NFL sleeper picks here, New York might be your smart sleeper pick.
All of this led up to the debates last night.
There were a series of debates across the country.
The most followed one was the debate between Fetterman and Oz.
Now, there's a lot of focus on this particular debate for a couple reasons.
One, obviously, it's a very fraught Senate seat.
Mehmet Oz has been widely disparaged and attacked by the media, by Democrats.
Even some on the Republican side of the aisle have thought that he was a weak candidate and that Dave McCormick should have been the actual nominee in that seat.
But Memedos has been steadily gaining in that seat for weeks at a time.
A couple of months ago, I said that that seat was going to tighten up dramatically, and it has.
That seat is now effectively a dead heat going into the debate.
That's one reason.
The other reason is that John Fetterman is an awful candidate.
Despite all of the attempts to turn John Fetterman into a glorious new wave of the future candidate, John Fetterman is a lifelong dependent on his parents.
He was the mayor of a town of 1,800 people, which is smaller than many golf clubs.
His actual annual salary was in the hundreds of dollars.
He was being supported by mommy and daddy until he was 49 years old.
And then he became lieutenant governor.
And as lieutenant governor, he's done precisely nothing.
And then he ran for the Senate, predicated on an extraordinarily wild left record, including maybe we should free one third of the criminals in Pennsylvania's prisons.
And maybe we should have no limits on abortion whatsoever.
And this was considered the best part of his candidacy, right?
Democrats in the primaries decided to pick Fetterman.
Remember, Fetterman had his stroke before the primary vote.
Fetterman had a stroke.
It was on the Friday before the primary vote.
And then he defeated Conor Lamb.
So Democrats in Pennsylvania made the overt choice to pick a stroke victim over Conor Lamb.
And then we were told that John Fetterman was on the campaign trail.
He was perfectly fine.
Anybody who noticed he was not perfectly fine was ripped up and down.
I mean, you'll remember that there was an NBC News reporter named Dasha Burns who pressed Fetterman for medical updates and then went out and said, like, when I talked to him, when I chit-chatted with him, he just wasn't well.
I mean, remember, this was just a couple of weeks ago.
Here is Dasha Burns, who was ripped up and down, as we will see in just a second, for noticing that John Fetterman actually is not well.
We've asked for your medical records.
We've asked to have a conversation with someone from your medical team to interview your physician.
You've declined those requests.
Why?
Well, I feel like we have been very transparent in a lot of different ways.
Our doctor has already given a letter saying that I'm able to serve and to be running.
I mean, respectfully, that letter from your physician, that was six months ago.
Don't voters deserve to know your status now?
Being on in front of thousands and thousands of people and having interviews and getting around all across Pennsylvania, that gives everybody and the voters decide, you know, if they think that it's it's really the issue.
So Dasha Burns at the time, she noted that John Fetterman could not make small talk and he was having a very difficult time in conversation.
And the media ripped her up and down, up and down.
They were saying that she's terrible.
It was awful.
And you'll recall that she actually then had to tweet out, quote, We were happy to accommodate closed captioning.
Our reporting did not and should not comment on fitness for office.
This is for voters to decide.
What we do push for as reporters is transparency.
It's our job.
Fetterman sat down and answered our questions.
That's his job.
Again, the idea here from the media was it was very bad for Dasha Burns to notice that Jon Fetterman was nonfunctional.
In fact, you had people like Kara Swisher saying, no, no, I've talked to him.
He's perfectly functional.
Everything is totally fine.
So the media narrative went from Jon Fetterman is fine to as he was out on the campaign trail bobbling, John Fetterman may not be fine, but he's fine enough to be in the Senate.
And then it went to, if you notice that he's not fine, then there is something deeply wrong with you.
And now, after last night's debate, the media have already swiveled to, it's totally fine to have a non-functional stroke victim in the Senate.
That is now what they're relegated to because that is how John Fetterman performed last night.
You got to feel bad for the guy.
I mean, honestly, like the guy is a stroke victim.
He's obviously not functioning properly.
He's being put in front of millions of people to demonstrate his inability to process language.
It's not good.
I mean, it's hard not to make fun of the fact that there is a Democratic candidate for the Senate of the United States.
This is not a seventh grade spelling bee.
This is not a kid who's having difficulty, broke his leg and he's out there playing on the fifth grade basketball team.
This is for a Senate seat in the United States Senate.
I mean, honestly, watch his answers last night, and it falls somewhere between tragic and tragicomic that Democrats have decided this is what they decided to do with this.
Again, they made that choice.
We didn't make that choice.
They made that choice.
So the night opened, and right from the outside, it was clear that John Fetterman was having some severe, severe problems.
Here's John Fetterman last night.
He opens by saying goodnight to people.
Mr. Fetterman, we're going to begin with you.
Your political experience includes serving as the mayor of Braddock, a small borough near Pittsburgh, and one term as lieutenant governor.
You're running for a seat that could decide the balance of power in Washington.
What qualifies you to be a U.S.
senator?
You have 60 seconds.
Hi.
Good night, everybody.
I'm running to serve Pennsylvania.
Good night, everybody.
You may have noticed that that's not how you normally open a conversation.
It got worse from there.
Hey, that was just the outset.
Here's John Fetterman last night, who's asked about releasing medical records.
And he said, my doctor thinks I can serve.
He said, while being completely unable to finish sentences.
Again, my doctor L believes that I'm fit to be serving, and that's what I believe is where I'm standing.
That is what I believe is where I'm standing?
I'm not sure he knows where he is standing at this point.
And it's not mean to point out that the Democrats have decided and his family has decided to put this person in front of the public and say that this person is fit to serve in the United States Senate.
He's running for an office.
You don't get to run for office on the basis that it's mean to deny office to a person who's a stroke victim.
That's not how this works.
This is the angle Democrats are taking this morning, by the way.
The angle the Democrats have taken is that to notice that there is something wrong here is mean.
You are an ableist if you don't think that this person is fit to serve in the United States Senate.
That is not a defense to you guys putting up somebody who clearly is not fit to serve in the United States Senate.
I mean, here was John Fetterman speaking on minimum wage last night.
This is just incoherent.
Do you support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour?
Why or why not?
You have 60 seconds.
Yeah, I do.
Absolutely.
I think it's a disgrace at $7.25 an hour.
And how can a man, you know, with 10 gigantic mansions, you know, has and willing to talk about What in the world?
I mean, it's embarrassing.
It is.
signal mom trying with two children trying to race with them realizing making $31,000 a year, you know, $15 an hour. You know, I believe every work has dignity, and every paycheck must have dignity in it as well. True. I've always supported a living wage.
What in the world? I mean, it's embarrassing. It is. I mean, not for him, but for his entire team.
And you got to look at this guy as a victim of his team for putting him out there.
Thank you for watching.
That was not in English.
This is a Senate candidate.
It got worse and worse.
I mean, this was the entire night.
This was like an hour and a half.
And here's John Fetterman explaining that things cost too much.
How exactly, Mr. Fetterman, do you propose doing that to make it more affordable for families?
No, I just believe I just making it that much more it costs too much and I believe providing the resources to reduce the tuition to allow families to be able to afford it.
Oh.
My.
God.
Really?
How do you sleep at night if you're part of his team?
I don't understand.
I understand you want to win the Senate seat, but you would've been better off, if you were his team, just making up some bullcrap excuse to not put him in this debate.
Because this is the most watched debate of the Senate cycle, and you put out a person who cannot get through phrases.
Forget sentences.
Phrases.
He can't get through phrases.
And of course that's an issue.
This morning you have Democrats out there who are trying to claim, well, ignore the fact that he can't speak English or process language.
Ignore that fact.
After all, all you really need is for him to say yay or nay.
This is really what they're trying to... Here was an MSNBC guest last night trying to talk her way through this thing.
Fetterman's campaign is hoping to turn his sort of vulnerability into an asset here.
Do you think he did so on the debate stage tonight?
I think it's tough to say whether or not it will wind up being an asset with voters, but it was certainly an example of such remarkable transparency, the opposite of what the Oz campaign has sort of asserted, which is that he's somehow hiding something about his health.
I mean, showing up for an hour debate And it was, as he said, starting out, he said he was going to talk about the elephant in the room.
He played the clip.
He said, I'm going to miss words.
And you could tell.
I wrote in my story about how in my interview with him, there was a moment where he became frustrated and stressed out, and it made some of his communicative problems worse.
And I think that this context and what you described as the insanely high stakes of this election, this single debate, clearly This was a candidate who was feeling stress, and there was such intense scrutiny, often ableist scrutiny, on how he was going to communicate, and he just did a debate in front of, you know, the nation.
Uh, that's your defense.
He was radically transparent.
He won't release any of his medical records.
He's radically transparent.
Was he?
Hmm.
Interesting.
So your defense is we're so proud of Timmy.
I mean, this is honestly, you want to talk about ableist?
How about the idea that everybody in America is supposed to just wink and nod at the fact that the person can't speak English properly?
How about that?
That's not ableist.
That's a qualification.
That is a qualification for office.
This is the equivalent of you're applying to be a firefighter and you show up and it turns out that tragically, the week before, a tree fell on you and handicapped you and you show up and people are like, look at the bravery of this man who's auditioning to be a firefighter, who's applying to be a firefighter.
Sure, he's incapable of carrying out the job.
Sure, he's not going to be able to, you know, roll his way up those stairs and carry out another human being who's unconscious thanks to smoke inhalation.
But isn't Timmy brave?
Like, no, this is not how this works.
This is an application to be in the United States.
And it's not ableist to say that you should be able to process language.
My God, I know our standards for high office have fallen.
I mean, the president of the United States is no longer alive, but have they fallen so far that it is now considered an act of bigotry?
To demand that your Senate candidates be able to speak the English language and understand the English language?
I mean, Fetterman, it was, again, it was like this all night long.
So awkward.
The worst moment for Fetterman is when he was asked about his statements on fracking.
So, Fetterman has a very long history of saying that he opposes fracking.
In the state of Pennsylvania, it's a big deal because Oil shale is a big thing, right?
Fracking is enormous.
All of Western Pennsylvania's economy largely is based on the fracking industry.
And Fetterman has spent his career opposing the fracking industry.
And now he's reversed himself.
So he was asked about that.
And I mean, honestly, it's in the same way that it's kind of gut churning to watch Joe Biden go through a speech.
It is so much worse to watch Fetterman.
It is so much worse.
It's not just awkward.
It's it's difficult.
It is physically difficult to watch John Fetterman in debate.
Just a second, Mr. Oz.
I do want to clarify something.
You're saying tonight that you support fracking, that you've always supported fracking, but there is that 2018 interview that you said, quote, I don't support fracking at all.
So how do you square the two?
I do support fracking and I don't, I don't, I support fracking and I stand and I do support fracking.
fracking.
I mean, first of all, he's lying.
But I mean, put aside the fact that he's lying.
Ah, as a human being, it's hard to watch that.
It's very difficult.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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Well, of course, that's not going to stop Democrats from trying to push John Fetterman over the line.
Fetterman's campaign spokesperson last night tried to hype up the crowd at a post-debate rally.
It didn't go amazing.
All of us who have been knocked down, but got back up.
What Dr. Oz means to me is that he's going to fight for the big corporations who are ripping us off, he's going to fight for the big pharmaceuticals who are ripping us off, and the oil companies who are jacking up prices.
I think the people of Pennsylvania saw a relatable guy who had been doing his recovery in public for quite some time, and for a guy who was just, you know, in the hospital months ago, took a Dr. Oz brief.
And in the background, ABC is showing The Bachelor.
So things are going amazing for the Fetterman campaign.
Their big talking point coming away from the debate, aside from you're mean if you notice that there's something wrong with John Fetterman, is Dr. Oz suggested that abortion law should be made locally.
The headline they're saying is that Dr. Oz said that abortions should be decided between local politicians, doctors, and women, as opposed to, you know, between doctors and women.
Here's what Dr. Oz actually said.
This is a direct transcript.
There should not be involvement from the federal government in how states decide their abortion decisions.
As a physician, I've been in the room when there's some difficult conversations happening.
I don't want the federal government involved with that at all.
I want women doctors, local political leaders, letting the democracy that's always allowed our nation to thrive, to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves.
I'm not going to support federal rules that block the ability of states to do what they wish.
The abortion decision should be left up to the states.
That is a wildly uncontroversial statement from Dr. Oz.
They're trying to spin that because they got nothing else to spin.
When you got nothing else to spin, just make up what your opponent is saying, suggesting that you want like the local mayor in the room while a doctor and woman figure out how to do an abortion or something.
But bottom line here is that Fetterman, if he is elected in the aftermath of that, you want to talk about polarized American politics.
If John Fetterman ends up in the Senate after that performance, It will say something about the nature of politics in the United States, namely that people are so polarized that they're willing to elect people who are not fully functional to positions of high power simply because they are not the other guy.
One quick note here.
John Fetterman actually tried to blame the closed captioning system for his debate failure last night.
That was not the problem.
The problem was he couldn't process language and he couldn't speak out of his face.
This is actually forced.
Fetterman's criticism of the closed captioning system forced the closed captioning system to put out a statement, quote, both candidates agreed to the technical setup for the closed captioning process weeks ago, which was implemented at the request of the Fetterman campaign.
Both candidates were offered the same opportunity for two full rehearsals with the same equipment used in tonight's debate.
Mr. Fetterman chose to do only one.
In fact, Nextar's production team went to extraordinary lengths When you are relegated to blaming the closed captioning system, you have a massive problem on your hands.
request of the Fetterman campaign.
The closed captioning process functioned as expected during rehearsal and again during tonight's debate.
We regret that Mr.
Fetterman and his campaign feel otherwise.
When you are relegated to blaming the closed captioning system, you have a massive problem on your hands.
Okay.
Meanwhile, another race that has suddenly popped up onto the national radar is New York gubernatorial race.
So Lee Zeldin, who is a congressman from New York, a fairly conservative, moderate to conservative Republican in New York.
He's running against Kathy Hochul, who of course inherited her office as she has done with virtually all of her other high offices because some man couldn't keep his pants zipped.
So Kathy Hochul has not done a good job as New York governor.
There is nothing to suggest that she should retain that seat.
Lee Zeldin really went at her aggressively last night.
That race is surprisingly close.
And it is hard to to forget the fact in this context that the New Jersey race that was nearly upset by a Republican had about 11 to 13 point gap.
This New York race is closing and it's closing fairly quickly right here.
And you look at these polls and you have a poll just a week ago from Siena that had HOKALUP11.
And then you had a poll like days later from Quinnipiac that had HOKALUP4.
My opponent still can't finish this sentence.
are a little bit all over the place, but you can see the trend is to close the gap.
Back in August, Hockel had a 15 point lead on Zeldin. Today, Hockel has about a six point lead on Zeldin in the RealCourtPolitics polling average. The momentum is clearly in Zeldin's corner, and he really hurt her last night. So Zeldin opened by saying, there's a reason people are leaving this state, and it's because of bad democratic governance.
My opponent still can't finish the sentence. You can't expect her to ever fix it. But New York leads the entire nation in population loss because... She actually got asked this question by the media a few weeks ago when she was at Binghamton Airport.
She probably would love to have a redo because she messed it up that time.
For me, you ask me, why does New York lead the entire nation in population loss?
Because their wallets, their safety, their freedom, and their quality of their kids' education are under attack.
So they're hitting their breaking point.
They're looking at other states like the Carolinas, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, and elsewhere, and they feel like their money will go further, they'll feel safer, and they'll live life freer.
The state is at a crossroads.
We were at a crossroads in 1994 when New York elected George Pataki, and we're at a crossroads right now.
But as far as what happens with Kathy Hochul and one-party rule for four more years, outsize power of self-described socialists, we need balance and common sense restored to Albany.
Okay, and that sort of moderate republicanism has won in New York, as he points out.
George Pataki was governor of the state for a very, very long time.
Zeldin said that he is running to take back the streets as well.
The crime issue in New York is out of control and of course he is correct.
Now Cathy Ockels supports Castle's Bail.
As soon as it got implemented, she was out there bragging about it.
She chose the champion of the Defund the Police movement and the architect of Castle's Bail, Brian Benjamin.
Yeah, that guy who got arrested and had to resign.
That was her first big decision to make him the Lieutenant Governor.
We need to repeal Castle's Bail.
We need to repeal the HALT Act.
Amend Raise the Age and less is more.
We need to make our streets safe again.
I'm running to take back our streets and to support unapologetically Are men and women in law enforcement?
Okay, Hockel's response to all of this, to the rising crime rates in New York, to the fact that you cannot go on the New York subway system anymore because someone might shove you in front of a subway car, or because someone might hit you with a sword.
And her response to this is, why are you so interested, Lee Zeldin, in locking up criminals?
Why is that so important to you?
Yeah, I mean, listen, I stated that the first day that I'm in office, I'm going to declare a crime emergency and suspend Castile's bail and these other pro-criminal laws, because there is a crime emergency.
My opponent thinks that right now, there's a polio emergency going on, but there's not a crime emergency.
Different priorities that I'm hearing from people right now, they're not being represented, from this governor, who still, to this moment, we're halfway through the debate, she still hasn't talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes.
I don't know why that's so important to you?
under our laws, especially with the change they made to bail, has consequences.
I don't know why that's so important to you.
I don't know why that's so important to you?
I don't know why locking up criminals is so important to you and keeping them locked up?
I mean, Zeldin, for whatever remains of this campaign, she's going to run that ad over and over and over.
And him saying, I wanna fight crime, and her saying, I don't know why that's so important to you.
Because it's important to fight crime!
Why is this difficult?
Plus, Kathy Hochul kept doubling down on masking of children, for example.
And Kathy Hochul has run one of the strictest regimes in America with regard to COVID.
And here she was, continuing to push this sort of stuff.
And will you follow the CDC's recommendation to add COVID vaccines to children's vaccine schedules?
One year ago, when I became governor, we were still experiencing the effects of the Delta variant, and it was scary.
And children weren't able to get back to school unless we directed them to make sure that they had the opportunity to wear a mask.
A mask was able to get kids back into schools.
That is important to me, to keep children in schools.
But at this point now, we have so many vaccines available.
Remember, it wasn't that long ago when they were in short supply.
Lines were around the block.
There was nothing at the pharmacy.
There was a real panic around this.
Now because we have plentiful vaccine supply and everybody should get their booster.
So there she is explaining that it was masks that got kids back to school.
This is insane.
Okay, what Kathy Hochul is saying right there, that it was her masking policy that got kids back into school is nutso.
It is nutso.
The idea that masking small children who have no capacity to wear N95s, and again, there is no data, none, on whether a cloth mask is going to be effective against Omicron.
The answer is, spoiler alert, no.
The idea that she got kids back into school because of that, she delayed kids getting back into school by months and years because of her own bad policy.
And there she is promoting that.
And if Lee Zeldin doesn't close that gap, I will be a little bit surprised, honestly.
That's going to be a very close election, and it should be a very close election at the very least.
Meanwhile, speaking of governors who did a horrible job during COVID, Gretchen Whitmer over in Michigan did a horrible job.
You'll recall that she was barring people from going to the local feed store and buying seed, but she was allowing her husband to go out on the lake in his boat or whatever.
Remember that Gretchen Whitmer He was mandating masks and lockdowns and all the rest.
She is now in a hotly fought gubernatorial race with Tudor Dixon.
Tudor Dixon really took the wood to her last night over a lot of issues.
She pointed out that Whitmer has taken the furthest left position as possible to take on education, for example.
Here was Tudor Dixon last night saying that she is not going to value politics over parents.
I will put parents over politics.
I will put students over systems.
Dixon also slammed Whitmer over the school closing.
Whitmer had tried to claim she only closed the school for three months.
Well, for the parents who were homeschooling their kids for like a year, that came as kind of a surprise.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I just heard an audible gasp around town when Gretchen Whitmer said that kids were out of school for three months.
Perhaps she wasn't paying attention to what was actually happening.
We even had schools that were closed this year.
This is shocking to me that she thinks that schools were only closed for three months.
Or maybe she thinks she can convince you that schools were only closed for three months, but you know better because your students are the ones that are desperately behind.
And the test scores show that she's being dishonest about this.
She's being dishonest about even trying to get into these schools to get these schools back on track.
This is the big problem.
Democrats do not have a lot to run on here.
Tudor Dixon also slammed Gretchen Whitmer's position that you should have all these nonsensical, woke, sex-laden books in schools available for small children.
Here she was last night pushing it.
They've asked Gretchen Whitmer to comment, and she's been silent on this issue, so I'm anxious to hear what she has to say.
If you have material in your school that is something that you can't read to a child at a bus stop because you would be arrested because it is pornographic, then it should not be in our classrooms.
What these parents are talking about are not textbooks that will help children learn about themselves.
These are books that are describing to children How to have sex and parents are outraged about it across the state.
I stand with those parents that want to make sure we go back to the basics.
Democrats have no closing pitch.
They have no closing pitch.
And this is the biggest problem for them.
And Republicans have a lot to run on, namely terrible Democratic governance in a lot of these states.
And by the way, when Republicans were governing during COVID, remember, COVID is still the gigantic elephant in the room.
Everybody is pretending that COVID is not going to matter in these elections because COVID is not a major ongoing issue in the United States.
But the fact is the Democratic governance during COVID was bad.
This is why you saw my family.
I literally moved my family from California, a blue state, to Florida, a red state, specifically because of COVID policy.
We moved our company, with at the time some 90 employees, from California to Nashville, Tennessee.
Thank God the company has tripled in size since that time.
We did that largely because of COVID policy and crime policy and tax policy and all the things that bad Democrat governance does.
When you look at these gubernatorial races, particularly, you can see that Democrats have nothing to run on.
Which, by the way, there's another poll out in Florida.
Speaking of Republicans who are popular, a poll out today in Florida.
Ron DeSantis, 55.
Charlie Crist, 41.
That is a 14-point gap.
Ron DeSantis won his gubernatorial race in 2018 by 30,000 votes, by a fraction of a percentage point.
And now he has opened a gap that is wide enough to drive a Mack truck through it.
Marco Rubio in the same state now has an 11-point lead on Val Demings in that same poll.
In other words, Republican governance is better than Democratic governance and people like it better.
And what was made clear during COVID is just how much of a gap there is in terms of that governance.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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Well, it's been a busy month here at The Daily Wire.
We released a brand new documentary, held a rally to end child mutilation, and we are hours away from another exciting event, Daily Wire Backstage.
Join me, Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Klayman, and God King Jeremy Boring tonight, 6 p.m.
Central, 7 p.m.
Eastern.
We'll be talking midterms, leftist meltdowns, and a whole lot more.
It's a backstage you're not going to want to miss, so tune in tonight at dailywireplus.com.
Also, my book club, Ben Shapiro's book club, because you know who I am, is back tomorrow for a whole new episode, 8 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time.
This month's book, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley.
It is impossible to read Brave New World and not see the entire leftist agenda implemented in action.
One of the big questions about Brave New World is what exactly would the left oppose about that Brave New World these days?
You must be an All Access member to join in on the fun.
Head on over to dailywire.com slash Ben.
Become a member today and join us tomorrow at 8 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time.
Okay, so what exactly is the Democrats' closing pitch?
So Joe Biden tried to make it in the pages of CNN today.
Over at CNN Opinion.
So he didn't write this because I'm not sure that Joe Biden is capable of writing things anymore.
We have now reached that point in American life.
But one of his staffers wrote this.
What is his closing pitch for why you should vote Democrat?
Quote, over the past nearly two years, we have made enormous progress.
My administration, working with Democrats in Congress, is building an economy that grows from the bottom up and the middle out.
The unemployment rate is 3.5% of 50 or low.
We've created 10 million jobs.
You have not, actually.
That would be the natural consequence of COVID ending.
On my watch, Made in America isn't just a slogan, it's a reality.
We have more work to do.
Inflation, driven by the pandemic and Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine is a global challenge.
I know a lot of people have a job and are still struggling to pay for groceries, gas and rent.
That's why I'm so determined to lower costs for families.
I'm working to reduce the burden on working and middle class people by bringing down the cost of everyday things they need for their families.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Nope.
That is what this is going to come down to.
Nope.
No one believes you.
Inflation is at 40-year highs.
Unemployment is soon to follow thanks to the ratcheting up of the interest rates that are necessary in order to quash the inflation.
On the foreign front, the war in Ukraine continues to go on and on and on with no off-ramp in sight.
And you've not articulated an off-ramp.
You presided over the complete collapse of the United States' presence in Afghanistan and the turnover of that country to the Taliban.
You're foisting radical social policy on Americans.
You continue to maintain that there's a COVID emergency, sometimes, but not others.
Plus, you don't seem capable of running the country.
Joe Biden, as your closer, I mean, you know, every baseball team has a closer, right?
You're leading in the game and you bring in the guy who throws 100 miles an hour to get the last three outs.
Joe Biden is a fourth grader who throws like a girl.
You can't bring him in in a Major League Baseball game as your closing pitch.
It's not possible.
Because he does stuff like this.
Here was Joe Biden last night congratulating a person who apparently he believes is named Rasheed Sanook on becoming the new Prime Minister of the UK.
And whether it's the United Kingdom or just today, we've got news that Rasheed Sanook is now the Prime Minister.
As my brother would say, go figure.
Rashid Sunak.
You mean Rishi Sunak?
Would that be the person that you are talking about?
He's expected to become the prime minister, I think, tomorrow when he goes to see the king.
Pretty astounding.
A groundbreaking milestone, and it matters.
It matters.
He's, he's deranged.
The look of derangement across, that's the president of the United States.
And meanwhile, they're pushing the things that really matter.
So here's Corinne Jean-Pierre, the world's worst press secretary yesterday, suggesting that one of the top priorities for this administration are trans rights, are human rights.
Ah, the most important thing for this administration is ensuring that your small child can be, can be socially transitioned and then sterilized.
And then hopefully at some point in the future, mutilated.
That's the most important thing here.
I want to be careful here because you're asking about a political ad, so I can't respond directly to that ad.
But what I want to say is, you know, the President has been very, very clear, and you've heard us say this from this podium, and it will continue to be what we believe, which is transgender rights are indeed human rights.
And I'll leave that there.
Meanwhile, Corinne Jean-Pierre also suggesting, again, it is amazing.
These are the same people who suggest that if you deny election results, that it's the end of the republic.
Here is the White House press secretary yesterday maintaining that voter suppression is happening at a high level in the United States, which is a lie.
It is a bigger lie than there is voter fraud happening in the United States.
You cannot name a human in the United States who has tried to vote legally and has been denied the right to vote.
You cannot name that person.
They cannot name one.
It is extraordinarily easy to vote in the United States.
It's particularly easy to vote in places like Georgia and Florida.
I went and early voted.
I early voted a couple of days ago because I'm not going to have time on election day to go vote.
You know what it amounted to?
I went to a website, I registered, I went in, I voted.
It was that simple.
But according to Corrine Jean-Pierre, just because lots of people are showing up to vote doesn't mean voter suppression isn't happening.
Well, you've now created an utterly unfalsifiable thesis that allows you to deny election results, which is what Corrine Jean-Pierre is very good at doing.
She still thinks that Stacey Abrams is the rightful governor of the state of Georgia.
There have been a host of anti-voter policies forced on states that challenge America's fundamental right to vote, right?
The access to voting.
And so this is against our most basic values, including respect for the law and the Constitution.
And speaking generally, of course, more broadly, of course, high turnout and voter suppression can take place at the same time.
They don't have to be, one doesn't have to happen on its own.
They could be happening at the same time.
Man, her body language is bad.
I mean, nodding her way through— Whenever she says something that is particularly false, she starts nodding.
Put your hands out there.
She starts nodding a lot.
Like a lot, a lot, a lot.
Then she said, right, right.
No, not right.
What you are saying is technically wrong.
When you say there can be high voter turnout and voter suppression.
Name a country where there's massively high voter turnout.
Massively high voter turnout that is not directed by the government.
Where the government isn't pointing a gun at someone and saying you need to go vote.
Name a country that has very high voter turnout and voter suppression at the same time.
Please.
I await your, I await your explanation of how this works precisely.
She then refuses to say whether Joe Biden was wrong to call Georgia's voting law Jim Crow 2.0, despite the fact that Georgia now has tremendous numbers of people who are early voting.
President Biden, last year, likened the new Georgia voting law to, quote, Jim Crow in the 21st century.
But turnout so far in the state's midterm elections has smashed midterm records.
Today, it topped 1 million votes overall.
That's about 70 percent more than 2018, on par with presidential election turnout.
Was President Biden wrong with this assessment of Georgia's voting law, or does he stand by that Jim Crow comparison?
So, as you know, I got to be careful.
I cannot get into politics from here.
So I won't comment specifically on that race or on the elections or the data that's coming out.
No one asked you to comment on that.
They asked about Joe Biden's comments.
He's the president of the United States.
So they're closing pitches.
We did a bad job.
And there's voter suppression.
Excellent, excellent pitch, guys.
Alrighty, the rest of the show is continuing now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We'll be getting into what Republicans are about to do in the House.
The answer is they're going to win a lot of seats.
Plus, Joe Biden is doing COVID emergency on, COVID emergency off.
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