All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 10, 2022 - The Ben Shapiro Show
43:25
Biden Takes A Victory Lap | Ep. 1608
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
We examine the latest election results.
Yes, they are still coming in, fully two days after the election.
Joe Biden takes a triumphant victory lap and prepares for a 2024 run.
And Donald Trump considers his options.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show.
The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
I talk about them every single show.
Why haven't you gotten a VPN yet?
Get ExpressVPN right now at ExpressVPN.com.
Slash Ben will get to all the news in just one moment.
First, you're paying a lot of money to places like Verizon, AT&T, or T-Mobile.
Over 80 bucks a month for wireless services when you can get the same service on the same network at PeerTalk for about half the price.
With PeerTalk, you get talk, text, and data that's just as fast for 30 bucks a month.
Those other guys are making pay for thousands of retail stores you don't actually go to or perks that you're not actually using the massive profits to keep themselves happy.
Pure Talk, on the other hand, wants to keep you happy, which is why they have invested in a US-based customer service team.
It's also why they give you so many more data options, because why would they charge you for data you don't need?
All the others, they just go unlimited data.
That's what you need.
Well, what if you actually are not using unlimited data?
Because no one in history has used unlimited data.
I switched to Pure Talk because I like supporting veteran-owned US-based companies that have my best interests at heart.
It took me less than 10 minutes to make the switch.
It's very easy.
I'm super satisfied with my service.
Go to puretalk.com.
Enter code SHAPIRO.
Save 50% off your first month and lots of money down the road.
Again, head on over to puretalk.com.
Promo code SHAPIRO for 50% off your very first month.
That's puretalk.com.
Promo code SHAPIRO.
Get 50% off your very first month today.
Puretalk.com.
Once more, enter code SHAPIRO.
50% off your first month.
Have you been listening to the show for a long time?
You know that I have a great Helix sleep mattress.
Love the thing.
But that's not the only place where I catch up on my sleep.
It's also on my Allform sofa.
Helix has left the boudoir.
They've entered the living room with Allform.
That is correct.
Helix has launched a new company.
It's called Allform.
They're already making the best sofas in the game.
Allform sofas are American made, easy to assemble, scratch and stain resistant, stylish and comfortable.
All-form sofas are modern yet timeless seating pieces that come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and configurations.
They're easily customizable and cost a fraction of what you would pay in traditional stores.
All-form sofas are designed to grow with the way you live.
The All-Form Sofa Collection has got everything from armchairs and loveseats to an eight-seat sectional so you can find the perfect piece for any space.
Plus, all-form sofas are shipped directly to your door.
They can be assembled in just a few minutes.
No tools necessary.
If getting a sofa without trying it in-store sounds a little risky, you don't actually need to worry.
You get 100 days to decide if you want to keep it.
If you don't love it, they'll pick it up for free and give you a full refund.
To find your perfect sofa, check out allform.com slash Ben.
Allform is offering 20% off all orders for our listeners at allform.com slash Ben.
I've got an Allform sofa.
It's fantastic.
Step up your own sofa game today at allform.com slash Ben.
Get 20% off your order.
Well, election month goes on.
I know it's supposed to be election day and we were supposed to have results that night, like the great state of Florida did, but nope.
It is now Thursday, the election was Tuesday, and we are still counting votes in Nevada, where a single blind nun in Mozambique is apparently tabulating all of the votes.
The same thing is happening in Arizona, where apparently a similarly situated blind nun, this time in Saskatchewan, is tabulating all the votes.
The votes are still coming in.
In Nevada, it looks as though Adam Laxalt is going to pull off his race against Catherine Cortez Masto, which puts the Republicans at 50 seats in the Senate.
Which means that the Republicans need to win one of the final two outstanding seats.
Arizona is still up for grabs.
Blake Masters looks like he is trailing there.
It is very likely that he loses in that race.
Over in Georgia, the race is headed to a runoff.
So once again, control of the Senate will come down to a runoff in Georgia, as we are used to, as has become our custom here in the United States.
This time, Hershel Walker is not going to have Brian Kemp's coattails to hang on to.
To cling to, to drag him into victory.
So Republicans presumably are going to have to put every effort into elevating Herschel Walker, an extraordinarily weak candidate in the state of Georgia.
I say he's extraordinarily weak because again, Brian Kemp walked all over, stomped Stacey Abrams in the gubernatorial election.
Pretty much any generic Republican in the Senate would have beaten Raphael Warnock, but Herschel Walker is not generic R. And as we have learned, not generic R very often does worse than generic R.
So Adam Laxalt with about 80% of the vote in, 80 plus percent of the vote in, is still about 15,000 votes over Catherine Cortez Masto.
Many of the outstanding areas trend Republican.
Predictions are that he is going to end up taking that seat.
Meanwhile, as we say in Arizona, votes are still being counted.
Carrie Lake could still end up as governor of Arizona.
That race has gotten extraordinarily close.
The current outstanding vote count has Carrie Lake down in the single thousands of votes.
Somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 votes is where she is right now, but a lot of the results are still coming in.
Arizona still has one quarter of the vote to count, and the gubernatorial election is just too close to call at this point.
So Carrie Lake could still pull that one out on the governor's side.
On the Senate side, Blake Masters is lagging fairly badly.
Carrie Lake at this point with about 75% of the vote in, 76% of the vote in.
She has about 941,000 raw votes.
Meanwhile, Blake Masters only has about 884,000 raw votes.
So that's a pretty serious lag.
Some split ticket voting going on over in Arizona.
Meanwhile, as we say, the Georgia runoff is coming.
It's going to be a barn burner once again.
People in Georgia are begging Trump to stay out of it because last time Donald Trump lost two Senate seats in Georgia.
So we'll see how that one plays out.
In other words, some of the Democrat major triumphalism is out of place.
This was not a wave election for Republicans.
It was barely a trickle for Republicans, but it is quite possible, not probable, but possible that Republicans end up in control of the Senate by one vote and they will end up in control of the House If they do lose the House, the Democrats, then they may have New York and Florida to blame.
Which means largely New York, because a lot of the people who came down to Florida are from New York.
Except it's a lot of Republicans who came down from Florida to New York.
Lee Zeldin, who did not win his gubernatorial race against Kathy Hochul, but only lost by five to six points.
He apparently had serious coattails and he dragged a bunch of Republican candidates in New York State to victory, according to the New York Times.
As Democrats sought to maintain their narrow House majority in this year's midterms, they counted on New York to be a crucial bulwark instead.
As the party mostly outperformed dire predictions across the country Tuesday night, one of the nation's most liberal states morphed into perhaps the most powerful drag on its chances.
Channeling angst over persistent crime and inflation, Republicans ran a nearly clean sweep through the slate of New York's congressional toss-up races.
While their parties struggled in swing states like Virginia and Michigan, Republican candidates made inroads deep into the suburbs of Long Island and the Hudson Valley, even into pockets of Brooklyn and Queens, where President Biden had won handily.
When they were done, Republicans had flipped four Democratic House seats more than any other state.
They'd won a staggering prize, the defeat of Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, who was the House Democratic campaign chairman charged with protecting his party's hold on Congress.
So Democrats did exceedingly poorly in New York.
Again, reading this election as a referendum on excellent democratic governance is wrong.
This election ended up being a referendum on crazy people, on bad candidates, on candidates who simply were not up to snuff and were nominated because of enthusiasm of the base very often for President Trump or for election 2020.
But this was not about a green light for all the Democrats policies.
This was a rebuke to Democrats, but what will be fascinating to see is if Democrats refuse the rebuke.
If Democrats see this instead of a rebuke, sort of a rebuke that was that was sort of softened by the bad quality of many Republican candidates and the distracted nature of their campaigns.
If Democrats instead see this as a triumph, this could be a big mistake for them.
Joe Biden obviously sees it that way.
We're going to get to him in just one second.
The big stat that came out of this election is how independents voted.
So I said this before the election.
This one I got right.
So I was a little too enthusiastic about Republican chances beforehand because the polling seemed to be moving all in one direction.
It seemed as though the Republican wave was coming.
And then it just sort of dissipated.
Why?
Well, this is the one thing I did say.
How independent voters decided was going to decide this election.
In 2010, independent voters broke like two to one for Republicans.
In 2018, independent voters broke on behalf of Democrats.
Independent voters should have broken heavy on behalf of Republicans, considering that Joe Biden has a 28% approval rating with independent voters in the United States.
They did not.
If a single stat tells the story of this election, it is that independent voters broke 49-48 for the Democrats.
49-48, what does that say?
What that says is that they were looking at Republican candidates and they said, these guys are not serious, we can't hand them power.
It didn't say that they love Democratic policies.
The exit polls showed Americans don't like Democratic policies.
They think the Democrats are wrong on the economy.
They think the Democrats are wrong on crime.
They think the Democrats are wrong on illegal immigration.
There's really only two areas where Democrats dominated.
One was responsibility for government, because again, Republicans ran a lot of very irresponsible candidates.
And two, abortion, which we'll get to in just one second.
And as a pro-lifer, This speaks to what kind of strategy pro-lifers should use going forward, particularly when running for federal office.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Democrats appeared to hold off the steep losses in Congress if preliminary results pulled up that are traditional for the president's party in midterm years.
They did so in large part because their own voters came to the polls with unusual enthusiasm and swing voters broke in their direction.
Again, that is a shocker.
Swing voters breaking the direction.
In many states that were decided by the narrowest margins in 2020, Democrats came closer to matching their presidential year vote totals than did their GOP opponents.
In Pennsylvania's race for an open Senate seat, the winner, Democrat John Fetterman, who is not with us, drew about 76% of President Biden's 2020 vote total.
Republican Mehmet Oz drew 73% of the vote that went to former President Donald Trump.
Now, Mehmet Oz was not a good candidate.
It also happens to be the case that a lot of people split their ticket.
Meaning that a lot of people voted for Josh Shapiro and then voted for Mehmet Oz in the Senate election.
What if the Republicans had not run Doug Mastriano, a person who literally went to QAnon rallies just before he was nominated?
What if they had nominated someone who is significantly more palatable in a purple state?
Instead, they didn't.
And so the Republicans did poorly with independents.
Democrats notched an unusual achievement.
They brought their own supporters to the polls in large numbers while persuading independent voters that Republican candidates were an unacceptable alternative.
Independent voters were expected to break for the GOP because of economic anxiety.
Instead, backed Democratic candidates by three percentage points nationally, according to one large survey of the 2020 electorate, 2022 electorate called AP VoteCast.
Independence broke for Democrats by far larger margins in many states with competitive Senate races, by 19 points in Pennsylvania, 28 points in Georgia, more than 30 points in Arizona.
Candidate quality matters.
So very few of the Democrats cross the aisle to vote for the Republicans.
But a lot of people who are independent cross the aisle to vote in favor of the Democrats.
In Georgia, where the survey asked about the personal quality of Senate candidates, 56% of voters told VoteCast they believed that Raphael Warnock had the right experience for the job.
Only 40% said that former football star Herschel Walker had the right experience.
Scott Reid, Republican and former chief political strategist for the U.S.
Chamber of Commerce, said that Republicans had everything going for them.
Trump turned out to be the deciding factor, picking a lot of second-rate candidates.
In the final three weeks, he made the election about him.
Now, again, losing independence in a year when the president has a 28% approval rating with independence is a shocker.
And the only rationale for that is that the Republicans ran some really bad candidates.
It also happens to be that abortion turned out to be a major issue.
So if you look at the exit polls, the economy was in fact the number one issue.
According to the CBS News exit poll, something like 32% of the Americans, the American voters said that the economy, inflation, that was their top issue.
27% said abortion was their top issue.
Now, For Republicans to have avoided any blowback from Roe v. Wade at the federal level would have not been all that hard.
All Republicans would have had to do is say, this is a state-level issue.
I am running for Senate.
This is a state-level issue.
I am running for Congress.
Roe v. Wade says the overruling of Roe v. Wade in Dobbs literally says this is a state-level issue.
It is highly doubtful, by the way, whether any significant pro-life legislation at the federal level would be greenlit by the Supreme Court anyway.
So federal candidates should be saying, no matter how pro-life they are, if you're a pro-life person and you wish to see legislation passed in your state, which is mostly how restrictions on abortion are going to get passed, if you wish to see that happen, it has to be relegated back to the states.
And in order to get those restrictions passed, you actually have to win.
And losing, but being very loud about losing, does not do you any good in helping to save the lives of the pre-born.
So if you wish to save the lives of the pre-born, perhaps you ought to be strategic about it.
This is why in purple states, for example, pro-lifers would be wise not to go for broke.
A lot of pro-lifers in states like Michigan, which is a very, very purple state.
It is a purple to blue state.
If you push forward with a full ban on abortion in Michigan, that is going to get rejected.
And that's precisely what happened in Michigan.
Instead, abortion got enshrined in Michigan.
Instead, if you're in a purple state, what you do is you gradually push that line backwards.
That's on state-level elections.
When it comes to the federal, when it comes to the Senate and the Congress, even when it comes to the presidency in 2024, pro-lifers would be wise to acknowledge that this is in fact a state-level issue until a constitutional amendment is passed to change the law.
As a practical matter, that is what it is going to be anyway, because the Supreme Court is not going to allow, if the federal Congress today Passed a law barring abortion from birth?
The Supreme Court would strike it down saying that it is not within the power of interstate commerce.
I'm just telling you that's what would happen.
Brett Kavanaugh essentially says as much in his concurrence in Dobbs.
Nonetheless, abortion did become an animating issue for a lot of Democrats.
I thought that Republicans were going to do a better job of avoiding this issue, but they didn't.
According to the New York Times, voters in three states, California, Vermont, and highly contested Michigan, decided to protect abortion rights in their state constitutions.
In a fourth, Kentucky, a conservative bastion and home to Mitch McConnell, voters rejected an amendment saying their constitution gave no right to an abortion.
For decades, abortion politics worked a certain way, rallying the Republican base and abortion opponents with far more intensity than abortion rights supporters.
Conservative evangelicals and Catholics often voted on abortion, or the future of the Supreme Court, even if it meant compromising other priorities.
But overturning Roe v. Wade appears to have flipped the script.
In the months since the June decision, Democrats seized on the issue, linking abortion to everyday family economics and health care, tapping into voter fears about the rise of far-right Republicans, and then they wove that into broader Democratic messaging about Republicans' extreme views.
By the way, this is statistically true.
I mean, the one group in America that went heavily for the Democrats is single women.
Single women went heavily for the Democrats.
Presumably because of the issue of abortion.
Does that mean that pro-lifers should avoid the issue?
No, it doesn't mean pro-lifers should avoid the issue.
What it does mean is that pro-lifers should use common sense when it comes to what they believe they can actually get done and when it comes to how they campaign, particularly, again, for federal office.
You're running for state legislature?
Different thing.
You should be honest about what it is that you are seeking and about what it is that you can achieve.
Okay, but when you wrap all of this up, there is one problem for the Democrats.
One very, very large problem for the Democrats.
And that is that under the tip of the iceberg, this election was the tip of the iceberg, the iceberg under the water is moving against the Democrats.
Demographic trends are actually now moving against the Democrats.
Sean Trendy over at RealClearPolitics He says one of the quiet stories under the hood is Republicans are looking like they will win the popular vote.
Probably a popular vote swing of 5% depends on how California works out, swinging about 2% of the chamber.
The generic polls, by the way, are likely to be about spot on.
Why?
An easy story is uncontested seats.
There are about eight more GOP uncontested than Democrats, but in some of those, they don't count any votes.
So a net hurts the GOP.
There are seats where two Democrats ran against each other, so Dems double dip.
California has a lot of votes left to count, and building that into my estimate, Republicans are up six in the generic ballot right now.
A five-point swing would have them win by two.
California had a gap of four million in the popular vote.
It looks about half the ballots are counted already.
Some states like Arizona will see final counts that are helpful.
So, what explains it?
Some of it is a chart that he talked about again and again this cycle.
At R plus two, the popular vote is still nestled in a valley where there just aren't that many seats to flip.
There are not that many seats within that R plus two or D plus two segment of the congressional seats.
The seats are now kind of polarized out.
There are a lot of R plus tens and a lot of D plus tens.
So what Sean Trendy says is, in other words, the Biden plus 10 levy held.
Combine that with some bad candidates in Biden minus 10 districts, like Ohio 9, and you get a fuller explanation.
But the quiet story under the hood is something I talked about last year.
Republicans did relatively well with black and especially Hispanic voters, but it didn't translate to seats.
So, for example, Bennie Thompson is at 58% in his minority majority district in Mississippi.
That's a bad number for Bennie Thompson.
Still means he won by 15, 20 points.
Linda Sanchez is at 54% in a 66% Clinton, 62% Biden district.
Anyway, nice reminder that structural advantages aren't permanent, and as the GOP vote migrates to rural areas where they're already strong or minority areas where they'll do better but not well enough to win, they're going to start to produce some of the inefficiencies that have bedeviled Democrats these past few cycles.
What he's talking about there is the Democrats complaining that they win the popular vote but lose the electoral college.
Here, what you see is that the Republicans win going away in the congressional popular vote, but they don't pick up as many seats as they should because a lot of the seats are apportioned differently.
What does that mean for the Democrats?
Well, it was not an amazing day for the Democrats.
It was a dodge-the-bullet day for the Democrats.
What happened here is that Republicans pulled failure out of the jaws of victory.
This is what happened.
The Republicans had this thing, and then they blew this thing.
They ran a bunch of bad candidates.
They campaigned badly.
They didn't have any cohesive and coherent messaging.
And so what happened is in a lot of those areas, the voters just didn't trust them.
That's really all it comes down to.
Did the voters trust you or did the voters not?
Okay, so here is the problem for Democrats.
We've talked a lot about the problems for Republicans and we'll talk more about that, but there's a big problem for Democrats.
Lurking in the weeds here is a monster for the Democrats.
People don't like their policies.
People don't like the wokeness.
People don't like the transing of the children.
People don't like the big spending.
People don't like the centralization of power at the federal level.
People don't like what Joe Biden has done as president.
They don't like it.
But because Joe Biden didn't get clocked in the face by reality, because his party did not get clocked in the face by reality, because they dodged the bullet, they're now interpreting that as a mandate.
Now again, this does not mean the Republicans had a good night.
They didn't have a good night.
I'm not going to sugarcoat that Republicans had a good night.
They didn't.
They were supposed to win 25, 30 seats.
Republicans at this point are going to be lucky if they pick up like 10 seats.
That'd be like a big win for Republicans right now, is if they end up at like 222, 223.
After all this is said and done, they started off at 212.
With that said, was this an amazing night for Democrats?
It wasn't an amazing night for Democrats.
They're gonna lose the chamber.
It wasn't an unbelievable night for Democrats in the Senate either.
Remember, most of these seats that we're talking about right now are seats that Democrats currently hold.
Arizona is a seat held by a Democrat.
Nevada is a seat held by a Democrat.
Pennsylvania is a seat that was held by a Republican, but it was an open seat.
Georgia is a seat held by a Democrat.
New Hampshire is a seat held by the Democrat.
So there's an expectation Republicans are going to flip a lot of seats.
So Democrats holding is a victory of sorts, but it is not like a monster.
Your agenda has been validated.
Everything you do is right.
Victory.
That's not what it was.
They barely escaped.
Barely.
And instead of reading that as, maybe we ought to course correct a little bit, guys.
Maybe we ought to think a little bit more about what it is that we are doing.
Maybe this is just a warning shot from the American public.
And if Republicans, if Republicans get their act together, we are cruising for a bruising in the future.
This is about Republican incompetence, not about our own genius.
Instead of taking that message away, Democrats seem to be taking away the opposite message, which is we have been validated.
Everything we have done has been a good idea.
This is one of the crucial mistakes that seems nearly everybody makes in politics.
In 2004, George W. Bush ran for re-election.
He ran on the heels of the war in Afghanistan beginning, and 9-11, and the war in Iraq, and he barely eked out a victory against John Kerry.
It was a very close election.
I remember being in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the time, and the expectation by many people was that Kerry was actually going to win and George W. Bush would be a one-term president.
In fact, I was so preemptively depressed about the possibility of John Kerry winning that I went over to the local Tower Records.
Yes, there used to be, children, stores where you would buy these things called CDs that would play music.
And I bought a copy of Mozart's Requiem to play.
In case the election went the way that a lot of people were saying.
It didn't go that way, but here's the thing.
George W. Bush took away from a very narrow victory, not the message that he ought to be a little bit chastened in his policies.
Instead, what he took away was, it's time to privatize social security.
I'm going to use my political capital and mandate to mandate.
Same thing happened with Barack Obama.
In 2008, he wins a broad victory based on unity.
Blue strike, red strike, blah, blah, blah.
And instead of taking that as a mandate to unify the country, he took that as a mandate for a socialistic scheme to essentially remake healthcare.
And in 2010, he loses 63 seats.
Stop taking a mandate not to do stupid things as a mandate to be as crazy as you want to be.
This is true on every side of the aisle.
First party to sanity wins.
is the message from this particular election cycle.
Joe Biden is not taking that message.
We'll get to more on this in just one second.
First, the holidays, they are the most exciting time of the year.
But if you want to enjoy them to the fullest, you need to get your best sleep every single night.
And one of the ways you do this is by getting the world's best sheets.
I'm talking about Bull and Branch.
I'm serious.
I literally took all my other sheets and I threw them away because Bulletin Branch are just that good.
They feel softer every time I wash them.
They are fantastic.
I got them for my kids as well.
Bulletin Branch sheets are made from the finest 100% organic cotton threads on earth.
In fact, their signature hem sheets were made with threads so luxurious three US presidents have slept in them.
Bulletin Branch sheets are made free from toxins, pesticides, and other harsh chemicals.
They actually soften with every wash cycle.
They come in nine neutral colors and all mattress sizes.
Their signature sheets come wrapped in a beautiful holiday gift box.
Who wouldn't love the gift of a good night's sleep after today?
Best of all, Bull & Branch gives you a 30-night risk-free trial with free shipping and returns on all orders, but you're not going to want to return them.
Bring home a better night's sleep this holiday season with Bull & Branch bedding.
For a limited time, get 20% off your first set of sheets and free shipping when you use promo code SHAPIRO at bullandbranch.com.
That's bullandbranch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D, branch.com.
Promo code SHAPIRO.
Go check them out right now for the world's best sheets.
Also, I'm an Orthodox Jew, as you know, and that means that Israel is very important to me.
It's important to millions of Christians who stand with Israel as well.
This is why I've partnered with the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
The fellowship was founded 40 years ago by a rabbi in Chicago to build bridges between Christians and Jews by serving the needs of impoverished elderly Jews, many of whom are Holocaust survivors today.
The organization is the largest humanitarian organization helping the poor, not only in Israel, but throughout the former Soviet Union, and especially Ukraine.
The fellowship is doing important work right now inside Ukraine to provide food for elderly Jews, many of whom have nowhere else to turn as the war continues to intensify and winter closes in.
During a recent attack on Kiev, bombs landed 600 feet From a vulnerable Jewish community, The Fellowship serves.
For just $25, you can rush a food box with highly nutritious food.
Two Jewish people in need right now, thanks to this special partnership.
Every $25 donation you give will be matched, so you're providing not one, but two food boxes that will save Jewish lives in Ukraine.
To give, go to benforthefellowship.org.
Please donate today, they urgently need your help.
That's benforthefellowship.org again.
benforthefellowship.org.
So yesterday, Joe Biden stumbled out to the microphones to take a triumphant victory lap.
And listen, listen, you can't blame the guy too much.
The fact is that Joe Biden's party overperformed in this election in a way that no president has overperformed in a midterm election since George W. Bush in 2002.
And that was literally around the heels of 9-11.
This was, by historical standards, a win for Joe Biden, and he's going to treat it that way.
So Joe Biden goes out there and he says, it was a good day for democracy.
We had an election yesterday.
And it was a good day, I think, for democracy.
And I think it was a good day for America.
Joe Biden finishes there by starting to cough and then he says he has a little horse like little Sebastian on Parks and Recreation, which apparently he rides around the White House garden in his off hours.
It's funny how the democracy is at stake stuff went immediately to democracy is alive, well thriving.
Everything's amazing.
Almost as though it was an election ploy, this whole democracy was at stake stuff.
But the real message that Joe Biden was there to give yesterday is that he is not changing course, not one iota, not one bit.
This is validation of everything that he has ever done or ever will do.
And there's a president who basically lucked into his position by virtue of COVID, an incompetent campaign by his opponent, and the fact that he was able to lock himself in a basement for six months, and who has proceeded to run the country directly into the ground.
And here he is basically saying that he gets that voters are still frustrated, but... So he's asked about this.
Here's what he had to say.
And another thing that we know is that voters spoke clearly about their concerns about raising costs, the rising costs that they're in, and the need to get inflation down.
There's still a lot of people hurting.
They're very concerned.
And it's about crime and public safety.
And they sent a clear and unmistakable message that they want to Preserve our democracy and protect the right to choose in this country.
OK, so he says that he understands the frustrations.
But in reality, what just happened is that we are restoring the soul of the country.
This is the world beating.
I am an FDR, LBJ, Barack Obama figure from a doddering old man.
The soul of the country is being restored because John Fetterman is in the Senate or something.
I said we're going to restore the soul of the country.
Began to treat each other with decency, honor, and integrity.
And it's starting to happen.
The conversations are becoming more normal, becoming more, how can I say it, decent.
Everyone's becoming more decent now.
The sun is shining, gang.
Four days ago, the end of the republic was at hand.
You understand that we didn't just, apparently according to Joe Biden, we didn't just avoid catastrophe.
The sun is now shining.
The world is a bright place.
We went from a world that was shot through a dingy red lens to a world shot through a yellow lens with beautiful sunlight streaming into your warm, cozy kitchen.
And Joe Biden's sitting there, sniffing your hair.
Everything is great, guys.
Amazing how fast things switched.
It's just, wow, wow.
Can you feel your soul beginning to grow?
Can you feel it?
Can you feel the happiness?
So, he's asked, so are you going to change anything or do anything differently, considering that you still do have a 43% approval rating?
You just lost control of the House of Representatives.
And the reason you didn't lose control of the Senate is because Republicans decided that they would go down to the local homeless shelter and pick some candidates.
Do you have anything you'd change, Mr. President?
I'm not going to change the direction.
I said I ran for three reasons.
of voters say the country is heading in the wrong direction, despite the results of last night.
What in the next two years do you intend to do differently to change people's opinion of the direction of the country, particularly as you contemplate a run for president in 2024?
Nothing, because they're just finding out what we're doing.
So I'm not going to change the direction.
I said I ran for three reasons.
I'm going to continue to stay where I am.
I fully understand the legitimate concern that what I'm saying is wrong.
The thing is that they're finding out what we're doing now and that's why they love us.
It is a truth of politics that God's justice comes for all.
As a religious person, I truly believe this.
I believe that so much of our politics is about God's justice coming for people in the most ironic and ridiculous possible ways.
It happens over and over and over again.
Hillary Clinton wanted to be president for her entire life.
Her entire life.
That's all she wanted.
And then she helped elevated Donald Trump to her opposing nomination in 2016.
She wanted him to run.
She was desperate for him to run.
And then she loses.
God's justice came.
Barack Obama thought of himself as a world-conquering, unique figure in American politics, an extraordinary intellect.
And then he has to hand the keys over to the car to Donald Trump, who sits across from him, and he's like, hey, Barack.
Reborn in Kenya, were you?
Yeah.
God's justice came for Barack Obama.
Donald Trump wants to be ridiculously popular.
It's a thing he loves more than anything.
And yet he seems to not be able to get out of his own way.
And for Joe Biden, Joe Biden believes that because he has lucked into many things in the past several years, including he lucked into the vice presidency, and then he lucked into the nomination, and then he lucked into the presidency, and now he has lucked into an escape act in the midterms.
He believes that he's going to do amazing.
I mean, it's like watching a Greek tragedy.
His character flaw, which is that he has a self-confidence of a guy coming off the bench who goes 0 for 10 from three point range, but heaves him up from half court.
That's Joe Biden.
Joe Biden made a lucky shot from near half court.
And now he's like, well, I must be Steph Curry.
I'm amazing at this.
I'm not going to change a single thing.
I mean, sure, the American people are like blaring red lights in my face telling me to stop, but I'm not going to stop.
More cowbell.
All right.
All right.
I mean, if you... Okay.
If this is the way you want to do it.
So Joe Biden continues, he says, I have no guarantees that we can stop inflation.
Yeah, I'm concerned about it.
I have empathy.
If I say empathy a lot, then I guess you'll think I'm empathetic.
But, um, but yeah.
But what I can't do is I can't guarantee that we're going to be able to get rid of inflation, but I do think we can.
We've already brought down the price of gasoline about $1.20 a gallon across the board, and I think that the oil companies are really doing the nation a real disservice.
So again, he's not going to bring down inflation.
Also, he maintains that we are nowhere near a recession.
He's just going to keep whistling this tune.
It's amazing.
So there's a lot of things we can do to affect the things that people need on a monthly basis to reduce their inflation, their cost of living.
And so, but I am optimistic because we continue to grow.
And at a rational pace, we are not anywhere near a recession right now in terms of the growth.
But I think we can have what most economists call a soft landing.
We're going to have a soft landing, he says.
Also, he says that, are you worried, he's asked, are you worried that the Republicans are going to do a Hunter Biden investigation?
No, no, everything's in me.
No, Hunter's the smartest man I know.
Snorting Parmesan cheese from carpets is what we do.
If you're a Biden, we love Parmesan cheese and carpet.
I'm sure.
Final question.
Republicans have made it clear that if they do take control of the House, that they want to launch a raft of investigations on day one into your handling of Afghanistan, the border.
They want to look into some of your cabinet officials.
They want to investigate you.
They may even want to investigate your son.
What's your message to Republicans who are considering investigating your family, and particularly your son Hunter's business dealings?
Lots of luck in your senior year, as my coach used to say.
Look, um, I think the American public wants to move on and get things done for them.
Um, well, we will find out.
Daring people to investigate your son is a, is a unique strategy.
We'll see how that, we'll see how that plays.
Meanwhile, he's asked, well, you know, now you're going to have to deal with Republican Congress.
How does that change your math?
He's like, well, the Republicans won't cut deals with me.
Probably.
I mean, I'm, I'm such a nice person.
Why wouldn't?
Nope.
That is not going to happen.
The predictions were, and again, I'm not being critical of anybody who made the predictions, I got it, okay?
There's supposed to be a red wave, you guys, you were talking about us losing 30 to 50 seats, and this is gonna, nowhere near, that's not gonna happen.
And so there's always enough people on the other team, whether it's Democrat or Republican, that the opposite party can make an appeal to, and maybe pick them off to get the help.
Okay, so, finally Joe Biden is asked, are you going to run for re-election?
And this is the real takeaway here.
He's not changing course and absolutely he's going to run for re-election.
Ironically, by Republicans not winning a major victory, Democrats were ready to take Joe Biden and they were ready to tie him up and put him under the train like snidely whiplash to Nell.
But instead, along came the Republicans, like Dudley Do-Right, to save Nell from the train.
Here he comes, Joe!
And so now Joe Biden is on time.
He's off the train tracks.
And you know what?
He is going to run.
He's going to run.
So ironically, the one thing that Democrats kind of don't want, which is Joe Biden to run, is going to happen now.
He's enthusiastically going to run.
By which I mean walk incredibly slowly, avoiding cords on the ground.
Here's the president announcing this.
Two thirds of Americans in exit polls say that they don't think you should run for re-election.
What is your message to them?
And how does that factor into your final decision about whether or not to run for re-election?
It doesn't.
Watch me.
Watch me, I don't know.
The people who want me to run?
Screw it!
I'm gonna, I'm gonna crawl!
I'm gonna, sort of, thrash around on the floor!
So, Democrats, good luck.
You've learned no lessons, so we'll see how that pays off for you.
Again, whichever party learns the lessons faster and becomes not crazy is going to win.
Whichever party continues to be crazy is going to lose.
Joe Biden has not learned any lessons.
The question becomes, will Republicans learn any lessons?
What lessons will they learn?
Well, in order for the Republicans to learn some lessons, there's going to need to be some change at the top.
I know it sounds harsh, but it turns out that when your team sucks, the coach gets fired.
I keep saying this.
The coach needs to get fired.
There needs to be some systemic changes inside Republican HQ.
Somebody needs to stand up and take the reins in an actual, strong, and coherent way.
But instead, what you're getting from a lot of the Republican leadership is, guys, everything was fine.
It went amazing.
It was terrific.
So now, it ain't just a river in Egypt.
It is, in fact, apparently like the key component of Republican thought leadership, at least inside the infrastructure.
We'll get to that in just one second.
First, what if I told you there was something that could make the fine lines, forehead wrinkles, dark spots, even under eye bags disappear?
Sounds pretty fantastic, right?
Well, it's not too good to be true.
It's just GenuCell.
GenuCell has sold over 1 million products to both men and women.
The reviews speak for themselves.
Samantha says, I love GenuCell skincare.
I've used it all over my face and under my eyes.
It cleared up the dry flakiness and even reduced my forehead lines.
Somebody even asked if I'd had work done.
Susan wrote, I've been using GenuCell for a couple of months.
The puffiness around my eyes is gone.
Even the crow's feet and small lines have disappeared.
I've been using GenuCell myself because frankly, my kids are giving me the bags under my eyes and I need that to stop.
I actually gave some to my mom as well.
My wife too.
GenuCell uses a proprietary base with clinical levels of botanical extracts.
They come together to yield amazing results.
GenuCell products are natural, cruelty-free, made in the United States.
Take advantage of GenuCell's early Black Friday sale going on right now and get their most popular products package for over 70% off.
You'll get two months worth of their best sellers plus They're hyaluronic acid serum free with your purchase.
Take advantage of the amazing deal right now by going to GenuCell.com slash Shapiro.
Use code Shapiro for an extra 10% off.
That's GenuCell.com slash Shapiro.
G-E-N-U-C-E-L.com slash Shapiro.
Also, I recently watched an amazing new three-part series by my friend Jordan Peterson called On Marriage.
It's his definitive series on matrimony exclusively at Daily Wire Plus.
You're not gonna see it anywhere else.
Believe me, you need to see it.
In 2018, marriage rates hit an all-time low in the United States.
That is a disaster for the United States.
We need to rekindle what marriage is supposed to mean and how it can make you a better person.
That's what Jordan does with On Marriage.
Daily Wire Plus members can watch all three episodes of Jordan Peterson's On Marriage today.
If you're not yet a member, go to dailywire.com slash men and join today.
So as I say, first party to sanity wins the race.
Right now, Joe Biden looks like he's going to double down on the insanity because he didn't learn the lesson of this election.
Will Republicans learn the lesson of this election?
Well, apparently the leadership won't because after all, they have a stake in pretending they did an amazing job.
So RNC chair, Ronna McDaniel, she actually suggested that Republicans won the Super Bowl.
If by won the Super Bowl, you mean won the play-in round of the playoffs and got defeated before heading to the national championship at all, then sure.
I mean, if your standards are so low that winning a couple of seats in the House to take the majority is enough for you, then I guess that's your baseline.
But a historically bad performance by the out-of-party power with the president at 43% doesn't sound like winning the Super Bowl to me.
Unlike in football, basketball, baseball, the margins matter.
The margins really, really matter.
And if Republicans fail to take the Senate, that's not just a failure, that is a massive failure.
Here is Ronna McDaniel, however, trying to pretend that this was just a big win for Republicans across the board.
We won with Wesley Hunt.
We picked up two seats, and Abbott won against the third-time loser Beto O'Rourke, despite all the money that he had.
We beat Stacey Abrams.
We retired Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the DCCC.
We beat Elaine Luria, who ran the January 6th committee.
This is a good night for Republicans, and anybody saying otherwise is just wrong.
When you win the game, you don't say, oh, did you win it by one point or two points?
You won the game.
We just won the Super Bowl last night.
Nancy Pelosi will no longer have the gavel, and it will be in the hands of Kevin McCarthy, and that is good for the American people.
Okay, let's just put it this way.
The margins matter.
If you win the House by one, that's not the same thing as winning the House by 30.
If you win the House by 30, you then have margin of error.
There are a lot of these Republicans in purple districts who may, in fact, cross the aisle to vote with Democrats on particular issues.
Yes, the margins matter.
Anybody who says that it wasn't a good night for Republicans, I feel like you have a stake in this ballgame since you are the head of the RNC.
I like Ronald McDaniel, but can we stop pretending that like if anybody is pretending here, it's like whoever learns the lessons of last night will do well in 2024.
And if you refuse to learn the lessons of the election night, you're not going to win.
It is that simple.
The American people speak again and again and again.
And all they keep saying is give us sane candidates who don't want to wreck the country.
That's all.
Just just like don't raid the local homeless shelter.
Stop pressing policies that look like they came off The writing's on the wall at Arkham Asylum.
How about that?
And both parties are like, nope.
Joe Biden's like, I like the Arkham Asylum.
I like those plans.
And meanwhile, the Republicans are like, I may not like the plans on the wall, but I love the inmates.
The inmates are amazing over at Arkham.
So Ronna McDaniels says, this is a wave because we are waving goodbye to Pelosi.
There was discussion that this was going to be a red wave.
You know, for every text that I got today that said, you know, I thought there was a red wave coming, and you're telling them that they won the Super Bowl, they might want to know, they might want to hear more than that, Ronna.
Listen, we never used the word red wave at the RNC because we knew the map had shrunk.
There were less competitive seats because of redistricting, and we picked up 14 in 2020, and everybody forgets that.
But Republican governors were overwhelmingly re-elected last night because of what they did in the pandemic because we did have a message. We kept our schools open. We kept our economies humming.
And from Florida to Ohio to Iowa, across the board, we didn't lose a single Republican governorship. And the wave did happen because we are waving goodbye to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Uh, no, not that. No.
A wave at the beach is not the same thing as waving with your, no, no.
Okay, so who's going to learn the lesson first?
Race to the pool, whoever learns the lessons first.
Okay, so Joe Biden said the quiet part out loud yesterday in his press conference.
He said that what he is rooting for is for Republicans not to learn the lesson.
He is rooting for Republicans to go to internecine warfare.
So Joe Biden, he looked real excited yesterday when he was asked about Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.
He was very pumped up about this.
And here's what he had to say.
Okay, so actually Biden is right.
If you're a Democrat, what you want right now is for Trump to go at DeSantis.
Editor Ron DeSantis or former President Trump?
And how is that factoring into your decision?
It'll be fun watching them take on each other.
I think they should marry each other.
Okay so actually Biden is right.
If you're a Democrat, what you want right now is for Trump to go at DeSantis.
Now look, Ron DeSantis has not declared for the presidency.
He has not.
Ron DeSantis is still governor of Florida.
Presumably he's going to spend a while being governor of Florida because last I checked my calendar, it is November 10th, 2022.
And the next election is not held until 2024.
So he has a while to go here.
But this brings up the question of what Donald Trump is going to do.
So Donald Trump has spent the last couple of days just wallowing in it.
He's very upset.
He's very upset, not just because some of his candidates lost, but because his handpicked candidates did poorly and mostly because Ron DeSantis did really well.
And you can tell because Donald Trump has been spending the last few days attacking Ron DeSantis, the most successful Republican governor in the country, by a long shot.
He spent the last couple of days just defending him.
I mean, just ripping on him, ripping on him nonstop in jealous, petty fashion.
If Donald Trump actually wants to run for president victoriously in 2024, what he should be saying is, we won amazing victories in places like Florida because I endorsed Ron DeSantis and he's a great candidate.
I look forward to his support in 2024, right?
That'd be the smart thing to do.
Instead, Trump goes on Truth Social and he says, now that the election in Florida is over and everything went quite well, shouldn't it be said that in 2020, I got 1.1 million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year?
5.7 million to 4.6 million?
Just asking.
No, that shouldn't be said because one is a presidential election year and one is a midterm year.
And those are not the same thing.
And people typically vote more for presidents in their state than they vote for governor in their state.
So no, those are not comparable in any way, shape or form.
But this is this is his obsession now.
He he he just keeps he just keeps doing this.
He was asked yesterday.
If he would sort of change his tune going into 2024.
Because he picked candidates this time to back based almost entirely on whether they supported the narrative that he won the 2020 election.
He picked Don Balduck in New Hampshire based on the narrative that he won the 2020 election.
Balduck got smoked by 10.
Doug Mastroianno in Pennsylvania was a kook.
He picked him in that gubernatorial race because Doug Mastroianno supported the 2020 election was stolen routine.
And then Trump has done.
So here is Trump explaining.
So Trump actually says, he's proud of his candidates.
He's not going to change anything.
He said, there's a fake news narrative.
I was furious.
It is the opposite.
The people I endorsed did very well.
I was batting 98.6% in the primaries and 216 to 19 in the general election.
That is amazing.
Okay, well, um, I would just like to point out something.
Virtually all of the seats of those 216 that he won were non-competitive seats.
The 19 that were lost were all in very, very competitive districts.
And then he took credit for Marco Rubio's performance, which is weird, since he had nothing to do with that.
Uh, and then he took credit for JD Vance performing less than he did in Ohio.
He took credit for Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, who was elected before Donald Trump was in politics.
So that's, that's strange.
Again, this is, this is not the way that you want to run a, a reelect effort if you are, if you are Donald Trump.
Attacking Donald Trump, Donald Trump attacking Ron DeSantis is a bad strategy.
It is a foolish strategy.
But Trump feels like he has to clear the field.
And that is the major story right now, is what Trump is going to do next, which is what we're going to talk about next.
The rest of the show is continuing now.
You're not going to want to miss it.
We'll be getting into whether or when Donald Trump is going to declare for the presidency.
▲
Export Selection