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Aug. 25, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show

56:17

Mugshot Of The Century

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	Well, it will be the most trafficked photo in the history of planet Earth because social media is so ubiquitous.
	President Donald J. Trump yesterday, he went to the Fulton County Jailhouse where he was arrested.
	He was fingerprinted.
	They took his picture.
	The mugshot is now out.
	It's destined to be the most famous mugshot certainly in the history of humanity.
	It's a, um, I will say that it is a win for Trump to have his mugshot taken.
	I know it was supposed to be some sort of big win for the left.
	They finally got him.
	They finally, the frog marching in the ha- So here's the thing about Trump and imagistics.
	Trump is a meme.
	He is a walking, living, breathing meme.
	Everything he does is memeable.
	He is made for TV.
	He is made for the internet.
	He has changed our age because of that.
	And so Donald Trump also happens to be a person who's been consistently on camera since the time he was about 20 years old.
	He is currently almost 80.
	So 60 long years of being in the public eye and of having your picture took means that dude knows how to take a picture.
	And the mugshot of Trump, again, it is such a big, I have to say, it's a giant imagistic win for him because we know that he was going to be arrested.
	It's not as though no one knew he was arrested.
	It's not as though it was a shock dawning on the American people that Donald Trump is under indictment in four separate jurisdictions.
	We've known about all of this for months.
	What the mugshot does, especially this particular mugshot, is it gives Trump the appearance of somebody who is bravely standing up to forces that are going after him.
	And again, his image here actually conveys all of that because Donald Trump is phenomenal on camera.
	And whatever else you can say about the guy, the dude was a TV star for decades.
	And I promise you, he knows what he looks like on camera.
	There is zero chance that before he did this mugshot, he didn't sit with his team and say, OK, what expression should I use in the mugshot since it's going to be the most trafficked photo of me ever?
	What expression should I use?
	Because this is a pitch perfect thing.
	I mean, just from a theatrical perspective, the mugshot of Donald Trump for Trump's purposes is pitch perfect.
	He doesn't look as though he's afraid or concerned or anxious.
	He doesn't even look, I would say, angry.
	He looks determined, right?
	I mean, that is the goal here, is to look as though he is the face of doom coming for his enemies.
	And that's what it looks like.
	I mean, if you flash that back up there, that is exactly what Donald Trump looks like in this mugshot.
	And this is what he is going to convey for the rest of the campaign, is I'm coming for my enemies and your enemies are my enemies.
	There's a reason why he's already trotting it out on the mugs.
	There's a reason why he's already trotting it out on the t-shirts.
	The cash machines at the Trump headquarters are going to just be going nonstop today.
	And when it comes to the Georgia indictment, as we've discussed, Fannie Willis is actually spinning up something that doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of legal sense.
	She could have charged Donald Trump for conspiracy to commit some sort of crime, right?
	That's an actual crime in Georgia.
	If you have a conspiracy to go rob a bank, a conspiracy to rob the bank is an actual crime.
	The problem is she can't actually identify the crime that the conspiracy involved.
	A conspiracy to challenge election results is not a conspiracy to commit a crime because you're allowed to challenge election results.
	So she couldn't charge him with that.
	So she decided instead that she was going to go for a RICO charge.
	Now, a RICO charge means an ongoing criminal organization dedicated to a variety of criminal activities.
	The problem is, what are the variety of criminal activities that the organization was dedicated to?
	Normally, when you have some sort of mafia organization, they're dedicated to things like prostitution or like prohibition era Alcohol running or drugs or, you know, any other variety of protection money, right?
	That is what the criminal organization is dedicated to.
	And then you wrap everybody up in a big ball and then you prosecute everybody together because you want to make sure that the leaders are held responsible for what their lower downs are doing.
	But in this particular case, was there an actual criminal organization surrounding Trump dedicated to criming?
	What were, what criming?
	Like, what are the crimes they were dedicated to?
	And so she's stuck in the in between.
	She doesn't like what Trump did.
	There are people on low level who may have committed actual crimes, but there's no clear evidence that Trump actually told them to do those things.
	And there's no evidence that Trump himself committed a crime.
	And so what you have here is her basically living in the space between conspiracy.
	And Rico.
	And she's trying to basically bridge that gap with ire about January 6th.
	That's essentially what this indictment comes down to.
	So let's talk about how this whole thing went down yesterday.
	So Trump, again, he's very good at drama.
	This is why he was the president.
	It's why he may be the president again.
	He released a personal note just before he showed up in Georgia for the arrest.
	And it said this, today I will be going to the notoriously violent jail in Fulton County, Georgia where I will be arrested despite having committed no crime.
	Isn't it interesting that I went my entire life without ever getting arrested?
	But suddenly out of nowhere, once I decided to run for president as a political outsider and fight for the forgotten citizens of our country, I get arrested four times within the span of five months.
	Not only that, a judge has ruled that today's spectacle may be televised for the entire world to see.
	The American people know what's going on.
	There's a punishment handed down from the deep state for daring to challenge the status quo and give a voice to the silent majority.
	The left wants to intimidate you out of voting for a political outsider who puts the American people first.
	But today, I'm walking into the lion's den with one simple message on behalf of our entire movement.
	I will never surrender our mission to save America.
	When I walk into the jail to get wrongfully arrested, I will not cower, I will not sulk, I will stand tall and remain resolute in our mission to save America.
	And that's, again, Dude is great at pictures.
	That picture is the resolute face for Trump, right?
	And if you see me on TV during my sham arrest, just remember, you are the source of my courage, my hope, and my resolve to save our country.
	If you're doing poorly due to the sinister people in control of our country right now, don't even think about donating, but if you can, please make a contribution to save America during this dark chapter in our nation's history.
	That is brilliant marketing.
	It's really, really smart.
	Okay, it is, it is, again, It is emotive.
	It is empathetic.
	I mean, even at the very end where he drops like, if you can't afford it because you're suffering under Joe Biden, don't give it to my campaign.
	But if you can, then give it to my campaign.
	And there is something to the baseline idea, obviously, that dude wasn't arrested for his entire career.
	And then the minute he walks out of the office and just before the election, suddenly have four indictments ring down on him as though he's in the middle of a summer storm in South Florida.
	So that is a very strong pitch from President Trump.
	And ironically, that pitch was actually exacerbated by Joe Biden.
	So everybody knew that Donald Trump was supposed to show up for the arrest at 7.30 p.m.
	last night, Eastern Time.
	He was supposed to show up in Fulton County Courthouse to be arrested at exactly that time.
	So at exactly that time, at exactly that time, 7.30 p.m.
	last night, Joe Biden tweeted out, apropos of nothing, I think today's a great day to give to my campaign.
	Those are real bad optics.
	Those are truly bad optics.
	The entire case here is that the Democratic Party infrastructure is going after Donald Trump to make Joe Biden president.
	So at the exact time that Trump is showing up to be arrested, you tweet out, come support my campaign.
	You want to say this isn't a political prosecution, and then you're tweeting out as the arrest is happening, not, this is a sad day for our country, the rule of law must be upheld.
	You're not tweeting that out, you're tweeting out a campaign link.
	I mean, guys, you're saying the quiet part out loud here, and you're saying it really, really, really loudly.
	Now, there's another side to that, which is that Joe Biden pretty clearly wants Donald Trump to be the nominee because he thinks he can beat Donald Trump because he beat Donald Trump in 2020.
	He thinks that Donald Trump, his performance in 2020, plus four indictments means he loses.
	Now, Biden may be wrong about that.
	He certainly could be.
	But it's pretty obvious that Biden would both like Donald Trump to be indicted multiple times in order to degrade his candidacy.
	And also, he certainly doesn't mind if Donald Trump is the nominee, because the polls show that Donald Trump is not running amazingly well against a deeply unpopular president of the United States.
	Right now, Donald Trump's own approval ratings are lower than Joe Biden's approval ratings.
	So Biden both wants Trump indicted and also wants him elevated in the Republican primaries.
	But that tweet is so Gross.
	I mean, that's a disgusting tweet, really.
	Your political opponent's getting arrested by people who are of your political party, on charges that are basically spurious, and you are tweeting out, apropos of nothing, I think today's a great day to give to my campaign, and sort of blithe, oh yeah, by the way, this is all political.
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	We'll get to more on this in just one second.
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	Okay, fine.
	So, the folks at CNN, They were pretty giddy over yesterday because the spectacle of a person they absolutely despise showing up at the Fulton County Jailhouse to turn himself in is one of their favorites.
	Fulton County Jail is not a pleasant place to be.
	You do not want to be there.
	It is not a courthouse.
	We've been informed by one of our own producers, whose name rhymes with savvy, that she spent some time at the Fulton County Jailhouse at one point.
	Because of her deep and abiding criminal history, we here at The Daily Wire, we tried to reach out to the underprivileged who have had arrest records, which is why Savvy works here.
	But Savvy had to spend some time at the Fulton County Jail.
	And for the record, guys, she was there basically by mistake.
	She ended up having her arrest expunged.
	She was also in a spot.
	But she described the place and apparently it is just a garbage heap.
	CNN described the place also.
	They also say that it is a garbage heap, but they're real excited because that means that Donald Trump has to walk into a garbage heap.
	Mr. Trump will be booked at the Fulton County Jail.
	It's a jail known for rather deplorable conditions including inmate deaths and excessive force and a prison population that is more than double the amount it was designed to hold.
	Four people have lost their lives there in just the past few weeks.
	Anybody connected to the criminal justice system in the Atlanta area knows that if you're ever told you gotta go down to Rice Street, brace yourself because it's gonna be horrible.
	We can give you some details on this place now.
	Fulton County Jail is the formal name.
	It is known as Rice Street because of its address.
	It opened in 1989, but almost immediately after it opened, it was overcrowded, had deplorable conditions, and was just, you know, just a horrible place to be.
	Just last month, I've never seen someone so excited about terrible jailhouses.
	Somebody get that dude a paper bag, because he is really, really excited.
	He's like, you know how many people died at Fulton County Jailhouse?
	And Trump's showing up there next?
	Now, the media, again, I don't think that this is going to go for them exactly as they wish it to go.
	Rachel Maddow also covered the arrest and, again, tried to be more in sorrow than an anger routine, but it did not succeed.
	Officially, as of now, Donald Trump is under arrest in the state of Georgia.
	We had confirmation earlier that he had entered the jail, and as of right now, former President Trump is in custody.
	He has been arrested.
	landmark moment and as I said before, for all the worst reasons.
	Oh, it's just, oh, I don't believe you, Rachel. I just don't.
	You seem very upset.
	You seem super, super, super upset.
	So he was booked on 13 counts, stemming from the efforts to reverse the Georgia 2020 election certification.
	He was wearing a dark blue suit and a red tie.
	He arrived at the Fulton County Jail around 7.30 p.m.
	And jail records listed him, this part, there were actual betting markets on what he was going to be listed at for his weight, but that was assuming he was actually going to be weighed.
	Here's one thing that is not true.
	He was listed at six foot three inches tall and weighing 215 pounds.
	Donald Trump is not 215 pounds.
	Donald Trump, during his last physical in office, clocked in at 240.
	He is significantly heavier than he was when he left office.
	6'3", 215, he should be playing tight end for the Baltimore Ravens.
	Like, that's not... But, bottom line is, he was released on $200,000 bail, and then he strolled out to the cameras and did what he does best.
	The dude is great on camera.
	He really is, and he knows how to play it.
	Here we go.
	I really believe this is a very sad day for America.
	This should never happen.
	If you challenge an election, you should be able to challenge an election.
	I thought the election was a rigged election, a stolen election.
	And I should have every right to do that.
	As you know, you have many people that you've been watching over the years do the same thing, whether it's Hillary Clinton or Stacey Abrams or many others.
	When you have that great freedom to challenge, you have to be able to.
	Otherwise, you're going to have very dishonest elections.
	What has taken place here is a travesty of justice.
	We did nothing wrong.
	I did nothing wrong.
	And everybody knows it.
	I've never had such support.
	And he went on along these lines for another 20 seconds, then he walked away.
	Again, for Donald Trump, this may be the best day of his campaign.
	Honest to God, yesterday, today, these are going to be the best days of his campaign because it is so obviously political in Georgia, and it's so obviously political to mugshot the guy in the first place.
	Again, Georgia state law does not require a mugshot if you are a well-known figure who has taken a recent photo.
	Georgia state law requires everybody to get a mugshot unless we have a, you know, recent photo of you.
	Well, I mean, I feel like we have some recent photos of Donald J. Trump.
	I feel like that's the case.
	So they were being vindictive in going after him with the mugshot, and he completely reversed it on them with what is going to be an iconic photo of him.
	I mean, it is an iconic photo.
	There are a few iconic sort of mugshots in American history.
	You got the very famous Frank Sinatra mugshot.
	You have in sort of political terms, you have the Martin Luther King mugshot.
	In Hollywood terms, you have multiple Lindsay Lohan mugshots, and then you have, obviously, Donald Trump's mugshot.
	And as I say, just on a pure theatrical level, that mugshot is great for him.
	It is a great image for him.
	In just one second, we're going to get to what this means for, you know, the Republican nomination process.
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	Okay, so what does all of this mean?
	Well, first of all, it means that Donald Trump is going to be spending, like, the next year and a half in various courthouses.
	Right now, his proposed trial on Georgia election interference is supposed to begin October 23rd.
	They want to start it, like, forthwith.
	One of his other co-defendants has already been charged and will start his trial on October 23rd.
	Presumably, Trump will try to push that into the middle of next year, at the very least.
	When it comes to the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, that is already slated to start May 20th of next year, just before the conventions at the tail end of the primaries.
	His Manhattan D.A.
	case, the one about Stormy Daniels, that one is slated to begin March 25th, which is literally the day before Super Tuesday.
	So all of this is pretty obviously, when he says it's election interference, I mean, yeah, it pretty clearly is.
	And when it comes to the January 6th case that was filed in Washington, D.C., we are still awaiting Some more information as to when that case is actually going to begin.
	As far as the 13 charges that Donald Trump is facing, he's facing one charge violation of Georgia RICO, three charges of solicitation of violation of oath by a public officer, which would presumably be him asking people to put their names on some sort of alternative elector slate, which I'm not sure why that's illegal, actually.
	He has one charge of conspiracy to impersonate a public officer, which is a very weird charge.
	Two charges of conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree.
	Two charges of conspiracy to commit false statements and writings.
	One charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents.
	And a couple of charges on false statements and writings and filing false documents.
	So that is where the Georgia case stands.
	Okay, so what does this mean for the election?
	Well...
	Obviously, Republicans, me included, anybody who is conservative who looks at this and looks at what's happening in Georgia or looks at what's happening on the January 6th case in D.C., looks at what's happening in Manhattan, a little bit less so on the case in Florida, where it's pretty obvious that Donald Trump violated the law.
	The best case that you can make right there is that so did Hillary Clinton.
	And this is a political prosecution because of the double standard, which, again, I sort of agree with.
	It is pretty obvious to everyone that there's a lot of sympathy for Trump on this, and there should be a lot of sympathy for Trump on this, that he is being politically targeted.
	Now, he could have made it a lot harder for his political opponents to target him, in the classified documents case particularly, but that wouldn't have stopped the other three cases, which are all ginned up.
	Okay, so that being the case, there's gonna be a lot of sympathy for the idea that if you nominate him, there has to be a groundswell because you feel it, right?
	I feel it.
	Everybody who watches this on the right side of the eye feels the sympathy for Trump.
	They feel like, well, this can't stand.
	Somebody has to be punished, right?
	As Trump himself says, this is his entire campaign now.
	I am your vengeance, right?
	I am your revenge.
	This is going to be my vengeance campaign against the deep state.
	I'm gonna take them out.
	This is what Trump himself is saying in his statement.
	The problem is that because we live in various silos and echo chambers, it's easy to forget that there are other voting populations that don't agree with you and don't feel the same things that you do.
	Democrats get caught up in this regularly.
	This is why Democrats, they'll say things like, well, you know, where I live, everybody feels the same way.
	How could anyone else feel differently?
	And it turns out a vast majority of the country feels differently than they do.
	Well, this is why it's important to look at the actual data on how Americans feel about Trump and how they feel about the indictments and how they feel about voting for Trump.
	Because I understand that people want to... Every time there's a poll, confirmation bias is a very strong drug.
	Whenever there's a poll that confirms your suspicions, you are likely to cite it.
	Whenever there's a poll that does not confirm your suspicions, you are unlikely to cite it.
	So, one of the things I try to do here on the show is give you polls that both confirm my suspicions and also do not confirm my suspicions.
	I'm gonna give you all the data.
	I don't think that zero data is a substitute for some data, even if that some data is not perfect data, because there's no such thing as perfect data.
	So in a second, I'm gonna get into what the polls actually say about whether additional Trump indictments, whether mugshots, whether any of this actually is going to lead Trump to victory in a general election against Joe Biden, which is the thing that I care about.
	I can do two things at once.
	Sympathize with Donald Trump's legal plight, promote the legal funds of people who are being charged as co-conspirators, like Jenna Ellis, which we've done on the show and online.
	We can do all that, and also recognize that is he the best guy to beat Joe Biden come next fall?
	We'll get to that momentarily.
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	Okay, so let's look at the actual data.
	With regard to President Trump's favorability, unfavorability ratings.
	So according to the latest YouGov polling available, which was like three or four days ago, his current favorable ratings are, he's underwater by 17 points.
	And according to the Ipsos poll, about the same time, ABC News Ipsos, unfavorable ratings, 24 points underwater, 31% favorable rating.
	In fact, there are zero polls that I can identify that have Donald Trump anywhere close to even parity with regard to his favorability or unfavorability rating.
	Now, you compare that to Joe Biden, who's the person he would be running against, and Joe Biden also has terrible, favorable, unfavorable ratings, for sure.
	They are very similar, actually.
	Joe Biden's favorability ratings are in the 42% to 44% range.
	Sometimes he may reach 45%.
	Trump's average right now, right now, the 538 average for favorability ratings on Biden, he's about 12.3 points underwater.
	Donald Trump's favorability ratings are about 17 points underwater.
	Okay, so he's more unpopular, just on average, than Joe Biden is.
	But what's more important is who's gonna come home, right?
	So one of the big questions in this election, there are really two questions.
	Turnout for your side, well, three.
	Turnout for your side, turnout for the other side, and what do people in the middle do?
	So, Joe Biden believes that turnout for Joe Biden is driven almost entirely by the presence of Donald Trump on the ticket.
	Democrats don't care about Joe Biden.
	They don't like Joe Biden.
	They think he stinks.
	At best, he's a mediocrity.
	He's a person who's just kind of standing there, if he can even stand.
	But they really hate Donald Trump.
	Now, in order to understand this, you have to have lived in both a blue area and a red area.
	So, during the 2016 and 2020 elections, I lived In California.
	And let me explain to people who have never lived in a blue area.
	The level of hatred for Donald Trump in places like California is deeper than the level of hatred that people in California have for like ISIS.
	It is deep and it is visceral.
	They despise Donald Trump.
	Despise him.
	Which means that they will walk across broken glass to vote against Donald Trump.
	I mean, that really is the reality.
	And that is particularly true after 2016, when he was definitely not supposed to win.
	So they weren't willing to walk across broken glass to vote against Donald Trump in 2016, because he was kind of an unknown.
	They didn't know quite what he was.
	And there was a widespread assumption that Hillary Clinton was going to win.
	And so they're like, I don't know, maybe, you know, do I really have to get out of bed?
	I mean, Hillary's clearly going to win.
	And then Trump won.
	And their level of panic went so high that every single one of them voted.
	They changed the voting rules, obviously, with the mail-in ballots and everything else.
	Joe Biden's presupposition, and this has been shown, by the way, by pretty much every subsequent election, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, right?
	All the subsequent elections show that when Trump is perceived, even, to be on the ballot, every single person who is a Democrat shows up to vote against him, not because they love the Democrat, but because they hate Donald Trump, hate him, with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns.
	And meanwhile, in the Republican areas, people really, really love Trump, and so they show up, and they vote for Trump in really high numbers.
	However, There is a core of people, you know, they tend to be ignored, but the never Trump folks who say they will not vote for Trump under any circumstances is not a minority.
	It's not a tiny position.
	It's not a huge position, but it's not a tiny position either.
	The number of people in the Democratic Party who say they 100% will not show up for Joe Biden is essentially non-existent.
	There is no never Biden crew among the Joe Bidens.
	So if you're looking at who's going to come home in the Democratic Party, the likely answer is virtually everybody.
	In the Republican Party, the answer is likely like 92%.
	That 8% makes a difference in a very, very tight election.
	And then you look at and beyond that, there are going to be some Republicans who are just like not enthused with the idea of a Trump-Biden election again.
	And then maybe like, well, I like Trump and I want to be president, but it is raining today.
	And Joe Biden is like, meh.
	Joe Biden doesn't get anyone animated.
	Trump gets people on the right animated and he gets people on the left animated.
	So Donald Trump turns out votes for his side and he turns out votes for the other side.
	But the third factor is the people in the middle.
	The people in the middle, by polling data, they break for Biden.
	They broke for Biden in 2020.
	There's very little evidence they're going to switch back to Trump.
	Now, the case for Trump is very easy, actually.
	The case for Trump is it was better when Trump was president than when Biden is president.
	The problem is that if all you're going to get next year is not Trump prosecuting the case against Joe Biden and his economy and his incompetence and how bad a president he is, the case you're going to get is it's really unjust that I'm being jailed by Fannie Willis or by The Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, or by Jack Smith.
	That's a bank shot because you basically have to say that all of these people are working for Joe Biden and therefore it's unfair that Joe Biden is musing all of these people to go after me and it's not quite the easiest argument actually for Trump to make.
	Which presumably is why what the polls show, according to the most recent polling data asking the question, There's a poll from AP NORC.
	This is circa about a week ago, week and a half ago.
	More than half of Americans say there is zero chance of them voting for Donald Trump to return to the White House in 2024.
	53% of Americans told the AP NORC censor survey they would definitely not support him next November.
	Another 11% say they would probably not pull the lever for the 45th president, which means only 36% say they would probably or definitely support Trump in his third consecutive bid for the White House.
	So it is this disconnect between Republican voters who think that everybody thinks like them and the rest of the country that is leading to Trump's increase in the polls.
	Now, do I think that this is going to wear well for Trump?
	Over time, it tends not to.
	Over time, what tends to happen, there's an opening here.
	There's an opening for another candidate in the Republican Party to make the very simple and convincing case.
	Donald Trump should have all of our sympathy for the legal travails he is undergoing.
	And also, he's very unlikely to beat Joe Biden.
	That's actually the case.
	That's the only case that you can make if you're a Republican at this point and hope to win primaries against Donald Trump.
	Which raises the question of, how'd that debate go?
	So we now have some data on the debate fallout.
	So I gave you my take yesterday.
	And my take, as I suggested, is different from the take of some of the lanes inside the Republican Party.
	And it's also, you know, count it for what it's worth, which is one person's opinion.
	I'm going to give you the data that we now have from some of the polls.
	First of all, important to note, a lot of people watched the debate.
	Not 2016 numbers, but 12.8 million total viewers watched the debates according to the Nielsen ratings.
	The first debates in 2015 did like twice that because Trump was on the stage, but 13 million people is not bad.
	There were another 1.7 million people or so who watched it on Fox Business, so it actually looked like 14 million people probably who watched the debates.
	That's leaving aside everybody who watched it on Rumble or watched it in other places.
	That is a fairly solid number.
	And that's going to be a large percentage, not an insignificant percentage of people who actually vote in the Republican primaries.
	So it turns out that that debate may indeed have mattered a little bit.
	And when people say, well, you know, Trump's interview with Tucker Carlson did 230 million video views and all the rest of it, that, again, the metrics for a video view on Twitter are not the same as the metric for a video view on Nielsen.
	Not even remotely the same.
	Nielsen ratings require you to watch several minutes of the thing in order for you to be counted a viewer.
	A Twitter view counts as the post is in your screen more than 50% in your screen for more than two seconds.
	For two seconds or more.
	So you can be scrolling and you just start looking at the tweet below it and it's playing above and that counts as a view.
	Also if you reload because your connection went away Which I did, right?
	I was watching the Trump-Tucker thing.
	I had to reload that sucker because I was on a plane.
	I had to reload that sucker probably 15, 20 times.
	And so that each one of those is a view.
	The actual percentage of people who actually watched a significant portion of the Trump-Tucker interview is not even remotely 230 million.
	It is, by some metrics, as low as a couple of million.
	Because, again, it wasn't broadcast anywhere, it wasn't particularly illuminating, that interview.
	You really have to really love Trump in order to really find that stuff illuminating, as I talked about yesterday on the show.
	Like the Trump-Tucker interview, he was asked no serious questions and he gave no serious answers.
	And it was entertaining, but it really didn't illuminate anything.
	Okay, so, that means that maybe the debate mattered a little bit.
	So, we now have some polling data with regard to who won and who lost the debate.
	So the Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight, and Ipsos all conducted a poll before and after last night's debate, according to the Washington Post, with potential Republican primary and caucus voters, including those who watched the debate.
	According to those voters, not according to me, according to the voters, the 29% who watched said that DeSantis had the best night.
	Vig Ramaswamy came in at 26%.
	Now again, my generalized take is that everybody basically accomplished what they wanted to accomplish in the debate.
	DeSantis wanted to escape fire and look presidential.
	Vig Ramaswamy wanted attention, which he got in spades.
	Nikki Haley wanted to lock down that traditional GOP lane, get some momentum there.
	Pence wanted to shore up his legacy.
	Christie wanted to throw a couple of punches and shore up the Never Trump vote.
	So pretty much everybody got what they wanted from the debate.
	But what the stats actually show is that DeSantis, according to this poll, 29% say that he performed best, which is a far cry from a lot of the people who are big Trump fans saying that he was terrible, he was awful, he was ugh.
	That's really not what people who watched the debate said.
	26% said that Vake performed the best.
	What's more important, actually, is what percentage of people say they are considering voting for each of the candidates.
	So again, this is just for GOP debate watchers, for the people who actually watched the GOP debate, which, you know, again, is 12, 14 million people.
	It is not the 40 or 50 million people who presumably will vote in a Republican primary.
	But among the debate watchers, 67% of people say they are considering Ron DeSantis for President of the United States.
	That is an uptick of about four or five percentage points from where it was.
	That actually is the number one in the field.
	Number two in the field is Trump.
	61% say they are considering voting for him.
	Nikki Haley had by far the biggest bump.
	She went from 29% of people in the GOP debate watchers saying they were considering voting for her to 46% saying they were voting for her or would consider voting for her.
	Vivek moved from 40 to 46 percent, so he picked up some ground, but not a ton.
	He's now tied with Nikki Haley in terms of people who would consider voting for him in a primary.
	That's followed by Tim Scott at 43 percent, Mike Pence at 23, Chris Christie at 22, and the inimitable and electric Doug Burgum at 12 percent.
	Now, when you take a look at GOP primary voters, just overall GOP primary voters, not just people who watch the debate, what you find is that 51% say they are considering DeSantis, 64% say they are considering Trump, and nobody else is even within remote spitting distance.
	Nikki Haley's at 24, Vivek is at 23, Tim Scott is at 25, 26 are at Pence, 14 Kristi, 4% the inimitable and electric Doug Burgum.
	So, What does that mean?
	Well, it means that actually DeSantis got a little bit of a bump from this.
	Actually.
	What's actually even more interesting is how the favorables and unfavorables went for everybody in the field.
	So, the favorable rating for DeSantis basically increased slightly and his unfavorables went down slightly.
	72% favorable, 25% unfavorable, which makes him the highest in the Republican field.
	Donald Trump is among the GOP debate watchers.
	Among GOP debate watchers, 59% said that they are favorable to Trump, 35% unfavorable.
	So he's plus 24.
	DeSantis is, if my math is correct here, my mental math here, he is currently plus 47.
	So those are big numbers.
	Nikki Haley's favorables went up pretty dramatically.
	She's up to 65% favorable, 27% unfavorable.
	Weirdly, Vivek, because nobody had heard of him up until the last few weeks actually, Vivek's favorable ratings went from 50 to 60, but his unfavorable ratings went from 13 to 32.
	So he actually, on net, lost favorability ratings over the course of the debate.
	So there's more people who said they loved him, but there are a lot more people who said they didn't like him after watching that debate, which again makes sense.
	It's a very polarizing performance.
	Did I say for one crowd it was an A and for one crowd it was a D?
	So, DeSantis at least gave himself a little bit of a boost from this, which is, again, kind of surprising.
	And he maintained.
	He maintained.
	The biggest mover was Haley.
	What does that mean for the primaries?
	I mean, it may mean very little for the primaries, depending on whether anyone can capitalize off the back of that and move forward.
	But the notion that DeSantis got his clock clean, the campaign is over, which is something that Don Trump Jr., for example, is trying to push, that obviously is not true.
	Here's a Fox News focus group directly after the debate.
	Here's what they had to say.
	He went in last night open-minded, leaning a little bit DeSantis.
	How did you feel?
	Well, I think DeSantis definitely was solidified in my mind.
	Thank goodness that the election isn't tomorrow because I still think we have a lot to learn and a lot to hear.
	I was really impressed with Nikki Haley.
	I liked how she came at the issue of abortion.
	She talked about it in a way that I think can neutralize some of the negative talking points from the Democrats.
	Okay, Kevin, next to you.
	You came in liking DeSantis, and did you like what you heard?
	Yeah, I think that something about DeSantis is that he's very much touting his background and what he's accomplished in Florida.
	Yesterday, I kind of saw a lot of people talking about what they will do once they get into office.
	DeSantis said, I've done it in Florida, and I'll do it on a national level.
	So to me, someone who has the accomplishments there, it really resonates with me.
	So that was a clip that involved a couple of people who were previously pro-DeSantis, but there were a bunch of people in that focus group who were actually more pro-Trump or more pro-Poveyk, and they also said they thought DeSantis did well.
	Again, that's not standing for DeSantis.
	He could turn into nothing, right?
	It could be just another kind of moment in which it seems like he's going to burst onto the scene and then nothing happens.
	Or it could be the beginning of a build of momentum.
	What happens next is going to define, I said this yesterday, what happens next is going to define what the debate means for everybody else.
	As always, you can only see inflection points in retrospect.
	Some things look like they're going to be inflection points and they turn out to be nothing.
	Some things look like they could be inflection points and they turn out to be something.
	We're about to find out.
	In just one second, we'll get to Joe Biden, who's just sitting there, waiting.
	We'll get to that momentarily first.
	We have some great employees here at the Ben Shapiro Show.
	One of those employees is Adam.
	Adam is the editor on the show.
	He does all the clips.
	He makes sure that everything sounds great in terms of being put together exactly right.
	And I've been informed by my staff that Adam makes virtually no mistakes.
	Adam is as perfect as perfect can be.
	Which means his job is in danger.
	Because, as I said earlier on the show, we here try to be diverse.
	Adam is a white guy.
	Who is really, really good at his job.
	He doesn't make mistakes and he is not a former felon.
	Unlike Savvy and Adam.
	Adam, this means that if we are looking for, you know, a diverse hiring base, we need to check out ZipRecruiter.
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	It's not as though we had actually our other employees unionize against Adam and have me say all of that.
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	Okay, meanwhile, Joe Biden, again, that dude is super weak.
	He's really, really weak.
	It is fun to hear people try to defend him.
	So DNC chair, Jamie Harrison, he says that Joe Biden is one of the most successful presidents since LBJ, which is weird since LBJ was so unsuccessful, he had to drop out of his own 1968 reelect race because he was so unpopular.
	I don't take much credence in terms of polls.
	Because in the end of the day, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going all across this country, Democrats are going across the country to talk about how this administration, which is probably one of the most successful since Lyndon Baines Johnson, has done so much to improve and put America back on track.
	We are going to make sure that that message gets out to the American people.
	Yes, they are so popular.
	They're so popular that Politico is now trying a Kamala Harris relaunch.
	This would be number 27.
	It's super funny.
	The Kamala Harris thing will never not be funny.
	Kamala Harris is awful at this.
	She's awful.
	If you recall, Kamala Harris was a very bad senator in California, and people kept trying to make her a thing.
	They kept trying to make Fetcher a thing, and it just wasn't.
	It just wasn't a thing.
	They tried it when she was going after Brett Kavanaugh, like, is this Kamala Harris's moment?
	Turns out, no, it was not Kamala Harris's moment.
	Then it was like, she's running for president.
	She will be amazing.
	She is a strong black woman and she will be incredible.
	And then she went into a debate and she told a bunch of bullcrap lies about how Joe Biden didn't want her to go to school as a kid or something.
	And everyone's like, oh my God, it's a moment.
	And then like five seconds later, her campaign imploded.
	She didn't even make it to California.
	Like, oh man, she sucked.
	That was terrible.
	Then Joe Biden picked her for vice president, like, oh my God, you know who's incredible?
	Eighth look at Kamala Harris.
	And then it turns out that her campaign was terrible and awfully run and people kept getting fired and all this.
	And then they're like, oh man, she's not.
	And then the election happened and she won.
	Then it was like, you know who could be incredible?
	Wait for it.
	Kamala Harris.
	She could be unbelievable.
	And then it turns out she's garbage at her job.
	And they're like, oh man, she sucks.
	She's really bad.
	Like she can't speak English properly.
	She can't string together sentences.
	She sounds like a drunk schoolmarm who's trying to educate you on, like, what a duck is all the time.
	It's bizarre.
	She just, like, she just starts speaking in bizarre haiku-ish poetry about electric buses and Venn diagrams, like, what's happening?
	And then they're like, but wait, wait, wait, Joe Biden's weak.
	So you know who we should give a look at?
	Wait for it, guys.
	Wait for it.
	We should give a look at Kamala Harris.
	So this is take number 87 here, quote, I can't get into people's heads.
	Kamala Harris tries to reshape her public image ahead of 2024.
	In a political interview, the vice president addressed how she views the growing scrutiny she's under as Republicans use her as a bogeyman in 2024.
	Oh, she's a victim again.
	Oh, so she sucks at her job.
	She's a victim again.
	That's how all this crap works.
	So they can pretend that she is the heir apparent to a to a I mean, honestly guys, Joe Biden is in such fragile health that some of the stuff that we do here at Daily Wire involves me cutting videos a couple of weeks in advance so that we can edit them properly.
	And so we actively consider things like, if I make this video, what's the turnaround time on it?
	If the turnaround time is like several months and it's about Joe Biden, I'm not sure we can do it.
	It might not be relevant.
	These are active considerations that people make in the political world based on Joe Biden's frailty and ailing health.
	So of course they're trying to prop up Kamala Harris again backstage as she prepares for a not-so-intimate fireside chat about gun safety in front of hundreds of people.
	Hundreds of people?
	The Vice President?
	Hundreds of people?
	Let me explain something.
	I can draw hundreds of people.
	She's the vice president.
	Anyway, Kamala Harris is unscripted and seemingly at ease.
	No notes or teleprompter in sight.
	Well, slow clap for the lady who doesn't need a teleprompter for talking to a reporter backstage.
	Wow!
	No notes even?
	Woo!
	Ugh, the IQ points just flow out of her like water from Moses's rock.
	She's comfortable offering condolences and counsel to those who have lost loved ones to gun violence.
	That one probably looks around like, what's she, why is she whispering?
	demand action, her students demand action, she holds their hands and looks into their
	eyes.
	We speak their names, she whispers to one woman.
	That one probably looks around like, what's she, why is she whispering?
	She gently reassures a man clearly anxious about where to stand in the photo line.
	All eyes are on her.
	But that's been true of Harris for a while now, and the view has not often been kind.
	Yes, yes, she is a victim.
	She is a victim of the fact that she is such a dramatic failure throughout her entire political career that she keeps failing up.
	If she keeps being as bad at her job now as she has been throughout her career, eventually she'll become empress.
	Just every time she fails, they're like, you know what?
	What if we give her a higher slot?
	Maybe she'll be better even- She's like the Michael Moulse of politics.
	The worse she does at her job, the more we're like, what if we just promote her more?
	Her tenure as Joe Biden's number two has not been known for relaxing warm moments like those in Chicago.
	Instead, Harris's term has largely been marked by stilted performances at public events, at odds with the uninhibited interrogator she was known as in the Senate.
	They've fueled whispers about whether she'll be a drag on the reelect ticket as 2024 heats up.
	Now her political future and quite possibly the success of the Democratic ticket hinges on a simple question.
	Is it possible for Kamala Harris to make a second impression?
	By second, do you mean 2000th impression?
	For Harris, it's a question that fundamentally misunderstands the point.
	In her mind, she's the same person she was, when the prevailing narrative of her was that of star prosecutor, ascendant political talent, even the future of the Democratic Party.
	You could have followed me around in Iowa ahead of 2020, Harris said.
	You would have seen the same thing four years ago.
	It's always who I've been.
	I can't get into other people's heads about why they characterize things as being one way or another.
	It's not as though I've just found myself.
	I've always been here.
	I never went away.
	And then the entire article is about how that's not true and how, really, it's others around her who have failed the great leader.
	But really, she's actually empathetic and sympathetic and wondrous.
	Guys, if this is the best you got, you better pray that Republicans jog Democratic turnout because Kamala Harris is a disaster area.
	And when I say that Joe Biden is being a bad president, I mean, he's really a quite terrible president.
	So the migrant crisis continues to mount.
	I mean, I know that we all forget about it intermittently, but it is still a problem.
	According to CBS News, officials in New York are assembling tent cities for those who can't be placed in a shelter system of more than 200 hotels and other facilities already housing 60,000 migrants.
	And more than 50,000 homeless residents.
	In Chicago, housing over 7,000 migrants, police stations and parks have been converted into makeshift shelters.
	Plans to house asylum seekers in vacant schools have generated fervent local backlash.
	In cities like Sacramento and Denver, some migrants have found themselves on the brink of homelessness.
	In Boston, the arrival of thousands of families and pregnant women seeking asylum prompted the state's governor to declare an emergency.
	A perfect storm, again this is CBS News reporting, has brought the historic migration crisis along the US-Mexico border to some of America's largest cities.
	The city struggles to house tens of thousands of destitute migrants and their growing calls for federal action have also placed mounting pressure on the Biden administration to intervene.
	Local leaders have implored the administration for funds and to allow migrants to work legally so they can be self-sufficient.
	Cities have spent hundreds of millions of bucks serving migrants, housing them in hotels, churches, schools, parks, police stations, even a National Guard base.
	The Biden administration has set aside $770 million for New York, Chicago, Denver, Boston, and other cities.
	The administration recently asked Congress for another $600 million, but the administration has refrained from taking other actions requested by local leaders, such as granting migrants temporary legal status so they can apply for work permits more quickly.
	Now, what's hilarious is that nobody at these cities will say, you know, what we might do is, you know, close the border.
	We could do that.
	They won't do that, obviously.
	That'd be super bad.
	Can't do that.
	So instead, they're stuck in the unenviable position of allowing the border to remain wide open and migrants to be shipped by the tens of thousands to their cities, and then complaining they don't have enough money to deal with it.
	Here's Cathy Hochul, the failing governor of New York.
	But New York has shouldered this burden for far too long.
	Since the first migrants began arriving at the Port Authority bus terminal last year, city and state have poured tremendous funds, billions of dollars, and energy into helping them.
	The city has been helping by the state to manage this in partnership with our state legislature, and in our budget we allocated over $1 billion, now upwards of $1.5 billion, for providing shelter.
	National Guard, public health, transit, case management, and legal services to asylum seekers, especially the housing.
	That's in addition to the over 200 shelters and hotels that are stood up by the City of New York with the financial support from the state.
	Well, they're doing an amazing job, but now they have to beg the federal government for more money.
	Or they could actually, you know, talk about the fact that their stupid policies have generated this problem in the first place.
	Okay, meanwhile, speaking of Joe Biden's failures, his DOJ is such a mess.
	It is such a mess.
	I mean, between trying to cut sweetheart deals with Hunter Biden, and then getting exposed for it, and that blowing up in their face, and going after Donald Trump on non-criming, between those two things, Now they've added to that that they are filing a lawsuit against SpaceX, you know, the only truly successful space company in America.
	The lawsuit alleges that from at least September 2018 to May 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying and refused to hire or consider them because of their citizenship status in violation of the Immigration Nationality Act.
	SpaceX apparently wrongly claimed that under federal regulations known as export control laws, SpaceX could only hire U.S.
	citizens and lawful permanent residents.
	You know, green card holders.
	But, asylees and refugees' permission to live and work in the United States does not expire.
	They stand on equal footing with U.S.
	citizens and lawful permanent residents under export control laws.
	So, they're now suing.
	They are now suing SpaceX for the great crime of discouraging people who have claimed asylum and refuge from applying for open position because they haven't actually been given a green card.
	So, don't worry, guys.
	They're not encouraging people to falsely claim asylum and refuge by suing companies like SpaceX, which, by the way, has national security contracts.
	So what the federal government is now doing is they want people who have claimed asylum or refuge and whose cases are, it sounds like, either pending or being adjudicated They want those people hired by companies that do national security business.
	This is like a nutty, nutty lawsuit.
	But it's designed for a purpose.
	It's like, you must, you must hire more refugees if you are SpaceX, apparently.
	This is, that's wild.
	That is a wild, Lawsuit.
	And of course, the real reason they're doing that is because Elon Musk is a political enemy and you're not allowed to beat Elon Musk.
	That's bad.
	You know how many companies are going out of their way to hire people who don't have green cards?
	Because you know what's really hard to check?
	Whether somebody has legit refuge or asylum status.
	A lot harder to check than a green card or a citizenship status.
	But apparently, you know, there are a lot of companies, I'm sure, that do this.
	SpaceX is the one, of course, that comes up.
	Musk said, I think people are very confused about this during a 2016 speech.
	He said, Unfortunately, this is not up to us if you're working on rocket technology that's considered an advanced weapons technology.
	Even a normal work visa isn't sufficient unless you get special permission from the Secretary of Defense.
	This isn't out of some desire of SpaceX to just hire people with green cards.
	It's because we're not allowed to do anything else.
	I think this is not a wise policy for the US.
	There are so many talented people all around the world.
	We'd love to have work at the company.
	Unless they can somehow get a green card, we're legally prevented from hiring someone.
	Musk added the export laws do not apply to Tesla and that about 25 to 30 percent of the engineering staff of Tesla was from outside the country.
	So, um, Jonathan Grode, immigration attorney, he says that SpaceX is not barred from hiring foreign nationals at all, but companies do have to seek certain visas for foreign nationals or obtain government approval when it comes to ITAR restrictions.
	SpaceX is within its rights to not pursue that path.
	But he said that refugees should not be affected by ITAR restrictions.
	So what if they just got it wrong?
	I mean, what if they just got it wrong?
	But they have a business incentive to avoid an accidental ITAR violation and be conservative.
	But apparently, they've now been disincentivized.
	So, if they make a mistake, then you remove their government contracts and destroy their security clearance.
	And if they don't hire enough of the migrants that you want them to hire, then you sue them in federal court.
	Amazing stuff from the Biden DOJ.
	Okay, meanwhile, we should comment on the fact that there are many grave mistakes made with regard to Russia.
	First on the list is, of course, invading Russia during the wintertime.
	Second on the list is leading a coup against the Russian leader, failing, and then flying a private jet near Russian airspace.
	That is a very, very bad mistake.
	So, as predicted, the Wagner mercenary group chief Yevgeny Progozhin.
	He's dead.
	According to the Wall Street Journal, shortly after 6 p.m.
	Moscow time on Wednesday, an Embraer jet carrying Wagner paramilitary group owner Yevgeny Progozhin, who led a short-lived June uprising challenging Putin, abruptly disappeared from flight-tracking radar screens northwest of Moscow.
	Videos posted by bystanders showed the plane missing a wing, spiraling to the ground.
	Missing a wing.
	Okay, that is not a normal mechanical failure, gang.
	Missing a wing.
	About an hour later, Vladimir Putin stepped up to a lectern in Kursk, about 500 miles away.
	He made no reference to the crash.
	Instead, he launched into a speech talking about how Russia defeated the Nazis in World War II and talked about Ukraine.
	Russian civil aviation authorities said Prigozhin and two other top Wagner commanders were killed when his plane went down.
	The government says, don't worry, we're investigating the cause of the crash.
	It will turn out to be suicide.
	Probably he committed suicide on the plane.
	That's probably what happened.
	I mean, it's very weird always when a plane jumps out of a fourth story window.
	There's so many people who commit suicide who are enemies of Vladimir Putin, you know, by shooting themselves twice in the back of the head and then throwing themselves from a fourth story window.
	So yeah, it's a shock, guys.
	It's a super giant shock.
	But let me just point out, dumb move by Purgosian.
	What if I fly my private plane, you know, like halfway between St.
	Petersburg and Moscow?
	How is that going to go wrong?
	Well, that was somewhat predictable.
	Joe Biden, of course, was asked about it, and he had no comment because he has been working out.
	Doing what?
	I mean, honestly, my question here is not that Joe Biden has no comment on it.
	My question is, he says that he works out?
	Like, how?
	He walks up a stair?
	Mr. President, do you have a reaction to the plane crash in Russia?
	Aye.
	My goodness, that cop is supporting him.
	May I recall, I was asked about this by you.
	There's not much that happens when the aggression is not behind, but I don't know enough to know the answer.
	I am not surprised.
	Do you think people are evil?
	There's not much that happens when you're brushing Putin off your mind.
	I don't know enough to know the answer.
	I've been working out for the last hour and a half.
	He's been working out for the last hour and a half, guys.
	You can see it.
	And he wears it well.
	But that dude is ripped.
	And by ripped, I mean there's not a tendon in his body that has not been ripped.
	Apparently.
	So things are going great.
	They're just going spectacularly.
	Okay, time for some things I like and then some things that I hate.
	So things that I like.
	So Disney is just getting its ass kicked.
	I mean, just in the stock market, they're getting destroyed.
	Their stock price closed at $82.47 on Thursday.
	That's the worst showing in nearly nine years.
	Since like 2014.
	So, the Disney Syndicate's stock took a serious dive of 3.9% over the course of the day.
	Since March of 2021, about two and a half years ago, the stock has lost nearly 60% of its value.
	Uh, well, maybe that's because they decided to woke every single thing in sight.
	Maybe it's that.
	As I've said before, it actually is kind of gut-churning to me that I can't take my kids to Disney World.
	Like, I grew up with Disneyland.
	I loved Disneyland.
	It was great.
	My wife and I were annual pass holders when we were in California, and then we fully intended on being annual pass holders of Disney World when we came here to Florida.
	And we have not done so.
	And we have not done so for a very specific reason, and it is because of the politics they've decided to inject in every- Like, I'm not gonna walk into Disney World with my kids and see some dude dressed up as a lady waving my three-year-old into Bibbidi-Bobbidi Boutique.
	I'm not gonna do it.
	And I'm not the only one who feels that way.
	There are tons of people who feel that way.
	All Disney would have to do is stop.
	That's all they would have to do.
	How about, like, if you're gonna make Snow White, how about you make it not?
	About how a woke princess is going to stop seeking her prince charming.
	And she's going to learn to fight on her own.
	What if you actually, you know, made a children's movie that did not include a non-binary character?
	How about that?
	It's really not that difficult, guys.
	It really is not that tough.
	But for you guys, apparently it's tough because you're held hostage by your own politics.
	So if you wish to destroy the most valuable IP in the history of humanity, I suppose you can do it, but it really is quite terrible.
	Okay, time for some things that I hate.
	We are now learning that in Maui, Where did this horrifying fire happen in Lahaina?
	The Hawaii Power Utility, believed to have started the deadly Lahaina fire, removed damaged power poles and other equipment from a key fire scene, potentially affecting evidence that is part of an official investigation into how that blaze ignited, is according to the Washington Post.
	Hawaiian Electric hauled away fallen poles, power lines, transformers, conductors, and other equipment from near a Lahaina substation starting around August 12th, before investigators from the ATF could even get there.
	Those actions may have violated national guidelines on how utilities should handle and preserve evidence after a wildfire and deprives investigators the opportunity to view any poles or downed lines in an undisturbed condition before or after the fire started.
	According to Michael Wera, he says if a lot of equipment has already moved or gone by the time investigators show up, that's problematic.
	You want to observe where the equipment was relative to the ignition site.
	Maybe there's a homeless encampment or kids or a power line down on the ground where the ignition occurred.
	Once you move it, it's kind of hard to figure out exactly what happened.
	Hawaii Electric is pretending that they didn't move all of this stuff.
	One of the claims is that the utility did not shut off power in advance of high winds, though it said it took some other preemptive measures and is now facing at least nine lawsuits.
	So, is that all an accident?
	Hmm, when evidence disappears like that, sometimes it is not quite an accident.
	Alrighty folks, we are going to jump into the mailbag.
	We'll be doing that right now, but you can only have your question answered if you are a Dailyware Plus member.
	So if you're not a member, become a member, use code Shapiro, check out for two months free on all annual plans.

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