Nov. 7, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
54:59
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Today on the show, we're going to go through Republican weaknesses leading into 2026. | ||
| What do Republicans need to do to reverse the results of this week politically? | ||
| We will also be getting to Sidney Sweeney and that amazing interview that you recently did. | ||
| And we will also be getting to the government shutdown. | ||
| Will it continue? | ||
| When will it end? | ||
| First, Friendly Fire returns Wednesday night, November 19th at 7 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire Plus. | ||
| What exactly is Friendly Fire? | ||
| Well, we are glad you asked. | ||
| It's the show where Matt Walsh, Michael Moles, Andrew Clavin, and I get together to disagree for the entire internet to watch and comment on in real time. | ||
| This time, we're world premiering the official trailer for the Penn Dragon cycle, The Rise of the Merlin. | ||
| You've seen the teaser. | ||
| Now get ready for the trailer that's going to blow you away. | ||
| It's all happening on Friendly Fire, Wednesday, November 19th, at 7 p.m. Eastern on Daily Wire Plus. | ||
| Well, folks, there are some lessons that must be learned by Republicans from the elections of this week. | ||
| The reality is, as I talked about a couple of days ago, the elections this week weren't just obviously in Virginia or in New Jersey or in New York City. | ||
| Actually, Republicans did pretty poorly across the board. | ||
| There's a point being made by Matt Cottonetti, now of the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| He says the off-year Democratic wave flooded Republican safe harbors. | ||
| Democrats flipped at least 13 seats in Virginia's House of Delegates. | ||
| They plan to use their governing trifecta, control of the governor's mansion and both legislative chambers, to redraw the state's congressional map in their own favor. | ||
| New Jersey Democrats now enjoy their largest assembly majority in 52 years. | ||
| Georgia Democrats won two seats on the Public Service Commission. | ||
| That's the state's utility board. | ||
| No Democrat has won even a single race there since 2007. | ||
| So that is 18 years ago. | ||
| One of the reasons for that is because the electricity prices have been spiking and have continued to kind of softly go up during President Trump's term. | ||
| This obviously should be a warning sign for Republicans. | ||
| And when you look at the 2026 election, the importance of Republicans retaining the House. | ||
| The Senate, it looks like Republicans are in fairly decent shape to retain. | ||
| In order for Democrats to actually take the Senate in the next election cycle, they would have to flip a rather unlikely seat, like say Iowa. | ||
| But in Congress, where Republicans basically have zero margin at this point, Democrats do not need to flip very many seats in order to take the House. | ||
| So there are approximately, according to Cook's political report, 16 toss-up seats. | ||
| Those toss-up seats, right now, 10 of those are held by Republicans. | ||
| So that's not great for Republicans. | ||
| When you look at another eight that lean Republican and 10 that lean Democrat, you're talking about kind of a total possible variance of 34 seats. | ||
| Now, Republicans would have to do really, really poorly to lose all of those. | ||
| But again, they don't have to lose many of those to lose control of the House. | ||
| If they lose control of the House, all you're going to get all day long are hearings and investigations and impeachments. | ||
| And we know that all of this is the case. | ||
| And we also know that it wouldn't solely be due to anything that President Trump is doing. | ||
| Midterm elections almost always go the direction of the party that is out of power. | ||
| Since World War II, according to Newsweek, the president's party has lost an average of 26 House seats and three to four Senate seats in midterms. | ||
| When the president's approval rating is below 50%, the losses tend to be more severe. | ||
| Presidents with a sub-50% job approval have seen their parties lose an average of 37 House seats, as opposed to when the president is popular, where they lose about 14 seats on average. | ||
| So, again, Republican enthusiasm seems to not be nearly as high as it is when President Trump is on the ballot, obviously. | ||
| And a sinking economy, or at least an economy that doesn't feel as though it is soaring, is having significant downstream impact. | ||
| There are audiences that President Trump brought in who are beginning to move against President Trump. | ||
| One of those is Latino audiences. | ||
| Latino voters, which went very heavily toward President Trump in the last election cycle, seem to be bleeding away. | ||
| In New Jersey and in Virginia, Latinos backed the Democrats by huge margins. | ||
| According to the Washington Post, exit polls showed Democrats regaining strength with Latinos. | ||
| That's not because Democrats are doing an extraordinary job. | ||
| It's because presumably there has been so much focus on the immigration crackdowns. | ||
| It's one thing to shut the border. | ||
| It's another thing if there's stuff all over your TV about Abuela being taken out and then deported. | ||
| Now, again, I think that all of that media coverage has been pretty terrible, overblown, inaccurate. | ||
| But just speaking politically, obviously, this is not redounding to the benefit of Republicans among Latinos at the very least. | ||
| But the real issue here is the economy. | ||
| And we all know that the real issue here is the economy. | ||
| Every exit poll from this week, every single one, said the economy was the number one issue. | ||
| And the reality is that our economy is on some shaky footing, not only because of the continued government shutdown, which will end, but because of a generalized feeling that the economic growth that we are currently seeing is not a broad-based economic growth. | ||
| That when we are looking at the stock market, for example, the vast majority of stock market gains, nearly all of them, in fact, have accrued to the top seven companies in the market, all of which seem to be focused on tech and AI. | ||
| Industries where jobs are being created, but not industries where the vast majority of people are holding jobs. | ||
| They're not really service industries, which is where the vast bulk of American jobs are. | ||
| The tech industry is really important, but if it's the entirety of your economic growth, you got a bit of a problem. | ||
| And the reason that that is happening is because investors don't know where to put their money. | ||
| That is due to tariffs. | ||
| It is due to bizarre regulations. | ||
| It is due to a generalized feeling of too much government involvement in private industry. | ||
| It turns out the more the government is involved in the economy, the more investors are likely to try and discern where the government at hand is likely to come down next and then place their money there. | ||
| And that is a major problem. | ||
| This is something that Republicans very much should be considering as they head into the next year. | ||
| So, for example, there haven't been any Bureau of Labor statistics data put out about job loss over the course of the last couple of months, but there are some private services that actually do put out numbers. | ||
| ADP, a payroll processing firm, according to the New York Times, reported that employment at private companies fell in September, but rebounded modestly in October. | ||
| An alternative measure from Revealia Labs, a labor market data firm, showed the opposite. | ||
| Data from LinkedIn, Bank of America, and other sources paint a similarly mixed picture. | ||
| The bottom line is that the trend line seems to be going down when it comes to private sector employment. | ||
| It hasn't changed dramatically since the summer. | ||
| Employers are apparently not adding many jobs, but they've avoided resorting to widespread layoffs. | ||
| So again, everybody is sort of holding steady, which is why it does feel as though the economy is on the edge. | ||
| We've already seen that some major companies are planning mass layoffs, that'd be Amazon, UPS, IBM. | ||
| Altogether, according to the New York Times, companies announced more than 150,000 job cuts in October, nearly triple the number in the same month a year earlier. | ||
| Now, again, maybe that's wrong. | ||
| Maybe the data come in and it turns out that things are going fine. | ||
| But what the polls are showing is that people are deeply worried about the state of the economy. | ||
| And earlier this week, and really since the beginning of this week, there's been a relatively significant decline in the Dow Jones industrial average. | ||
| There's a rather large sell-off on Tuesday. | ||
| One of the things that's been happening in the market is because nobody knows where to put their money. | ||
| They don't know how to invest in industries. | ||
| Typically, if you're going to buy a stock, instead of thinking of stocks as though you're at the casino, you're supposed to buy a piece of a company that you like because you think it's a good company and it is likely to succeed into the future. | ||
| That is not the way a lot of people are treating the stock market right now. | ||
| They're treating the stock market the way they are treating crypto. | ||
| If you're going to buy crypto, you should buy crypto as a hedge against inflation, for example, which is why I myself own some Bitcoin and some Ethereum, but nothing else. | ||
| If you're treating crypto as a get-rich-quick scheme, if you're treating the stock market as a way of making a quick buck, that is not a solid way to treat your stock trading, your stock portfolio. | ||
| Just a general piece of financial advice. | ||
| But that is how people are treating things right now because people are looking around. | ||
| Things are more expensive. | ||
| All of the inflationary money blown in during the last days of the Trump administration and then the entirety of the Biden administration is still in people's pockets. | ||
| They don't know what to do with it. | ||
| Now, the Federal Reserve is lowering those interest rates again in an attempt to create more liquidity, which, again, I've always found this strange. | ||
| We do not have a dearth of liquidity in the United States right now. | ||
| We don't. | ||
| We have a dearth of opportunities for where to put the liquidity because nobody knows what to do next. | ||
| It feels like the market is doing fine, but it's also kind of paralyzed. | ||
| And that's the problem. | ||
| As James McIntosh of the Wall Street Journal points out, the more speculative an asset, the harder it fell on Tuesday. | ||
| Big tech and artificial intelligence, penny shares, retail investor favorites, and crypto all dropped together. | ||
| Gold fell too, failing in its role as a haven asset after attracting lots of new buyers with a big rise earlier this year. | ||
| It's notable that for many of the most speculative assets, the sell-off started last month, but until Tuesday, it hadn't drawn in the country's biggest companies. | ||
| All right, coming up, we'll get into the media deciding that it's very, very bad for Elon Musk to be compensated by his own shareholders. | ||
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| So there are drops, for example, from Palantir, which I think is a good stock, but it plummeted 8% despite better than expected quarterly results. | ||
| The Magnificent 7 big tech stocks fell 2.2% compared with a drop of less than 1% for the rest of the SP 500. | ||
| Tesla fell the most. | ||
| And it is because of the stock market valuations, which are, again, wildly out of whack with the earnings of these companies. | ||
| That is why you end up with a $1 trillion package for Elon Musk. | ||
| That is why. | ||
| So, one of the yardsticks that I look at when I'm determining whether I think stocks are overvalued is the PE ratio, that is the price to earnings ratio in a stock. | ||
| And typically, when you're looking at price to earnings ratio, you want to look for a low price to earnings ratio, means that a stock might be undervalued. | ||
| If you have really, really high, that means you expect the stock to just explode. | ||
| Well, right now, the current PE ratios at the top of the market are pretty much insane, like totally crazy. | ||
| According to our friends over at Comet, my sponsors at Comet, a new web browser, Buy Perplexity, the current PE ratios for the Magnificent 7 as of November 2025 include Apple at 36. | ||
| Again, Benjamin Graham suggested 16 to 18, 36, Microsoft at 34, NVIDIA at 53, Amazon at 34, Alphabet at 30. | ||
| According to Comet, those figures reflect each company's trailing 12-month PE ratio as of the first week of November 2025. | ||
| Tesla has the highest valuation by far, which is presumably why stockholders are desperate to keep Elon Musk there. | ||
| So, for example, right at the moment, the price to earnings ratio on Tesla is 307. | ||
| That is a big bet that a lot of people are making on Tesla. | ||
| And again, I love Tesla. | ||
| I think it's a great company. | ||
| I own a Tesla. | ||
| I think Elon is a genius. | ||
| Also, a PE ratio of 307 is unthinkable. | ||
| Benjamin Graham, who's sort of the financial forebear of Warren Buffett and his ideological mentor when it came to markets, he said that a typical PE ratio that was in safe zone was 16 to 18. | ||
| 307. | ||
| 307 is what we are talking about for Tesla, which feels, you know, a little wild to me, frankly. | ||
| NVIDIA, their PE ratio right now is 54. | ||
| That's very high. | ||
| Now, NVIDIA, of course, has huge earnings because companies are spending enormous amounts of money on their chips. | ||
| But if that peters out, do people really think that the stock is going to end up earning out 53 times the earnings? | ||
| I mean, serious question. | ||
| If you take a look at Alphabet, the PE ratio on Alphabet right now is significantly better. | ||
| Okay, that is 28, which is closer to reality. | ||
| And fundamentals trading to me is always a safer bet than this sort of speculative trading. | ||
| But the problem is that everybody doesn't know where to put their money. | ||
| They want to make a quick buck. | ||
| They're looking at the market. | ||
| They're feeling like, okay, instead of investing in stocks that pay dividends, for example, stocks that have a nice steady cash flow, stocks that are a solid business with growth potential that is steady but isn't exponential. | ||
| Instead, they're like, okay, you know what? | ||
| I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and one of the Mag 7. | ||
| And this is precisely why Tesla had no choice but to give a gigantic pay package to Elon Musk. | ||
| So people are pointing out, they're saying, oh my gosh, in this time of economic hardship for so many people, why is Elon Musk getting a trillion-dollar pay package? | ||
| Well, the answer, of course, is that it isn't cash. | ||
| He's not being given a trillion dollars in cash. | ||
| He's being given stock and incentives. | ||
| And the reason for that is because if he were not, if Musk were to break with Tesla, I think it's a fair assumption the stock would collapse and everybody at the board knows it. | ||
| According to the New York Times, Tesla shareholders on Thursday approved a plan that could make Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire. | ||
| Now, again, the New York Times is contrasting this with the tax the rich candidacy of Zorhan Mamdani. | ||
| Okay, the market rationale for why Elon Musk is getting that pay package is because the shareholders, meaning the people who actually own the company, believe he is worth that. | ||
| They believe that without Elon Musk's brain driving the next creative steps for Tesla, the stock is going to collapse into oblivion. | ||
| If you were to take the Tesla stock right now and you were to bring its price down to a 20 PE ratio, price to earnings ratio, then you'd have to divide the stock price by a factor of 15. | ||
| And so, what they're figuring is you're buying the future with Tesla. | ||
| That's what the stock is. | ||
| If you lose the future because you lose Musk and it just turns into a car company with some AI capacity, then you got a major, major problem. | ||
| That has nothing to do with quote-unquote taxing the rich. | ||
| Taxing Elon Musk is not going to fix the real issues with the market. | ||
| The real issue with the market right now is that the middle bulk of the market is not being invested in. | ||
| And one of the reasons that it's not being invested in is sure, there are hungry speculators with too much cash in their pocket, thanks to the free reign of free money for a very long time. | ||
| But also, there's tremendous uncertainty if you're in a service industry or manufacturing industry about the tariff. | ||
| That does make a gigantic difference. | ||
| There's no question that people are confused and discombobulated by the day-to-day action of the administration. | ||
| As I've been saying for literally the entirety of the Trump administration, if the administration pursued lower taxes, lower regulation, free trade agreements with everybody around China, the economy would be in better shape. | ||
| Because the conditions that you need to succeed as a mid-level to smaller company are conditions that allow for the fullest freedom of action in the labor markets, in the export markets, in the input markets. | ||
| That's what you actually need. | ||
| And so to this, this sort of economic policy where we keep sticking fingers in the pie is not going to make anyone quiescent and it's not going to produce more jobs. | ||
| But that has nothing to do with Elon. | ||
| And the attempt to kind of pin this on Elon and Tesla seems to me merely some class envy directed at Elon. | ||
| Now, again, from a sort of generalized perspective, would I buy Tesla stock at its current price? | ||
| I would not on a personal level because that PE ratio is adaw back to me and I like to trade based on fundamentals. | ||
| But the idea that somehow Elon Musk getting a big pay package is a justification of Zorhan Mamdani's socialism is totally crazy. | ||
| These two things are utterly unrelated. | ||
| Zorhan Mamdani's answer would be take away all the money of Elon Musk, prevent those kinds of deals, watch the stock of Tesla Crater and all the stockholders go down. | ||
| Presumably that would somehow be better in some way. | ||
| Remember, that pay package is dependent on people voluntarily engaging in transactions with Tesla and buying their stock, allowing for the issuance of new stock. | ||
| That's where that money is coming from. | ||
| The New York Times tries to admit this, you know, on paragraph eight, because that's what they do. | ||
| They're going to fib by omission and then later they buy it back. | ||
| These are vastly different arenas, to be sure, but that split-screen reality speaks to a larger divide in American business and politics. | ||
| On one side are billionaires like Mr. Musk and their many supporters, including President Trump, who see the financial success of a small group of executives as something to be celebrated and emulated. | ||
| On the other are progressives like Mr. Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, who are calling for something more akin to the social welfare systems of Western Europe. | ||
| I love how the New York Times keeps trying to pretend that he's just a Norwegian Mamdani. | ||
| He literally said he hates capitalism. | ||
| The DSA wants him to full-on nationalize housing in New York. | ||
| His proposals involving, for example, gigantic rent freezes or government-run grocery stores, that is not just the social welfare system in Western Europe. | ||
| But this is going to be the line. | ||
| The line for Democrats going forward is going to be: if the economy collapses, this is why I've been saying for literally months. | ||
| I'm not saying anything new here. | ||
| If the economy goes down, it's an existential danger to the Republican Party, meaning to the country. | ||
| Because the next step by a lot of people is going to be swiveling over and saying, we need more government. | ||
| We need more centralized power. | ||
| Now, the thing I'm saying is that it's the centralization of economic power in the White House, yes, even under President Trump, that has been preventing more growth for the middle class, more wage growth, more business innovation. | ||
| And if the president would take his hands off the football, that would actually be a better thing than the sort of tariff in and out that we've been playing for a while here. | ||
| That the attempts to force the Federal Reserve, for example, to lower the interest rates, to inject more liquidity into the system. | ||
| I've been against that pretty consistently because to me, the proper interest rate in a functioning economy should be zero. | ||
| My money should be worth precisely what it was worth yesterday. | ||
| You shouldn't just be able to degrade my savings by 2% every single year at the whim of a centralized bureaucrat. | ||
| But I'll tell you what's not going to be a political winner. | ||
| So the president yesterday denied that prices are going up. | ||
| Now, listen, to be fair to President Trump, if you take a look at how they rose during Joe Biden's term in office, of course, was way higher. | ||
| But there comes a point in a presidency, every presidency, where you can no longer say it's better than the last guy. | ||
| You have to deal with the fact that inflation is still too high at nearly 3%, that people still feel like they're paying too much for groceries. | ||
| And not only that, they feel very uneasy about their jobs. | ||
| Because one of the amazing things, of course, about the gigantic investments being made at the upper end of the market in AI is that I think a lot of people, quite correctly, are worried about the job dislocations that will almost certainly occur as a result of AI growth. | ||
| So you're going to have this weird situation in which the stock market continues to rise as productivity continues to rise, but jobs are going to decrease because in the initial term, before new jobs are found for everybody in new industries and creative endeavors, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. | ||
| Well, here's the president denying that the prices are going up. | ||
| Again, I don't think that, I don't blame him, but I don't think it's a winning political pitch. | ||
| So I don't want to hear about the affordability because right now we're much less. | ||
| If you look at energy, we're getting close to $2 a gallon gasoline. | ||
| With Biden, it was $4.50, $5. | ||
| Another thing, inflation. | ||
| We had the worst inflation in the history of our country. | ||
| Now we have virtually no inflation at all. | ||
| It sounded a very low number and a very normal number. | ||
| So the affordability is much better with the Republicans. | ||
| The only problem is the Republicans don't talk about it. | ||
| And Republicans should start talking about it and use their heads because we have great numbers. | ||
| Well, again, I agree with much of what he is saying, but it's not going to be a sort of winning electoral proposal. | ||
| Democrats are just going to campaign on the fact that people don't feel great about the economy. | ||
| Now, ironically, one of the things that could help the Trump presidency is if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs. | ||
| If the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs, the economy is going to rip because a lot of investors who've been sitting on the sidelines are going to suddenly feel secure that their inputs are not going to be increased, jacked up randomly by 30%, 40%, 50%, depending on where they're getting their products from. | ||
| And they're not going to fear as much that export markets are going to disappear. | ||
| So it actually could be a blessing in disguise if the Supreme Court smacks down the tariffs. | ||
| Coming up, are President Trump's tariffs actually inhibiting the growth of the economy? | ||
| And if so, could there be sort of a blessing in disguise if the Supreme Court strikes them down first? | ||
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| As the Wall Street Journal points out, the Trump administration has misused executive authority here. | ||
| They have. | ||
| The power of the person belongs to Congress. | ||
| Tariffs are, in fact, taxes on Americans. | ||
| But again, beyond the legal, it would be better for the country if we had lower tariffs. | ||
| Now, I understand that this is very near and dear to the president's heart. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| And I understand his feeling that we have been screwed in past trade negotiations. | ||
| I don't even disagree with that. | ||
| But the answer to that is to negotiate better deals with countries, not to put blanket tariffs on allies that we need. | ||
| Is this going to be the precursor of change? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Here's the head of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett. | ||
| He says our agenda will not be slowed. | ||
|
unidentified
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But the thing I want everybody to listen to right now from this White House is that they are not going to slow down our agenda. | |
| They are not going to upend our agenda. | ||
| That we're working every day so that when the government gets open, we can basically fire hose new policies at the Senate and get everything that we can possibly think of accomplished this year if they open the government. | ||
| So President Trump, they're trying to slow down President Trump's agenda, but they're not going to be able to do it. | ||
| They need to give up that thought and put the American people first. | ||
| Okay, so again, if what we're talking about here are more tariffs or more interventions, I understand that President Trump likes the headline of some firm telling him they're going to invest $10 billion in the United States and build a factory. | ||
| I've yet to see that money actually delivered and actually build the factory. | ||
| Joe Biden used to say the same kind of stuff, of course. | ||
| He used to say, We're going to take tax dollars and we're going to chip sack. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And by tomorrow morning, you're going to see one bajillion, bajillion million jobs and chipmay. | |
| And you know what? | ||
| That never materialized. | ||
| So you might get a bit of a sugar high from an announcement, a sort of corporatist announcement, where the United States government has taken a stake in X company. | ||
| But the conditions that lead to long-term economic prosperity, particularly in times of change, are conditions that allow for innovation, investment, adjustment on the fly. | ||
| Let the free market work. | ||
| Let it work. | ||
| That is my recommendation. | ||
| Now, meanwhile, the government shutdown continues apace. | ||
| The Senate is apparently exploring some sort of plan in order to end the government shutdown. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal reports that Senate Majority Leader Thune told Senate Republicans on Thursday they should expect to vote on a new proposal today, aiming to end the government shutdown, according to people familiar with the plan. | ||
| Democrats say that they are not sold on the emerging package. | ||
| Some say they would need their core demand of extending Obamacare subsidies to be part of any legislation. | ||
| The plan to vote on a revised proposal comes as the impact of the shutdown continues to grow. | ||
| Obviously, government workers, many of them, are not being paid. | ||
| Low-income families are seeing cuts in SNAP. | ||
| Airlines are cutting flights because of the FAA. | ||
| The new proposal would apparently combine a short-term spending measure with a package of three full-year funding bills covering the legislative branch, agriculture, and military construction and veterans' affairs. | ||
| It was unclear whether the interim measure would keep the government open through mid-December or January. | ||
| Democrats, of course, have been saying they only want more Obamacare, more Obamacare subsidies. | ||
| They want to reverse the one big, beautiful bill on Obamacare. | ||
| Republicans are acknowledging something else. | ||
| Senator Thune said the Democrats are walking back or slow walking this, that they're the ones who are really holding this back. | ||
| Apparently, one of the elements that's under consideration by the Senate, and again, this is Republicans making concessions right now. | ||
| The Republicans said clean CR. | ||
| Democrats said no, no, no, no, no, and started screaming like babies. | ||
| And we've now been in a government shutdown for well over a month. | ||
| Well, Republicans now have a choice, which is, I think, a politically smart one. | ||
| They're going to make some targeted concessions to Democrats, and then Democrats can either take it or leave it, because then it's Republicans who are showing movement, not Democrats. | ||
| One element under discussion includes a proposal to stop or even roll back some of the firings the White House initiated at the start of the shutdown. | ||
| It'll be interesting to see whether Democrats cave at all on all of this. | ||
| Senate Democrats are divided, apparently. | ||
| According to the Washington Post, the deal that Thune is proposing could appeal to about a dozen Senate Democrats, or at least it was poised to do so. | ||
| And then Democrats did really well in New Jersey, Virginia, and New York City. | ||
| And now Democrats are saying this shutdown stuff is great for us. | ||
| Maybe we should just continue it. | ||
| Most of the party is currently expected to reject the proposal, leaving it short of the 60 votes it would need. | ||
| So, by the way, for those who are saying what Democrats are doing here is not political, it is eminently political and they're admitting it. | ||
| Senator Chris Murphy, who's one of the far-left senators, he says, quote, Tuesday was a watershed moment. | ||
| The country, first and foremost, was making a referendum on Donald Trump's corruption and his mishandling of the economy, but they were also making a statement about this fight. | ||
| Well, the statement they're making is that they want the shutdown to end. | ||
| And they think that as a punishment to President Trump, Trump will make concessions and then Democrats will end the shutdown. | ||
| If what Democrats take away from that is we must continue the shutdown under all circumstances, I'm not sure how that's going to play because it will, in fact, change the game if Republicans make concessions and Democrats refuse to move one iota, one inch. | ||
| And now, you know, the Republicans have been trying to minimize the cost of this thing. | ||
| They really have. | ||
| So, for example, when Barack Obama was president and there was a government shutdown over Obamacare, he shut down things like open-air World War II memorials in an attempt to make people feel the pain. | ||
| He shut down national parks to make people feel the pain. | ||
| The Republicans are not doing that. | ||
| Republicans have been trying to minimize the damage while being in compliance with the law. | ||
| Now, bizarrely, yesterday, a judge ordered the Trump administration to continue to pay SNAP benefits. | ||
| The problem is that's actually illegal. | ||
| The case that was made by the Trump, the Trump administration would be perfectly happy continuing to pay out SNAP benefits because, again, the idea here is that Republicans don't want to leverage people. | ||
| Republicans are not interested in using food stamps as a way of harming Americans, thus to get the other side to cave. | ||
| They understand they're the party in power, but they actually are not supposed to just empty emergency funds from SNAP because the government refuses to go into session and pass the CR. | ||
| Well, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration to release full funding for November food stamps by Friday. | ||
| That oral order came as many, many Americans, 42 million Americans have lost access to some benefits under SNAP. | ||
| U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell, who is, of course, an Obama appointee, no surprise, said, quote, last week, SNAP benefits lapsed for the first time in our nation's history. | ||
| This is a problem that could have or should have been avoided. | ||
| The government knew there would be a long delay in paying SNAP benefits and failed to consider the harms individuals who rely on those benefits would suffer. | ||
| Well, I mean, I'm just, yes, it's true that it should have been avoided with a clean CR. | ||
| I'm not sure how that means that you get to unilaterally change the law. | ||
| Again, this bizarre notion that a single judge can force the opening of the law and the misuse of the law this way is strange. | ||
| The Vice President J. Vance slapped back at the ruling. | ||
| It's an absurd ruling because you have a federal judge effectively telling us what we have to do in the midst of a Democratic government shutdown, which what we'd like to do is for the Democrats to open up the government. | ||
| Of course, then we can fund SNAP and we can also do a lot of other good things for the American people. | ||
| But in the midst of a shutdown, we can't have a federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation. | ||
| We're trying to keep as much turned on. | ||
| We're trying to keep as much going as possible. | ||
| The president and the entire administration are working on that, but we're not going to do it under the orders of a federal judge. | ||
| We're going to do it according to what we think we have to do to comply with the law, of course, but also to actually make the government work for people in the midst of the Democratic government shutdown. | ||
| If they would like to end this, we would be welcome, we would welcome working with them to end this government shutdown, and then we wouldn't have to triage what we're going to fund and what we're not going to fund. | ||
| Okay, now, again, I think that he is absolutely correct in his assessment of the situation. | ||
| But, you know, it's a good thing that Republicans have really good friends, you know, people who are fighting the left, people really, really fighting the left, like, for example, Marjorie Taylor Greene who has spent zero time fighting the left, but instead is making the rounds in order to go after President Trump, Speaker Johnson, you know, continuing to undermine the party and receive these strange new respect. | ||
| So do to a woman who once famously posted about Jewish space lasers. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Actually, I'm doing exactly what I've done the entire time. | |
| I ran for Congress in 2020 criticizing Republicans and Democrats equally. | ||
| And one of my campaign lines was I'll go to Washington and hold Republicans accountable. | ||
| And that's exactly what I'm trying to do right now is to hold the Republican Party accountable to work for the American people on the promises that they made. | ||
| I'm one of those Americans that feels disenfranchised by my government. | ||
| And I feel that our government has failed the American people on both sides of the aisle. | ||
| Okay, so thanks. | ||
| That's super, duper helpful. | ||
| But at least you're getting your moment in the sun. | ||
| Again, the rumor is that she wants to run for president. | ||
| Good luck with that. | ||
| Congresswoman Green, who would be completely obscure if it were not for President Trump, the president who she is currently attacking incessantly. | ||
| All righty, coming up, who is the leader of the Democratic Party? | ||
| Democrats have legitimately no idea. | ||
| First, let's talk about something that actually matters, honoring American veterans on Veterans Day. | ||
| Legacy Box has been with the Ben Shapiro show for years. | ||
| They've helped preserve the memories of over a million families. | ||
| Now they're teaming up with all of us here at the Daily Wire to give back in a big way. | ||
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| Here's where it gets personal: if there's a veteran in your family, head on over to get.dailywire.com/slash legacy box or click the link in the show notes. | ||
| But even if you don't have a veteran in your life, you still have a legacy worth preserving. | ||
| Right now, Legacy Box is giving all of my listeners exclusive access to this deal in honor of Veterans Day, just nine bucks per tape to digitally preserve your family memories. | ||
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| You know, my family, my parents, we digitized a bunch of old film reels, and now I can see my grandparents, what my parents were like as kids, they can see memories that they haven't accessed for 50 years. | ||
| Whether it's a loved one in uniform or your family's holiday mornings, preserve the stories that shaped you. | ||
| Head on over to legacybox.com/slash Shapiro today to preserve your family's history. | ||
| That's legacybox.com/slash Shapiro. | ||
| Also, here's the reality: over 90% of Americans are not getting enough dietary fiber. | ||
| Most of us aren't hitting that recommended variety of fruits and veggies either. | ||
| I know I wasn't. | ||
| That's why I tried Balance of Nature supplements. | ||
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| It's helping keep me healthy, despite the fact I'm on planes all the time these days. | ||
| After years of research and development, they've created something that makes getting proper nutrition actually convenient. | ||
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| Well, meanwhile, Democrats are struggling on their side of the aisle too. | ||
| They don't know who their leader is. | ||
| According to Politico, Democrats still don't have a leader to guide them out of the wilderness. | ||
| So they did a poll conducted by Public First in the closing weeks of the election, and they found a complete lack of consensus among 2024 Kamala Harris voters on the question of who do you consider to be the leader of the Democratic Party? | ||
| And the number one answer is don't know. | ||
| 21% don't know. | ||
| 16% still Kamala Harris. | ||
| So that is not real. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| No, no one actually believes Kamala Harris is the leader of the Democratic Party. | ||
| That just add that 16% also don't know. | ||
| So you're 37% don't know. | ||
| And then you also have to add another 11%, nobody. | ||
| So now you're talking about 48% don't know Kamala Harris, which is don't know, and nobody. | ||
| So at least half their Democratic Party has no idea who the leader of the Democratic Party is. | ||
| About 8% say Akeem Jeffries. | ||
| About 7.5% say Chuck Schumer. | ||
| About 7.5 say Barack Obama. | ||
| The only person who is running for president who's on this list is Gavin Newsom, who's clocking in at 6.2%. | ||
| Bernie is at 2%. | ||
| Donald Trump is at 0.8%, which is hilarious. | ||
| AOC is at 1%. | ||
| So Democrats are fragmented. | ||
| According to Lauren Harper Pope, Democratic strategist, she says the party is divided factionally and ideologically. | ||
| I couldn't tell you who the leader of the Democratic Party is either, and I work in Democratic politics. | ||
| Now, that's actually not a terrible place for the Democrats to be in one sense. | ||
| Once they appoint a leader, that leader becomes the sort of chief of the opposition, and all Republican fire can focus on them. | ||
| So if you say it's Mamdani, they're in trouble. | ||
| If you say it's Spanberger, they're in trouble. | ||
| So, the best thing for them to do probably is for them to maintain a sort of confused status about the future, which is why it's, as a Republican, encouraging that one of the dumbest people in American politics, Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who also, for some reason, seems to want to run for president based on the fact that he's a human existing in time, I suppose. | ||
| He says that the future of the party is Momdani. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think the future of the party is Zoran and Abigail and Mikey, right? | |
| The future of the party is that we're a Big Tent party. | ||
| Okay, so that Big Tent is going to have to decide what exactly they are. | ||
| What exactly are they going to be? | ||
| And the answer is quite unclear at this point in time. | ||
| The answer is unclear for the Democrats. | ||
| He says the future is Zoran and also Abigail. | ||
| And it's a point I've been making about the right, and it's also true of the left. | ||
| If you let the nuts run your party, you're opening the door to defeat, even when you seem on the verge of victory. | ||
| Democrats could make a large-scale mistake by embracing Momdaniism. | ||
| Because how crazy is Zorhan Mamdaniism? | ||
| The Democrat socialists of America have now put out a demand sheet articulating the organization's demands for Mamdani. | ||
| Those demands include divest city pension funds from Israeli bonds and securities, withdraw city funds from banks that lend money to Israel or do business in Israel, end city contracts with companies that do business with Israel, operate city-run grocery stores free from Israeli products, investigate real estate agents hosting illegal sales of stolen lands in the West Bank, evict weapons manufacturers and transporters from the New York City metropolitan area, divest CUNY endowment and reinstate wrongly fired professors, | ||
| dismantle Eric Adams' New York City Israel Economic Council, remove nonprofit status from any charity that raises funds for the IDF and NYPD training with Israel, and arrest Benjamin Atanyahu and any active IDF soldier for war crimes. | ||
| That is their list, which is psychotic. | ||
| Every single one of their policies is about Israel. | ||
| That's their list of demands. | ||
| Their list of demands is not about free busing. | ||
| Their list of demands is not about affordable housing. | ||
| Their list of demands is just Jews. | ||
| It's just Israel. | ||
| The obsession is real and insane. | ||
| And if Democrats decide to side with this sort of stuff, then good luck. | ||
| Now, again, one of the things that I've seen, and you've seen this sort of, again, horseshoe around, is people who are claiming, well, you know, the thing that distinguished Zorn Mamdani from everyone else on the stage is that he said in a debate, I've heard this now from Anna Kasparian. | ||
| I know that Tucker has said something similar, is that what distinguished Mamdani, the reason he won is because he said, I don't care what's happening in the Middle East. | ||
| I only care what's happening here. | ||
| Has ever a more gaslighting statement been made than that? | ||
| What absolute nonsense. | ||
| Zorhan Mamdani is the most Israel-obsessed candidate in America. | ||
| His entire political career was built on hatred of Israel. | ||
| It's why he was a students for justice in Palestine activist. | ||
| So Democrats, you know, I guess that you break it, you bought it. | ||
| And I suppose you can enjoy the people with whom you have chosen to ride. | ||
| We'll see how it works out for you. | ||
| Meanwhile, the old guard in the Democratic Party is fading away. | ||
| Nancy Pelosi, who was, I'm old enough to remember, the most left-wing member of the Democratic caucus and then became the speaker, and now she has been supplanted by people even further to her left, announced that she will not seek re-election. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I will not be seeking reelection to Congress. | |
| With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year of service as your proud representative. | ||
| As we go forward, my message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power. | ||
| We have made history. | ||
| We have made progress. | ||
| We have always led the way. | ||
| And now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy. | ||
| I think what I like most about that video is the visiting angels music underneath it. | ||
| I mean, I feel like it's age-appropriate for sure. | ||
| But, you know, with her going, one of the things that I think is funny, you're seeing Republicans, some people online saying, we pushed her out. | ||
| Dude, she's been in Congress since before John F. Kennedy was born. | ||
| Okay, like that lady has been in Congress since Charles Sumner was being caned on the floor of the Senate. | ||
| She served in Congress as John Quincy Adams. | ||
| Like, you didn't push her out. | ||
| She left. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Can you just be real about that? | ||
| But if there is a message to this in Democrats, that the old guard Democrats are in fact being supplanted by their crazies. | ||
| And we'll see if that works out for them. | ||
| I do not think that it will. | ||
| The thing that scares me, of course, is that American politics is a reactionary game. | ||
| Again, if the economy goes south, then the progressive nutjobs could actually win. | ||
| But is this a smart move for Democrats? | ||
| I think not. | ||
| Well, someone else signed in in the chat about Nancy Pelosi. | ||
| Marjorie Taylor Green's Democrat apology tour continues. | ||
| She was on CNN yesterday praising Nancy Pelosi, a person she once said was a traitor and guilty of treason. | ||
| She's now praising Nancy Pelosi while ripping into Mike Johnson. | ||
| What a great Republican she is, truly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
However, I will praise Nancy Pelosi. | |
| She had an incredible career for her party. | ||
| Yes, things are going well. | ||
| Okay, meanwhile, in actual good news, New York has a candidate for governor on the Republican side, a very strong candidate. | ||
| In fact, Elise Stefanik, congresswoman from New York. | ||
| She has now announced that she will be running for governor. | ||
| Here was her campaign launch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
As a working mom, congresswoman, and fighter, Elise knows families need more help, and she'll make New York affordable. | |
| That's why she authored and passed the largest middle-class tax cut in New York's history, letting working families keep more of their hard-earned money. | ||
| Elise will reduce your energy utility and grocery bills. | ||
| She fought woke insanity in our schools, stood proudly with law enforcement, championed small businesses, and will never back down from fighting for New York families. | ||
| With everything on the line, we need someone who will deliver results and make New York affordable and safe for families and small businesses to not just survive, but thrive. | ||
| Elise Stefanik will clean up Kathy Hochul's catastrophe and restore New York's greatness. | ||
| Elise Stefanik for governor. | ||
| It's time to save New York. | ||
| Yeah, well, that's a good ad. | ||
| And Elise Stefanik is a very strong candidate. | ||
| Kathy Hochul put out her own ad attacking Stefanik. | ||
| She didn't really attack the congresswoman as much as she attacked President Trump. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Meet Elise Stefanik. | |
| The greatest president in the history of our country, President Donald J. Trump. | ||
| She's Donald Trump's top ally in Congress. | ||
| I'm proud to be one of his top allies on Capitol Hill. | ||
| This goes back to fighting against the witch hunt impeachment. | ||
| It goes back to being the first member of Congress who endorsed him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Now Elise Stefanik is running for governor of New York to do what she's always done. | |
| Put Trump first. | ||
| She is phenomenal. | ||
| She's a friend of mine. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Phenomenal at putting Trump ahead of you. | |
| Like when she proudly cast the deciding vote to pass Trump's agenda that rips healthcare away from 1.5 million New Yorkers. | ||
| She's doing me a big favor. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Stefanik put five rural hospitals in her district on the chopping block just to keep Trump happy. | |
| And I've been proud to be President Trump's top ally in Congress. | ||
| She voted to greenlight Trump's tariffs, too, even though they're hurting New York farmers and jacking up costs on everything from groceries to coffee to building and owning a home. | ||
| And when the Trump administration tried to cut $187 million in counterterrorism funds from New York, Elise Stefanik didn't raise a finger or say a word. | ||
| And New Yorkers noticed. | ||
| Elise Stefanik. | ||
| Elise Stefanik, she'll always put Donald Trump ahead of you. | ||
| So we'll see if that works. | ||
| We'll see if that works for her. | ||
| Just saying Trump over and over and over and over. | ||
| Maybe it will, because obviously New York's a very blue state, but I don't know. | ||
| I think that New Yorkers might fear a Kathy Hochul, Zorhan Mamdani, governing duo than they do, you know, Elise Stefanik at the head of the New York governor's mansion. | ||
| I think it'll be fascinating to find out. | ||
| Joining us on the line is Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who, of course, launched her campaign today. | ||
| The polls show her essentially in a dead heat, maybe even slightly ahead of the current governor, Kathy Hochul, who is deeply unpopular in the state of New York. | ||
| Congresswoman, thanks so much for taking the time and joining the show. | ||
| Great to be with you, Ben. | ||
| People are following this race very closely. | ||
| So let's talk about why you're jumping into the gubernatorial race. | ||
| Obviously, New York has been a blue state in terms of the governorship for quite a while. | ||
| What makes you think things are going to change? | ||
| Well, look at what just happened in New York City, Ben. | ||
| The world was watching and they elected a radical anti-Semite, defund the police, tax hiking, abolish private property socialist who I call communist, Kami Mom Dami. | ||
| And Kathy Hochul bent the knee. | ||
| She endorsed him. | ||
| And he just slightly got above 50%. | ||
| And traditionally in New York, which is outnumbered from Democrat to Republican seven to one, traditionally the Democrat nominee gets in the 70s. | ||
| He did not. | ||
| And nearly half New Yorkers opposed him. | ||
| So they know that this reeling off a cliff is going to be a disaster for New York State. | ||
| I also am running because the top issues for New York families are making New York affordable and safe. | ||
| Kathy Hochl has made New York the most unaffordable state in the nation. | ||
| We have the highest taxes, the highest energy prices, utility prices, grocery prices, rent. | ||
| The list goes on. | ||
| And we also have a crime crisis where you have failed bail reform, where under Kathy Hochl's failed leadership, they release violent criminals onto the streets who literally have killed New Yorkers. | ||
| So those are the top issues. | ||
| And I'll tell you, it's been 20 years next year since we've had a Republican governor. | ||
| It is time. | ||
| And this coalition will be not just Republicans and Independents, but Democrats as well who are fed up with the direction far left that is happening in New York. | ||
| So Congresswoman, obviously you look at New York. | ||
| New York, as we say, has traditionally been Democratic. | ||
| And that means that Kathy Hochul has decided she's going to run her reelection campaign on the basis of President Trump. | ||
| Obviously, she's going to try and just say President Trump's name over and over and over in the hopes that because you have been in Congress a supporter of President Trump, this is somehow going to push her over the finish line as a piece of sort of anti-Trump backlash. | ||
| What do you make of that line of attack and how do you plan to talk about that? | ||
| Well, first of all, it's Kathy Hochl who's on the ballot and we're going to hold her accountable for her record. | ||
| And the reality is, let's dig into the facts. | ||
| Kathy Hochl is an accidental governor. | ||
| This is not someone who ran through when she first was governor a primary. | ||
| She was elevated because Cuomo stepped down. | ||
| She was a lieutenant governor, a do-nothing lieutenant governor, and a weak lieutenant governor. | ||
| Cuomo knew that. | ||
| That's why he selected her. | ||
| And when she ran in 2022, she didn't really, she was unknown. | ||
| Now she's known for her incompetency, for her weakness, and for this failed record. | ||
| When it comes to her votes, she won 3.1 million votes in New York. | ||
| President Trump actually won close to 3.4 million votes in New York State. | ||
| So this is about turnout. | ||
| It's about turning out lower propensity voters. | ||
| We believe, I know that I've done that in my district. | ||
| We have the highest turnout of any congressional district in New York State, and we're going to have to do that across New York. | ||
| But you can feel the energy and enthusiasm. | ||
| Meanwhile, Hochul can't triangulate between the radical far-left socialist and maintaining her middle, which she has lost and it's never coming back. | ||
| So obviously, as you say, that that is a major issue for Kathy Hochul because right now, Zarn Mamdani has proclaimed that he has these massive plans for New York City. | ||
| A huge number of them are reliant on the state of New York, the state legislature, and the governor actually signing off on incredibly large tax increases in the state. | ||
| And it's unclear at this point whether Hochul is going to go for that. | ||
| And so she's sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place. | ||
| If she attempts to raise taxes dramatically on people living in the state of New York, already one of the most overtaxed states in the country, then there will be a bit of a rebellion. | ||
| If she does not, then presumably the progressive left is going to be deeply upset with her and maybe try to eat her alive. | ||
| That is an unenviable political position for her. | ||
| Well, Ben, you're exactly right in your political assessment, but let's be clear: Kathy Hochul has already raised taxes on New Yorkers. | ||
| She is the reason why we have the highest taxes in the entire nation. | ||
| And it took less than 24 hours for Zora Momdami's supporters to heckle her, to tax the rich, tax the rich, to run her off the stage, for her to change her position and say she's now open to raising taxes. | ||
| She will be forced by a Democrat-run state senate, Democrat-run state assembly with Mom Dami and the DSA, the Democrat Socialists on the march, to bend the knee. | ||
| At every opportunity, Kathy Hochul bends the knee. | ||
| She is controlled by the radical far left by Mamdani, and she will do that in the case of raising taxes. | ||
| This was the situation with her endorsement of Mom Dami. | ||
| She didn't intend to. | ||
| She said she wasn't planning on endorsing, and then she did. | ||
| Because of her bad polling, she's well under 50% among Democrat voters in New York State. | ||
| So when you look right now at the polling data, obviously there have been some variant polls that suggest she's ahead. | ||
| There's one poll that suggests that you are actually ahead in this race. | ||
| But the biggest factor here is the fact that she has never been a popular governor or even a gubernatorial candidate. | ||
| In the last election cycle, in which Kathy Hochul ran against Lee Zeldin, who, of course, is now the head of the EPA. | ||
| She only won in the state of New York by something like five and a half points. | ||
| And that was, in fact, an off-year election, just like this one will be. | ||
| What do you make of the fact that it is an off-year election? | ||
| Obviously, Republicans tend to turn out significantly more during presidential election years. | ||
| Is that going to be a hindrance or is it just going to be an opportunity for you to reach out to independents and moderate Democrats who may be put off by the radicalism of the current Democratic Party? | ||
| I think it's both, Ben. | ||
| We're very focused on turning out those lower propensity voters. | ||
| As I pointed out before, we've worked on this in my district. | ||
| We have the highest voter turnout of any congressional district in New York State. | ||
| People are looking for a leader and a reason to get out and vote. | ||
| And saving New York State, I mean, this is dire. | ||
| This is dire for families. | ||
| And that's only exacerbated when you look at the New York City mayor's race. | ||
| People do not want Kathy Hochul. | ||
| She failed as governor. | ||
| And these non, you know, traditionally wouldn't be necessarily part of the Republican coalition, they're now coming on board. | ||
| My phone's been ringing off the hook from Democrats who either voted for Hochul or supported Hochul financially in terms of donations and bundling. | ||
| They are coming on board our team because she's left them far behind. | ||
| So we view it as an opportunity to broaden the tent, reach out to new communities and run up the score to save New York State once and for all. | ||
| Well, that is Elise Stefanik. | ||
| She's a congresswoman from New York. | ||
| Hopefully she'll be the next governor of New York as well. | ||
| Congressman, thanks so much for the time and congrats on the run. | ||
| If people want to support your campaign, what's the best way to do so? | ||
| EliseForgovernor.com. | ||
| They can follow me on social media at Elise Stefanik. | ||
| Well, again, thank you so much and good luck. | ||
| All righty, folks, the show continues for our members right now. | ||
| We will be getting into the amazing Sidney Sweeney's interview. | ||
| She did an interview with some crazy Hollywood press lady and it really went poorly for that lady. | ||
| Remember, in order to watch you have to be a member, if you're not a member, become member, use code Shapiro. | ||
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