People that you're okay and you support biological males competing in female sports, doesn't matter if it's not happening very much.
If you can't say you oppose that, a lot of people are going to think you're out of touch and completely crazy.
And again, the ad that hurt her most, the most effective and consequential political ad of this century, was the ad hitting her on that issue, and she could never compellingly respond.
So, Rich, I want to stay with you for a text message we received from Sue in Oregon, Ohio, who says, I would like to know what will happen to JD Vance's Senate seat now that he'll be vice president.
Yeah, interesting question.
I believe Mike DeWine, the Republican governor, gets to appoint a replacement, and there's been jockeying for it.
And I think the vaccine Ramaswamy, more than a Trump position, I'm guessing, guessing, I don't have any inside information, would very much want that Senate seat.
And, you know, if Trump picks up the phone and calls Mike DeWine, there's a strong chance he could get it.
Could I just say for a moment, it was crushing to see Sherrod Brown, a very decent, longtime senator, congressperson from Ohio, go down.
I believe he's run three times for Senate, but this was the first during a presidential election with, and of course, Trump running.
But he was someone who cared deeply for the working class, stood for dignity, and understood his state.
And I think we need more Sherrod Browns.
And I think, Rich, you know, you're real smart, but the whole drive on the trans issue is ginned up to a large extent.
This is not a huge issue.
It's made into one by the millions poured into that ad about Kamala and trans issues.
I think it's completely different.
But if it's not a big issue, why couldn't Democrats just say, no, biological males shouldn't compete in female sports because it's such a rare thing?
Well, I think the ads were different.
They weren't about the sports issue as much as, you know, the protecting trans.
So I do want to get back.
By the way, there's no state where there's surgery below 18.
I think it's ginned up.
So let's get back to the callers.
I want to hear from Steve in Valocia County, Florida, on our line for Democrats.
Go ahead, Steve.
Hello.
The reason why I called is because I think a lot of the Democrats' problem is that we let the right caricaturize us.
I'm like most voters that vote Democrat.
I believe in unrestricted free market capitalism.
I'm not a socialist.
I've worked full-time all my life.
I never wanted the government to support me.
And as far as all these isolated incidents that happen in the country that are pulled out and reframed as the front and center of the Democratic platform, like these buzzwords like woke.
I mean, really, what does that even mean?
I think that that's a manufactured buzzword like socialism.
And I guess I, you know, the way that we are characterized and framed is nothing the way that Democratic voters are like.
And Rich Lowry, you're one of the people I'd like to sit down and have a cup of coffee with and just talk about as far as politics and how, you know, what happens in our lives, what, you know, develops our political feelings and everything instead of just hiding behind all these These jargon phrases and buzzwords.
All right, well, let's let Rich respond to that.
Sure.
Well, the term woke, it's not as though Republicans came up with that term.
It came out of the academic complex.
It's a word Democrats, people on the left applied to themselves.
And if you look at the 2019 presidential race, 2020 presidential race, Joe Biden, traditional Democrat, I think he's gone too far left in terms of his presidency here.
But he said, no, I'm not going there.
You know, I think my old Democratic Party still exists.
And Kamal Harris and others raced down this track to embrace every wild left-wing position they could come up with.
Considering abolishing ICE, decriminalizing illegal crossings, Medicare for all.
What's radical about Medicare?
All of this.
Well, ending private health insurance is not a position most people are going to support and not a lot of people.
Kamala Harris instantly, instantly backed off of it, right?
But anyway, she went down this track, and I didn't make her do that.
Republicans didn't do that.
She did it because she thought that was the future of the party.
Then she realized, no, it's not.
Then she was asked about all the stuff this time around, and most of it didn't even dress herself.
Usually when you flip-flop on something, and I'm all in favor of changing positions on things.
I've changed over the years on things myself.
But you think it through and you come up with an explanation and explain people why you've changed.
And she couldn't do that.
Caller's larger point was this labeling of Democrats with these terms, the idea of woke and some of these buzzwords, as the caller mentioned, is being deployed unfairly against Democrats.
Similar to some of the complaints that you heard during the Biden administration from Republicans that many of these other buzzwords are being deployed against them, how do we, if we, move beyond this?
Well, if Democrats don't want to be called woke, they shouldn't be woke, right?
They should be a moderate party.
And they should be able to say, again, Katrina, sorry, I'll just finish and let you go, Katrina.
You know, Katrina and some colleagues say, oh, these are very rare cases.
Well, again, if they're rare and not important, just say you don't support them.
But they couldn't.
And she was just, again, I don't mean to be obsessed with the trans ad, but it's very important.
Kamala Harris had no compelling explanation for where her position was or why she'd taken that radical position or how she'd changed, right?
She just had a shible of, oh, I'm going to follow the law.
Which people watched that and said, that's not an answer.
And so often in her interviews, that's what happened.
I want to come back to your caller.
I do think that there's a demonization of issues, of people, that precludes having a serious debate about what the future of short-term future, for example, of the Democratic Party or the country, or understanding that this issue of pushing out incumbents with nativist right issues is not just U.S.-based.
It's a global issue right now.
I think the fight over woke and what it means and who supports, it distracts from a politics of opportunity, well, a politics that is about issues that matter to people's lives.
And I think there's a lot of, I've seen, failure to deal with the trans issue on the part of Republicans because they're fearful about a changing country.
It's not going to overtake our country.
Trans is a social issue that demands attention.
The media, especially the Republican media in its different forms, gives it way too much attention.
Finally, your caller's point that he's not a socialist.
Well, I'm a Rooseveltian Democrat, and I think there are different kinds of capitalism.
There's a rapacious predatory capitalism, which I think we'll see with Trump and his crypto people and others.
And there's a more humane kind of capitalism.
Many of my colleagues would disagree.
They're thinking about democratic socialism.
But I do think that we need a full debate about where we're heading as a country.
And that demands a lot of rethinking, which is tough for people in this country and, you know, others.
Jewel is in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Jewel.
Good morning, everyone.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hi, I was calling to, I'm hearing all the other callers, and I have a mixture of people that in my inner circle, some are Democratic, I'm independent, Democratic, Republican, and I'm hearing the fighting amongst everyone.
The problem is, I've watched the, I'm not political, and I hate it because it brings out the worst in people, but I've watched this election cycle.
And my thing is, I don't feel that the incoming president, the one that's coming in, Mr. Trump, is I don't feel safe.
Okay, a lot of us are talking and we don't feel safe.
Yes, I don't, there's some things I don't agree with both parties, but at the end of the day, we're humans, right?
And we're supposed to be loving one another because I'm a believer of Jesus Christ.
And I don't see that love with Trump because all his rallies has been spewing hatred and demoralizing others.
And I don't know if there's going to be guardrails up for our safety.
And I just don't foresee it because he's going to be bringing in people that's going to be saying yes, yes, yes, for everything.
And there's going to be no guardrails.
You know, we had the prior generals and other people that were putting up guardrails.
They're all gone.
So, Joel, I want to give our guests a chance to respond.
But first, I want to read a statement from former Representative Liz Cheney, who was obviously campaigning with Vice President Harris towards the end of the campaign there.
Our nation's democratic system functions.
This was the day after the election, last night, and we have a new president-elect.
All Americans are bound, whether we like the outcome or not, to accept the results of our elections.
We now have a special responsibility as citizens of the greatest nation on earth to do everything we can to support and defend our Constitution, preserve the rule of law, and ensure that our institutions hold over these coming four years.
Citizens across this country, our courts, members of the press, and those serving in our federal, state, and local governments must now be the guardrails of democracy.
Rich, both Liz Cheney and our caller there talking about guardrails or the lack thereof in the coming Trump administration.
Yeah, well, I agree with most of that statement from Liz Cheney.
But, you know, we were talking just a couple minutes ago about buzzwords that are simplistic and crude and defame one side.
A huge buzzword in this election was fascism, right?
This is what Liz Cheney was out there with Comwell Harris making this case against Donald Trump.
And it's completely absurd on almost every level.
Fascists, you know, one thing they support is expansionist wars abroad, right?
Wars of territorial aggrandizement.
And as Katrina was saying at the close of the top of the hour, she hopes Trump will actually be less hawkish than the traditional Republican.
And actually, that was the case in the first Trump term.
So this was an absurd smear against Trump.
Now, there are things he says that he shouldn't.
He does freak people out, and he shouldn't.
But the caller, who I really appreciate her sincerity, which came through in her call, these rallies were not as betrayed.
He would say harsh and negative things.
He'd also say wildly optimistic things about unifying the country and creating a new golden age.
It's just those were never in the headlines because the press was so slanted in this race and determined to defeat Donald Trump.
And it lost almost as much as Kamala Harris did.
There were some pretty crazy things said at the rally, Rich.
I wanted to say the fascism that it was thrown around, it was thrown around pretty too often, though the great historian of fascism, Robert Paxton, came to believe that he was witnessing a kind of fascism.
Fascism is essentially corporate power fused with government state power.
You know, I found it interesting, I'm not denouncing it, that Elon Musk got on a call with Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine.
It's not clear where that's going to go, bringing in unofficial people, supporters on those calls.
But I was not saying we do know Project.
I think the unofficial people on calls isn't fascism.
That's the same.
I'm just saying that the power of a Musk or some of the other oligarchs, you know, it's going to be very oligarchical in construct.
However, Project 2025, which many of the listeners may remember, is an outline, in effect, if Trump remains disciplined to what we will witness.
And I think weaponizing or politicizing the civil service, the Justice Department, all of that is frightening.
And I think that is a blueprint if people want to check out what Trump and team intend to do.
So with the acknowledgement that during the campaign the president-elect distanced himself from Project 2025, Jewel, our last caller, did bring up this idea that there would no longer be guardrails around the president-elect.
Do you agree with that, Katrina?
And what do you think would be the response to that?
Well, I think you'll see sustained organizing.
And at the state level, taking it to the states as movements organizing, for example, if there are mass deportations.
And I think the progressives and other Democrats will be a phalanx against the excesses.
The Justice Department, obviously, is one where you could see an expansion of executive power and a rollback of rights.
On the other hand, I still maintain that if out of, I do think there's a chance that we have a different kind of engagement with the world where we are not policing, we're not the indispensable nation, that there's an understanding America is one of many, or not one of many, one of several, restraint and realism better than this indispensable nation.
Gary is in Winterhaven, Florida on our line for Democrats.
Go ahead, Gary.
Yeah, I wanted to talk about the results of the election.
It's really simple why the Democrats lost.
First is the American people have a very low tolerance for economic pain.
They don't understand how things work, and they have short memories.
The economic pain I hear a lot about Trump cheap gas, that it was the COVID lockdown and the laws of supply and demand.
It had nothing to do with Trump policy.
And then inflation coming off the COVID lockdowns, it didn't matter whether Trump won or Biden won, we were going to experience that.
Biden did a pretty good job, but he was straddled with economic pain.
And then people have short memories.
Trump lost in 2020 because we were suffering economic pain.
We were all in lockdown.
Biden lost in 2024 because of the effects of the lockdown.
We're still experiencing economic pain.
They're blaming the administration.
Rich, what's the point of the market?
I think this is the last COVID election.
I think we forget the impact of COVID on our country, economy, and society.
And Rich, what do you think of that assessment?
We also saw in other countries around the world that whoever happened to be in power during this time of high inflation basically lost.
Yeah, no, I think there's a lot to that.
And I do think the Wilkes stuff played a role, but the economy was the biggest issue.
And this is one reason I was bullish on Trump's chances all year long.
He's leading on the economy pretty consistently.
There's some polling three weeks out or so that showed Harris catching up on the economy, but then it seemed to widen again.
So it just seemed hard for me to believe he was going to lose, winning by about 10 points or more on the economy.
And Biden didn't cause the inflation solely, but his policies did make it worse with the overspending and just the denial eroded his credibility.
And then something that also played a big role that was entirely Biden's fault was the border.
He just blew up the border because he ripped up every Trump policy that had worked and that was humane and reasonable.
And he was warned this is going to create a disaster.
You have millions of people flowing in.
And sure enough, he did.
And then for three and a half years, they just denied it.
They just said it's a crisis, not a problem.
Even though you had Democratic mayors across big cities in America saying, please make it stop.
We can't take this.
I know we're supposed to be a sanctuary city, but these 10,000 illegal immigrants have shown up and it's bankrupting us.
And finally, they did a little bit by convincing Mexico to do more to stop the flow and then promoting this pretty bogus Lankford so-called enforcement bill.
But Biden just did that for just no reason and to placate the left largely because the left doesn't really believe we have a moral right to exclude a certain class of people of asylum speakers across the border.
And this is something Trump will fix pretty quickly.
I think it's a fantasy that he's going to fix it quickly.
I think it's an ongoing embedded problem.
I think there's new thinking about how not to weaponize the border, but find a public safety approach.
It's been so criminalized and weaponized that it's not effective.
There are more people coming in.
And I think Trump, his policy is just not feasible for the economy, for morality, and for a real way forward.
There's a lot of thinking going on.
Remain in Mexico.
Remain in Mexico is totally sustainable, totally humane, and was working.
And Biden ended it for no reason, just for the sake of it.
Just because he didn't like Trump's policies and wanted to open up the border.
And the country has paid the price, and he's paid the price, and Comwell Harris has paid the price.
I think the border flow, as soon as Trump's inaugurated, it will go to zero, and then it'll tick up again and needs to reinstate this stuff.
So Trina, you're going to get the people who came illegally last couple of years.
A couple years is going to be difficult.
It's about the economy, too.
I mean, first of all, one thing we haven't talked about, which is interesting, are these trade deals, which really began a process of weakening the American working class, not really as helping the Mexican working class.
But on trade, it's going to be interesting to watch because Robert Lighthauser, who is the pick, I believe, is very close to the left's leading trade person, Laurie Wallach.
So again, there's this transpartisan kind of alliance in that.
Rethinking about the border has to be humane, has to be effective, and has to be about public safety and security.
I do want to get back to our callers.
Let's hear from Jerry in Forked River, New Jersey on our line for Republicans.
Go ahead, Jerry.
Morning.
I was just wondering, I saw in the CNN or MSNBC the head of this big Hispanic group, and he was saying that the Hispanics voted so highly because they, many of them, Cubans or whatever, came from actual communist countries.
And all this Trump is Hitler and communists and racist and misogynists and fascists.
All those names, he was saying that all these people that came from the communist countries saw that exactly what the left was saying and they saw all the laws there, lock them up, lock them up, he's a felon.
And they said they left countries that were doing that.
And now they see it happening here in America.
And they think that the left was the ones that are being communists.
Now, he also mentioned that Harris, when they were running, she had Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Oprah, Julia Roberts, George Cloney, Stevie Wonder.
They're all millionaire or billionaires.
Now, when Trump had his, he had all his friends on.
Dana White, I mean, people that he's been friends with for 50 years.
So that also influenced them because most of America can't really relate to millionaires.
So Jerry, if you have a point about Hispanic voters, I want to read an article here from the Miami Herald before we get Rich to respond.
The headline is, do Hispanic voters take Trump's immigration rhetoric personally?
Most say no in a poll.
Despite former President Donald Trump's continued rhetoric about immigration, particularly along the southern U.S. border, his support is growing among Hispanic, with most saying Trump's remarks are not about them.
According to their poll, Trump's remarks on immigration have long inflamed his opponents on the left and some influential voices on the right who have accused him of demonizing immigrants in order to score political points, with the bulk of his attention focused on the flow of undocumented immigrants coming into the United States from Latin America.
Rich, Jerry made the point that just some of these arguments about Trump just really did not land well with Hispanic voters.
What's your take?
Yeah, so she was discussing Cuban voters, and that might be true of Cuban voters, but this is much broader than that.
Cuban voters are a traditional Republican strength, and Trump has broadened out from that in a really amazing way.
And I think the bargain Democrats, progressives offer to Hispanics and other groups, hey, you can be an oppressed victim like everyone else.
And I think this is a statement a lot of Hispanic voters, no, we just want to be Americans.
We just want to be part of the mainstream.
And they are.
You look at the polling, they cared about some of it.
They cared about the economy more than white voters did.
So I think that was the overwhelming factor here.
Hispanic households have more people in them than any other group in the country.
So you have inflation, that's going to hurt them more.
And a lot of them are working class going paycheck for paycheck.
Katrina Kaitis finished.
I'll be done quickly, I promise.
And then also, I think the average Hispanic voter, if you said the choices between a FDR Democrat and a conservative Republican, they'd be with the FDR Democrat.
But that's not the Democratic Party anymore.
As we discussed, it is woke.
It's into these boutique social justice issues that appeal to affluent white people overwhelmingly.
And these folks, these working class Hispanics, are not woke.
They're patriotic.
They're culturally conservative.
They're religious.
And that stuff repels them.
So I think the economy and the wokeness of the Democratic Party drove these voters into Trump's arms.
Katrina, a quick response before we get back to the poll.
I think that's a rag mischaracterization of the Democratic Party.
I do agree that it's a reprise of 2020 when the Democrats made the mistake of treating Latinos as a monolithic group.
The economy is critically important for that cohort, and I think Democrats need to press hard and think hard and look at that.
Althea's in Queens, New York on our line for Democrats.
Go ahead, Althea.
Alethea, excuse me.
The economy is critical.
Go ahead, Alethea.
All right, let's hear from Patrick in Florida on our line for independence.
Go ahead, Patrick.
Well, thanks for taking my call.
A couple of things.
One, Katrina, your woman's guest, said NAFTA was the downfall of American manufacturing.
Wow.
Actually, it was the 72 Israeli-Arab War where Richard Nixon said to Israel, keep all the land you want to, and we got the Arab oil embargo, which really hurt.
Second, to your male guests there, you say you're pro-life.
I was stationed in Germany.
You couldn't buy American chocolate bars, because I like to remind you when Trump complained that Germany went by our food.
Because by German law, chocolate bars could only have three ingredients in them.
American chocolate wouldn't do that.
You couldn't get American beer over there, but by German law.
And the reason I say this is because I've called in twice about the Wall Street Journal having articles of the overuse of pesticides causing autism.
Wall Street Journal.
Okay, you've raised a couple points there, Patrick.
I want to hear from Katrina on some of his comments around NAFTA.
And then, Rich, if you don't mind, I don't want to get into chocolate so much, but Trump has talked about some pretty broad-reaching tariffs that could affect our European allies.
Katrina?
You know, NAFTA, you began with NAFTA.
NAFTA is the original sin in many ways.
Listen, the left Democrats are not against trade or globalization.
It's for whom, by whom, and millions have been shafted as a result of these trade deals, and many have greatly benefited.
So I think that needs to be understood as one of the grievances that is driving this election, Drovet, and previous elections.
So that's my, I don't know, I haven't followed the link to 72 and the oil, but that's my, and I think the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party was right about the impact of these trade deals, not just on the economy, but on the workers who now are, you know, they are the heart and soul.
They remain the heart and soul, not just the white working class, but the working class, brown, black, of the Democratic Party.
And Rich, can you talk a little bit about some of these proposed tariffs that President-elect Trump has talked about?
Yeah, so first of all, I think the most important point is to realize, despite the depiction we get from the left and parts of the right now that America's just been economically devastated last 10, 15, 20 years, it's leapt ahead.
We've advanced much further than the EU has.
You take the poorest American state, West Virginia, on average incomes are higher than they are in advanced European countries.
So the picture has actually been one of progress in advance.
It doesn't mean that there aren't pockets of poverty and problems that we have.
And on trade, manufacturing, we employ manufacturing has become more productive, right?
Trade's been part of that, but advances in technology are a huge part of it as well.
We still make a lot of stuff.
You can just do it with fewer workers.
Now, Trump does not agree with what I just said, and that's why he's talked about tariffs.
This was the main affirmative policy stance he took in this election.
He was quite obsessed with it, and I think we'll see more tariffs, and it matters a lot what form they take.
It's just sweeping across the board on everyone 10, 20 percent tariffs.
I think that will be quite counterproductive and potentially destructive.
If it's more, well, we're going to have reciprocal tariffs, you know, we're going to do to you what you do to us, that could actually unleash some useful deal-making and see some countries reduce their tariffs and mean that we're not hurting ourselves as much as we would with across the board tariffs.
And just last point: you know, steel and things like that that we've had tariffs on, they're inputs to U.S. manufacturing.
So, yeah, you help the steel industry specifically with those tariffs, but you hurt all sorts of other manufacturers.
And that's kind of the story I think writ large on tariffs.
Let's get one more call in.
Stephen is in Pasadena, California, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Stephen.
Thank you.
Very long-winded.
Yeah, I'm a black American, and one of the reasons Donald Trump won so much of the black male support is because we know what it's like to be railroaded.
We've seen the Justice Department weaponize against him and do things that we never saw them do to anybody else.
And he's supposed to be coming in to drain the swamp, right?
You don't come in draining the swamp by giving pardons.
What Hunter Biden did, he deserved it.
And he already got away with the millions of dollars of money laundering that he could have gotten convicted under the RECOL Act that would have tied him to Joe Biden.
He got away with that already.
Don't pardon him because if Trump took a poll, the majority of his voters would not want Hunter Biden to be pardoned.
Do not pardon Hunter Biden.
That would be bending over forward.
I'll let both of you respond to that and any closing remarks you have, Katrina.
Well, I think there are many others who could be pardoned.
And I wouldn't lift up Hunter Biden, though I do agree with Rich about the human quality of it.
I guess I'd say that, you know, we are analyzing this election in the weekend after.