Mark Halperin is critical because the Democrats are in near-total denial about what went wrong in the 2024 election. They are avoiding holding Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the Democratic Party's leftward shift accountable. The party is not addressing its shortcomings with voters, particularly on national security, economics, and social issues.
Pete Hegseth's chances of confirmation are now stronger because his team, including the vice president-elect, has changed the terms of the discussion. They have highlighted that serious allegations against him are based on anonymous sources, which is unfair. They have also framed the confirmation as a test of the president's agenda and warned senators of potential primary challenges if they vote against Trump's nominees.
Steve Hilton believes a Republican can win statewide in California because there is Republican support in the state, and the number of votes needed to win in the next midterm election is slightly lower than the number of votes President Trump received in California. The key will be to mobilize Trump voters and address issues like crime, homelessness, and the cost of living.
Steve Hilton discusses several key policy failures in California, including the highest rate of poverty, highest homelessness, highest taxes, highest housing costs, the worst business climate, and the highest gas and electricity costs. These failures are attributed to one-party rule by an increasingly extremist far-left Democratic establishment.
Steve Hilton argues that California has become a 'Wuhan lab' of far-left extremism because it has been exporting bad policies and ideologies that have gone wrong across the country, including under the Biden administration. The state's one-party rule has led to the entrenchment of far-left policies, which have had catastrophic effects.
Steve Hilton identifies two pivotal moments: the granting of collective bargaining rights to public sector unions, which entrenched Democratic power, and the 2008 ballot initiative for independent redistricting, which led to gerrymandering and gave Democrats a supermajority in the legislature. These changes allowed for the passage of extreme policies without opposition.
Steve Hilton believes San Diego's new sanctuary county policy is concerning because it goes beyond existing sanctuary laws by adding an additional layer of bureaucracy that hinders local law enforcement from notifying ICE about illegal immigrants, even those who have committed heinous crimes. This policy is seen as a performative stance that prioritizes far-left ideology over public safety.
Hey everybody, it's the Charlie Kirk Show. A great man, great American, Steve Hilton. Steve Hilton is just a wonderful man. This is a phenomenal conversation around his new book, Cala Failure. You're really going to enjoy it.
Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Become a member today, members.charliekirk.com, members.charliekirk.com, and get involved with Turning Point USA at tpusa.com. That is tpusa.com. We also have Mark Halperin this hour. Everybody, you have to come to AmericaFest. It's amfest.com. The speakers are breathtaking. Do you know how hard the team has worked on this? The least you guys can do is come and enjoy and celebrate. We got Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck,
Steve Bannon, Patrick Bet-David, Ben Shapiro, Speaker Mike Johnson, Donald Trump Jr., Matt Walsh, Tim Poole, Ben Carson, the next ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Michael Moles, Ted Cruz, Rob Schneider, Byron Donalds, Ana Paulina, Matt Gaetz, Danica Patrick, Brett Cooper, Jack Posobiec, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Benny Johnson, my wife, Eric Kirk, Riley Gaines, Brandon Tatum, Tom Holman, the deporter-in-chief, George Janko, Ali B. Stuckey, Sage Steele,
more. It's amfest.com. You might be able to meet your future husband, your future wife, your best friends. You're going to be so fired up. It is a celebration unlike any other. Our annual event, America Fest, is held December 19, 2021-22 at the Phoenix Convention Center. Those who attend this once-in-a-lifetime four-day event will hear from dozens of the nation's top speakers, as I just mentioned, network with thousands of like-minded attendees and 100-plus partnering organizations. An
and experience concerts featuring top artists, all while celebrating the greatest country on the planet. Following a Turning Point event, all attendees will return to their campus and communities more energized than ever. Go to amfest.com. That is A-M-F-E-S-T dot com. We have, again, let me just repeat this, Tucker Beck.
Bannon, BetDavid, Shapiro, Walsh, and more. Amfest.com. A-M-F-E-S-T.com. Buckle up, everybody. Here we go. Charlie, what you've done is incredible here. Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus. I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
I want to thank Charlie. He's an incredible guy. His spirit, his love of this country. He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA. We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country. That's why we are here.
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Joining us now is a great friend who I saw this weekend and just an overall terrific person. 10 out of 10. Just love spending time. He's just fun and he loves life and he's here to do good. It is Steve Hilton, author of Califalier, founder of Golden Together and host of the Steve Hilton Show. Steve, my friend, great to see you again. It's so fun to see you, Charlie. Can I just say before we get into all the things we're going to talk about today, I
I just want everyone to understand what an incredible thing you have built. And that was what was so thrilling about being with you this weekend for your massive turning point event and the, the event at Mar-a-Lago and the whole thing, just the scale of your achievement, this organization that you've built. I'm an entrepreneur. I've started businesses and just from the pure entrepreneurial sense of what you've achieved, it is absolutely incredible. It was just a joy to see you there, um,
with all these friends and supporters, it was an amazing, amazing weekend. It just made my heart just full of joy. Well, thank you, Steve. And what a festive time. I mean, it just, it was real joy, right? We were at the Mar-a-Lago ballroom and playing YMCA. It was, it was real joy. Steve, congratulations. Sorry. Yeah. One more thing, Charlie, sorry to cut you off.
I said this to you on the night, and I think everyone also needs to understand this. The joy was real because it felt like a family coming together. It wasn't even like a political event. It was this real sense of, you know, so many people, we're just old friends and we're hugging each other and you had cash and Bobby Kennedy. And it's just an amazing event. And this sense of a family that loves the country, but we also love each other. And that was what was so wonderful.
Steve, thank you for that. Congratulations on your new book. It's coming out in a few months, but it was announced today. It's something I care deeply about California. I spend a lot of time in California. It still has so much goodness left in it. I hope people understand there are so many good people, patriots, and it still is objectively the most beautiful state that God has for us in this state. Steve, tell us about your book.
So the thing about California that I love so much is that in the best version of California, it should be the absolute best of America. It should capture the spirit and essence of America, freedom and opportunity and dynamism and adventure and the rebel spirit. That's the best version of California. But instead, what we've had for the last, and it's nearly 20 years now, of one party rule by an increasingly extremist,
far-left democratic establishment in California. It's the opposite. We're now the worst of America. And that's not an exaggeration. That's why I called the book Califalia, because they are failing on every single front. You'd pick any issue, and California now is the worst
In America, we have the highest rate of poverty from these people that lecture us the whole time about social justice and whatever and compassion. Highest rate of poverty, highest homelessness, highest taxes, highest housing costs, the worst business climate.
That's been voted by CEOs across America. California, the worst business climate in America, 10 years in a row. We're supposed to be the home of entrepreneurship. I mean, on and on, the highest gas prices, highest electricity costs, everything is a disaster. And what I've tried to do in the book is not just list all those things and explain it. And there's a lot more than what I've said. I mean, the details are just horrendous.
But try and explain why, because this is what everyone in America needs to understand, whether you live in California or not, because so much of this bad stuff that's gone so wrong across the country, and you see in the Biden administration, it starts in California. As I use this phrase, California has become like the Wuhan lab.
of far left extremism. They're exporting all this stuff. And so we have to defeat it here. And I go through all the ways in which this ideology has taken shape that I call it the pathologies of this ideology. So we look at, you know, what's really driving it, right? It's not just politics. It's the elitism, the narcissism, the cronyism. I mean, there's all these different things that have added up to create this catastrophic failure.
Can we just talk about how special the state is first? I want to start there. It takes an intentional set of decisions over long periods of time and overruling repeated objections to mess up a place as spectacular as California. Steve.
That's exactly right, because we have all these advantages, right? We once had the best education system probably in the world, right? The University of California system was renowned. The schools were great. We had the infrastructure back in the day. And by the way, this was a Democrat governor, Jerry Brown's father, Pat Brown, built the State Water Project, the most incredible feat of engineering the world had seen, bringing water to the area from where it's plentiful to where it's needed. Just incredible.
incredible things that California did and it grew. And there's a time not that long ago, just a few decades ago, where people were flocking to California. Housing was plentiful and affordable. And there was this wonderful life, the California dream. And that's where people came to start businesses.
And bit by bit, as they grew the government and they just got more and more into the nanny state mentality, regulating absolutely everything, the bloat of the government, the corruption and the cronyism has expanded the size of the government. So that's why taxes are so high. Half of it going out the door in luxury pensions and health care to the unions, the government unions who've completely wrecked
the public schools, so no longer can you hope that your kids can have a better life than you through a great education. So all these things are deliberate choices. That's exactly what I say in the book. This is not some natural phenomenon. This is the result of policy choices. And the really good news is that actually, I think we can get back to that great version of California pretty easily if we just make the right decisions politically. And so the second half of the book actually is called Califuture.
and we lay out a plan for the specific policy changes that will bring us back to where we should be, which is, I mean, sometimes I use this phrase, if we think of America as the greatest country on earth, which it obviously is, and we love it so much, California should be the best of it. And to use that famous phrase, if America is a shining city on a hill, California should be a beautiful gleaming tower on the top. And we can rebuild that. And I think we can do it quicker than anyone thinks.
So, Steve, just briefly as we wrap up this segment, about two minutes remaining, before we get into the future, I am curious, what would you say were the pivot points where California really turned in the wrong direction? Because, I mean, the 80s and early 90s, it was heaven on earth. I mean, you could come and get an affordable house.
You could start a business, some of the greatest entrepreneurs and companies that was just at the beginning of dot com and Silicon Valley semiconductor land. I mean, we we had every major entrepreneur on the planet saw California as the state of the future. That is where Elon Musk initially planted his roots. It's where Peter Thiel and I mean, from. So what happened? What were the policy pivot points that created the steaming pile of garbage?
It's a great question, and it's answered in the book. And just to give you just at the beginning, right, just a couple of points along the way, really significant moments were the granting of collective bargaining rights to the public sector unions, the government unions, because that entrenched the Democrats' power.
and enable them to build this political machine that was so dominant. But the really important moment was actually a ballot initiative that was passed in 2008, which had the sort of nice sounding idea of independent redistricting. And what happened once that started to be implemented in 2010 was that the Democrats, again, these people who lecture us all the time about democracy, gerrymandered the districts to give themselves a super majority in the legislature.
So when that happened, and they also, there was another ballot initiative that took, that meant that you could pass a budget with 50% votes in the legislature, not two thirds as it was previously. Putting all that together, they had free reign to do whatever they wanted. And that's when the extremism really came in. There was no opposition. The Republicans in the state legislature were frozen out. I'll just give you one number to capture that. If you look even in a bad year in California, Republicans get statewide around 40% of the vote.
You look at the legislature, it's not 40% Republican representation. Until just recently, it was 20%, half what it should be. That's a result of gerrymandering. That means they've had this one-party rule and they've got more and more extreme and passed all this nonsense.
And so that's why the most achievable way of actually bringing things back in California is to run statewide because there's enough Republican votes in California to bring common sense back to our beautiful state. Amen. As there are more registered Republicans in California than any other state, any other state. I spend so much time in California. I vacation in California. My best friends are in California. Producer Andrew's there. My pastor's in California. Yeah.
Boy, if it can be done, it is the most worthy of all the political tasks because the prize of California, the untapped potential. Every time I land in Orange County, what do I turn to Mike? I say, how did these maggots screw this place up? I just I say that it's just I know. And I mean, it's just it is a slice of the divine that we have.
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To turn the county into a super sanctuary county, let's play Cut 78. I think this policy goes beyond California's existing sanctuary laws by adding an additional layer of bureaucracy that hinders local law enforcement from directly notifying ICE.
about illegal immigrants who are currently in our jails and they have committed heinous crimes including child abuse or endangerment, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs but only if this conviction is for a felony, torture, rape and kidnapping.
Steve, what is going on in San Diego? It's insane. I mean, this is, again, going back to what we were saying earlier, this is a place that used to be thought of as a Republican place. And they've gone completely nuts to the far left. This extremism is off the charts. And they're doubling down on this policy. They're going further, even than our terrible sanctuary state laws, to basically stop any kind of cooperation between states.
local law enforcement and ICE. Tom Homan's not going to stand for this. We know that. But, you know, they're just throwing up these barriers. What's it all about? It's this performative. I mean, I don't even want to use the term virtue signal. There's no virtue in it. But that's what it's about. It's like saying we're the good people. We're standing up against Trump. We're going to preemptively stop them from deporting people. Who are they defending here? They're defending violent criminals.
OK, that's what's going on. And the kind of the outrageous nature of this, they have no self-awareness of what this means or what it tells people about their values. I mean, it reminds me of L.A. City Council. That was just a couple of weeks ago. They voted to become a sanctuary city, actually less teeth than the San Diego one. They did that in the middle of the Lake and Riley murder trial.
Just the kind of crass offensiveness of that is just unbelievable. But they have no concept of how this comes across to regular people. They're totally captured by their far left activists. And this is all just pandering to them.
Steve, can a last question, uh, Cala failure is the book. Can a Republican win statewide again in California? Yes. Um, and here's why I always felt that that was possible because people, you know, you could just push people so far and I go around the state all the time and people are just sick of what's going on. They've had enough, the crime, the homelessness, the, the cost of living can't get, can't get a house, can't follow your dream, can't run a business. It's all a nightmare, right?
So there's those substantive reasons that I always felt if we had a really great campaign, we could really bring people across. But actually, what happened in this election in California just now is the real data that we need. And so I'll just give you a couple of numbers. If you look at the next statewide election is 2026. It's a midterm election. You're going to have a lower turnout. And if you just take an assumption of what that turnout is going to be based on previous midterm elections,
the number of votes you need to win as a Republican in California is actually slightly lower than the number of votes that President Trump just got in California. So the votes are there. President Trump got the votes in California this election. The key will be to make sure that everyone who voted for Trump in California this time
turns out and votes for change next time, then we can definitely do it. The votes are there. The Republican support is there. We just have to go and find it and get it and make sure people vote, which you, Charlie, know all about, because that's what you've been doing across the country this election with Turning Point. Do you get a sense that the Democrats are afraid of a backlash in California to break their supermajority, eventually win statewide elections?
But a minute remaining. Speak about the current political climate as Newsom's regime comes to an end. No, they don't. They're still complacent. They're still totally arrogant. They're delusional about this. They think that they're going to be in power forever. They got the arrogance of this ruling elite. And so they don't really fear that kind of political change. They actually fear democracy.
primaries from the far left and that kind of thing. And that's why they're completely beholden to their activists and the unions and so on. But I think that they need to, you know, I'm very happy if they're complacent, by the way, because it means that they won't be ready for what's coming. A real revolution is coming in California. That is my show on Fox used to be called The Next Revolution. I say it at every meeting. The next revolution is going to be the California revolution.
I love it. Steve, you're a great man. I'm going to behind you any way I possibly can be. Thank you. And someone's got to run for governor out there in the Golden State. So why don't you go find someone, Steve? I think so. I think we need to find someone really good who's really fired up about the possibility of change. Yeah. When you find a candidate, call me. Thanks, Steve. Thank you, Charlie. See you soon.
Joining us now is Mark Halperin, political reporter and Mark Halperin's wide world of news. Also, two-way TV. Check it out right now, two-way TV. Mark, welcome to the program. Mark, about a week ago, it looked as if Pete Hegseth was on very, very shaky ground. How would you grade his probability of confirmation and what changed in the last week?
Well, Charlie, thanks for having me back. If there's no new information and if he performs well at the hearings, I think his chances are between 9 and 10, 8 or 9 out of 10. I think he's in a very strong position. I think not all the senators who are inclined to oppose him currently have been publicly named. So I think his problem on paper is a little bit broader than people realize. But what's changed is he and his team, including the vice president-elect,
have been super smart at changing the terms of the discussion. First of all, no senator thinks it's fair for someone's career to be short-circuited by anonymous allegations. That runs against a lot of what Americans believe in, and senators themselves are subject to a lot of anonymous allegations. So highlighting the fact that every serious allegation against him is based on anonymous allegations, I think has been successful. I think also making this about the president's agenda,
about whether woke is going to be removed from the Pentagon, making it about the future, not the past, I think has been effective. And I think efforts to convince these senators that if they vote against Donald Trump's nominees, if they don't give him the kind of deference most presidents get, they could be primaried, to paraphrase a great Arizonan, paraphrase now, nice Senate seat you got there. It wouldn't be a shame if you lost it.
I've said that once or twice in the last week. Yeah. So let me ask you from your reporting, Mark, because I'm kind of in my own bubble here.
Have those threats of primarying resonated with Senate staff and those that are within the decision making? Has the increased temperature and ferocity from people like myself and even Elon, has that helped move the dial or make a difference? I think what you guys have done, along with others, including Pete himself, is bought him into January. OK, I think I think it's easy to over calibrate.
One direction or the other. It's not an overstatement to say that this nomination was close to being done last week. Yes. Which is to say it was Donald Trump was not publicly reported, talked to Governor DeSantis about it, had other names under consideration.
But I think what you all have done is move this to a January discussion. Another point, if you're a nominee who's embattled, is to get a hearing, right? Nominees usually survive a hearing and then a floor vote. What causes them to go, and you saw this with Matt Gaetz, is forced out before a hearing. And I think what you all have done is gotten the senators who are wavering, the Republican senators, if I go to an NCAA men's basketball conference,
idiom on the bubble, you've gotten them to say he deserves a hearing, right? It's not fair to take this opportunity away from him to deny President Trump the person he wants without a hearing where he can face his accusers if they come forward. And getting a hearing freezes the field, right? Now I'm switching from a basketball to a football metaphor. The field is frozen. People aren't going to come out against him, I don't believe, in December. I don't believe anyone will. There's one senator who's been thinking about it
but I believe he's been brushed back. And you all gave him the opportunity to get to this January. Now, in January, I think you could see between now and then more investigative reports, maybe some not based on anonymous sources. I think you could also see some of the people who've been anonymous do television interviews. And depending on the strength of their testimony, that may be powerful. The other thing is, and this I think, Charlie, is important.
The people in the Republican Senate who have doubts about Pete Hagseth, there's nothing in it for them except they think he's in the public interest to consider whether he's the right person. Despite some of the accusations made against them, they're not taking suitcases full of money. They're not anti-MAGA. They don't want the job themselves.
They think the right thing to do is consider whether he should get the job. And I think what would be great for the country is if there was less focus on the personal allegations, not no focus, but less focus and more focus on some fundamental questions. Running a building with three million employees, that's hard. There's nothing on Pete Hanks' resume to suggest he's able to do that. He needs to have that conversation with the senators.
Can he sit in the situation room during a crisis and give the president the very best judgment about how to respond? Again, not much on his resume, although of course he served, that suggests he's prepared for that. So I hope the country and the Senate has that discussion and not the media and tabloid obsession with some accusations which are serious and will be investigated, but don't warrant blotting out the other things.
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Update on those two, Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard. And the kind of more surprising one we can get to is how Kash Patel looks like he's likely to kind of glide to confirmation, which really no one saw coming as of right now. So let's go one, two, three. Right. So I think that all three will be confirmed if there's no new revelations and they perform well at their hearing. The hearing, congressional hearings are normally just show trials. They're like they're, you know, they're not they're not on the up and up.
There's nothing good for the public. There's just time for members to get in front of the camera. But I think these hearings will be important. When they give their opening statement, when they answer policy questions, Bobby Kennedy is kind of an interesting case. If you talk to anyone with an opinion about Bobby Kennedy and you press them, there's probably one thing that he's for that they really like, and then there's something he's for that they do not like.
And I think he's going to have to figure out how to navigate that, particularly with the senators on the committee to say, well, you may not like the fact that I've spoken out in favor of abortion rights or you may not like the fact that I've been a vaccine skeptic. But how about this position, Senator, that you think is a good one? Again, there are accusations against him of all sorts. I think he'll make it, assuming there's nothing new and he performs well.
The key to me for Tulsi Gabbard is people like Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio. Both of those guys are extremely well respected on intelligence matters. And of course, Marco Rubio is in line to be Tulsi Gabbard's colleague in the Trump administration if they're both confirmed. If those two guys say that doubts about her on intelligence issues can be set aside, I think she'll be confirmed. And I suspect that they both will.
And then finally, on Kash Patel, you know, it's just so not surprising. The tone of the coverage in the dominant media, which doesn't like him and never has, is very hyperbolic, very hysterical. This isn't about winning Democratic Senate votes. He will not. It's about holding a 50 of the 53 Republicans. And I think if you look at the things that people put in these long articles, you know, that are raising alarms about him,
There's a few things he said that I think are intemperate, unwise, not in keeping with the best of American traditions. And I think if he explains what he meant and maybe take some of them back, I don't think there's any problem. People who say he doesn't have the experience are just flat out wrong. People who say he shouldn't be in the job because of some of his views are
He's reflecting the views of the man who ran and won. And Donald Trump wasn't shy about expressing views on these issues. He was quite clear about what he wanted. So I don't think it's fair to a president-elect to say, I don't like this guy's views, which happened to match the president-elect, so I'm going to vote him down. So again, barring some new revelation, assuming a good performance during the hearing, which I'm more confident he'll have than the other two, again, I'd expect that he'd be confirmed.
I mean, John Bolton came today with his typical over-the-top statements. He says, senators won't escape history's judgment if they vote to confirm Kash Patel. I'm glad John Bolton is not reaching for the hyperbolic in such statements. So kind of looking at that across the board, there's going to be confirmation fights, then confirmation schedules. You've been covering this for quite some time.
Mark, usually these aren't that sexy. Usually it's kind of just very procedural. It's kind of just run of the mill. You know, they even do voice votes on some, not all. I think this is going to be different. This might be one of the more intriguing confirmations in history. Is there any parallel to this of this kind of drama that we've seen in recent memory?
Not like this, because the sheer number of folks who are inspiring controversy and who are known quantities, right? Often you'll have controversies over cabinet officials who could walk down any street USA and not be recognized. Bobby Kennedy, Tulsi Gabbard, even Kash Patel, they've got currency in the popular culture and the wider culture. What's unusual also here is none of these confirmations will rise or fall on the opposition party.
The Democrats are in the minority. They may vote for some Trump nominees, but any Democrat who's getting votes from Democrats doesn't need those Democratic votes to be confirmed. So this is a universe, depending on who the nominee in question is, of up to 15 Republicans, I think, of the 53. I think there are 15 who might, might potentially vote no on the Trump nomination.
on some, some, one or more of these nominees. And so the question is just gonna be a simple game of math. On any one of these nominees, will four or more of those 15 vote no? And I think you saw Tom Cotton, who's a very shrewd guy the other day, who's the number three Republican in the incoming Senate, say he expects them all to be confirmed.
which means he expects none of them to lose more than three of those 15 on any given confirmation vote on the floor.
You have to get out of committee before you get a floor vote. Most of these committees shape up decently for these nominees where they're probably still going to get out of committee, even if the committee is deadlocked. So I'd expect for all of us to not be hyperbolic, focus on the issues. And then for the sake of just the pure question of confirmation, that binary question,
Are there four or more votes against from the Republican side or not? And I don't I don't think you're going to see that. I think the Matt Gaetz experience did not embolden these folks so much as chasten them. And they will do their due diligence. And if these nominees can explain their past controversial positions and some of the accusations against them, I do expect them to. Senator Cotton is probably right.
And that will be the norm. The norm Donald Trump withdrew to, never got to a committee hearing, never got to a vote. The rest being confirmed, that's the norm. The relative absence of votes from Democrats, and I think most of these guys and gals will not get Democratic votes, that's unusual. But that's a sign of our times and increased polarization that we see, and of Donald Trump's
choosing pretty, what you could call them bold or controversial picks. Mark, from your reporting, it seems that these things sometimes heat up about a month and a half later. What I'm talking about is the autopsy reports. It takes a little bit of time because, you know, sometimes Democrats or Republicans, when there's a loss, it's a little bit of shell shock, but then there's a little bit of like, oh, here's what went wrong. Is that the case? And I'm not as interested in that question, but at least what are you gathering from the Democrats that are starting to put together a
the diagnosis of the autopsy of what they think went wrong this election cycle. Yeah, you're right. It's usually not right in the immediate aftermath. Historically, the big event is this thing they do at Harvard called the campaign managers. It's been going on since
for decades. And that one just took place. I think, I say this with no disrespect, just a factual matter, I think as best I can tell, the Democrats are in near 100% denial about what went wrong. They're almost entirely avoiding holding Joe Biden accountable for his contributions to the loss, Kamala Harris for her contributions, the Biden-Harris record for the contributions. And then I think most significantly,
the, the, the, the inclusion with the media that they've been in collusion with about all of this stuff in terms of trying to stop Donald Trump has been a failure to look at the shortcomings the democratic party had during this election with voters, right? Donald Reagan, Ronald Reagan talked about the three-legged stool, national security, economics, and social issues. It's true that Republican Senate candidates lost in a lot of the key Senate contests,
But at the presidential level, the party is defined, the Democratic Party is defined in a way that they continue to be in denial about. The Democratic Party is much further to the left than it's been in decades.
And their autopsies, their ruminations do not include in the main discussions of those four issues. And I think that's a big mistake. There are lots of reasons why Donald Trump won and Kamala Harris lost. But those four are, I think, the main reasons. And I haven't seen any discussions of that so far. It's good that they're loyal to their bosses. That's a good trait.
But if the party wants to have a real reckoning about what went wrong and they just want to fall back on, we're not as good as messaging or the Republicans are tougher than we are.
I think they're making a big mistake because they're not getting to the heart of it. It's such a smart point, and I just find this to be a cope. And Republicans do it too, to be fair. Republicans do it too. But Democrats, when they say, we're just not good at marketing our ideas. Well, maybe your ideas are bad, okay? Maybe it's not just a marketing or a presentation issue. Maybe it's the core thing you're trying to sell. It is the greatest D.C. cope ever that people would say. So what you're saying is that there is not –
a, a reckoning yet? I haven't seen it. I'm not sure we'll get to it. You know, every, every campaign that loses is got a thousand stories about why. And there's not an exact science to differentiate between the little things and the big things, the big causes, little causes. I think when you listen to the Harris senior folks talk, it's gibberish. It's gibberish.
And they're very good people. I've said about the Harris High Command, most of whom also worked for the Biden campaign. These are not political all-stars. They're hall of famers. They're some of the most accomplished operatives in either party in the last 50 years. And for whatever reason, they don't want to be honest about why they lost this election. And I find it
You talk about, you know, the patterns. I've never seen a campaign as reluctant to admit to a single error on the part of either the candidate or the campaign in my career. I've never seen it. They will not admit to a single error. And I'm not trying to browbeat them or make them feel bad. But as a journalist, I want to know what happened. And as a party, the Democrats should want to know what happened. And instead, they just say, we didn't have enough time. The conditions were against us.
You know, people didn't think the Biden-Narris record was good. Well, as a MAGA operative, I support their indulgence in their getting high on their own supplies. Mark, yes, thank you so much. Excellent as always. Twoway.tv, check it out. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always, freedom at charliekirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless. For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to charliekirk.com.