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Well, tonight is the big vice presidential debate. This will be the last scheduled debate of the 2024 election cycle. Join DailyWire Plus tonight for extensive coverage of the 2024 election season, including the VP debate. Our exclusive pre and post backstage show is tonight with DailyWire Plus. You get daily uncensored ad-free shows from most trusted names in conservative media. And for a limited time, get 47% off your new DailyWire Plus membership with code FIGHT. Don't miss out. Head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe and join
the fight today. Now, again, this election remains extraordinarily close. I spent yesterday campaigning with Senate candidate Eric Hovde in Wisconsin. It was a wonderful day meeting constituents, meeting folks in that swing state. That swing state is incredibly close. So, of course, is Michigan. So, of course, is Pennsylvania, which is why a vice presidential debate has now taken on some added significance. When I talk about how close this election is, I should point out that at this point, even the Democratic candidate in Michigan
Her name is Alyssa Slotkin, is suggesting that Kamala Harris may be down in Michigan. Remember, if she loses Michigan, this election is likely over. Hell, if she loses Pennsylvania, this election is likely over. On the other hand, if Donald Trump loses North Carolina, this election is likely over the other way. So this election is incredibly close. Here was the Michigan Senate candidate for the Democrats admitting that she believes that actually Harris is running slightly behind Michigan right now.
I'm not feeling my best right now about where we are on Kamala Harris in a place like Michigan right now. We have her underwater in our polling.
Okay, well, that obviously is a big admission there by Alyssa Slotkin. That means that something that usually doesn't make a huge difference, like a VP debate, could make a big difference. Because again, very unlikely there's going to be another presidential debate. Kamala Harris wants one on one of the left-wing networks. Trump wants one on Fox News. Neither side is going to agree to that. Both sides seem to be willing to sort of hunker down behind their particular blockades and just wait to see what the results are. So what exactly has to happen tonight? Well,
This is a real contrast in styles. J.D. Vance, of course, is a brilliant person. J.D. is a senator from Ohio. He is 40 years old. He's a kid, relatively speaking. He's my age. J.D., Yale Law School, best-selling author, really fast on his feet, really quick, extraordinary knowledge of the facts going into this debate. And Tim Walz, who's sort of a populist yeller.
So the expectations for Vance are high. There's been an attempt by the Trump campaign to lower the expectations for Vance in advance of the debate.
They've been saying that Walls has been through many debates before, and that, of course, is true. And he hasn't performed horribly in those debates. Meanwhile, the Walls team is trying to do the same thing with regard to J.D. Vance. They're talking about how wonderful Vance is, how Vance is going to clock Walls, how Walls is basically, you know, just like a poor, dumb teacher from the Midwest, despite the fact that he's a two-term governor from the state of Minnesota and he's been through this ringer before. The real question here is whether this has any impact at the top of the ticket.
Now, the temptation for J.D. Vance is going to be to go after the target rich environment that is Tim Walz. And Tim Walz is, in fact, a target rich environment. In fact, we are now learning, for example, that Tim Walz claimed at a 2014 congressional hearing that he would he says he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square massacre. That wasn't true. Is there anything in this guy's biography that is true?
Tim Walz has been a very radical character in Minnesota for a very long time. Here's a clip from just a few years ago in which Tim Walz talks about the beneficial effects of mass migration into Minnesota. He's so happy they're speaking 50 languages at the local public school.
We have more refugees per capita than any other state. That's not just morally a good thing. It's our economic and cultural future. This beautiful diversity we see out in Worthington when I'm there, you see 50 languages spoken in the school. Again, this is who Tim Walz is, the guy who said on national TV and just a few weeks ago, he suggested that socialism was the only way to get people to live.
was just another word for neighborliness. So he's a target-rich environment. With that said, it would be a mistake for J.D. Vance to aim his fire at Tim Walz. Understand that the audience for this debate is not going to be as big as the presidential debate, but it will be tens of millions of people, and this is the opportunity to label Kamala Harris for what she is. Meanwhile, for Tim Walz, his task is actually not going to be to attack Trump. He has to believe already that Donald Trump is well-informed
established in the public mind. Everybody already has their thoughts about Trump. Walls is going to go after Vance specifically. Walls is going to declare that he is weird. This has been part of his campaign, that he's too extreme, that he's too right wing, that he's a representative of sort of a strange subterranean politics in America. That's going to be what Walls does.
And of course, he's going to have to try and build up Kamala Harris. And that is where, again, this is the great shortcoming of the Kamala Harris campaign. There is nothing there. There's nothing there. So good luck to Tim Walz in that particular department. Kamala Harris's campaign is all about emptiness and her economic plan, if you can call it a plan, is a disaster area. Get ready for a massive tax hike and almost 40% top inflation.
income tax rate 7% increase to the corporate tax, and ridiculous capital gains tax on unrealized gains. Also, she can add almost $2 trillion to a current $2 trillion deficit. You might be thinking it's time to make more of your savings tax sheltered and inflation sheltered. This is where I trust the good people at Birch Gold Group to help you the way they help me. Birch Gold will assist you in converting an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold. And the best news is you're not going to pay a penny out of pocket. Just text the word BEN to 989898. Get a free info kit on gold.
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Meanwhile, Vance is not expected to participate in preparations quite so formal, although obviously the reality is that Vance is a super smart guy. And while he's on the road, he is certainly prepping this thing. And the bottom line is, will there be a major move out of this? Well, not unless there's some sort of major collapse by one of the candidates. Could it do damage to Kamala Harris's campaign? Sure. But the person who's doing the most damage to Kamala Harris's campaign right now is in fact Kamala Harris because she is just an empty suit. She's a total empty suit on every front.
The most obvious front right now being this hurricane. Hurricane Helene tore through parts of the panhandle of Florida, then tore through parts of Georgia and really, really slammed North Carolina. There are hundreds of people who are missing in North Carolina right now. Parts of the states underwater. Serious damage done. Well, the response from particular governors has been pretty good.
The response from Brian Kemp in Georgia has been good. The response from Ron DeSantis in Florida has been excellent. They had the electricity back on right away. Again, I think the underrated part of Ron DeSantis' appeal when he ran for president is that he's actually really good at being governor. He really cleans up the state when something bad happens. He makes sure that things are taken care of quite quickly. In fact,
DeSantis said that he would rather see Joe Biden go to North Carolina than to Florida, specifically because North Carolina has been so hard hit. He said, we have what we need right now. I think most of the effort should be in Western North Carolina right now because you still have active rescues that need to take place.
He's right about that. But here is the thing. It is amazing how when a Democrat does okay, like just okay with a hurricane, this is considered a great signal moment for the Democrat. Remember Barack Obama in 2012 with Hurricane Sandy, which hit the Northeast.
And he and Chris Christie were hugging on the tarmac. It really helped him in the last days of the election cycle in 2012. And that was considered an amazing thing. Meanwhile, George W. Bush, who really did not handle Hurricane Katrina all that badly, was treated as though he were Satan, deliberately attempting to drown people in New Orleans.
Well, here's the question. What is Joe Biden doing? I understand that Joe Biden has been holding calls with governors. That's what you do as president. And listen, I didn't make the rules. If I made the rules, I wouldn't care about people jet setting to various disaster locales in order to do photo ops. I really wouldn't. I think it's a really dumb trope of American politics that when something bad happens, you have to put boots on the ground of a major politician to show empathy or sympathy.
Again, that's not my bag. For me, the question is, do the services get provided or do they not? But I'm not the one who made these rules. The person, the people who made these rules are the people of the left. The Democrat media complex made these rules. You have to demonstrate how much solidarity you have with people who are suffering by going to these places. And here's the thing, Biden ain't, Harris ain't. They've been busy. Donald Trump, however, did. So Donald Trump went and visited a disaster area in Georgia and he talked about what was going on on the ground.
We're here today to stand in complete solidarity with the people of Georgia and with all of those suffering in the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Helene. Throughout the region, our hearts are with you and we are going to be with you as long as you need. It's called an hour of need. You're in our prayers.
And we pray to God and throughout this long weeks, the long weeks that lay ahead, you're going to have a lot of work. But the end result is it's going to be good. We just wish so many people weren't
So badly hurt and in many cases, sadly, no longer with us. Okay, so the media are very angry with Trump for going there. They're also angry with Trump because they say it's politicizing. It's politicizing that he went to these places. And also he got pretty overtly political. For example, he suggested that perhaps Joe Biden was sleeping right then.
Okay, so everybody is fighting mad about this on the left. Political has an entire headline. Trump turns Hurricane Helene aftermath political. Now, this is really disingenuous stuff. Again, if a Republican is governor of a state and something bad happens in the state, the entire media turn that into a referendum on the evils of the Republican.
If, however, a Democrat botches something, a natural disaster or say a generalized disaster like East Palestine, Ohio, if the president doesn't do what he's supposed to do, if, for example, there's a massive fire in Lahaina that burns down the entire city in Hawaii and the federal government is completely AWOL, then we're supposed to pretend it's totally apolitical and has nothing to do with your local state or federal governance.
That is the double standard that rules here. But I think the American people can see through it, and they certainly can see the inauthenticity that springs from Kamala Harris. So Kamala Harris put out a photo in the middle of this hurricane. The photo...
is accompanied by the following caption, quote, I was just briefed by FEMA, Deanne Creaswell, on the latest developments about the ongoing impacts of Hurricane Helene. We also discussed our administration's continued actions to support emergency response and recovery. I also spoke with North Carolina Governor Cooper about the ongoing rescue and recovery efforts in North Carolina. Our administration will continue to stay in constant contact with state and local officials to ensure communities have the support and resources they need. Doug and my thoughts.
are with all those who lost loved ones and those whose homes, businesses, and communities were damaged or destroyed during this disaster. Now, I'd like to point out at this point a couple of things. One, there's a very famous picture of George W. Bush during Hurricane Katrina flying over the flood area, and he was dinged as being above it all. It was suggested that he had no empathy for the people on the ground because there he was in Air Force One flying above the area rather than being on the ground. She put out the exact same picture.
And apparently nothing. Not a big deal at all. Not only that, this picture is an absurdity on a couple of levels. It's like Highlights Magazine spot the problem with the picture. Okay, so if you take a look at this picture, what you will see is that she has an earphone in her ear and she wears wired earphones. The reason she wears those wired earphones is presumably to prevent Bluetooth hacking or something like that. However, there is but one problem. It's not connected to the phone.
If you close up on the photo, you can see there is nothing connected to the bottom of the phone. So she's literally sitting there talking or listening to a phone with an earphone not connected to the phone. And she is poised with a pen writing on blank paper. There's nothing on the paper.
because she is an empty vessel. She's an empty suit, and she always has been. Kamala Harris is a total empty suit. She is a nothing burger. She's a pseudo-intellectual. But if you would like to be a not pseudo-intellectual, if, say, you'd like to get a degree from a university that actually shares your values, head on over to Grand Canyon University, a private Christian university in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona, they believe we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. GCU believes in equal opportunity and that the American dream starts
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Kamala Harris is at an L.A. fundraiser with Stevie Wonder, Keegan-Michael Key, Sterling K. Brown, Demi Lovato, Jessica Alba, Lily Tomlin, Alanis Morissette, and Halle Berry performing. Menu, duck egg roll, goat cheese honey blueberry ball, beef wellington, lobster roll, crab cakes. That was as the hurricane went down. Real woman of the people over there. Don't worry. She has the people at heart. Now, again.
I don't care that much about performative politics. I really don't. But these are the rules. I didn't make them. This is just how American politics works these days. Meanwhile, President Trump was in fact on the ground in Valdosta, Georgia. And this was making Kamala and Joe very upset. So they had to stage some photo ops. So here, for example, was Kamala Harris yesterday. She showed up at the FEMA headquarters to pretend that she actually does something for a living. And then she ran away. She spoke for about five minutes, took zero questions, and jet-setted right out of there. And I'll catch you later.
Bye. And then all the government employees who have to, by law, clap for the vice president, they pretend that she's there to actually do anything, which, of course, she is not. Now, what actually would her policies be with regard to things like hurricane cleanup? I mean, she laid it out back in 2019, 2020, when she was running for president. She said that we should use disaster relief based on equity, which means based on race, which is against federal law and morality. It is our lowest income communities and our communities of color.
that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making. And women. Absolutely. And so we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity, understanding that we fight for equality but we also need to fight for equity, understanding not everyone starts out at the same place.
And if we want people to be in an equal place, sometimes we have to take into account those disparities and do that work. Sounds like she will make an excellent president for everyone.
of particular melanin levels or something, because what she's talking about here is insane. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is in fact asleep at the switch. Now he's speaking with these various governors, but it turns out that when you look like the bad guy at the end of Indiana Jones and the last crusade, like you drank from the wrong goblet and you're just babbling into the microphones,
It makes you look terrible. Regardless of what you're actually doing, the presidency is in fact about optics. So if you're going to do it, you got to do it right. Joe Biden looks like death here. He just does. I mean, there's no other way to put it. Here he was talking. He was asked about what can you do for the North Carolina victims? He's like, nope, we've done all we can.
And we've given them all of the, everything that we have. We're on the ground ahead of time. So we're working hard. Are there any more resources the federal government could be giving them? No, we've given them, we have pre-planned a significant amount of it, even though they didn't ask for it yet. Hadn't asked for it yet. No, no. Okay, first of all, terrible answer. And again, it shows he's not with it because the actual answer is we're giving them everything we have and willing to give them whatever they need.
No is a terrible answer right there. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, he did a press conference. It didn't go well. At the very end, he was asked about what he was doing during the hurricane. Why wasn't he, for example, at FEMA trying to direct traffic? And he said, I was commanding. Actually, he was in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
On the hurricane, Mr. President, why weren't you and Vice President Harris here in Washington commanding this this weekend? I was commanding. I was on the phone for at least two hours yesterday and the day before as well. I command it. It's called a telephone. It's all my security. He commands. It's called a telephone. Wow. It's that kind of sterling leadership that has led America to such high heights.
But Joe Biden is very defensive. He's very defensive that Donald Trump is calling him out. So he literally released a video of himself from the Oval Office talking to a TV. I believe this is the fake Oval Office, by the way. They built like a fake Oval Office that he can broadcast from. And and this looks like a fake set of an Oval Office that you might put together for a school play. And then he zoomed in some hostages to talk about how he's helping them.
Mr. President and Governor Cooper, Donald Trump has accused both of you of ignoring the disaster. He is lying. Let me get this straight. He's lying. And the governor told him he was lying. The governor told me he was lying. I've spoken to the governor, spent time with him, and he told me he's lying. I don't know why he does this. And the reason I get so angry about it, I don't care about what he says about me. I care what he communicates to the people that are in need.
implies that we're not doing everything possible. We are. We are. And we spoke to the governor. I assume you heard the Republican governor of Georgia talk about that he was on the phone with me more than once. So that's simply not true. It's irresponsible. OK, he said as he was reading from the binder. OK, meanwhile, again, all of this is playing into a tight race in which every single little thing matters.
One of those not so little things is the fact that we are about to have a major strike in the United States, the dock worker strike. You should go check out a YouTube video that we put out an episode of facts talking about the history of private sector unionization and strikes in the United States. If you want to know more about the history and backdrop to what's going on right now. But there is a dock workers strike coming. And this comes amid the CNN polling, which says that Kamala Harris is in particularly bad shape with union voters, actually.
Look at where Kamala Harris is today. She's only leading by nine points. That would be the worst democratic performance in a generation. Ten points off the mark of Joe Biden, who of course won four years ago, was sort of that union guy, Union Joe, right? Won it by 19 points. She's ten points off his mark and the worst in a generation.
So the dock workers have now launched a major strike at ports from Maine to Texas. And the problem is she's stuck in the box. If she comes out against the unions, if Joe Biden were to use the emergency powers that are available to him under the presidency in order to forestall some sort of strike, in order to create a cooling down period, which you can do, if you were to do that, then she would lose even more union votes. So you are likely to suffer from higher prices for the next several months because of what is happening right now, because she wants to win union votes.
The unions know they have the leverage, by the way, which is why they are doing this. Well, Kamala Harris is vice president and Joe Biden is president. According to the Wall Street Journal, dock workers walked off their jobs at dozens of ports from Maine to Texas at midnight, launching a strike that threatens to rattle the American economy five weeks ahead of the presidential election. Members of the International Longshoremen's Association, which represents 45,000 dock workers at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, began picketing early Tuesday at cargo terminals that handle more than half of American import and export volumes as the
as their contract with Port employers expired. Port employers, pressed by Biden administration officials to resolve the impasse, raised their offer on wages to a 50% increase over six years from an earlier 40% increase. Along with other improvements and benefits in the 24 hours before the strike deadline, it wasn't enough. The ILA is seeking a 77% wage increase over the next six years.
A near doubling of their wages over the next six years as a condition to even sit down and talk. Why are they doing this? Because they know they got their boy in the White House. The unions know that they have this administration by the short hairs. They know they've got Kamala Harris's campaign by the throat, and they are going to squeeze. They're going to use the fact that they have control over a large block of union voters
in order to get Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to do their dirty work, making it significantly less profitable and efficient to use American ports. By the way, American ports are already some of the least efficient ports in the developed world. American ports do not work 24 hours a day because of union contracts.
American ports are not automated in large part because of union contracts. America's ports are already a disaster area. Now you're going to have the problem of an economic slowdown because of this port strike that Joe Biden won't do anything about. That might keep you up at night. But you know what else keeps you up at night? It's also uncomfortable betting.
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The White House is intervening.
And of course, Republicans are saying, well, why don't you just keep the ports open? I mean, you can do that. You can force a cooling down period under federal law, under the Taft-Hartley Act. You can actually do that. And the administration is like, nope, we're not going to do that. So that is bad news for Kamala Harris as well. You know who to blame. The reason that this is all continuing is specifically because of the Biden administration.
It's because of the Biden administration. And by the way, you have to add on to this. One of the reasons she's losing union workers is not because this administration is insufficiently pro-union. One of the reasons is specifically because I think that the Democratic Party, they just have the American people wrong, particularly blue collar workers. The Democratic Party seems to think that blue collar workers desperately want more than anything else is heavy social spending and a new kind of masculinity. And that's a weird, weird pitch.
America's men continue to fall further behind. According to the Wall Street Journal, the life trajectories of America's sons and daughters are diverging, presented with a more equal playing field. Young women are seizing the opportunities in front of them. Young men are floundering. The phenomenon has developed over the past decade, but was supercharged by the pandemic, which derailed careers, schooling, and isolated friends and families. And the result has big implications for the economy. The labor force participation rate for males age 25 to 34,
is under 90%. Those are young, healthy males. Under 90%. That is a bad number. Not just that. It turns out that if you keep on promoting a closed economy that only benefits certain small sectors of the economy, it makes it much more difficult for people to succeed. Americans are more and more reliant on government aid. According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans' reliance on government support is soaring, driven by programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The spending right now is at all time highs. A much larger share of Americans are seniors. Their healthcare costs have risen, but you're also seeing a major share of people who are now on disability. A lot of that is untrue. The amount of money that is currently being spent on this is exorbitant. And guess what? People are not happy because of it. What Americans actually want is an opportunity to thrive, an opportunity to succeed. And for young men, they want an opportunity to actually live out that success in a masculine, aggressive way.
But that's precisely what Harris and Walz are not promising. Here, for example, is the avatar of masculinity, Molly Jongfast, over at MSNBC, talking about the pitch that Harris and Walz are making to men. I do think that Democrats have been trying to offer an alternative vision to this very sort of
destructive masculinity that we're seeing on the right being advertised. And an example of that is Walls, right? Yeah. Tim Walls has been in, he was in a Michigan football game. He's talking to young men. He's trying to make the case. And also Doug,
Right. I mean, you know, the second gentleman is also, you know, trying to make a case for supporting your wife and how you can be a masculine guy. So I do think there are inroads. It is certainly not as far along as Republicans in their sort of embrace of masculinity. Oh, you mean because they actively alienate men, particularly young men, and then in return they offer them government dependency? And the only people who get a leg up are people who are allies of the Democrats, like the union leaders?
Yeah, it turns out that might have some dire effects, not just on the economy, but on Democrats' capacity to actually win in this election. Young men are falling behind. Hell, a lot of Americans are falling behind. Are you still struggling with back taxes or unfiled returns? Handling that alone can be a huge mistake and cost you thousands of bucks. In these challenging times, your best offense is Tax Network USA. With over 14 years of experience, the experts at Tax Network USA have saved their clients millions in back taxes. Regardless of the size of your tax issue,
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in Senate races in places like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. According to the Wall Street Journal, a group aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is planning to pour tens of millions of dollars in an effort to crack the Democrat blue wall with less than six weeks left to go before Election Day. The Senate Leadership Fund is going to drop almost $70 million on TV, radio, and digital ad reservations in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
All three of those are very, very close Senate races. Senator Bob Casey versus Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania. That one is basically a dead heat at this point. Eric Hovde, my campaign with yesterday in Wisconsin, targeting Senator Tammy Baldwin. And Alyssa Slotkin fighting Mike Rogers for the Senate seat in Michigan. Stephen Law, president of the Senate Leadership Fund, said that recent internal polling by the group showed Donald Trump competitive against Harris in those three blue wall states and said the Senate races in those places were tightening as well.
He said, we've seen these races closing. Those three candidates, McCormick, Hovde, and Rogers have all been outraised by their Democratic opponents. So hopefully as that gap closes in terms of spending, so too will the polling gap in those particular states. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris continues to run a lockluster campaign. It just is. She's got a pro campaign on the ground. I will give her this. She is a pro. The Democratic Party, they are professionals at the local level when it comes to getting out to vote. This is the thing they do quite professionally.
However, they happen to be running with an absolutely charmless and irritating candidate. Kamala Harris is so radically inauthentic. It's truly amazing. So she was on a podcast yesterday and the levels of cringe and awkward on this podcast, truly unbelievable. Here she was explaining her love for Doritos, for example.
One of my guilty pleasures, especially when I'm on the road, are my Doritos. Oh, what flavor? Nacho. Old school, original. Come on. Come on. That's exactly right. Gotta have a napkin nearby. Wow. Wow. That's some exciting stuff. That's
As Matt Barnes and Steven Jackson, Steven Jackson looking like he wants to slit his wrists live on camera while he listens to this supposedly intelligent platitude machine talk about how she likes the OG Doritos and needs a napkin nearby. Well, I mean, in other inspiring news, she eats no for breakfast. So between eating Doritos and no, that is apparently her diet. You should never hear no.
You should never hear nobody like you has done this before or it's not your time or they're not ready. Like, don't hear that.
Don't hear that. I eat no for breakfast. She's waiting for them to respond. And Steven Jackson, once again, looking 10,000 yards there, just looking into the maw of death. Points to Steven Jackson. Matt Barnes is trying. Matt Barnes is desperately trying to be enthusiastic about this. Even Matt Barnes looks like he wants to crawl under the rug. But Steven Jackson is having none of it. Steven Jackson's like, man.
This is worse than malice at the palace. This is just awful. Here's Stephen Jackson with Kamala Harris, where she explains making a pork roast. Look, from the time that the president called me and told me he wasn't running, I mean, it just like everything was in speedy, speedy motion. Wow. And I was not sleeping so well. And...
That one morning, I just, I mean, I had, I don't know, a few hours sleep. And I, you know, I like to sleep. I just got up. I was like, and so I just went out and got a pork roast and started marinating. See, time to work. Get to your happy place. And my family happened to be in town, so they were very happy about the whole situation. But I just got up and started, everybody's asleep, but just got up and started cooking. That's what she makes for her super Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff. She makes the brisket for Passover, and she makes the pork roast. Very exciting stuff.
So solid stuff there from Kamala Harris. You can see with that level of just absolute charisma, how wonderful this is. Again, Stephen Jackson, just he's had enough.
My best friend from kindergarten is still one of my best friends. That's crazy. Right? Stacey Johnson. Yeah, that's dope. I love it. We used to go to the clubs and hurt Father Seville. Steven Jacks is like, oh, well, that's a good story. That's a wonderful story. You know how hard Democrats have to work to make themselves enthusiastic about this election?
And they've been yelling at Trump for a very, very long time. At a certain point, you yell at somebody enough and it gets really boring. And Democrats have offered this absolute empty vessel and pretended that it's something incredible. Well, she is not. Listen, I wish that the Republican candidate had done a better job of labeling her in the debate. I wish that the Republicans had done a better job of pointing out just what an empty vessel she is. I wish that this sort of stuff got wide play.
I wish it did. But the bottom line is there's still 30 days left of the election, 34 days left until the election. The pedal has to be to the metal. It's time to expose Kamala Harris for what she is, because I'm sorry, she cannot be allowed to enter the White House on the basis of absolute gobbledygook platitude laden nonsense. Kamala must be exposed for what she is. You know, betting on this election, it's going to be rough because it's
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These debates are better with friends, especially friends who can spot every lie and false promise. That is why we are doing a special backstage with pre-show analysis from Matt Walsh, Michael Mills, Andrew Klavan, Jeremy Boring, and of course, yours truly. Plus, stick around for a post-debate breakdown with insights you're not going to hear from the mainstream media. So instead of yelling at your TV alone, why don't you just come yell with us? The vice presidential debate tonight, 8.30 p.m. Eastern at Daily Wire+. Ready to join the fight? Get your new Daily Wire Plus membership at
now for 47% off. Just head on over to dailywire.com slash subscribe. Use code fight to join today. Joining us online is Seth Dillon, CEO of Babylon Bee and Kristen Wagner, president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom. The Babylon Bee has filed a lawsuit against the state of California. So Seth, tell me about this lawsuit. Well, I wish we didn't have to file lawsuits to defend our right to tell jokes, but unfortunately this is where we're at. Um,
Gavin Newsom has been wanting to crack down on speech he doesn't like, jokes he doesn't like. He saw a viral video that was mocking Kamala Harris. It was like this AI-generated kind of deepfake parody thing. And he commented on that immediately. This was a few months ago. He commented on this and said that this kind of thing should be illegal. And so I guess there was already a bill that was in the works that they kind of accelerated to get pushed through that would make this unlawful right around election time, making parodies like this.
Definitely seems politically motivated to me, but it affects the Babylon Bee and our ability to do satire. So...
We've retained the services of ADF. Thankfully, they fight for freedom and they're here to help us push back on this. So, Kristen, on a legal basis, you know, the claim by California, presumably, is that they're just trying to crack down on actual misuse of face. And that when it comes to some forms of informational usage, that those could theoretically violate the law in terms of fraud. What's the problem with how they drew this law or trying to draw these regulations?
Well, they're claiming they have an interest in the fair elections, but yet what they're doing is using a sledgehammer to essentially crush the First Amendment rights of all Americans in the process, including making jokes illegal. There are a couple of different statutes that are in place in California. The first one that the lawsuit is focused at is where California is saying that if there's any type of materially deceptive content—and of course, California gets to decide what that is—
That content, if it could potentially harm a political candidate's chances of getting elected, it's illegal. And it's not just the candidate that can sue. It's anybody, including you can be sued if you repost this information. So it's just a roadmap for censorship and it's a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
So Seth, one of the things that they're apparently trying to do is suggest that you must label satire or parody as satire or parody. Apparently people are too stupid to recognize otherwise. Now, as a professional joke-making human, what does it mean if you would have to label everything that you do as satire or parody? Well, we've kind of wrestled with this for a long time because, as you know, the Badmobby's been fact-checked many times over the years. We've been accused of trafficking and misinformation under the guise of satire. That's what the New York Times said a few years back.
And so there's always been this suggestion that we're misleading people on purpose, that we need to do more to make people aware of the fact that we're publishing satire. But it really does ruin the joke when you put a massive disclaimer. I think the requirement – Kristen can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the requirement in this law is that the disclaimer be at least as large as the largest font that's in the actual article or parody itself. And so if we have a headline that's got very large font, we need to have a disclaimer that's equally as big or bigger than the headline itself.
It completely ruins the joke. And we're not willing to do that. So we're going to continue to have to violate the law, which then puts our business in jeopardy. Because if we get sued repeatedly by state officials for violating this law, it could potentially bankrupt us and put us out of business if we're covering all their legal fees. So and so then we have the decisions that we have to make. Well, do we want to publish these particular jokes because we could have these enforcement actions that chill speech? Because then we're going to be withholding content that we would otherwise publish if not for these laws and their penalties.
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So, Kristen, you know, you mentioned that California here is trying to basically, you know, kill a fly with a sledgehammer. What would a more calculated approach look like to stop people from disseminating, say, a deep fake of you? That wasn't satire or parody. It was just you saying that you full scale endorse abortion on demand and the transing of children or something. How could that be stopped should the government step in in those circumstances? Well, in a number of ways.
- In a number of instances, there are already laws in place to do that. Whether they're election fraud laws that really are actually interfering in elections, whether it's defamation and there's actual harm to our reputation, we already have laws in place to deal with these types of issues.
Adding this law, especially when it's impacting core political debate, is really just an attempt for the government to be able to put its thumb on the scale of speech that it likes. It's content discrimination because it's focusing on the subjects like political debate. This law only applies to candidates, as an example, or elected officials. And it's viewpoint discrimination as well in that if
A candidate or someone wants to post something, for example, that is positive about a candidate but untrue, the law doesn't apply to that. And so there's just no way that this law is consistent with the First Amendment because of how it's being applied. It's also very vague in its definitions. I mean, the last person we want to decide what's true or false in our political debate is Gavin Newsom. And that's essentially what it's allowing California officials to do. It will have a nationwide effect because
Actually, you can get sued. I can get sued as a private citizen for just reposting something that the Babylon Bee puts out there.
Well, Seth, do you ever find it puzzling that you've become the center of so much firestorm over the course of the creation of the Babylon Bee? It really is kind of amazing how the Babylon Bee has, I would say, quasi-inadvertently changed the world in ways that you guys probably didn't intend. I mean, if it had not been for the Babylon Bee becoming apparently the focal point of every bit of left-wing ire, then probably Elon Musk doesn't buy X, which obviously changes the direction of free speech in the country. Do you ever sit there at night and just wonder why it is that this
this thing that started as a fairly small satire site and that has now grown into a successful business, that that has changed the nature of free speech in the country so much and the debate around it? It's definitely not something we ever expected. You know, we literally did just set out to tell jokes on the internet, try to make people laugh, be entertaining, you know, speak truth to a post-truth culture using humor. Did not expect to be on the front lines of a battle for free speech in the public square. But this is
It's where we find ourselves because there's so much opposition to the First Amendment and what the First Amendment protects. And you see it happening all over the place. There's op-eds being written about how maybe it's time to do away with the Constitution. You had John Kerry just the other day talking about how the First Amendment is – I think the word he used was roadblock. It's a roadblock right now. It's in our way. It means that we can't decide what's true for everyone, which is what we need to do in order to retain our power and whatever.
And that is just, you know, thank God for that roadblock. Thank God that we actually have that roadblock preventing these tyrants from deciding what's true and what jokes we're allowed to tell. So, Kristen, what is the next step for the lawsuit? Where are you? Where are you filing this thing?
The lawsuit's already been filed. We're waiting for a judge to be assigned. I think you can also expect that a preliminary injunction will be requested, as well a permanent injunction to stop the law from going into effect, both on a temporary basis and then a long-term basis. It's very telling that this law went into effect immediately upon Newsom's signature, so that it's supposed to affect this election cycle.
And I think it's just important to point out that when we allow the government to use code words like misinformation or disinformation, that is state-sponsored censorship. And that blurs the lines between democracy and dictatorship. That's Kristen Wagoner of Alliance Defending Freedom, always doing amazing work on the legal side. And of course, Seth Dillon, CEO of Babylon Bee, the funniest site in America, doing yeoman's work in making you laugh and also pointing out the stupidity of a lot of bad ideas. Seth and Kristen, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it. Thank you, man. Thank you.
All right, guys, coming up, there's a movie that's going to come out in late October. It's called Conclave. I never do this, but I'm going to savage a movie I haven't seen because I have read the book. And what's coming with this movie, the amount of press this movie is going to receive and the reasons for it, pretty gross. If you're not a member, become a member. Use code Shapiro. Check out for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us. The stage is set. The stakes are sky high. Senator Vance, Governor Waltz, face off.
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