Republican Debate Rundown
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All right, Republican debate run down. We’re gonna do it. First and foremost, okay. I am up very early this morning watching and reading and seeing what’s out there. And first, I want everybody to understand this. You can go to one newspaper, another newspaper, and they’ve got their experts out there. And what was one article I wrote? Oh, this is the verdict. Verdict, this is the verdict on the who won the debate. And they had one Democrat.
another Republican pundit, they’re the verdict, those two. Those two make that decision. First and foremost, I want everybody to understand this. All of these people that are out there that are speaking in front of television cameras, giving their opinion on what happened and who they thought won, they’re paid for.
They’re paid for, they’re paid to have a certain opinion. Yeah, yeah, either that or they’re vying to be a part of someone’s campaign. They are not honest arbiters by any stretch of the imagination. They’re PR people, they’re salespeople, they’re trying to sell you. You see, what they wanna have, they wanna take…
They want to alleviate your burden as far as a thought process as concerned. They want to think for you. Don’t allow that to happen. People don’t use your own mind. You’re much smarter than you. You actually think if you put your mind to it, when you start relying upon other people’s opinions or ideas or, you know,
one-liners, whatever it may be, you’re doing yourself, and quite frankly, you’re doing your country a disservice. And we’ve gotten to that point in time. I remember, what was the tagline from Fox News? We report, you decide. That’s a bunch of BS. But we report, you decide? And they’re spoon feeding you what they want you to do, what they want you to think. And it’s shameful, as far as I’m concerned. Anyway.
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Let’s get into the debate from last night. First and foremost, I’m gonna be honest, NBC did a hell of a lot better job than Fox did. Is there any argument that in my opinion, you might wanna think differently, but give me a break, they did a much better job than Fox did in handling this debate. Put that aside.
Um, again, what is what is the media want you focusing on today? What is what are the headlines in various different papers is, you know, the tit for tat between Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy? That’s, you know, again, that’s even after post debate. This is where, again, I thought that the people who ran the debate, I think did a good job. The post debate people at NBC, I watched for about five minutes and I was like, this is ridiculous. They want to turn this.
into some Bravo show. It’s like the real housewives of New Jersey. That’s what they wanted it to become. So Click went to bed after that. But anyway, yeah. And again, you get all the papers today, New York Post, you name it out there. Everyone’s focusing on, oh my God, and Vivek and what he said and Nikki Haley and then some out there, wow, this is what we need. And this is, you know, Vivek really took it to him and all this.
nonsense. Why don’t we focus on the substance of everyone’s argument? Then I’ll get into my opinion in regards to Vivek and Haley and their back and forth there. Why don’t we start off first? Why don’t we start off with foreign policy? That was a major part of the debate last night.
Chris Christie, Nikki Haley basically staked themselves out as you know what, we need to fight Russia, gotta fight Russia, Tim Scott as well, we gotta defeat Russia, and this is a great investment in the Ukraine. You did have obviously Vivek stake out a completely different position, and you also had Ron DeSantis to some degree, kinda play it down the middle.
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to some degree, kind of pushing back in regards to this, you know, blank check that we keep sending Ukraine, even though he wasn’t as a voice for us as Vivek was on this topic. I’ve given you my opinion. The things that Vivek was saying in regards to the Ukraine, you heard it here first. We’ve been reporting on these items.
Fox hasn’t been reporting on them. CNN hasn’t been reporting on them. MSNBC hasn’t been reporting on them. And there are important issues that America really doesn’t know about. The issues with Ukraine. What’s actually taking place there? This idea that it’s like Ukraine is some sort of Jeffersonian bloody democracy, it is not.
It’s not, there’s ulterior motives when it comes to the Ukraine. Ukraine could be a major cash cow. It is now for certain players. It is, it’s like I said, it is a corrupt African country in Europe. That’s what it is, with great farmland, great opportunity there. Corruption is great for making money if you’re on the right side and you know what you’re doing and players.
know this. It’s a reality of the terrain and Vivek was right on that. So again, that’s again, my opinion, you decide. Okay. The idea out there that they keep presenting, and again, they did this as well when it came to China, making China out to be this massive existential, okay, they love that word, existential threat. China’s gonna, I mean, China throughout their history, okay, the
entire history, thousands and thousands and thousands. And again, do it yourself.
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They have never been a country where it’s like, you know what, we’re gonna go invade this country. We’re gonna invade that country. We’re gonna take over that. They’ve never done that. And thousands of years, they haven’t done that. Now, all of a sudden, you seem to think that they’re gonna change this, and all of a sudden, they’re gonna wanna take over?
the entire region, I’m not buying it. I’m not buying what they’re selling. Yes, do you have to pay attention to what’s going on there? Absolutely, absolutely. But then they start talking about military expenditures. They talk about ships and the amount of ships that we have and the amount of ships that they have. And you know what’s going through my mind at the time, and I’ve gone over this on the podcast as well. And this is what I would say, I said, wait a second here.
We spend more money, more money than the next, was it like six, seven countries underneath us combined on our military. Why the hell are we falling behind? How is it possible that we are falling behind based upon the money that the taxpayers are spending? You’re asking for more money?
More money, Vivek even came, I was like towards the end because he was thrown off, he didn’t have an answer for it. 20% increase a year? And again, it didn’t really make much sense. I don’t know if he was talking about chips or money. Where is that money going to come from?
What
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Based upon the amount of money that we spend, we shouldn’t have an issue. We shouldn’t, I mean, where is it going? It seems to me that it’s lining people’s pockets.
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You’re trying to say that corruption is not involved with this? How is it that we spend all of this money way more than China? You can’t even compare. We’ve sent more money to Ukraine than Russia spends on its military, and we’re behind. To me, that’s an internal problem here. This is the type of issues that people have.
in sports, Yankee fans like myself, how in the world do we spend all of this money on the Yankees and we only win 82 games? How in the world are we spending all of this money on our military, blowing everybody away, and yet we seem to be falling behind on everything? Seems to be a leadership problem, seems to be a Pentagon problem, if you ask me. It’s not a money problem, we spend more than enough.
And again, that’s never addressed. Again, we always gotta have a boogeyman out there. There’s always, they ever notice that? There’s always the next boogeyman. There’s always the next monster underneath our bed. We are the most insecure country, I, you know, superpower in the history of the planet. But again, it’s not so much that. It’s just put out there because again, there’s a lot of money to be made in war. Let’s just face facts. The war is a racket. It is what it is.
So anyway, foreign policy, okay. Again, Vivek pushed back on Ukraine, DeSantis did. The other three did not. When it came to Israel, again, it was, you know, they basically held the position that Israel should do whatever they need to defeat Hamas. And I did like Vivek’s point as well saying, you know what,
Israel has always been about defending itself and being self-sufficient. Let them handle the situation. And I wish we did more of that. Okay. One issue that is near and dear to my heart, because again, we often talk about money issues here on the program, debt, deficits, social security entitlements. And this is where I saw some issues. Again, Kristi and Haley.
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actually came out on the right side of this, because they’re saying, hey, listen, this is not sustainable. This is not sustainable. Vivek had some sort of plan when it talked about cutting the size of government and reallocating assets and saving money, and that will help save social security. And he’s got a point there. Again, I wish that was the case.
But I’ve yet to see anyone ever be successful in reducing the size of Washington, D.C. They just keep making it bigger and bigger and bigger. Republican, Democrat doesn’t matter. I mean, you take a look at George W. Bush, he’s expanded the government more than any president that I know of. Department of Homeland Security, all this. I mean, it’s nonsensical. But anyway,
least Haley and Christie talked about the idea that, hey, you know what, we’re going to have to raise, raise the retirement age here. And, you know, we’re going to have to do some things, you know, for younger people, we’re going to have to change some things here and there. Tim Scott pushed back on that and he saw you can’t make people have backbreaking work, work longer. Again, all of these things to be solved. We again, we discussed it here on the program, you could code certain jobs.
that one has is more labor, physically labor intensive and put a weighting on that and deciding when people are going to be able to retire. It’s not a difficult thing to do. Someone spends their life putting roofs on, obviously there’s gonna be physical issues that are gonna come down the pike. I get that, I understand that. Different than people that are having less labor. I mean, if you’re sitting there working as a, at a desk working at the DMV, obviously it’s not that hard.
Okay, so yeah, I get that. And there’s ways that you can handle that, but he didn’t present it in that way. DeSantis screwed up royally on this one. Again, he got into mortality rates. He said, oh, mortality is going down. How can we lower this? And I’m like, and this, I mean, he was completely unprepared for this question. And it bothered the hell out of me, because it’s important.
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He’s punting on it just like Biden and Trump is punting on it and it’s important. It’s going bankrupt in 10 years. It is what it is. It’s going away, people. It’s gonna get cut, it’s gonna get cut big time. So he punts on this and he comes up with it, well, mortality is going down. Ron, dude, you’re a smart guy. And again, this is what bothers me about all of, how are you, each and every one of you not prepared?
on all of these important issues. I don’t get it.
I really don’t understand how you guys are not completely prepared and have an understanding of it. Mortality is going down because young people are dying due to drug overdoses. However, if you get to 60 years old, there’s never been a point in time in the history of the planet where you have a greater chance of reaching 80 or 70 and reaching 90.
Older people are living longer. Yeah, mortality has come down because people are losing 100,000 plus people a year to drug overdoses here in this country, and they’re younger. And obviously that messes around with the numbers. But again, he was way off on this, completely punted on that, and did the Joe Biden, you know, Donald Trump, Sergeant Schultz, I see nothing, I know nothing, I do nothing.
when it comes to entitlements. And again, I gotta give credit what credit is due with Chris Christie and Nikki Haley on that. Lightly talked about, they did talk about the drug issue at the border and what they would do in regards to going after drug cartels. I did like that they brought up, and Chris Christie did this talking about having to deal with the addiction problem.
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here and mental health issues here in that country. So overall, I mean, I think it was a pretty substantive debate. I do. And I think the candidates, they came out and the various different issues and they got their points across. Now let’s get into some of the, you know, go into the mud to some degree. You know, Vivek, in his opening statement, kicked off.
kicked off the debate, you know, basically he came out swinging. And when he’s swinging, he was throwing haymakers, okay? He was swinging, he was coming out throwing, I mean.
coming out hard and he went right after Ronna McDaniels and basically talked the same type of thing we’re talking about, he’s not wrong. All of the losing that continues within the Republican Party again and again and again and basically called for her to step down. Called for her to step down and again, I get it. The Republican Party loses and loses and loses again and I’ll get into some of the numbers and.
my take on what’s going to happen moving forward. He also went after the network. This wasn’t shooting from the cuff. This was all pre-planned stuff. He came out going after NBC and made the point that the Democrats would never allow Greg Gutfield to moderate one of their
He basically made the point that, what he said, he said, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and Tucker Carlson should be the one that should be hosting the debate. And then he often went after the moderator. And I’m sorry, her name alludes me right now. She’s the new moderator for Meet the Press and her coverage of the Russia hoax scandal, and they were all good points. Again, I don’t know if that was right.
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I don’t know if I would necessarily do that in that way, in that way, but he made some good points. Now, moving on. He went after it because there was a TikTok issue in the last debate. And again, that was another big topic, big topic, but why am I gonna ban TikTok here in the United States? And I’ve talked about this as well. Okay, gonna ban TikToks, you know, social media. But again, we’ve got…
They got court cases going on right now talking about how addictive Instagram is and how the algorithms were designed to get kids hooked onto these social media platforms and keep them, you know, never leaving the damn app for crying out loud. Anyway, neither here nor there. Again, I’m not a big believer in the TikTok boogeyman.
I’m just not, again, I don’t go on it. I don’t use it. Again, you wanna deal with their algorithms. I think there was a great point that was made in regards to TikTok is the fact that, we’ve got a Chinese social media app running in this country and I guess their algorithms are better than ours, but they don’t allow our social media companies to operate over there. To me, that seems like a simple trade. You wanna continue doing business in the United States? Well, you let us operate there.
and just, you know, see where that goes. But I don’t see that happening. Anyway, neither here nor there. Get that TikTok. I guess was it, Nikki went after Vivek because he has a TikTok account. The last debate, Vivek brought up, hey, you know what, you went after me, but your daughter is on TikTok. And then, you know, keep your, my daughter out of this. And you know, the maid have called him a scum underneath her breath.
that was up there, I don’t know. Again, I am a, I mentioned before, I am very impressed with Vivek Ramaswamy. I am very impressed with his intelligence. He’s got pretty good command of the issues. And the problem with Vivek, in my honest opinion, the problem with Vivek and why, I don’t think that he’s gonna win. I get it, he knows.
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I think he’s self-aware, okay, that more often than not, he’s probably one of the brighter people in the room when he walks in it. More, he’s very sharp, but there’s a way, and again, he’s young, is he 38 years old? Okay, what he hasn’t learned, what he hasn’t learned is that oftentimes,
Okay, you have to, as a candidate, you have to use, he hasn’t learned how to come up with self-depreciating humor and making fun of himself. And, you know, just, you can’t be all, it’s not gonna be effective to be in everyone’s face. Basically,
showing everyone this is how much smarter that I am than you. This is how much brighter I am than you. There’s ways of doing it and handling it in a way where you’re gonna be able to bring more people in. For many, I think that it’s just gonna, they’re gonna just tune them out. Whether that’s right or wrong, it is what it is. And do I think that someday he’s gonna…
I think he can make for a great candidate. I just think that he hasn’t been able to, to rein it in and use it in a way where it’s gonna benefit him, where he’s gonna be able to bring people over. Like he gives these rapid fire answers, like rattle stuff off. But you have to do it in a way where people are gonna be able to absorb it.
and understand and not be, you know, it’s like you’re shooting people, you know, with a machine gun of facts and what your opinions are without toning it down. And it’s going to be a problem for him. It is. I like the guy a lot. I like a lot of his ideas. Again, would he be somebody that, you know, if I was, you know, end up getting with somebody that I would hire absolutely, I would. There’s a guy that, you know, that obviously has an enormous talent. You want that.
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that person on your side. Again, though, it also, you gotta learn how, you learn how to bring people to your side, you gotta learn how to lead. And again, I’m batting it around in my mind right now, whether or not he is going to be able to do that. So across the board, there was a lot of good from each and every one of these candidates. And I’m sorry, I think we’re gonna be better served
any of them in the White House at this point. And again, I really talked much about, you know, Tim Scott, what a wonderful guy. And again, one of the things that I really liked about him too, and he was pointing out, and I think it falls on deaf ears, but he did a really good job of putting it out there, is just basically laying out how this country was founded, the Judeo-Christian beliefs that our founders,
utilized, took in, okay, in order to craft this. That’s who we are. And he made that point. You don’t have to be a Christian. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate the teachings and where it comes from. You need to understand it. And we need to get back to some of those values. You know, that I thought he was excellent when it came to that as well. Again, you know, each and every one of them
I think did a great job. I think that this was a much, much better debate than the prior two. I wish we didn’t have the, you know, I think that Vivek screwed up. He didn’t have to go after him on such a topic like TikTok. I think it was just stupid, didn’t make any sense. And I think it probably turned more people off. In my opinion, I could be wrong, turned more people off than brought them in. But again, they’re staking out their positions.
Um, at this point in time, um, again, Trump held a rally in Hialeah, Florida. And, um, I’m gonna, you should go watch just, just watch some of the, um, some of the, the videos that are put out from this. Um, it, I’m sorry. I was embarrassed. I mean, I mean, again, you may think I’m not, I mean,
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the screaming, the swearing, the, I’m sorry, it was embarrassing. It was. Again, maybe I’ve got bias. Maybe you think I’ve got Trump derangement syndrome, whatever it may be. See for yourself, you can judge. Okay? You know, unlike Fox, we do report and you can decide. Here, you can disagree with me. That’s fine. Watch it. Watch it.
Here to tell you right now, as far as the polls are concerned, and again, polls mean nothing. They mean nothing. Yeah. The only one I have right now is, you know, they talks about the, everybody’s talking about the Trump lead over Biden and Democrats are freaking out over this again. Um, Republicans again, took a beating this past Tuesday. You’re going to trust these polls that Trump is going to beat Biden.
Not to mention the fact, I still to this day, I believe that Democrats are gonna pull a fast one at the convention. I think that that’s most certainly in the cards. That they’re gonna pull a fast one and say, Joe’s gonna catch a cold or something like that. He’s not gonna be able to go on. And here comes the next person to step in from that. That could happen.
But even though Trump leads Biden in these battleground states outside of Wisconsin, where he’s losing, the only poll that I saw so far was Nikki Haley, who’s blowing Biden away. Same polls. Blowing Biden away and not only blowing Biden away, but also winning by 13 in Wisconsin.
I just, people, I’m not looking forward. I’m really not. I know maybe the networks are probably looking forward to it because again, it’s embarrassing. To me, it’s embarrassing to the country. It’s gonna be a damn dumpster fire. The Biden, it is gonna be a dumpster fire. And I don’t wanna see it. I don’t wanna see, again,
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I find myself, because I do this every single day, and I do my appearances, and I’ve got my radio show, and I don’t even know how I’m gonna cover, because I’m gonna be like, I’m gonna click. I don’t know how I’m going to go about doing it, because it’s the last thing in the world I wanna see. It’s like nails on a chalkboard, me. Biden, Trump, Biden, this is the best we can do. No, we can do much, I’m sorry, we can do much better.
And, you know, despite the, again, some of the back and forth, last night at debate, I think that the candidates up there, I think that they did pretty well. And I think we’d be better served with any of them at this point in time. Again, you decide. Don’t let me decide for you. Don’t let the pundits that are paid for on Fox or CNN or MSNBC, no matter, don’t let them decide for you either. Use your head, okay?
Take in the facts, trust your gut, use your value system to help make your decision. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
