 Let's start with just a quick update on the election. I think a lot of this you've already heard. I mean, the shocking news, the surprising news, but if you were following the election closely, you would have, the last few days at least, the counting of the votes, it's not a complete shock. And that is that the Democrats held the Senate. That is the seat that was most likely to flip, Republican, you know, maybe only other seat that was likely to flip was the Georgia seat. The other seat that was likely to flip, Republican was the seat in Nevada. The Republicans really thought they had a really good chance. A poll showed the Republicans leading, going into the contest. It looked like the Republicans would pick up a seat in Nevada. They did not. That seat was won by a Democrat. So the Republicans, so the Democrats now have at least 50 seats in the Senate, the same that they have right now. And it all hinges on, it hinges now on Georgia, what the final number is. But even with 50 seats, so even if the Republicans win Georgia, and it's 50-50, then what you get is a Senate that is dominated, that is run by Democrats because they have the vice presidential vote, which breaks ties. I'd also say that the Republicans would then have 50 senators, but of lower quality. Clearly, Walker, who would basically replace Toomey. Toomey is the senator from Pennsylvania who basically retired. And what they would get is instead of, Toomey, they would get Walker. Toomey was actually pretty good. I mean, too religious for my taste, but actually was objective. I think about Trump, I think he was good, really good on many of the economic issues, was good on kind of the principled issues with regard to what Republicans supposedly stand for. So overall, I would say it is a net loss for Republicans, even if they gain Georgia. But at least I'll have 50-50, which will make minutian and cinema key votes for the Democrats. So that is better than 51-49, where now they can peel off, still win even if minutian or cinema, one of them votes against whatever the Democrats want. The other issue, of course, is the House. The House is still very close. Republicans are within four votes of having four wins of having a majority. They have 214, a majority is 218. 214 is pretty good shape. That's, they only have four of, what is it? So four plus 13, so it's like 17, something like that, still seats. They have to win four of them. That's pretty good odds, but you never know these elections. You never know, Democrats are leading in a number of places the Republicans didn't expect. And we'll see, there's a case to be made that the selection will be determined funnily enough and surprisingly enough in California, that it is California House seats that will determine whether Republicans have a majority or not. Given that California probably had low turnout, that's my expectation, Republicans who didn't go to vote who wanted, you know, you should have gone to vote. Your vote probably had more meaning in California than anywhere else in the country. There's some really close house races in California. And in California, I would have voted in the House mostly Republican primarily because the Democrats in California are particularly bad. Plus, you want to slap the California Democrats a little bit, they dominate the state so much, a few losses over there would shake things up a little bit. So let's see what happens. Unfortunately, I think Katie Porter, who is right now one of my least favorite House members is a Democrat out of Orange County, California, a county that used to be solidly Republican, looks like she's leading a Republican opponent. So she might actually be winning there, which would be terrible because she's really, really, really bad, really bad. All right, so, you know, what can I say? As we talked about already last week, we've talked about over and over again, this midterm election was a phenomenal success for Democrats, a massive defeat for Republicans. This is really borderline worst case scenario for Republicans. If they win the House, they will barely win the House. They will gain, I think, less than 10 seats. They were expecting 30 to 50 seats. Maybe there was even talk of 60 seats. I mean, it's truly a disaster for Republicans. And they, of course, were expected to have a one or two seat majority in the Senate. The Senate is less of a surprise. The polls were basically predicting status quo 50-50 or 51-49 for one of their parties. So the Senate is not that a surprise if you believe the polls, but the House certainly is. The other thing is, coming out of this election, that's interesting before we get to Trump, is that the polls were actually correct. The polls were pretty good across the board. Everything was in the margin of error. The polls predicted this to be close. They predicted the House would not be overwhelmingly run over by Republicans. They did not predict a red tsunami. They didn't even predict a red wave. And therefore, you know, polls, particularly, what do they call it, 587 or whatever it is, Nate Silver's outfit, which I have followed, was particularly good. So it looks like whatever biases were built into the polls in 2016 and even in 2020, it seems like those have been corrected and those have been fixed. Of course, we'll see as we move forward if that holds true. But at least for now, this election, the polls were good. We're pretty good. They got it right. So they have corrected. Lauren says the issue with Katie Porter is that she is very effective as a demagogue. Absolutely. So while she might not be as left-wing and as wacky and as crazy as AOC, or as articulate on television as AOC, Katie Porter is excellent in committee and house hearings where she has CEOs in front of her as she ridicules and belittles and attacks them. And she has a little whiteboard where she writes numbers to make a seem, both intelligent and sophisticated. So she appears to be, she's very effective communicator by using that little whiteboard. And she comes across as very objective, to people who don't know what she's talking about, of course. But it's effective. It is, no question effective. So it is a little disheartening that she went. She has a little whiteboard. Lots of videos I've owned on YouTube, particularly going after, what do you call it, drug company executives. She's very good with drug company executives. Of course, they are pathetic in trying to defend themselves. They're really, really bad. And so she rolls all over them, completely rolls all over them. So anyway, that's where we are with this election. And a huge win for the Democrats. Huge, huge massive disappointment for the Republicans. I think one of the lines Donald Trump will have tomorrow when he announces that he's running for 2024. I think one of the lines is going to be he'll blame McConnell, he'll blame mainline Republicans, he'll blame the Republican establishment for not supporting his candidates enough, for not giving them enough money, for not backing them up. He will claim that everybody he really solidly, fully supported won, that everybody did much better than expected, that he is the only person who could save the Republican Party, that he is the guy who can turn this around and all these wimps out there, they're the problems. He is it, and then he'll harp on all the problems with the Biden administration, which will all be mostly true, but Donald Trump ain't the solution to them, but he will present himself as a real savior for the party. I think the few days right after he makes the announcements are going to be very telling. How do the Republicans respond? How do they react? How does the Republican leadership react? How do grassroots people react? What extent are they going to immediately endorse him? What's going to happen to many pro-Trump congressmen? Are they going to endorse him? Are they going to jump on the bandwagon? Are they going to wait and see if DeSantis announces? Or if others announce to see what happens? Or will they rush to Trump's side and rush to Trump's defense? The extent to which people are rushing to be on Trump's side will be the extent to which he will win this. And that will also determine whether somebody like DeSantis decides to run or not. I mean, he is not going to run if he thinks that he's going to lose to Trump. If he senses that Republicans are still committed to Trump and will not vote for anybody else. So very, very interesting few days in terms of the future of the Republican Party and the future of Trump. I've said this before. I'll say it again. I think Trump is pretty much the only Republican. I mean, there are probably a few others. The only Republican of the credible nominees, the only Republican that can actually lose to a Democrat, can actually lose to Biden or lose to whoever the Democrats nominate for president, maybe the governor of California is probably a pretty good bet. But Trump could lose to them. So Republicans are going to have to figure out, do they want to be committed to Trump? Now also they have to figure out, do they want to support a, you know, moronic, pragmatic loser, which is what Trump has proven himself to be. Interesting though that it really looks like Murdoch, the guy behind the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and Fox at the end of the day is turning against Trump. At least the New York Post is clearly coming out with stories that are anti-Trump. You know, a story that broke this morning. Again, I don't think Republicans care, but it's one of those stories that just gives you more and more insight and more and more visibility into the character of Donald Trump. If you needed more information, I don't. But if you needed it, here it is. And that is that Markelle, who was Trump's chief of staff for much of his presidency from 2017, from July 2017 to the January of 2019, basically is now saying that Trump asked him to weaponize the IRS against his political enemies, to go after his political enemies with audits, and that Kelly repeatedly told Trump that that was both unethical and illegal, that he wouldn't do it, and Trump went behind his back and went to other people in the administration trying to get the IRS to go after, and particularly Comey and McCabe from the FBI, and to go after them with IRS audits. Unsurprising in 2020, 2021, or 2020, a massive audit of Comey and I think McCabe as well, was launched. So another example, if you needed more examples of Trump using the levers of power to go after his enemies, the levers of power to do his own personal bidding, his own revenge rather than his duty and responsibility as President of the United States. The interesting thing about this story, which came out this morning, is that it is featured on the New York Post. This is not a story that's coming out in the New York Times. This is not a story that's coming out in the Washington Post. This is a story coming out in the New York Post, the New York Post, that throughout the Trump administration and until about a week ago was solidly behind Trump, advocated everything for Trump, didn't question Trump at any point in time, and he continued to do this. Tom says that Trump tried to do what Obama did. Yes, and Obama was rightly condemned for it. IRS was rightly condemned for it. Of course, not enough in my view, because I can't think of much greater abuses of power than what Obama did and what Trump was trying to do and looks like actually achieved doing. For both of those, it is a massive violation of everything, the responsibility of a chief executive, and certainly in Obama's case, a massive violation of freedom of speech, because in Obama's case, that was the number one complaint of all the things Obama did in his presidency. I thought that was the worst. If you go back to my podcast from 2015, when I started the podcast, that IRS issue was a big, big issue for me, and I thought it was the most horrific thing because it was such an explicit violation of the First Amendment. It was going after conservative organizations and not giving them tax-free status by the IRS for purely political reasons. So, yes, but I'm consistent. I'll go after anybody who does this whenever they do this. I actually think what Obama did was worse than what Trump tried to do, but okay, so they're both awful. If everybody recognized that Trump was as bad as Obama, maybe they wouldn't vote for him. All right, so... Oops, I didn't want to close that. Damn. Let's see if I can re-find it. Yeah. All right, so the big news again is that Trump will probably announce tomorrow and we'll see how kind of everything breaks given that. Let me just see what else I wanted if there's anything else related to that. Just one other political thing, one other race that is interesting to watch is the Los Angeles Mayor... Oh, Arizona. The Arizona race still hasn't been called, but Kerry Lake has a good chance of still pulling that out. She seems to be gaining, but it's still too close to call. She has gained on the Democrat opponent, but it's, again, it's probably going to go to a recount because the margin is so small, but we'll see. Another race worth watching is the Los Angeles Mayor's Race, where you have two Democrats, but Karen Bass, who is kind of a traditional, progressive Democrat, which you'd expect in terms of a mayor of Los Angeles. But she's running Andrew Caruso, who is a billionaire, who is a businessman, who is running on an anti-crime agenda, who's running on a... What would have been a Republican agenda if Republicans even tried to compete in Los Angeles? Karen Bass is leading that race by 9,000 votes, but it's very, very close, and still only 67% of the ballots counted. Caruso still has a chance of winning. Go Caruso, absolutely. That would really send, I think, shockwaves through the whole thing, through the whole system. If he wins, it's still probably Karen Bass's to lose, but it is a race to watch because it is a race within the Democratic Party in terms of where the Democratic Party wants to head from here on. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. 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