The Border Was the Weapon

I watched the short clip and went looking for the full conversation. Polish Member of the European Parliament Dominik Tarczyński is telling Patrick Bet-David that the migrant pressure on Poland’s border with Belarus was not a spontaneous humanitarian emergency. It was engineered. [VIDEO]

In the longer sit-down Tarczyński walks through the sequence he describes. Migrants arrived in organized groups, mostly young men. Detainees carried Russian tourist visas. The route, in his account, ran from places such as Syria through Russia to Belarus and then to the Polish line. He calls it hybrid warfare: a tool used by Russia (and Iran) to distract attention from Ukraine, drain Polish resources on hotels and services, and pressure the European Union. When Poland changed the law so that illegal crossings and attacks on soldiers could be met with lethal force, the numbers dropped. He says the message reached Arabic-language forums: do not go to Poland.

Civilization’s Fever

I keep noticing the people who were never full MAGA still mark the day something concrete happened and the skepticism dropped.

Ben Shapiro was on Hang Out with Sean Hannity this week. He said the day Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch was the day he put the hat on. He had not voted for him in 2016. He supported him in 2020 and campaigned in 2024. The policies turned out more conservative than he expected, and the Democratic response went past the bounds of reason.

Watch this edition of the Hang Out podcast here: [VIDEO]

On the midterms he said voters wanted to send a message to the Trump administration. Instead they shot themselves in the foot. Rejecting one side still means choosing the other. His remaining hope is the usual one: Democrats will treat the result as a mandate for radical change, overreach, and produce the next backlash.

She Rejected the Pledge

I keep noticing how fast the language changes once the votes are counted.

Governor Kathy Hochul faced Bruce Blakeman in New York. He signed a no-new-taxes pledge and dared her to match it. She did not. She talked about not raising taxes for the sake of raising them, and about middle-class cuts already on the books. Then she won.

A few days later, standing with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, she spoke of working within existing resources but finding a path if more was needed for universal childcare. Not for the sake of it. For a specific need.

Bill O'Reilly looks at that sequence, and at how Democrats are handling the Iran question, in the same clip: [VIDEO]

In the video he treats the tax talk as the progressive side arriving on schedule after the campaign talk of affordability. He asks what the new taxpayer-funded piece will actually cost.

They Said the Culture Wars Are Over

I noticed the pitch changed almost as soon as the results settled.

Texas went blue. A Democratic governor and a Democratic senator for the first time in decades. The talking point that arrived with it was that the culture wars are finished. Nobody has time for them anymore. Focus on the pocketbook. Put money back in people’s hands. That is the new line.

Ben Shapiro took it up in a clip from the day after: [VIDEO]

He calls the old approach woke 1.0 — the racial and sexual demagoguery of 2020 and 2021. What he hears now is woke 2.0: economic demagoguery aimed at capitalism itself. Progressives play the long game. They chip away at the free market until the universal acid of socialism can finish the work.

Still Not Out

The midterms were bad. Key states went the other way. The message was thin. Too much sat on one person. The party looked unprepared. That is what Brian Kilmeade says happened.

Here is the conversation with Miranda Devine: [VIDEO]

He does not treat the results as the end of Trump. He compares the president to athletes who stay calm under pressure and points to the bankruptcies and recoveries that came before. The border control and the judges are still there to be highlighted. Those are not erased by one bad night.

Defined by the Fight

 I saw the chart Patrick Ruffini posted this morning.

Via Patrick Ruffini/X

It is labeled “The K-Shaped Republican Party.” The subtitle reads: “Trump’s lane is defined by temperament, not ideology.”

The graphic from Echelon Insights starts on the left with the center-right establishment — Nikki Haley and Glenn Youngkin — labeled the pre-Trump governing wing. It runs through Marco Rubio, then splits.

One branch curves up to the high ground of policy conservatism: Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis.

A yellow branch goes to the national populists: Josh Hawley and JD Vance — socially conservative, economically interventionist.

The red branch drops alone to Donald Trump: the low ground, ideologically flexible, defined by the fight.

The axis underneath runs from “Appeals to Moderates” on the left to “Appeals to the Grassroots Right” on the right.

After the Results

On Thursday’s PBD Podcast they walked through the California results. The one that stood out was Los Angeles mayor.

Watch the PBD Podcast clip here: VIDEO

City Councilmember Nithya Raman unseated Mayor Karen Bass. Raman is the progressive, DSA-backed candidate who endorsed Bass in January, then filed against her on the last possible day in February. Bass is the longtime establishment figure—former Assembly speaker and congresswoman, the first Black woman to hold the office. Early election-night counts favored Bass. Later-arriving mail ballots, the ones that typically skew younger and more progressive, moved the margin. By Thursday Bass had called to concede. Raman led by roughly four points.

Tom on the show called it a Democratic dirty trick that turned into a double cross. Raman was positioned, in that telling, as a spoiler who would soften Bass; she beat her instead. The pattern the panel notes is familiar in deep-blue cities: the further-left candidate gains once the later ballots arrive.

That is the California piece in the clip.

Not on the Ballot

Trump sat down with Ross Douthat on 60 Minutes the Friday after the midterms. The interview aired Sunday. He sounded more reflective than he usually does after a loss, and he did not reach for fraud claims. He still put the result on things other than himself.

The version that went on television is the shorter one: [VIDEO]

In the broadcast cut, Douthat opens with the size of the Republican losses. Trump’s first answer is that he was not on the ballot. He says he campaigned hard, the rallies were large, and the personal popularity did not fully transfer to the candidates he endorsed. He points to the Iran war, the rise in gas prices after he had brought them down, and what he calls a great dislike for Israel. He agrees with most of JD Vance’s post-election analysis but adds that the right historical question is whether he would still hit Iran’s nuclear program if he had the decision again. His answer is yes.

His Stock Went Up

 Florida stayed red while the rest of the map turned blue. That is the clip.

Via Memeology 101: [VIDEO]

Ron DeSantis spent years making Florida a place people moved to on purpose: lower taxes, fewer lockdowns, school choice that actually passed, and a property-tax amendment that drew Republicans to the polls on November 3. The national night was brutal for the party. Florida was not. The amendment helped drive turnout; the rest of the coalition he built held. Republicans kept the state when almost nowhere else did.

Success is visible. People notice when a governor delivers results they can measure in registration numbers, in-migration, and election margins that do not require a national wave to hold. DeSantis already had a record. The midterms turned it into a contrast. While other Republican candidates struggled to make a positive case, Florida’s results did the arguing for him.

His stock went up because the evidence did. The rest of the party is still sorting out what that means for the next two years. Florida already has an answer.

Musk’s Big Bet Flops: The Real Winners and Losers of the Midterms

Patrick Bet-David’s panel didn’t do a full results recap. They went straight to ranking who actually won and lost—and why. [VIDEO]

The clear losers, in their telling: Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and Trump’s endorsements.

Musk spent heavily (reports put his total GOP-related outlays near or over $400 million, with a massive chunk on Ken Paxton in Texas). Paxton lost decisively to Democrat James Talarico, who flipped a Senate seat Democrats hadn’t held since 1988. The panel treated it as proof that even unprecedented cash has limits when the candidate is flawed and voters have other priorities. Rogan got grouped in for the same reason: the manosphere/influencer energy that mattered in 2024 didn’t hold young men or low-propensity voters well enough this time. Trump’s endorsements produced a string of losses as Democrats gained ground in both chambers.

They Counted the Wins by Color

After the midterms the celebration I kept seeing treated the results as a return of something. Not a return of policy. A return of categories.

Bill O’Reilly put up a short clip on it the next day: [VIDEO]

He starts with the numbers. Democrats took the Senate (54–44 as he had it) and the House (228–139). He had expected the House loss. The Senate was the bigger surprise. Money, bills, gas, utilities. The filibuster stays, so sixty votes still matter for a while.

Not a Mandate

 The night produced a blue tsunami. The reading that follows is that Democrats now have a mandate. That is not what the Daily Wire segment treats it as.

This clip is from their Election Day livestream, with Cabot Phillips hosting Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and Andrew Klavan.

Watch the clip here: [VIDEO]

They start from the results and move to the larger claim. This was a midterm. Midterms are a referendum on the party in power. People are angry, so they punish the people holding the offices. Democrats won because they are not the ones implementing policy right now. None of their ideas are in force. Voters were not choosing left-wing policies. They were voting against what is currently in place.

They note the usual cycle. In 2004 it felt like Republicans would never lose again. By 2006 Nancy Pelosi was Speaker. Obama won in 2012 and it felt permanent. Then 2016 happened. The disappointment tonight is real, but it is not a permanent condition. The test comes when Democrats actually have to govern. They have already moved further left—celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk and other conservatives—without paying a clear price. That price arrives only if voters still punish them once the policies are theirs.

They treat the night as transitional. Westerners are leaning right in places like Poland and France, even when the left overreacts. The British example is the one they reach for: Conservatives in power long enough to go stagnant, a Labour wipeout, then the governing party becomes unpopular and the other side rises again. The same pattern is available here. The real reason Democrats won is that they do not have power.

The Kalshi numbers come later in the same conversation. Impeached and removed sits at 31 percent. Resignation during the term sits at 27 percent. Shapiro and the others call both easy money on the no side. Removal requires a major scandal that actually frightens swing-seat Republicans, and even then it hands the presidency to Vance. Resignation is simpler: no way. Trump does not walk away. Those markets are noise next to the larger point the segment is making about the night itself.

The midterms were a referendum on the party in power. They were not a mandate for what Democrats would do with it.

You can watch the Daily Wire Livestream from November 3rd here: [VIDEO]

The Map Moved

Wow. I hear tsumani but the Democrats performed very strongly in a number of races from Governor to US Senate to US House. It appears they will take control of Congress for two years. There were a few surprising results from these midterms.

Created by A.I.

I had my A.I. assistant list the results that are key:

• Texas: James Talarico beat Ken Paxton for Senate; Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott for governor. No Democrat had won statewide there since 1994.
• South Carolina: Annie Andrews beat Darline Graham for Senate. Democrats had not won a Senate race in the state since 1998.
• Maine: Troy Jackson beat Susan Collins for Senate.
• Kansas: Adam Hamilton beat Roger Marshall for Senate. First Democratic Senate win there since 1932.
• Iowa: Josh Turek beat Ashley Hinson for Senate; Rob Sand flipped the governor’s race.
• Ohio: Sherrod Brown beat Jon Husted for Senate; Amy Acton beat Vivek Ramaswamy for governor. Democrats had not held the governorship since 2006.
• Georgia: Keisha Lance Bottoms won the open governor’s race. Democrats swept the major statewide offices.
• Michigan: Abdul El-Sayed beat Mike Rogers for Senate (Democratic hold). Jocelyn Benson beat John James for governor (Democratic hold).
• House: Kentucky’s 6th District flipped (Zach Dembo over Ralph Alvarado; Trump carried it by about 15 points in 2024). Multiple Pennsylvania seats flipped, including Brian Fitzpatrick’s district and the ones held by Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan. Democrats also held or won seats in Florida that Republicans had redrawn earlier in the year to favor themselves.

Texas is the one that still does not sit right. Both the Senate and the governorship went Democratic in the same cycle. Paxton carried baggage. Talarico moderated enough to win. That is the result. Whether he fits the state is a different question, and the election already answered the only one that mattered on Tuesday.

It's About Trump

Bill O’Reilly was on NewsNation last night, the day before the votes are counted. Leland Vittert asked why Republicans would win the midterms. O’Reilly’s answer was short.

They are not going to.

He said the House goes to the Democrats, the way Obama’s House went in 2014. The Senate is still open. That is the same call he put out yesterday on his own site: Democrats take the House on the economy, Republicans keep the Senate.

Here is the clip: [VIDEO]

O’Reilly’s reason is not the usual one. He does not say the polls are fixed or that the candidates are weak. He says the trouble started with Iran.

The plan was never really confronted. Once the war began, inflation and oil prices rose. Americans watched the numbers move and remembered what they had been told. O’Reilly’s line: “They’re not voting on macroeconomics. They’re voting on Trump promised this and it never happened.”

He added that Trump’s emotional responses have not helped. The election, in his view, is not about affordability as a policy problem. “Today it’s about Donald Trump. Tomorrow it’s about Donald Trump.”

That is the whole case he made. The rest of the segment wanders into Alaska and Talarico and tax talk, but the prediction sits on those two sentences: the Iran operation was left unfinished, and voters are measuring the result against the promise.

Whether that reading holds after the counts come in is a different question. O’Reilly has been consistent on this point for weeks. The House loss, if it arrives, will be read as a judgment on the president’s unfinished work, not on a list of economic charts.

Have you voted today?