Point of View November 3, 2026 – Hour 1 : Voters relationship between religion and politics & Midterms

[00:00:04] Across America, live, this is Point of View. Kerby Anderson. And it's election day, we've been waiting for this for some time and of course if you have already voted, I'm glad that you have. If you're going to, don't wait any longer. If you know some individuals that have not voted, you might encourage them to go out as well.

[00:00:31] And of course we will spend some time, as you might imagine tomorrow, talking about the results. But some of the concerns that we raised even on Friday about the different Dan Sullivan and of course Alaska, the copycat Dan and the rest. I've got a piece here where there was a question asked of a voter, and this was in Anchorage, Alaska. If he voted for both Dan Sullivans or one, and he has this really puzzled look on his face and said,

[00:01:01] Well, I don't remember seeing the other Dan Sullivan. I totally forgot to even look if there were two Dan Sullivans. He said, Well, there were two on the ballot. You didn't see his face. It begins to sink in. He says, You didn't notice that? No, I just, I must have had a brain freeze, but I don't remember if I voted. For the right Dan Sullivan or the wrong one. So that becomes an issue as we find out tomorrow. Maybe we'll come back to that issue once again.

[00:01:28] I've already decided that we will probably post this very good piece by our good friend Cal Thomas, Dirty Tricks, Nothing New. Talked about a little bit that the other day with one of our guests, but we might revisit that in the future. But we are privileged to bring to you today an individual that I've been following for some time and appreciated what he's written about civic education. He even thinks that Nashville Airport should be named after Dolly Parton, so he's got a lot going for him.

[00:01:57] But if nothing else, it's Alejandro Ramos, who is the founder and executive director of the Ramos Research Institute, which is a research organization focused on democracy, civics, education, public policy. Individual graduated from Sacred Heart University, later Cornell University. Alejandro, thank you for joining us today here on Point of View. Irving, thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation. Well, again, I've been following your organization. I might just mention, too, we have a couple of things.

[00:02:27] We, of course, have a link to your website, ramosresearchinstitute.org, and people can go there directly or they can click on that. Also have a link to the informed observer if somebody would like to follow you there as well, plus a place on LinkedIn. So if people find themselves wanting to get more information, they can do so. And let's, if we can, maybe get to one of the many issues I know you would like to talk about. And that is what I think some people are calling the evangelical paradox.

[00:02:58] Yesterday I had a caller who said he wasn't going to vote for any Republicans because he didn't like Donald Trump. He grew up in New York and didn't like Donald Trump and all that. And I said, well, that is sometimes the case. You know, Trump said, I'm on the ballot. Think, at least act as if I'm on the ballot. So a number of people voting against him. But here's another situation. You have a good number of Republicans that aren't real thrilled with Donald Trump. His approval ratings have dropped.

[00:03:24] But that does not seem to have any impact on whether or not they vote for Republican candidates, even though many of them have grown somewhat dissatisfied with Donald Trump. Is that what you found? Yes, that is what we're seeing. You know, what we're seeing right now is that there is Trump's approval rating, as you mentioned, has gotten pretty low.

[00:03:49] And what we are also seeing is that that is not totally impacting people's preferences for congressional candidates. Right. We can't make that assumption for all individuals. There's individuals that I know in my own life that have voted for Trump in the past three elections. But this election, they're breaking with him. And they're saying what he has broken all of our promises, you know, to us. He said no more wars and we're in Iran.

[00:04:17] He said we're going to get a better economy and look at where we're at and we're struggling. So there's certainly some people that are breaking with the Republican Party. But I think that it really, as you look at the different religious groups here in the United States, particularly the Protestants, you know, whether they're white evangelical Protestants or just white Protestants, right, are still, for the most part, intending to vote for the Republican candidate,

[00:04:42] whether it's for the senatorial elections, gubernatorial elections or the congressional seats that are up this year. And, again, part of that has to do with, again, I will point to our November outlook issue. The socialist surge is happening in America when some of the Democratic candidates are taking views very different than the views held by most of the listeners to point of view. You can see some of that to be the case. But, nevertheless, I think that is intriguing because as the president has traveled around,

[00:05:10] he keeps saying, you know, act as if I'm on the ballot, thinking that in every case that's a positive. And I think what you have surfaced is something I think most of us intuitively have figured out. Even if people like Donald Trump after a while, that all fades. He's been in the public eye now, what, 10-plus years. So there's a sense in which maybe that is part of it. But, nevertheless, when you look at least at the, as you say, white evangelicals, and you look at the Senate races and most of the Republican House races,

[00:05:39] that seems to be probably still one of the most significant voting blocks for many of these Republican candidates, isn't it? Absolutely, yes. And what I would say, you know, speaking on this topic of Trump saying that he's on the ballot, gosh, if I was working in the White House or on any one of the campaigns, I would say, Mr. President, quit saying that, right? Let each individual candidate run on their own and on their own metrics, right? And on their own platforms, right? In some states, it certainly helps.

[00:06:09] I don't think that it's helping across the board, right? If you look at what some of the different sites and pollsters are ranking as toss-ups, right, these are toss-ups that we would never think of, right, like a Texas, right? I'm 25 years old. I would have never thought that in my lifetime I would see Texas potentially go blue in any federal election. And we have, you know, an election between Ken Paxton and Tallarico where you're seeing that happening.

[00:06:37] You know, and I think that there's different religious groups, right, are playing really interestingly into this, right? Whether if you look at Catholics, right, Catholics as a whole have a preference for Democrats in this election. But if you look at the breakdown between White Catholics and Hispanic Catholics, you see a very, very wide margin. Right. Right. White Catholics very slimly will go towards the Republicans,

[00:07:04] but the Hispanic Catholics are, you know, at about 60% of registered voters that are Hispanic Catholics are saying that they're going to vote for the Democrats, right? And we're seeing interesting numbers, of course, against black Protestants. And these are two groups, right, the African Americans here in America, the black coalition and Hispanic that Trump made incredible inroads with in 2024, right?

[00:07:31] So being able to, seeing that erode and that sort of power within those two groups diminish, I think is a telltale sign for Republicans and they should be a little cautious moving forward. When we come back from the break, I do want to talk about some of the religious factor because you have not only in Texas, but in Kansas, Adam Hamilton and some others, individuals running as pastors, but they represent a more liberal, I'm being generous, particular perspective.

[00:08:00] But just before I take a break, and then we'll come back and get into that, just to give people a perspective, if you look at White Catholics, they favor Republicans 50% to 32%, but Hispanic Catholics favor Democrats 59% to 19%. So, again, it illustrates something else we want to talk about in terms of race, party loyalty, and faith. These are all very different factors,

[00:08:24] and this is some of the material that you can get if you would like to find out more by the Ramos Research Institute. But we do need to take a break, and when we come back, we'll continue our conversation. They're going to move on to some other issues. There's a closing argument for the election, some of the victories for the Trump administration that a lot of people in the campaign ignored, and much, much more. All that coming up right after this.

[00:09:00] This is Viewpoints with Kirby Anderson. Today is Election Day. Usually midterm elections are important, but you can't possibly find a more important midterm election in modern history. The control of the House and the Senate are at stake, and we have several candidates from the Democratic Socialists of America. America is divided, and that has intensified the stakes in this election. Republicans control the House and Senate by slim majorities, and that has also intensified the stakes in this election.

[00:09:29] And the losing party is likely to charge the other party with voter fraud, voter suppression, and a variety of other offenses. This has also intensified the stakes in this election. America has had lots of close elections, even at the presidential level. In 2000, George W. Bush led Al Gore in Florida after the first results were tallied, but the outcome of the election essentially came from the Supreme Court. In 2016, Donald Trump won three swing states by a mere 77,000 votes.

[00:09:57] In 2020, Joe Biden won three swing states by 42,000 votes, and a controversy surrounded both of these elections. In 2024, we had a clear winner because Donald Trump won the popular vote by more than 2 million votes and won seven swing states, but it's worth mentioning they won in five of those swing states by less than three points. Midterm elections are different. Historically, the President's party usually loses seats during midterm elections. That has been true in 20 of the last 22 midterm elections.

[00:10:25] Tonight, we'll be watching what happens in the 435 House races and the 35 Senate races, and there will be 36 governor's races, along with thousands of state house and state races and local races. We'll have a lot to talk about as the election returns begin coming in. I'm Kirby Anderson, and that's my Point of View.

[00:10:49] Go deeper on topics like you just heard by visiting pointofview.net. That's pointofview.net. You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again talking with Alejandro Ramos, and again, the Ramos Research Institute. We have information about that on the website, and you might want to check that out. And let's, if we can, talk about the faith factor, because you mentioned just a minute ago,

[00:11:18] and I think it's worth mentioning that there has been a movement, at least on the part of some Democrats, to say, you know, we're losing on the faith issue. And, of course, you have some individuals who are liberal pastors who are serving in the Senate. Georgia is a good example. And, of course, you used Texas as just an example a minute ago. But I mentioned one other one, and that, of course, would be Adam Hamilton, who is also a liberal pastor in Kansas.

[00:11:47] And if he is elected, that will be the first time you've had a Democratic senator in 50 years. You just pointed out a minute ago that if, again, James Tallarico is elected in Texas, that's the first time in decades. And so, in some respects, that, I think, has been used by at least some Democrats to neutralize the faith issue. Some of the other candidates, by the way, you have even Jasmine Crockett's pastor and a number of others running, some others in Iowa.

[00:12:17] So there are a number of individuals that say, I'm a Christian, but they're really a liberal Christian. But as a result, some of the individuals that said, well, he doesn't look quite so secular, so maybe I would vote for him, maybe are changing the electoral landscape, at least in Kansas and Texas, don't you think? Absolutely. And I think that those are two races that I'm really paying close attention to,

[00:12:43] because I think that that might be then moving forward if the Democratic Party were smart, right? Maybe they would recruit more candidates like that, and maybe not so many candidates like Abdul Al-Fayed out of Michigan. Right. I think that the Democrats, right, are kind of all over the place in this election in terms of candidate profile, right? Because as you just mentioned, you have these two individuals that are pastors, right? Sure, more liberal pastors, but pastors nonetheless.

[00:13:11] And then you have these Democratic Socialists of America that are running. And those two visions, if you sort of put them side by side, those profiles really aren't compatible with one another in the way that they address, you know, potential individuals that will be voting for them, the way that they speak to the opposing party, right? So I think that there's going to be something really interesting that happens if, let's say, right, Tallarico wins,

[00:13:38] and then Adam Hamilton in Kansas wins, right? That'll be something interesting to sort of put forth. And then if you even think past the midterm elections, right, Raphael Warnock is someone that, you know, is being floated for a presidential candidate in just two short years. And again, it might hold up on a booklet that came out in September, which is, again, a biblical view on woke Christianity. And, of course, we've talked about wokeism before, as a matter of fact, have a booklet on wokeness.

[00:14:06] But this was the idea that you're starting to see some of those candidates, and Raphael Warnock is already a senator. You could have a Senator James Tallarico, a Senator Adam Hamilton. This, I think, just illustrates what has kind of changed in the electoral landscape. And, of course, you'll be watching that. I'll be watching it as well. We'll see how that unfolds certainly by tomorrow when we get into the program as well.

[00:14:32] But I thought it also is a perfect setup for the fact that I have read your piece on why civic education must be at the forefront of reforms. As a matter of fact, I've seen it in more than one venue, so I think they've taken it and used it again. But one of the things that Alejandro, he spends so much time talking about, is the lack of good education.

[00:14:54] In particular, the lack of civic education, you only had less than a quarter, 22% of 8th graders who are proficient in civics. You have a study that was done a number of years ago by the Annenberg Constitution Day Civic Survey that found that less than half, only 47% of adults, could identify the three branches of government.

[00:15:18] And if you've ever watched Jesse Waters when he sends Johnny out there, or in the old days when we had a variety of other individuals go jaywalking, when Jay Leno would do that, you're just appalled at the lack of basic information that people have. And then my favorite cut line is, and these people vote. And yet it seems to me that one of the things you've been calling for for some time is the need for us to really bolster and reinvigorate civic education

[00:15:48] if we really want to have a republic that's going to actually flourish in the future. Absolutely. You know, I think that one of the biggest challenges that we're faced with today, well, we have so many challenges in society, but I think that one of them is sort of this base knowledge of our country, right? My parents are both immigrants to this country. They're Cuban, so I'm Cuban by descent. And growing up, we learned about the country.

[00:16:16] We learned about our homeland. You know, why did my parents flee? You know, Cuba, the island. You know, my mom for political reasons in one of the earlier ways and my father for financial reasons in one of the later ways. And that was something that was always ingrained into us. And I remember that my grandmother would sit there at the kitchen table with us and would do homework. And she would, you know, teach us math and all these other things.

[00:16:41] But she always stressed the importance of understanding the structures of our government and the way that the government works. And, you know, that was always approached in a way that it wasn't, you know, my grandmother telling us, you know, this is the way that you should think or you should think this way. She would lay the facts on the table and she would say, oh, what are your thoughts about this? Right? And how would you go about this? So I think that that's where civics education needs to be. It's, to me, this is what I've dedicated my life to doing.

[00:17:08] And the work that I do is getting students engaged but also informed. And we live at a time where there's organizations that just want young people to be engaged, right, and to hell with having the knowledge. And then there's other organizations that all they want to focus on is the knowledge. And I think that these ideas need to be married to one another. We need, in this country, informed and engaged citizens that will be able to participate in elections,

[00:17:36] that will be able to understand the processes of our country, and not just individuals that will listen to whatever the latest wins are on social media, to whatever their parents are telling them to do, to whatever is the new cool thing to engage with. And the way that I approach it, yeah, go ahead. No, no, I just want to jump in because the other part of that is engaging, is knowing how to dissent. You wrote a very good piece a while back on colleges are fixing their free speech rules.

[00:18:05] Now we need to teach students how to disagree. And in the past I've had Jonathan Haidt on this program, The Coddling of the American Mind, and it does seem to me that not only do they not have the facts, but they don't know how to disagree without being disagreeable. And so that's another kind of thing that you have been working on at the Institute, isn't it? Absolutely. And I'm so glad that you brought up Jonathan Haidt. You know, I'm such a big fan of him and the work that he does.

[00:18:34] And that was the exact next point that I was going to get to, is sort of not only being able to do, to understand and have the knowledge, but we need to be able to possess different skills. And one of the things that we've developed at the Institute is called the Citizenship Empowerment Framework. Yes. And that has four pillars. The first thing is this foundational knowledge, right? Who is responsible for what in our government? Knowing the three branches, who is responsible for the different pieces? Should I call my mayor or should I call my governor?

[00:19:03] And being able to have that baseline of understanding of federalism and of our constitution. Then moving on to the skills of media literacy and being able to consume information and know when you're being said propaganda, right? From either side, information that's not true and how to spot out myths and disinformation. Then when you have that foundational knowledge and you have these skills, then engaging in something that I call courageous dialogue, right? When I started off in college in 2019,

[00:19:33] this idea of safe spaces was emerging, right? And Jonathan, through several books that he's written, addresses this and through media that he does. And I was sort of, I always thought that was an interesting concept, right? Because we would, at home, would have, you know, open conversation, whether we agreed or disagreed with each other, right? We did those things. And then I went to college and we had these things and I started off at one institution before ending up transferring to Sacred Heart with sort of this notion of safe spaces

[00:20:03] and everyone had to feel safe in a conversation. And I totally disagree with that. So I've developed this thing of courageous dialogue where you should be able to engage across differences, right? In a respectful manner to be able to ask why, right? We tend to approach conversations as a debate, right? You're right, I'm wrong, you know, or whichever way we flip things rather than if we're sitting here and we're having a conversation, Kirby, and you say something interesting, I'm going to say, Kirby, I would love to learn a little bit more about that.

[00:20:33] Why do you believe that and how have you come to this understanding? So, and we've been able to deploy this, both the framework as a whole and courageous dialogue on many college campuses to be able to get young people to ask questions. And then once they have that skill and the ability to engage in courageous dialogue, then I tell people, go out into the world and do something positive. And that's the fourth pillar of the framework is to get out into your community, see something that you want changed, and now you have the skills to be able to change it.

[00:21:03] And see students are incredibly engaged with our framework and have a desire to want to have conversation, right? And other pieces that I've written through direct conversation with students, students are calling me Alejandro. I want to be able to have conversations online. And that's part of that citizenship empowerment framework. And if you'd like to know more about what he is working on, I would encourage you to go to the website, pointofview.net. We're going to take a break, get back into some of the issues in the news right after this.

[00:21:33] In 19th century London, two towering historical figures did battle, not with guns and bombs, but words and ideas. London was home to Karl Marx, the father of communism, and legendary Baptist preacher, Charles Spurgeon. London was in many ways the center of the world, economically, militarily, and intellectually. Marx sought to destroy religion, the family, and everything the Bible supports.

[00:22:02] Spurgeon stood against him, warning of socialism's dangers. Spurgeon understood Christianity is not just religious truth, it is truth for all of life. Where do you find men with that kind of wisdom to stand against darkness today? Get the light you need on today's most pressing issues delivered to your inbox when you sign up for the Viewpoints commentary at pointofview.net slash signup. Every weekday,

[00:22:31] in less than two minutes, you'll learn how to be a person of light to stand against darkness in our time. It's free, so visit pointofview.net slash signup right now. pointofview.net slash signup. Point of View will continue after this.

[00:23:00] You are listening to Point of View. The opinions expressed on Point of View do not necessarily reflect the views of the management or staff of this station. And now, here again, is Kirby Anderson. It is election day, and there are a lot of different comments coming from a number of different sources. So, one of the articles I've posted is one which is quoting from Nate Silver. I've mentioned him before.

[00:23:27] He really looks at things from a liberal point of view, but nevertheless, I think a lot of the research that he's done over the years has been very accurate. First, really gained national attention when he predicted virtually all of the various cases of the election of Donald Trump in terms of state by state. And since then, of course, I've been reading some of his articles and, again, has an individual that maybe does have a bias in one sense, but really works hard

[00:23:56] to look at the data. And he's the one that was predicting on Sunday a blue tsunami. Not just a blue wave, but a blue tsunami based in large part on some of the numbers I gave you yesterday from the New York Times Siena polls, which we're looking at, again, kind of the last possible chance to get some reaction from individuals, keeping in mind that more than half of the people that will have voted already have voted before the polls

[00:24:26] even open today. So there is a sense that that is the case. And so he is actually looking at the same numbers a lot of us have been looking at in terms of the Senate battleground. And he also is quite honest about the fact that there has been some really bad polling in the past. But, he also says, and I'm giving you his quote, Democrats could actually absorb a modest-sized polling error and still prevail, perhaps, given the latest

[00:24:56] round of surveys. So his argument was is that Democrats hold the edge in a lot of these polls and they're poised, at least at the moment, to win or at least seriously compete in what have been historically red states. We just talked about a few of those with Alejandro, but he gives a couple others, South Carolina, Kansas, which we did mention, Iowa, and pointed out, interestingly enough, this was an interesting comment from him, even if Democrats lose a handful

[00:25:24] of these red state races, they won't necessarily be complaining. Again, quoting from him, he says, even if Democrats were to lose a couple of these races, and there's actually some bad news for them here in Alaska, I guess, as that's where he was at the time, he says, I think absolutely no Democrat's going to complain if we only flip the top five races in this chart, especially if it comes along with a Texas governorship, which I had not seen on the list as well. So you have, right now, just a real sense of expectation

[00:25:54] on the part of Democrats taking the House, taking the Senate in significant ways, winning races in some states they haven't won in literally decades, or in the case of Kansas, a half a century. But, that being said, there's always the fallback. And, again, you're not going to hear me quote Hillary Clinton too often, but she was on The View the other day, and what she did, in a sense, was make the kind of argument that we've heard before. If Democrats lose,

[00:26:24] well then it's due to some conspiracy, and she had at least four conspiracies that I can count in a very short amount of time. Number one, she argued that the midterms could be stolen because ICE will confront people at the polls. First of all, show me any place where that's happening, but okay. Number two, that the election could be stolen because the Justice Department and the U.S. Marshals might use that in some kind of various way. Again,

[00:26:54] show me where that's happening or has happened. Number three, the election results could be hacked and changed. Sonny Hauston was one that kind of teed that one up. And then, number four, and I don't even understand this one, that the Trump administration would somehow use people's social security numbers to manipulate their thoughts. I don't even know where that comes from, but this, I think, just shows you sort of the fever swamps that we have taking place right now. And if nothing else,

[00:27:23] I saw one of the people that was commenting about this on X saying, Mrs. Hillary Clinton, just go home. These are conspiracy theories that we wouldn't even want to give credence to, and they're mentioned one right after another on The View. But again, that's not where necessarily too many people get their political information, but that is the case. Now, you heard just a few minutes ago that there are individuals who call themselves Republicans,

[00:27:51] probably have voted Republican, that are disappointed with Donald Trump. Got that. And so, I thought it would be good for you to see one of the articles I've taken the time to post. It's called The Closing Argument for America on Election Eve. It has a couple of mistakes in it, so don't take every number there, because this is where he says that there are 33 Senate races, or actually 35, 435 members of the House of Representatives, 36 governors. So again, 435, 35, and 36.

[00:28:21] But, more than that, also mentions that there would be up to 75 million votes cast. I was using that number yesterday. It's more than 50 million, but it is not 75 million, but nevertheless, more than half of the people's votes that we will count tonight have already been cast, which is always interesting because you're seeing some of these late election notifications. My phone keeps ringing. You know how yours probably does as well. And I'm thinking,

[00:28:50] if you have access to any of the voter rolls which tell you that I voted some time ago, you're just wasting your time making that phone call or even wasting your time trying to connect up and get me to vote when I already have. But okay, I get that. And so, the point he's making is that you really have to look past personalities. You may or may not like the particular senatorial candidate. You may not like something the president said in the last week. You may not be thrilled about gas prices, although I will get to that in a minute when I get to a very good piece

[00:29:20] by Victor Davis Hanson. The question about Iran, all sorts of other issues, ICE and the rest, and simply says that you need to recognize as we have posted in our October and now November issues, but especially the November issue, the socialist surge is coming and that is certainly the case. Also, this article makes the case that according to the Harvard-Harris poll,

[00:29:48] 36% of those voting for Republicans are doing so because of the president, but also, as we pointed out just a few minutes ago with Alejandro Ramos, there's a lot that are voting for the Republicans that maybe aren't necessarily as thrilled with Donald Trump. But let's just remind ourselves of some of the facts that do need to be on the table and I don't think have been adequately mentioned sometimes by some of these candidates. For example,

[00:30:18] the nation's poverty rate is at the lowest it has ever been reported in the history of this republic. The violent crime rate is the lowest it's been in, I think the estimates are, 50 years. We are safer, we are more affluent than we've ever been before. You also have, of course, the fact that, I know people tend to forget that not so long ago you had the one big beautiful bill

[00:30:47] and so you had all sorts of tax cuts, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security, increasing the standard deduction, all of these without a doubt helped lower and middle income Americans, many of whom now because of the various variations that have actually been implemented are either paying no income tax, federal income tax, or a reduced amount of federal

[00:31:17] income tax. And so again, you've got to understand that there are consequences if indeed Democrats control the Senate, not the least of which is the ability to block all sorts of judges, treaties, and other things. If indeed Democrats take control of the House, they will spend more time on, as he calls it, performative investigations and impeachments, which do nothing to advance the future of this country,

[00:31:46] but nevertheless are the case. So if you wanted to, if nothing else, show this to somebody who wonders if he or she should vote, I think this closing argument for America is really a very good piece, and it's a good setup for what we're going to talk about after the break, and that is a very good piece by Victor Davis Hanson, because he goes back to four years ago and remind us that on June of 2022, the price of gallon of gasoline

[00:32:16] was $5 a gallon and stayed around $4 a gallon in October. The inflation rate had hit a high of 9% and would average at least 5% over the entire four-year tenure of Joe Biden, and yet the gas prices and inflation, which we're now being told are going to hurt Republicans, didn't seem to hurt Democrats that much in the 2022 midterms. So I'm going to come back and talk

[00:32:46] about a little of that, and also, also real quickly mention another very good piece that came out from Inez Fetcher-Stepman taking stock of the Trump administration's victories, because again, how quickly we forget, and sometimes when you flip through these pages, page after page, you go, yeah, I'd forgotten about that, I'd forgotten about that, and voters don't have that in their minds when they go into the polling place, but nevertheless, it's just a reminder of some

[00:33:15] tremendous things that actually have happened, some very positive things that have happened, that you wouldn't hear about if you listen merely to the mainstream media. But let's take a break, we'll come back and talk about some of these other issues. Victor Davis Hanson refers to it as the midterm election incoherencies, misadventures, and paradoxes. We'll talk about a few of the victories, all that coming up right after this.

[00:33:57] You're listening to Point of View, your listener-supported source for truth. Back once again, let me just mention that tomorrow we are going to have quite the round table of discussion, and we'll do that again on Friday. So there'll be a couple of days where we'll have all sorts of voices and perspectives, trying to give a perspective to first of all, what happens tonight and is announced, and then we will do a full wrap-up on Friday, and we'll have basically everybody at a microphone. So it'll be a very interesting

[00:34:27] time for me to just try to direct traffic as we get some very intelligent voices here to give us some perspective on what's taking place. Let me, if I can, go back to this piece by Victor Davis Hanson, Midterm Election Incoherences, Misadventures, and Paradoxes. And again, what he does is he takes us back four years. In 2022, there was an argument that there would be a red wave because of all the problems. Gas was $5 a gallon in June. It stayed around about $4 a gallon by October

[00:34:57] still. Inflation had been at 9%. It never really went below 5%. And so gas prices, inflation, everything else would certainly have been the argument that you would have had a red wave and Republicans would have won and this would have harmed Democrats. And that didn't turn out so well. He adds to it a few other things, which again, we tend to forget about. You had already had, of course, the loss of tens of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure and weaponry

[00:35:26] that was left for the Taliban in Afghanistan in one of the most humiliating American retreats in modern history. And, of course, you also had the Ukraine war begin there as well because of the invasion February 24, 2022. There were all the reasons in the world to say four years ago that that would be a red wave and it would wipe out the Democrats. And it did not. Well, we'll see what happens tonight.

[00:35:55] But again, the lecture that we are receiving from the media and from all these pundits is we're going to have a blue wave or a blue tsunami because of what? Inflation, gas prices, a war abroad, which are similar, maybe different than that. A lot of it maybe gets down to the whole issue of the personality of the president, whatever it is. But he goes on to say we're told that flipping a Texas Senate seat to the Democrats could be a landmark turning point because we just talked about a minute

[00:36:25] ago with Alejandro what could or could might not happen in Kansas. Texas and yet then the rest of his piece, and I would encourage you to read that because I may post it again if indeed we do have a blue wave, is to recognize that even when we've had some of these waves that have begun to crash on the shore, it doesn't necessarily cripple the president. One of the examples he uses is Bill Clinton. In his last two years of office, Bill Clinton,

[00:36:55] you might remember of course he was impeached but of course not removed from office. Yet nevertheless he was able to continue balanced budgets, led to the NATO barming against Syria, held an Israeli Palestinian summit and a variety of things like that, and that didn't really necessarily slow him down. Barack Obama the same thing, he should have been neutered if you will after he lost the Senate in 2014, but if nothing else he almost

[00:37:25] seemed more emboldened, maybe even more radical because that's when he talked about such things as how I've had my pen and my phone and executive orders and he could act unilaterally and committed the United States to the Paris Agreement, the Iran deal, even the normalization of relations with Cuba. And so in some respects you don't always have that taking place. So again, what is going to happen in the next two years? We'll see.

[00:37:54] The blue wave may not materialize, he says, just as the red wave did not materialize in 2022, despite the unhappiness with Ukraine war, inflation, and gas prices. But if it does, and we will find out soon enough, then you recognize that we still have a unique system of constitutional government and presidents actually sometimes become, if you can believe this, more popular after they lose at the ballot box. So we will

[00:38:24] see how that unfolds. But I think for just a minute, just to be fair, we did talk about how there are so many individuals now that are saying, well, you said we weren't going to be in a war and we're fine at war in Iran. You said that gas prices would be down, which I think they're down compared to certainly Joe Biden. But nevertheless, this very good piece that we are winding down with for this hour is called taking stock of the Trump administration victories. And I think from time to time is worth

[00:38:53] mentioning whether that affects the vote or not. The first, of course, she talks about immigration because we, I think, honestly can say that because of the actions of the president have effectively sealed what was a highly trafficked border, a highly lawless border which allowed for people and drugs to flow across it without much resistance or impediment. The administration has also deported nearly one million illegal

[00:39:23] aliens. So, on immigration, this was a pledge and this is one that is being fulfilled. On the economy, okay, I think it's fair to say that the middle class has been suffering for some time from some of these long-term structural pressures. A lot of that, as I pointed out, has to do with the fact that we are in many cases in a K-shaped economy because as we have dollars devalue,

[00:39:53] it takes more dollars to buy assets, so as a result, one leg of the K goes up, the other one tends to go down. And so median wages, housing prices are going in different directions, and that is a concern. But, again, as I mentioned a minute ago, we did have a one big beautiful bill, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security, 53 million taxpayers this April took advantage of at least one or more of those tax cuts, even if

[00:40:22] they don't remember those when they go and vote today. Real equality under the law is another one she mentions. We don't have woke exceptions, we don't have this reactionary and maybe even radical reinterpretation of the Civil Rights Act and all the DEI material that we've talked about before. She talks also about higher education, because again, some of the places where there's been the greatest violation of this complete woke

[00:40:51] reinterpretation of the Civil Rights Act has been at universities and colleges with regard to admissions, hiring, even protected some groups in which in many cases it was discriminating against white students, Jewish students, and the rest. And then also talks about two other issues, one, K-12 education, because of the school choice revolution that is really beginning to sweep this country, in part because of the COVID

[00:41:21] closures and also the parental awareness of some of things taking place, and one last one, the first serious rollback of the administrative state in a century, other than immigration, she says, I expect no area of Trump policy will leave more of a critical or lasting impact than administration that is done with regard to federal personnel curtailing the power of unelected bureaucrats and bureaucracies restoring the constitutional integrity

[00:41:50] of the executive branch, the so-called deep state. I've been saying for some time I need to maybe create a new version of the deep state booklet that I've written in the past. So much has changed since the last time I've written it, there is one very good illustration of that as well. So let's take a break and when we come back, if you'd like to join the conversation, I'd love to hear from you, 1-800-351-1212. But what I'm also going to do is for just a few minutes move

[00:42:20] away from the issue of the midterms because there's other things going on and there was a very the Wall Street Journal, National Review and others are talking about it and we need to talk about it so we'll talk about that for a bit. And then eventually we're going to spend some time with Troy Miller. He is an individual that is the head of the National Religious Broadcasters

[00:42:49] talking about the issue of the American Dream and lamenting that only about 51% of Christian U.S. citizens voted four years ago in the midterms. We'll see what the percentages are. So a lot more to talk about coming up right after these important messages. I'm sure that you've noticed that social media is now filled with information generated by AI.

[00:43:19] Dramatic descriptions of politicians and music stars supposedly making statements about a current issue. Leaning into the microphone looking into the lens opponents silenced. It's powerful, it's riveting, and it's all lies. Even several national television networks were recently found using enhanced pictures, meaning manipulated, falsified, literally not giving a true picture. So many liars,

[00:43:49] so much deception. Where can we turn for truth? Right here, from Kirby and the team at Point of View. We need your support, please. Join the Point of View truth team today with a monthly gift of $30 or more. Together, we can shine the light of truth and dispel the darkness and deception of this day. Give now at pointofview.net or call

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