Ben Shapiro Rallies For Republicans In Wisconsin, Says Baldwin ‘Needs To Go’

OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN—Ben Shapiro traveled to Wisconsin to support Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde, telling voters that Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin “needs to go.”

Shapiro joined Hovde, a Wisconsin native and businessman, on the campaign trail in Oshkosh and Elkhart Lake to discuss key issues informing voters’ decisions in the lead-up to the election.

The pair emphasized the importance of the upcoming Senate race at an event at an Oshkosh brewery, where Hovde told supporters that the country was becoming unrecognizable under the Biden-Harris administration.

“Waking up in America the last three and a half four years has been waking up in a bad episode of The Twilight Zone where what is right has become wrong and what is wrong has become right,” Hovde told the crowd. “We have literally flipped the moral compass upside down.”

Shapiro spoke alongside Hovde, telling attendees that Baldwin is “far too radical” for Wisconsin. Baldwin has been “masquerading as a moderate for far too long … she’s a rubber stamp for the Biden-Harris administration,” Shapiro asserted, arguing that “the most important thing in this campaign is Republicans taking the Senate.”

He also warned that a Democratic victory could doom future chances for Republicans to win elected office.

“If Republicans somehow failed to take the Senate, and if somehow, God forbid, Democrats were to take the presidency, the Senate and the Congress of the United States, they would then rejigger virtually every rule that allows for the possibility of the Republicans, of conservatives, of traditional people, winning office and winning power any time in the near future,” Shapiro said.

Hovde went on to explain why he decided to run for Senate, spotlighting some of the largest issues facing the country.

“I have four primary reasons why I got into this race. First, economically, we’re sacrificing our economic future. We’ve racked up more debt in the last three and a half years than in our country’s first 230-year history. The interest cost on our debt now is a trillion dollars a year,” Hovde explained. “I hate to tell you folks, but that’s how the great societies of history have always failed.”

Hovde turned his attention to domestic security, tearing into the “defund the police” movement, which the Republican called “the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“Milwaukee, a city in Wisconsin, is now one of the murder capitals in the country. It’s right up there with Baltimore today … You talk to the officers, their staffing is down 40%. They can’t even recruit officers.”

He also cited the border crisis as one of the reasons why he decided to challenge Baldwin, blasting mass illegal immigration as a danger to Americans.

“Venezuela has dumped their criminal cells, their jail cells, into America,” Hovde warned. “The sheriffs at the southern border will tell you they can see the prison tattoos and the gang tattoos on these guys.”

The Republican went on to address foreign policy, highlighting the “incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan” as “the most embarrassing moment of my life as an American” and detailing the conflicts raging across the globe.

“They’ve made us less secure internationally,” Hovde said of the Biden-Harris administration, arguing that the administration’s performance on the Afghanistan withdrawal prompted America’s adversaries to become more aggressive. “I think our adversaries moved, obviously Putin on Ukraine, the Ayatollah through Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel, and that conflict is widening, and then obviously China is getting more aggressive against the Philippines, against Vietnam, and clearly Taiwan.”

The event came after Shapiro and the Republican nominee stopped at a Baptist church in Oshkosh for a discussion with Moms for Liberty, where local community members explained how left-wing gender ideology had been forced on their school districts and what they were doing to stop it. POLITICO reported last month that Shapiro was preparing to travel to swing states and campaign alongside Senate candidates like Ohio’s Bernie Moreno and Tom Sheehy of Montana.

Lindsay Clark, a member of Wisconsin’s Neenah School Board, explained in a roundtable conversation with Hovde and Shapiro that the far-left curriculum in her children’s school drove her to run for office.

“I saw that even in my own community, in my own district, there was curriculum right in the kindergarten that was showing that our children, ‘you can do what you want. You can choose to be a boy, you can choose to be a girl.’ It was right in the curriculum in kindergarten.”

Shapiro addressed policies allowing men to access women’s locker rooms and play against women in sports, pointing out that the measures stem from the false claim that it is possible for people to change their sex.

“There is a fundamental untruth that’s being perpetrated against the American people, and girls are the victims of this untruth. And that untruth is that men can be girls, girls can be boys,” Shapiro explained. “Everyone’s daughters are going to be victimized by this, but it’s part and parcel of the broader attack on the truth.”

Hovde blasted schools for pushing a political agenda at the expense of children’s education, placing much of the blame on the Department of Education’s agenda.

“The farther we remove decision making from where people are taxed, the worse outcomes you are going to get,” with schools “pushing social agendas” despite not adequately teaching children the basics of math and reading, Hovde told The Daily Wire at the event. “In the state of Wisconsin … 27 percent of our kids read at grade level, less are proficient at math.”

Hovde and Shapiro ended the day with a fireside chat by Elkhart Lake, where they were greeted by an estimated 300 attendees, some of whom told The Daily Wire about the issues they care about most as the elections draw near.

“It’s absolutely the economy, especially inflation,” Wisconsin voter Cameron Clark said when asked what the top issue on his mind is. “We have to get inflation under control.”

Clark told The Daily Wire that the industrial manufacturing business where he works has been strained by inflation.

“Payments are starting to be delayed. The understanding of where that next revenue stream is going to come from, it’s a little bit more uncertain,” he said. “We’re to the point where we are actually looking at, ‘can we even pursue hiring more people because of that uncertainty?’”

Sherry Gulke, a Wisconsin teacher who teaches classes on the Constitution, told The Daily Wire that the right to life, the border, and the economy were the issues she’s most concerned with.

Gulke said that “the sanctity of life” is her top issue, and that she hopes America’s leaders will protect “the most defenseless, being the preborn children who have no way of protecting themselves.”

The state of the economy also concerns Gulke. “I’m worried. I have 17 grandchildren. I’m concerned for what we’re leaving for them. My husband and I are on social security right now. I would like to believe that there’s going to be some left for my six kids and their families when the time comes,” Gulke said about the economy before adding, “Taxes are destroying us.”

On the border, she says that even midwestern states like hers are harmed by illegal immigration.

“It’s coming to Wisconsin, it’s coming to every state,” she said of the crisis of illegal immigration. “I don’t want to see my grandkids live in a world where they can’t just go out and ride their bikes in town anymore, where they can’t be in the neighborhood playing because of the possibility of trafficking or just other crimes.”