Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] WVUA FM, Tuscaloosa. Any opinions expressed in this program are those of the host and do not represent the thoughts or opinions of 90.7 WVUA or the University of Alabama.
[00:00:19] Hello, and welcome to season three, episode three of polls of the Nation. I'm Braden Vick. This is the place to get the highest political stories from local, state and national sources. We are going to start off national. So if you remember all the Burisma stuff, the House Republicans are going to impeach, they're going to impeach Joe Biden for this because Hunter Biden has connections to Burisma and they're allegedly brides being put in the situation. But one of the House GOP star witnesses, a former FBI informant by the name of Alex Smirnoff, found to be making a lot of that up. And that is where we're going to start off with. The federal prosecutors filed and said that Alex Smirnoff admitted to the authorities after his arrest that, quote, officials involved with russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Hunter Biden. Yeah, that is not great when one of the House GOP star witnesses against Joe Biden and Hunter has extensive contacts with the russian intelligence agencies that would include those who help run overseas assassinations and.
[00:01:38] Yeah, that's not great. Not great. There was another one who was described as a high ranking russian foreign intelligence service officer.
[00:01:48] Not great when the resist libs who have been screaming Russia, Russia, Russia for the past eight years, not great when they turn out to be partially proven true.
[00:01:58] At least personally. For me, I don't like it when the worst fears about foreign interference in a presidential election, or any us election for that matter, I do not like it when that turns out to be partially true. Now, granted, Alex Spirnoff is A-U-S. And israeli citizen. He's a dual citizen, and he did volunteer, Alex Spirov did, to turn over his israeli passport. Federal prosecutors say that he could just get a new passport at any time at a consulate. So apparently the prosecutors said that in addition to lying about the whole hunter, bride and bribe thing, spirit off, apparently lied about them.
[00:02:43] His liquid funds. Apparently he has 6 million in liquid funds, which he didn't disclose to pretrial services. He only told them he had 1500 cash on hand and 5000 in a personal checking account. Yeah, not exactly great to lie about that either. That's just going to be more charges for you as well.
[00:03:02] But I'll just say my piece on this. As far as the political implications of this, it's again, kind of like the hero report, which we're probably going to be talking about a lot in a couple of weeks, it's not going to have much of an impact, I don't think, because for this particular instance, there's so many stories that are coming out in a particular news cycle that at least in the immediate future, it's not going to affect really any poll numbers. The only thing this is going to affect is James Comer having massive egg on his face because this is your star man. And your star man is apparently a russian asset who has been making a lot of the stuff that y'all are using in your impeachment proceedings. He made it all up. And where do you go from there? I mean, House Democrats have already called for Republicans to give up the goose. Just give it up. You don't have the evidence because the evidence you did have were faked and fabricated by russian intelligence.
[00:04:12] Who knows how deep this whole thing mean? Who knows know. Foreign intelligence services are going to have much more of an impact than they already have. Who knows what interference they're going to be running, whether they're going to be running AI robocalls, which we'll get to at the end of the podcast for something involving New Hampshire and whether they're going to do some of what they've usually done, not just Russia, but China and Iran and some of the other nations in Israel, too, that might have Saudi Arabia, too, that might have somewhat of an interest in trying to determine who will be the next president of the United States for their own purposes. And we'll see where that goes from.
[00:05:01] I mean, we'll see how much egg Jim calmer gets on his face. I don't exactly think it'll be much amongst the republican base, but as far as Democrats are mean, they view this impeachment as nothing more than a hoax. What isn't a hoax is Donald Trump's legal fees.
[00:05:23] Yeah, his legal fees could probably cover about five of the production rooms in which we use to record the podcast. Yeah. Well over $400 million that he has to pay in settlements.
[00:05:36] There's two settlements to E. G. And Carol in regards to defamation that total over $90 million. And then the big one, in terms of the fraud case out in New York, he's apparently on the hook for $355,000,000 without interest. May I add, if you add interest, that goes to well over $400 million. And I believe in terms of the total legal fees, over $500 million. Now, it came out recently that a New York judge by the name of Arthur Engaron is not going to delay the enforcement of those penalties. Trump's legal team asked them to push it back by 30 days that Nguron pretty much dismissed, like, flat out basically saying they failed to justify any basis for a stay. So, yeah, the interest part of it is that $87,000 in interest get added to that amount each day on top of what has already been added. So every day you're not paying the settlement. Boom, another $87,000. That's more than what a lot of us make in a year, mind you. So this isn't some drop in the bucket. Like, I know Donald Trump is rich. I get that.
[00:06:59] He's not that rich, though, which becomes very apparent when you look at some of his campaign activities, when you look at the RNC, when you look at the Save America pack and all the other things that Donald Trump has been using to fundraise that fundraising. Oh, dear God.
[00:07:17] I'll be honest, it's terrible.
[00:07:20] As far as January 2024, cash on hand goes. What I mean is that at the end of January and at the start of February, the Biden campaign, I think, had 130,000,000 cash on hand. You know how much the Trump campaign had? Just 30 million. 30 million cash on hand, which is compounded by the fact that the Trump campaign has been paying a lot of these legal fees, which, yeah, that is, I think, one way to pay off the massive legal fees, just get your campaign supporters to do it. Some of whom are donating like, 1015 5100, some of them are donating significant chunks of their savings into your campaign.
[00:08:07] And I'm going to be completely honest, I don't think this is a good way to run a campaign which the pulse have you up. But is that going to be the case when you're not able to run as many ads as the Biden campaign is? Because let's just talk about the legal fees for a second.
[00:08:30] As far as the January expenditures go, as far as just January 2024, legal fees went for over 20%, in fact, probably over 25% of the entire Trump campaign's expenditures in regard to January 2024. Of the roughly $15 million spent by Trump's two main committees, $3.7 million went to his legal fees. And these aren't for the settlements. These are just to pay your lawyers who you're paying top dollar for. These lawyers, these lawyers that, by the way, I mean, they must not be doing a very good job if you have over $400 million in settlements, you have to pay.
[00:09:19] But essentially, what's been going on is that these campaign committees are having to give each other refunds. You're moving money, know, and it's like, what is going on at the Trump campaign? I think I've covered it recently. The know the Republican Party isn't doing too hot in regards to cash on hand. It's not going to get much better if Trump's plans for the RNC come to fruition because I think I discussed earlier that Ronald McDaniel is going to be on a way out as RNC chair. And Donald Trump's handpicked choice to replace her is Michael Watley, the head of the North Carolina GOP. And you know who the co chair is supposed to be?
[00:10:04] Large Trump. I cannot pretend to be serious about that.
[00:10:09] Just give me a bit of applause for a second. Laura Trump, seriously? Really?
[00:10:20] Look, I have a few things on my mind about why you would pick Laura Trump to be the RNC coach here. First and foremost, it's plain nepotism. I was like, oh, yeah, you're just making the republican party the literal party of Trump if you just staff it with your family. Yeah, totally. That's a great way to run one of the two major political parties in this country. And also, Laura Trump expressed interest in the RNC helping to pay Trump's legal bills again. The Biden campaign has nearly over $100 million more cash on hand than you. That's not even including the future four pack.
[00:11:04] That's not even including the dark money that they have. So it's probably a lot more.
[00:11:11] And oh, yeah, guess what? The future four pack has already committed $250,000,000 to run ads in these seven swing states.
[00:11:23] In Arizona, in North Carolina, in Nevada and Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. They're going to be running those for months, getting up all the tv markets that you got. You're going to be running that.
[00:11:38] How is the Trump campaign going to respond? It's like, yeah, who's going to take up more of the tv time?
[00:11:45] Especially because the Biden campaign has been raising significantly more money than the Trump campaign. These aren't even just leadership acts or anything like that. You're just talking about the campaigns themselves.
[00:11:56] As far as Trump goes. What, you're raising less than $14 million. Yeah. Joe Biden's raising 47, not 47, 42. $42 million.
[00:12:10] As far as, if you combine it with the DNC, compared to the less than 14 million, if you combine it with the RNC, the RNC, by the way, having the least cash on hand, true cash on hand, and justice for inflation, it has had in two and a half decades.
[00:12:27] This is a presidential election which by all ods, you should be favored to win.
[00:12:33] But your nominee is Donald Trump.
[00:12:38] And I've thought this for months. Yeah, Joe Biden is not a particularly strong incumbent, but I believe Donald Trump is so weak of a challenger, has so many liabilities, that the Democrats might just win that election by default.
[00:12:56] It's just the homage that people might not like Biden, but they hate Trump. And I'm not just talking about a lot of the democratic based voters who are lukewarm at best in regards to Joe Biden. I'm talking about the swing voters, your moderate, white, college educated, suburban voters in Mesa, or in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, or in Cabaret County, North Carolina, that, you know, they might adore Nikki Haley. They vote for them, for her in a republican primary. And we have one that's going to be coming on the day that this podcast gets released. South Carolina Republicans are going to be voting in that primary, and Donald Trump is going to clean Niki Haley's clock. He's probably going to win by over 30 points, and he's probably going to win every single county, too. I know Nikki Haley usually wins, like one county, but she didn't in Nevada when she was running its literal air. And I don't think she's going to win one in her home state. I don't think Richland county is going for sorry, especially because the South Carolina college republicans endorse Trump. Same thing with Clemson.
[00:14:05] It's over. It is quite literally over for Nikki Haley, but she's still going to fight.
[00:14:11] And that is going to prevent Donald Trump from being able to collaborate more with the RNC in regards to joint fundraising committees and all that stuff. Because Nikki Haley is still going to be running. And until Donald Trump gets the necessary amount of delegates to win the nomination, then his campaign won't be able to coordinate with the RNC. And oh, yeah, speaking of Nikki Haley, she raised more than you in January.
[00:14:36] Yeah. You're being outraged by someone who you're probably going to be beating by 50 points nationwide.
[00:14:44] How does that make you feel? If you're in the Trump campaign? It should make you feel like you're stuck in a five alarm fire situation, like people are warming up to your candidate. Donald Trump's favorable ratings were the highest they've been in years because partially because I think a lot of voters have short memories, like don't remember a lot of the stuff about the know, presidency and all that. The Biden campaign has a lot of money to play around with.
[00:15:14] You cannot go band for bandwidth, though, because they're just going to outrage you. They're going to outspend you, probably. They're going to be able to define you, who these voters say, hey, remember all the crazy stuff you did as president? And here's a lot of the crazy stuff he's going to do if he wins a second term.
[00:15:34] For better or worse, Biden is a known quantity. Donald Trump is also a known quantity. But a lot of people have sort of forgotten about a lot of the stuff that he has done as president. If you're the Biden campaign, yes, your candidates trailing in the polls, but the economic sentiment is going know you're doing a lot better on that, especially because all the good economic news that have been coming out, not just in jobs, but also the stock market, and you also have a lot of favorable issues that you're going to be able to use in bashing the Trump campaign and potentially getting your poll numbers up and getting favored to win another presidential election. We're going to be talking about that soon. We are going to pivot to Wisconsin, however, because I think this is the biggest news story that we are going to cover this week. There are new legislative maps in Wisconsin. The era of know, having germander the state legislative know, state House, I think it's state assembly and state Senate there. I'm not sure, but Wisconsin has fair maps. And Tony ever signed his maps into law in Wisconsin. And what is the composition of those House maps and Senate maps? Well, Wisconsin is a purple state, as I think a lot of us know. And it voted for Biden very nearly by less than a point in 2022. It voted for Republican Ron Johnson for Senate by a point, voted for Tony Evers, the democratic governor, by about three points. Very swingy state for the new Wisconsin House maps. It's a lot of pretty competitive districts. It's, Trump won 50 districts, Biden won 49 of them. So the median district is somewhat to the right of the state, not nearly as the right of the state as it was, say, in 2018. If you've seen some of those stats where Democrats win like basically a landslide in the popular vote in Wisconsin, but Republicans get like 63 out of like 99 seats, like, come on.
[00:17:36] And then what you have now in the Senate, Tony, is I think a Biden 18, Trump 15. Tony Evers won the same 18 compared to the republican nominee for governor, Tim Michaels. So very competitive maps, both sides are going to be able to actually win a legislative chamber, too. Shocking I know, but the immediate impact is going to be in the House because everybody's going to be up in the House. The Senate has staggered terms, so Democrats won't be able to flip the state Senate until, at the very best, 2026. But with the Democratic Party of Wisconsin being one of the most competent parties in the nation, being able to run competitive races in more areas, not just in the traditionally republican suburbs of Milwaukee, which Democrats have actually been doing pretty excellent in getting a lot of good positive trends. What about more the competitive rules of the state, a lot of the more blue leading districts containing a lot of the southwest of Wisconsin, which you're going to be able to run candidates in. That is something that I think deserves a mention and attention as well, because in more areas, you're going to see more tv ads, more ground gain, more get out the vote efforts, more presence of a state or local party or candidate that is only going to ratchet the sort of political pressure in a state like Wisconsin, which is going to be one of the states that determines who becomes president in 2024. And I know there's a lot to say about down ballot effects from up top. What about up ballot effects from down? Because these down ballot candidates, if you run them, if they run really good, competitive races, even if they don't win, if they outperform the top of the ticket, they can drag that top of the ticket up with them a little bit, too, because it's a lot easier if you're squeamish about voting for a republican candidate for president, it's a lot easier to do that if you have a republican candidate for state Senate, if you have a republican candidate for us House in a deep blue district whom you really like and who you will want to vote for, then it's much easier to say, okay, fine, I'll vote for the republican for president, too. Goes the same way for Democrats in red districts as like, there is a sort of upbound effect that I don't think needs to be overlooked, especially like in the Fox Valley. A lot of competitive districts now in the Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh, you know, all these particular cities. And again, sorry if I mispronounce any of these names. I'm not a Wisconsin native. Far from it, man. If I was a Wisconsin native, I'll be completely honest.
[00:20:31] I'll be completely honest.
[00:20:34] Probably be one of the more insufferable packers fans out there just because of the Super bowl wed a decade ago and also because of litigating the Dallas Cowboys thing. But I'm not a Packers fan, and I'm just happy for them that they were able to put up a very good fight in the playoffs as a seven seed. But that's besides the point. Wisconsin related, yes. Politics related, no, we're not talking about Aaron Rodgers here or anything like mean, though he's probably still registered to vote in California somewhere. But yeah, we'll also be talking about California and all these other states with competitive past races, talking about the ballot effects as the election cycle goes on. Talk about a lot of these competitive Orange county states in California and whatnot. But that's the topic for another time. We're still on with every with a competitive state such as Wisconsin, and I know I'm probably going to be repeating myself a lot when I say this, every competitive seat is going to draw money, and I think the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is. There are a lot better fundraisers than the Republican Party of Wisconsin because the Democrats have been a lot more competent at wing statewide elections, especially ever since 2016, than the republican party has been going for 2018. Scott Walker, for whatever reason, he had a lot of pull, especially in suburban Milwaukee. But Tony Evers ran a race. He won that race. And we are seeing the results of such like one of the mottos that we have here is that elections matter.
[00:22:20] From the local city council races all the way up to us president. Every vote counts. Every election matters because especially when it comes to these very close elections, especially the local races, one vote could literally make all the mean. One of the favorite examples I like to pull up is right here in Alabama. Walt Maddox won the Tuscaloosa county in its race for governor by one vote, and that was his own even more recently in 2022. I think for a Kineca county sheriff, the Democrat in that down ballot race won that race by one vote over the Republican. So this is still happening today. These very close elections are decided, in very rare cases, by one vote, but it's like tens of votes, hundreds of votes, maybe even up for president. They could be decided by even thousands of, like out of millions cast, especially in a closed state, as Wisconsin is. It's a possibility, especially because the legislative Republicans have decided that Milwaukee shouldn't get an extended time besides what they got in 2020 to count their absentee ballots for these future elections. And so that is going to be, again, another major contention.
[00:23:46] There is all the talk about Milwaukee and ballot fraud and all that sort of stuff, but that might draw more republican money. Like if you're fighting for these ballot fraud claims, if you're setting aside money for that, that's going to take away from these competitive state assembly and state senate districts that you have to win in order to keep a majority, not just in 2024, but throughout the rest of the.
[00:24:15] Could be a major problem for a state party which has faded into being, as far as statewide goes, as to being not really a secondary power, but a party that is inferior in competence, that is inferior in strategy in relation to the Wisconsin Democrats. Part of that is because I think the Wisconsin Democrats have had to basically fight a thousand times as hard as the Wisconsin Republicans in order to win, especially because of the entrenched power the Republicans gave themselves after the 2010 red wave, when Scott Walker came to office.
[00:24:54] And when you had the red map come in in Wisconsin, that just sort of brutally gerrymandered these state legislative districts for Republicans. Republicans, you were able to coast for almost a decade, over a decade, actually, on these uncompetitive state legislative races, which you could win very easily. You'd hold the majority. You didn't have to do anything. You didn't have to campaign. The seat was won for you, and you basically got to do what you wanted. Because, look, when the Democrats have to win 60% of the statewide vote in a competitive state, as Wisconsin is, to even think about winning a majority, that's when you know. That's when you know that your maps might be a brutal, brutal german because you're packing the vote in Milwaukee and in Madison, and the rural vote is distributed. There is bad geography for Democrats in Wisconsin because the rural vote is distributed to such an extent, especially in the south of Wisconsin, southwest of Wisconsin, where it's like the Republicans will have a slight advantage, but you're not having 70 30 advantages until you go to the northeast of Wisconsin. You have 60, 40, 55, 45 advantages.
[00:26:17] 58, 42.
[00:26:19] It's a sort of thing where the rule of o isn't that republican, but the Republicans are spread out in such a way which you could very easily draw six republican US House districts where you could draw 60 plus very safe republican state assembly districts. You could draw a very safe republican majority in the state Senate. That is not happening. And what was very interesting is that Tony Evers's maps were passed by Wisconsin Republicans and the Democrats, except for one of them, actually rejected it. Why would the Democrats reject their governor's maps? Well, let me just say they trust Robin Voss in the Wisconsin GOP as far as they can throw them. And I'm not sure that you can throw Robin Voss very like they've seen a lot of what they believe are dirty tricks that he's used to keep power and all that sort of stuff. They just didn't trust him. It's like, well, why are you passing these maps? Are you going to try and file a lawsuit to delay their, like, what's going on here? And that's why they rejected it, just because they don't trust the Wisconsin GOP to engage in good faith. But for the Wisconsin GOP, it's like, well, okay, either we pass Tony Evers maps or we reject them. Let the courts implement a map that's going to put us in a minority in both the state senate and the state house. And that would be a very bad thing because the court accepted the maps that were implemented and said that the ones that were drawn up by democratic groups were the most fair. And Tony Ebert's maps are not as good for Democrats as those other democratic drawn maps. So essentially, the Wisconsin Republicans like, okay, swallow this pill just so that you have a decent chance of holding a majority in the state House and by 2026, still being able to hold a majority in the state senate. But, yeah, as far as how this will affect future contests, again, if you live in a state of Wisconsin, your state has been very competitive for a decade. That's not changing anytime soon. But this is a lot more to do with the Dow ballot.
[00:28:48] The democratic policies now have a chance to be passed. Like, you can fight them on the policy, not just saying, here's what we would do if we were in power now you get to say, here's what we will do if we get power. It's not when you have the chance. If for some reason you get power, it's now if we get power. And that, I think, is a very big difference because you get to say, okay, we can actually win a chamber. We can affect policy change.
[00:29:21] If not after 2024. After 2026, you hold a governorship, you get the legislative trifecta, and boom, you're like Minnesota with the policies that they have. A lot of what was passed by Scott Walker, you can undo that. And if that's not going to fire up Wisconsin Democrats, I don't know what will.
[00:29:43] So I think for the back half of the 2020s, it's going to be similar. Democrats are going to be a lot more fired up than the Republicans are, at least in the statewide level, because you're working to undo a legacy and you have the opportunity to enforce such a radical exchange in Wisconsin policy that you can get the progressives, especially in Madison, who want to just basically change everything. Get the radical changers in, and you can also get the squeamish moderates in the Milwaukee suburbs who don't like the direction the Republican Party is going. So, yeah, very big news out of Wisconsin. Tony Evers has also asked for a challenge to Wisconsin congressional maps. I don't know if that's going to succeed in time for the 2024 elections, but with Mike Galliver's retirement, if there is a change on congressional maps, while this will let you know about it, Mike Gallagher's former seat, Wisconsin's eight congressional district, which would be in the Fox Valley in this instance, it could be drawn to be a lot more competitive. That's all I'll say about that. Now on to general discussions about 2024.
[00:30:57] I think that I need to dispel some truths, and a lot of these truths you heard from me before, not just in season two, but in season one. Let's start out with the first thing. The 2024 presidential election is going to be between Joe Biden, the democratic nominee, and the incumbent president, and Donald Trump, the republican nominee, and the former president of the United States.
[00:31:23] That has been the truth ever since Joe Biden announced he was running for reelection last March. I think it was last March. It was been nearly a year.
[00:31:34] And that's not going to change unless one of them dies.
[00:31:40] If Joe Biden dies or is otherwise incapable of running for president again, Vice President Kamala Harris will be the democratic nominee in that instance. A vice presidential nominee, I don't know. Probably someone like Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor and who's currently serving as the secretary of transportation. If Donald Trump dies, that's what I'll concede. Some uncertainty. Nikki Haley is running for president. I think mostly to provide a contrast to herself and Trump and to provide a home for never Trump Republicans. But also, if Donald Trump is unable to go to the convention, because, know, I won't say either. He's.
[00:32:26] He's. If he dies, if Donald Trump dies, then Nikki Haley wants to be in that position to where I have delegates, I can be the consensus choice. You've seen what Nikki Healy does in the polls. She's whooping Joe Biden in a lot of these polls, not just nationally, but statewide. Okay. If you believe the polls, Nikki Haley would win an over 400 elect dual vote landslide. Again, I don't believe those margins for an instant, but there you go. You have those poll numbers from reputable pollsters that you can use to say, hey, if you nominate me, we will win and we will win big.
[00:33:06] And that is a good motivation as any, especially because you don't know what's going to happen with Trump's legal know. We've got a few months before the convention. We're gonna have a trial start.
[00:33:22] By the end of next month, we're gonna have jury selection for a trial.
[00:33:27] And that legal case is going to be running up until the convention. Let's look up when the RNC convention is going to be held. It's going to be held in mid July, from July 15 to July 18 in 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So again, another Milwaukee story to add to this whole thing.
[00:33:58] And let's be completely honest. Even if Donald Trump is found guilty, if he goes to jail for whatever reason before the convention, he's still going to be the republican nominee. You can run from prison. Like look up Eugene Depp's. He ran for prison. I believe in 1912, a decent chunk of the vote from prison.
[00:34:19] Donald Trump has an iron grip over half of the republican base.
[00:34:25] Well over half the republican base. Am I like. He is the Republican Party like, the Republican Party today is the party of Trump.
[00:34:35] And people like Haley, like, you need to recognize this is not your party anymore. This ain't the party of Romney. Like, he's gone from the Senate after this year, he's retiring. Boom, done.
[00:34:51] And now it is the party of Donald Trump. It is the party of Marjorie Caleb Green. It is the party of a person like a Lauren Boeber. It is no longer the party of a Ken buck. It is not the party of a Cassie Morris Rogers or Mike Gallagher.
[00:35:10] This is the party of Harriet Hageman. This is the party of Miller.
[00:35:17] Like, the republican party is a lot more right wing than it was a decade ago.
[00:35:26] And I know that a lot of these never Trump conservatives have wrestled with that. A lot of them, like, you're sticking with the party because while we can't have a Democrat in the White House, some of them just do not like Trump so much that they have decided to vote for Democrats. It's like, well, I didn't leave the party. The party left me sort of thing. That's why Joe Biden won in 2020.
[00:35:46] Like getting these swings in Maricopa County, Arizona, in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, in Oakland County, Michigan, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, in Cop County, Georgia, in Washoe County, Nevada, and all these others with high suburban populations where you would find these who are never Trump Republicans.
[00:36:10] A lot of them pulled the lever for Joe Biden, and that's what did him in because of the losses he sustained.
[00:36:19] Know, college educated voters which heavily populate the suburbs a lot more than they do the rest of the country, I might add.
[00:36:29] So we have to set the tone for what the election is going to be. I think a lot of people in the media are being dishonest right now because they are writing for their peers. Their peers do not want a Biden versus Trump rematch. Neither do the voters. But media journalists, y'all are smart enough to understand that the democratic base wants Joe Biden and the republican base wants Donald Trump, for better or for worse.
[00:37:04] And that whatever fantasies y'all have about Gavin Newsom or Nikki Haley or Michelle Obama or whatever sort of name you want to throw out, like, oh, well, Biden should drop out and it should go to a contested convention. Let me tell you something. If the democratic party does not, if, for whatever reason, it goes to a contested convention and Joe Biden's not able to serve as president, if whatever reason he's either decide, I don't want to run for president or he dies.
[00:37:34] If Kamala Harris, the vice president of the United States, is not nominated for president in that instance, good luck with turning out the black vote. Okay?
[00:37:46] Too bad the black voter base is the core democratic voter base.
[00:37:52] If you are alienating them, good luck with winning Georgia. Good luck with winning North Carolina. They're necessary to win Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan.
[00:38:06] They're key to any shot you have of flipping Texas or winning the Senate or the US House.
[00:38:15] If you pass up Kamala Harris, what does that do to the south asian vote as well?
[00:38:21] If you're passing up someone as qualified as Kamala Harris is for Gavin Newsom.
[00:38:29] You kidding?
[00:38:31] Like you really think Gavin Newsom would be a better choice than Kamala Harris?
[00:38:37] I have to ask y'all, this isn't me trying to analyze anything. This is me asking the media, what are y'all spoken to? Where you think the democratic party, the democratic party, which made South Carolina the first in the nation primary over the objections of New Hampshire, why would you think that the Democratic Party delegates would pass, accomplish? Why would you think Joe Biden would tell his delegates not to vote for Vice President Harris? Why?
[00:39:14] It makes absolutely zero sense.
[00:39:19] Why would you do that? If you're going to pass up the second of the command, who is of black, who is of south asian descent, free white guy from California, the Democrats were losing a landslide.
[00:39:41] That's not something that the democratic party is going to do.
[00:39:45] So be honest with yourselves.
[00:39:48] And though some of the ones who want to abandon Biden are at the very least being honest with themselves, like, they don't want Biden to run. Some of them have come to the reality that, yes, it would be Kamala Harris. And you have to wrestle with the fact about Kamala Harris's electoral pluses and minuses, and you have to decide, if you do not want Biden to run, it's going to be Kamala Harris. Do you think Kamala Harris would have a better shot of beating Donald Trump than Joe Biden? If you think, you think she would, then fair enough, advocate for Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden. That's your prerogative. It at least makes logical sense that way. But do not, for the love of God, put in your West Wing or your beat fantasies about some random democratic figure or JB Pritzker or Gretchen Whitmer stepping up to replace Biden. That's not going to happen. All right, let's be honest. Be honest with yourselves, media.
[00:40:47] Be honest about the political conditions of our time.
[00:40:51] Be honest that, yes, we have two unpopular politicians who are going to be the main party nominees for president.
[00:41:02] The only two people who have any prayer of gaining 270 electoral votes at this time are Joe Biden and Donald Trump. One of those two is going to be president on January 20, 2025. At the end of that day, one of those people is going to be president.
[00:41:21] So to all the people on the democratic side who are wetting the bed once every 3 hours, to the Republicans who are still trying to loot themselves into thinking that Donald Trump might not be the republican nominee, you have to admit reality.
[00:41:41] You have to accept reality. I know a lot of you are probably going through the five stages of grief at this moment in regards to the nomination process, but I don't know about y'all, but I accepted when Joe Biden ran for reelection, when he announced he was running for election, I'm like, okay, it's going to be a repeat. It's going to be Biden. It's going to be Trump.
[00:42:04] And the sooner we can operate off of that basis that the presidential election in 2024 is going to be between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the better.
[00:42:17] If you're a supporter of Dean Phillips or, God forbid, Marion Williamson, I'll pour out a cold one for you. I'll pray for you. You need it. You really need it. Like, if you were a supporter of Ron DeSantis or Nikki Healy or graffiti Grandmasami or any other GOP candidates, same deal. I'm pouring out a colon for you.
[00:42:40] Cheers. You need it.
[00:42:43] And, yeah, I will say about the primaries, though, as far as the Michigan democratic primary is concerned, as far as the Gaza issues related, I'm going to be very interested to see what that uncommitted number means. I'm not saying that the primaries are worthless, because when you have such uncompetitive primaries, the interesting thing to look at is see where are the presumptive nominees doing weakest, where are they getting the least amount of vote share? And that usually portends to trends that the other party is going to be able to capitalize on.
[00:43:23] And these liabilities are usually in the same places that the Republicans gain in 2020 and the Democrats gained in 2020. Trump's liabilities are in college educated suburbs, burps, and urban areas. We saw this in Iowa and in Iowa City and Johnson county. We saw this in New Hampshire as well. We even saw it in Nevada. And that when none of these candidates took home a huge victory, Nikki Haley did her best in Washu county, the area where, the county where Democrats have gotten decent swings out of.
[00:43:58] As far as Joe Biden is concerned, his main weakness is rural white voters who live in areas of not very high college education rates. The sort of voters that are usually a lot more moderate and conservative in their disposition and are either squeamish about Joe Biden or they're already like especially a lot of those real Nevada counties. None of the above, none of these candidates gets a decent chunk of the vote.
[00:44:33] Those voters are maybe registered Democrats, but they're Republicans like they're dinos, Democrats in name only. These people voted for Donald Trump twice, probably.
[00:44:44] And if we're going to be completely honest, a lot of those voters aren't exactly edible. Some are, but some aren't. And it's the same thing with the Republicans. Now, the uncommitted vote in Michigan is going to be very interesting because we will be actually seeing for the first time the scope of the left wing rebellion against Joe Biden in regards to Palestine. And the interesting thing, not just in Dearborn, not just in like Ann Arbor or East Lansing or anything else, I want to see what that vote number is and where is it strongest. Because there we will see know Joe Biden's weakness from the left. Where is it coming from and how strong is it?
[00:45:36] Because it could be very strong. It could be a massive liability for Joe Biden.
[00:45:42] But even if you're not able to fix that, even if you keep the ghost course you're going on with Israel, I'm still not certain that Donald Trump is a favorite. Do you want to know why? I think that is just look at the Alabama Supreme Court a couple days ago.
[00:45:59] If you were ruling that you were going to make a court ruling that extra uterine embryos, frozen embryos outside of the womb, if you're going to rule that those are children and their destruction would be a crime akin to murder, then you've basically temporarily ended IVF care in the state. Like three hospitals, two in Birmingham and one in mobile have temporarily paused IVF treatments.
[00:46:32] What are y'all doing to two earth, two Republicans? What are you doing? You are doing the exact same things that made you blow the 2022 midterms. You're doing the exact same things that made you blow the 2020 presidential election.
[00:46:54] Tell me why.
[00:46:57] On God's green earth, politically, I'm just speaking politically, I'm not even speaking to the one in six Americans who suffer from fertility issues and whom IVF would be a godsend to. I'm not just talking about, know, millions of families which have been founded through IVF, not just in the US but around the world. I'm not just speaking, know the reproductive health care options that families and that women have.
[00:47:31] I'm not just speaking to, I'm speaking about the politics of it.
[00:47:37] When you're going too far for not just national U. S. House Republicans but Alabama Republicans, that's when you know you might have stepped on a few rapes.
[00:47:48] Like the Alabama Republicans and Alabama Democrats, they filed separate bills in the House which would protect in vitro fertilization, which would rule that these extra uterine embryos, these frozen embryos, they would rule them as not children, as not unborn children or human beings or anything like that, and thus destruction wouldn't be a crime. Why you say that? Well, it's because in the retro fertilization process, some of the sermon egg things like they're not going to be able to survive in the womb.
[00:48:24] That destruction is part of the process.
[00:48:27] As to the ambiguity of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling, you could rule that their destruction would be a crime and thus you could have forced implantation on them, forced implantation of embryos which wouldn't have a chance of surviving forced miscarriages.
[00:48:46] Do you think women are going to vote for that? Do you think families going to vote for that?
[00:48:51] I don't think so.
[00:48:53] Like the vast majority of the american people, they support in vitro polarization, even like three fourth of Republicans do.
[00:49:02] Several republican politicians, Mike Pence, Michelle Steele, they've conceived families through in vitro fertilization.
[00:49:15] Granted, this probably speaks to the sort of, oh, when you use it, you understand that it shouldn't be banned or anything like that. A lot of levels are going to be like, oh, so you want to protect the access when you have it, when it's affecting you personally, that's when you're going to speak up about it.
[00:49:32] But again, it speaks to the reason why the Republicans blew the US Senate in 2022. It isn't just because you nominated candidates that would be less appealing than if I cut off my pinky finger.
[00:49:50] It's also because as much as the american public does not like Joe Biden, the American Republic does not like the GOP more. In my opinion. If they like the GOP more, they like the GOP's candidates. And branding Hershel Walker would be in the US Senate. So would Adam Laxalt, so would Oz.
[00:50:15] That's.
[00:50:17] And probably potentially so would Blake masters. Now, granted, Blake masters probably loses anyways because he's Blake masters. But still, that's at least three US Senate seats you blew. Granted, John Federerburn also beat Dr. Oz by five points, but still, there's multiple U. S. Senate seats you blew. Because not only did you nominate awful candidates, but the voters, which in a lot of these states, especially Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, that had electorates that voted for Trump in 2020, they viewed not just these candidates, but the party as too beyond the pale, that maybe just for this one time only, they'll pull the lever for Democrats. And for some of those orders that one time only becomes two times only, then three times only, and all of a sudden you're basically a straight ticket democratic vote.
[00:51:13] That's just part of what trends are.
[00:51:16] I allow myself this once and it's like, oh, I voted for a democratic candidate the following year, but. So I'll vote for a couple more this time out, then I'll vote for a few more the next election, and just the dominant effect keeps going there.
[00:51:32] I get that Tom Parker, the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, I get that he is a dominionist, I get that he is a christian nationalist. I get that he follows the seven mountains of, oh, we should control all these different aspects of the lives, is that people's lives should all be devoted to God.
[00:51:52] But, Tom, I've got to ask you something.
[00:51:56] Do you honestly think that banning in vitro fertilization is in any way keeping with the pro life or pronatalist movements here in America?
[00:52:08] Have we gotten to a point where the pro life physician is to prevent the conception of thousands of families, thousands of children, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands? If you go years into the future, is that a pro life physician.
[00:52:26] No, it's not a pro life physician.
[00:52:29] And the thing that this does, besides harm the thousands of families that are using in vitro fertilization in the state of Alabama right now, is the simple fact that the Democrats are going to be able to use this. The Biden campaign has been going gangbusters on this issue ever since the ruling got put in place. Half the Biden campaign's tweets have been about this ruling.
[00:53:01] This is going to be a part of their reproductive health and pro abortion, pro choice messaging.
[00:53:08] This case is going to be used to say the Republicans were never going to stop at abortion. You're going to use Clarence Thomas's cases on Obershu. You're going to use a Tennessee governor signing something in the law that would allow public officials to refuse to certify gay marriages.
[00:53:27] They're going to use these examples as proof that the Republican Party cannot be trusted to be in power because Biden campaign, the other Democrats are going to say the republican party wants to take your rights away. That's what they're going to say. And they're going to have the money spread to do it by the like, they're probably going to spend over a billion dollars, not just because of the small money and big money donors that they've got, but also the PACs are just raising a lot more money than the Trump campaigns is. Crucially, they're not having to pay legal fees.
[00:54:01] They're just not, not any extraneous legal fees other than what you have, like the wilds for.
[00:54:10] Like, you're not paying millions of dollars to lawyers who probably wouldn't know their way around a simple car crash.
[00:54:19] Like, I don't get it. I don't get the politics of the IVF ruling. I don't get the sort of like, actual ruling itself. I don't get why you would do it, and I do not get why. If you are a partisan Republican, the Alabama Supreme Court is full Republican.
[00:54:43] If you are a committee Republican who wants to see your party win a presidential, a competitive presidential election in 2024, why on God's green earth would you do anything that could jeopardize that? Why would you give the Democrats such an issue that they are going to run on for the next eight and a half months?
[00:55:05] Why do you think that? It doesn't matter because Chump's going to win anyway. Do you think Sean's appointed by God or something? Spoilers. He's not.
[00:55:15] He could very well lose.
[00:55:18] And if he does lose, this ruling is going to be why or at least a part of it. Also, another thing, another thing in regards to the IVF thing in regards to the politics of it all, there is a special Alabama state House election on March 26, about a month out from when this episode is coming out in House district ten.
[00:55:41] It used to be republican. It went for Trump by less than a point in 2020. It is one of the fastest left shrining districts, not just in Alabama, but in the nation. Southern Huntsville, southern Madison. It has redstone arsenal in it.
[00:55:55] Decently cosmopolitan, especially for Alabama.
[00:56:00] Like, one thing to note about the Huntsville suburbs, especially like Madison areas like that, they're not like Vesavia Hills, they're not like Brook.
[00:56:08] Like there's a lot less religious there, and they're going to be a lot more social liberal. And this IVF ruling is only going to serve the Maryland Lance campaign. They're going to pounce on this like they were running a spirited campaign against Madison City council and Teddy Powell. And as for Marilyn Lance herself, she's endorsed by the former republican representative of that, you know, special election came around. Like I discussed this, I believe in around the end of season two, because you have David Cole, a former representative there. He got arrested, charged and convicted for voter fraud. You voted in the wrong district. That's why the special election is coming out. And now you have national attention to this district. This district is going to be seen now by the national parties as how far does Dobbs messaging go?
[00:57:01] And when you have a ruling from the state of Alabama that says that republican and conservative judges are going to go beyond abortion in regards to an anti abortion agenda, then that's just something that's going to put the Democrats in a much better spot than they were a week ago.
[00:57:25] And again, I'm not just speaking about the politics of it all. I'm not just speaking about the impact, the personal impact this is going to have on many families in Alabama across the like we're folks of the nation, how is this going to affect how both presidential campaigns operate? How is that going to affect how Alabama Democrats and Alabama Republicans operate? Is this going to be one of the catalysts for a revival of the Alabama Democrats in suburban areas? If Maryland lands wins on March 26, that's going to send shockwaves throughout the nation.
[00:58:03] And we're going to be covering that House district ten special election for the next month. And when those election results come out, we're going to be doing analysis on the week of that week of that election, not just for the local or the state, but also the national impacts as well.
[00:58:23] I do want to end off on somewhat of a funny but also serious story. And I say funny because it involves some of the AI robocalls that we were talking about. So do y'all remember when there was this AI robocall that was using Joe Biden's voice in New Hampshire saying, oh, don't vote in the democratic primary for New Hampshire? Yeah, don't do that. Well, it turns out we now know who did that. So it was a man by the name of Paul Carpenter. He is a magician from New Orleans.
[00:58:58] And he says that he was hired to use AI software to make that imitation.
[00:59:06] He says that he created the audio using the robocall but did not distribute it.
[00:59:11] He says he was in a situation where someone offered him some money to do something and he did it. He said there was no malicious intent. He didn't know how it was going to be distributed. The person who distributed it, person who hired Paul Carpenter, was Steve Kramer.
[00:59:25] He is affiliated with the Dean Phillips campaign. He worked on ballot access for him.
[00:59:32] The problem is the Dean Phillips campaign is like, dude, we might take you to court for this.
[00:59:39] Like, the Dean Phillips campaign and Dean Phillips himself have expressed outrage. They'll never work with him again. They might pursue legal action if these allegations are confirmed to be true, that Steve Kramer used this roller call to sort of try and lower the Biden vote and maybe make Dean Phillips win in New Hampshire, which didn't work. Biden won in a writing campaign by 40 points. A writing campaign that he did not even wage.
[01:00:09] But the thing that's kind of funny about this whole thing about Steve Kramer is who he's worked for in the past. This guy's worked for Kanye.
[01:00:17] You know, remember with the birthday party when Kanye west ran for president?
[01:00:22] Yeah. Steve Kramer has worked for dozens of campaigns, longtime political operative. One of the more recent ones was that 2020 Kanye for president campaign.
[01:00:33] Apparently he's going to be publishing an op ed very soon. By the time this episode comes out, he might have already published it.
[01:00:42] And granted, there isn't any evidence that the Dean Phillips campaign ever directed Steve Kramer to produce or disseminate that roll call.
[01:00:53] Kramer was paid a hefty sum, about $260,000, by Dean Phillips's campaign in December and in January. And they were from ballot access work in New York and Pennsylvania, which you have to canvas for the signatures necessary to qualify for the ballot. In these instances.
[01:01:08] The Dean Phillips campaign said that this work included the production and distribution of a robocall that featured Dean Phillips's voice, like his actual voice, not an AI voice. Kramer did get out the vote work and all that stuff.
[01:01:21] But the Dean Phillips campaign says that if Kramer did have any involvement in these robocalls, he did so of his own volition. So, yeah, I'll end this off by saying something.
[01:01:34] AI is going to be a huge issue in 2024, if not on the policy matter. It is going to play a big role in determining who gets to be president, because the advancement of AI with this OpenAI and all these other new technologies, there's going to be AI use either by people affiliated with the campaign or by people who work with the campaign, but not of the campaign's volition, who are going to make these AI videos, AI protocols and all this stuff.
[01:02:10] And it's going to be used to create a lot of mass disinformation in 2024 in this presidential election cycle.
[01:02:17] And these AI things, they're going to be wild. And the lengths that operators will go to to make sure their candidates win, they're going to go to the max. And I want to warn all of you all listening now so that you all prepare for this in the future, especially around October. Do not be surprised if there is a huge AI scandal involving one of the campaigns and their use to sort of try to lower another candidate's vote totals, like trying to do disinformation about when to vote, how to vote and all that sort of stuff.
[01:02:57] Because remember, people that do disinformation, even if they're joking or half joking or something like that, even they say they're joking about it, you can get put in jail for that.
[01:03:09] And this will be something that we have to watch over this election cycle because it's going to come up again. It's going to come up again, and it's going to come up again. So thank you all for watching. Thank you all for listening. Season three, episode three of Pulse of the Nation. I am Brendan Vick. We will be back next week for our first March edition of Pulse of the Nation. We will be getting closer to Super Tuesday, and that will be where we cover which states are going to be voting as Super Tuesday, especially in Alabama and some of the primaries that are coming up that way. Thank you all for listening. And this has been the pulse of the nation.
[01:03:53] Any opinions expressed in this program are those of the host and do not represent the thoughts or opinions of 90.7 WVUA or the University of Alabama. WVUA FM, Tuscaloosa.
