Paula Witzel, the Chair of the San Diego County Republican Party, joins us to talk about how she and her party are fighting to elect conservative candidates and keep control of the state of California. She also talks about the challenges facing the party and how they are fighting for the future of the country.
00:06:56.860But everybody in the region knows him.
00:06:58.520He's very well known and he's very well liked and well loved in his area, actually.
00:07:02.740So I think he, you know, we lament this as Republicans, but this was really, from his point of view, his only pathway to a possible victory of keeping his seat.
00:07:14.620Well, I think that Issa was a little premature in his abandonment as well.
00:07:19.100I mean, he's got tons of funding, tons of reputation, tons of history, tons of connections.
00:07:23.640I think he could have probably stretched it out and won if he'd persevered through it.
00:07:27.520I think he saw the map change a little bit.
00:07:32.540Well, initially, there was the belief that that would be the position he would take.
00:07:37.040Because when you went from, you know, a certain universe of Republican seats to a constrained
00:07:41.740universe of those seats, the big concern was that a lot of these folks would start running against
00:07:45.480each other and they would burn to the ground the resources that they had built up. And so I think
00:07:51.180here, ISA will take his chips off the table and probably redeploy them in places that can be
00:07:57.720more helpful. He is a party builder. I mean, this is the guy who funded out of his own pocket
00:08:03.260the recall of Gray Davis, who was the governor of California. The only successful recall we've had.
00:08:09.380He was a winner in that regard, consistently won. I mean, he won some very close elections here in San Diego County when he represented this community. And I think you'll see him in the Trump administration somewhere. I think also—
00:08:21.380No, I mean, he's not going to be gone. We know that for sure. He's a political animal. He's going to slide somewhere else.
00:08:25.980But here's the question I want to ask you, Paula. Imagine you're making a case to a Democrat or maybe even a left-leaning independent about why the loss of a Daryl Issa in the congressional delegation is bad for them.
00:08:41.060Like even if you didn't agree with Daryl Issa on a vote or this or that, he was one of the most senior people in Congress. He could bring home the bacon. He could make things happen.
00:08:50.580And do you think there's a compelling case to make that Democrats actually hurt themselves by getting rid of a guy like Daryl?
00:09:17.700And so over the years, he'd really built a solid reputation that people were voting for him because it was Daryl Issa, not because he was a Republican.
00:09:28.700So I think he would have had a very good shot at keeping his seat.
00:09:32.440Well, if there was any shot, I think he would have done it.
00:09:36.180I think he would have assessed just how many people in this state blindly show up and vote Democrat.
00:09:40.800Now, the reason this is an important national conversation is because what we've been talking about in these dynamics and these moves on the chessboard, you're going to see this exact same thing play out in Virginia where they're doing the same thing.
00:09:53.780They're going to squeeze Republicans. Virginia could end up losing some senior folks and it's all going to happen.
00:09:59.920We just picked up a Republican in Virginia, didn't we?
00:10:02.880Oh, they just voted to redistrict. They're going to go to like 10 Democrats, one Republican.
00:10:07.740They're going to squeeze all the Republicans into one, you know, kind of one district that looks like it was.
00:10:13.580I think there was some Muslim candidate who had a bunch of racist tweets that came out like 10 years ago.
00:10:17.240And so he lost. And so a Republican just jumped into his seat.
00:10:20.680I'm pretty sure I just had a lot. We'll check it out in Congress.
00:10:23.500I think it was it might have been a state position. I thought it was Congress.
00:10:26.960Well, I must have missed it. One thing that that we do want to look at, too, as it relates to the California discussion is this governor's race.
00:10:34.140Yeah. And and big story about Governor Swalwell.
00:10:59.860I mean, everyday life is slapping Californians in the face.
00:11:03.580You go to the gas pump, and there's signs on the gas pump that say you are paying the highest price for gasoline in the entire country, higher than Hawaii.
00:11:13.100If only you guys had gas and fuel nearby that you could access.
00:11:17.180Did you see Newsom's tweet about that?
00:12:05.700This is shooting yourself in the foot, and he has the nerve to talk to Trump that way.
00:12:09.320The question, though, is whether or not this really is a breaking point with this poll saying 52% wrong direction, or is this something where you're still going to see Republican infighting?
00:12:22.260Can that poll overcome TDS in California?
00:12:28.700That is definitely a challenge because, I mean, I have relatives that this weekend made a comment about the fact that President Trump shines his own shoes every morning.
00:12:40.500And this person thought that was a negative thing.
00:12:44.200He can't afford to get someone to do that?
00:12:46.560I mean, if he has someone doing it, well, he can't shine his own shoes?
00:12:48.840This is a person that could have anyone do these menial tasks, but yet he was disciplined and he does it because that's something his father taught him to do.
00:12:57.240And so there's nothing that President Trump can do that will change people's minds because it's emotional.
00:13:11.780I mean, do they hate Trump so much that they're going to go and vote against independent candidate?
00:13:15.500Well, what happens is that when the Democrats issue campaign materials and advertisements and that sort of thing,
00:13:25.240They always try to tie the candidate to President Trump because that's how they see their pathway to to victory is by tying that candidate, whether they're a city councilman, it doesn't really matter.
00:13:39.600They tie they try to tie him. They put pictures of President Trump on mailers, that sort of thing, to make it look like that person, whether it is true or not, is a Trump surrogate.
00:13:51.180I'm trying to understand, Pearson, what goes into the psychosis of someone who will vote against their own interests because of that very raw emotion that Paula just described.
00:14:02.720Like, I'm thinking about the people who I've disliked the most, like in all of politics.
00:14:09.060And I can't imagine caring more about showing harm to them than improving my own life.
00:14:18.080like what what what level of the simulation are we in when that is the critical mass in not only
00:14:24.260california and a lot of these blue states there is a level of indoctrination that has been going on
00:14:31.340for for decades at this point and it has reached a critical mass now and it sounds like hyperbole
00:14:37.680or a cliche to talk about it this way but i think it really is at a point where these
00:14:42.060these democrat voters genuinely believe the stuff that they hear about trump and that i i really
00:14:48.820think that it is a survival mode it's almost like fight or flight you know they have they have an
00:14:53.300internal panic when they think about someone on the right getting into a position of power because
00:14:58.180all they hear and see is people like newsom talking about how evil we are and that you're
00:15:03.940going to die if trump gets into office you know these these literally life situations yeah you
00:15:09.180might put somebody with COVID in your nursing home or something. Yeah, something horrible like
00:15:12.800that. So you think you attribute it to that indoctrination as much as someone's own self
00:15:20.580loathing? Because I honestly, let me throw out a theory for you, okay? The reason a voter would
00:15:28.180vote to signal their hatred of Trump more than improving their own life conditions is because
00:15:34.420their own situation has become so grave and self-obsessed and and lacking the divine lacking
00:15:44.040i don't think it's mutually exclusive they hate themselves so much that they can't even imagine
00:15:48.980their circumstances getting good enough where they would enjoy their own company and so instead
00:15:53.320what's most important to them is sending a signal that oh i hate trump that's it's not mutually
00:15:59.040exclusive i think the other thing is i i think that the mainstream media has a lot to do with
00:16:05.060it because uh some of these people only watch mainstream media so they are not in connection
00:16:10.220with reality they uh are told that the economy's terrible and they believe it even though uh don't
00:16:19.380believe your lion eyes because uh the you know we're here uh seeing a lot of things get better
00:16:25.980for citizens in the country in general.
00:16:30.760We are watching, I get text messages from relatives in Texas
00:16:34.440with pictures of the pump and the gas pump,
00:16:37.700and they send it to me because, ha, ha, ha, ha,
00:16:39.420we're paying $1.99 and I'm paying $4.50, right?
00:16:44.080And so, but people just are detached from reality
00:16:48.060because they're believing what the mainstream media is telling them.
00:18:35.200Well, I was on the Judiciary Committee with Eric Swalwell, and Eric Swalwell had to feign these big, like, swells of emotion and outrage because he isn't smart enough to, you know, go through a witness's testimony and draw out the key components.
00:18:52.420He isn't sharp enough to read the documents and perform a cross-examination.
00:19:47.300But their reputations are not that stellar.
00:19:52.920But more importantly is what they would do for the state of California.
00:19:56.260Well, I want to point out that Mr. Swalwell has missed more votes in Congress, thank God, than anyone else, including, and I'm going to mess this name up, Raul Grijalva, who died a year ago.
00:20:15.020Swalwell has missed more votes than him.
00:20:44.000Okay, so as a political strategist in this state, which one of the Democrats would you want to run against?
00:20:49.880If you had one of the prominent Republicans like Steve Hilton or Chad Bianco in that in that subsequent election, who do you look at and say, that's who we want?
00:25:14.060He was the only teacher in school who didn't participate in the union, and they hated him for that because he wasn't one of the good old boys.
00:25:33.900Does that happen now where people feel intimidated to participate?
00:25:38.340Yes, because if you choose not to participate, if you opt out, they say, well, if anything ever happens to you, we're not going to go to bat for you.
00:25:46.120We won't negotiate salary increases or benefits for you.
00:25:51.000So they really threaten people with dire consequences.
00:26:42.840There's not a tax that Democrats don't like, and that's really the problem.
00:26:46.380So they think they can tax their way out of any issue, any problem, any concern.
00:26:51.580And we've already seen here in California that they have, what, 19 billion or some big number that they've attributed to homelessness, and homelessness has only gotten worse.
00:27:02.560So now they're trying to create new taxes to address the homeless problem.
00:27:35.500Well, it's, it's what I hear from my wife is Lebanese and her, you know, her whole family came from Lebanon and they have a mindset over there that the West is this, it's, it's heaven.
00:28:58.480That's what's going to happen is they're going to cascade down to the middle class.
00:29:00.980Yeah, if you are one of those middle class voters and Democrats told you that these billionaire taxes would be really good for you and then you see producers leaving, do you think it's hitting the –
00:29:59.620The average people out there would see the gas going up and think, well, it's because Trump's attacking Iran, not because Gavin Newsom shut down 40 refineries or whatever it was.
00:32:09.460I think another thing to use is the fraud stories.
00:32:12.660So you've got this article pulled for us.
00:32:16.080Under Newsom, hospice fraud explodes with $105 million in Medicare overbilling, 700 fraud warnings.
00:32:23.440Let me tell you something that we've picked up on the Matt Gaetz show, which we make every nine o'clock on weekdays here on One American News.
00:32:32.340People are really focused in on this fraud.
00:32:35.420Some of the biggest spikes we see in audience on our show come when we walk people through not just the headline allegations, but who actually gets hurt by this.
00:32:47.780And it's not like the people that get hurt are one political party or the other or even one age group.
00:32:53.440or the other. It is all up and down the spectrum. I mean, you talk about hospice fraud. You are
00:32:58.180taking money away. You are stealing from dying people with patients and clinics that don't
00:33:06.420exist, that are ghost-like. I really believe of all these headlines that we've seen, the stories
00:33:13.060of how Democrat-run jurisdictions take the money that should go to vulnerable people and they waste
00:33:19.960it or they give it to foreigners, I think that could cut through, Paula.
00:33:23.040And the fact that it's taxpayer money.
00:34:02.960And so that's not going to play well for Gavin Newsom.
00:34:05.640In one address, at one address in L.A., they had 89 hospices registered at one address.
00:34:15.620You're telling me that some AI bot can't, like, decipher that and stop it?
00:34:20.700So I don't know about the ones in California, but the issue they were having in Minnesota was these would get flagged, and they've been flagged for, like, the last decade.
00:34:29.440And they would be reviewed and dismissed.
00:34:32.640Whoever was reviewing it would just dismiss the investigation.
00:34:58.260I believe that the administration right now is building out cases against some of these fraud networks.
00:35:03.840I mean, come on, start arresting people, man.
00:35:06.540How many people have we caught in these fraud schemes in Minneapolis?
00:35:10.480Well, a bunch of them have been arrested in Minneapolis.
00:35:11.900I think it was like 79 was the last number I heard.
00:35:15.260Well, some have gotten some long prison sentences, but I think they're, I don't think, I know there are ongoing cases right now where they're going to try to pull this thing up from the root.
00:36:05.700If you're making a case to a swing voter in these midterms, anywhere in the country, give me the Paula case.
00:36:16.680Well, first of all, I think we need to use our taxpayer dollars wisely.
00:36:23.700And I think with all these fraud cases, we're seeing that not only our tax dollars are being wasted, but there are no checks and balances to ensure that this doesn't happen again.
00:36:36.480And DOGE, I think, was a very effective tool, which got a bad rap.
00:36:41.800But I think people have come to a realization that, yes, the United States has a lot of money.
00:36:48.360We do have a lot of tax dollars, but those tax dollars are not being deployed efficiently, honestly, to the people that actually need them.
00:36:58.100And we need to actually review all this.
00:37:00.620And, you know, that's the only way to make it happen is to clear out the swamp and start holding people accountable for how our tax dollars are being spent.
00:37:11.120very domestic focused there uh do you think the war becomes uh something that republicans are
00:37:19.360running on in the midterms i think it can because it needs to be i think that the poll number showed
00:37:27.520it was like 85 of republicans thought that trump had gone back on his word not to start a new war
00:37:32.960and i think that's going to hurt republicans when it comes to voting
00:37:39.380If we can have a decisive victory here, if Trump can pull this off in a couple of weeks and we can start nailing heads to the wall and use them as trophies when we go into the midterms, like, look what we've done.
00:37:51.280Unfortunately, Pearson is not using a metaphor here.
00:38:05.840But I think if we end up in another forever war or it drags on closer towards the midterms, and I think I saw something that the Pentagon said they were preparing logistics into September for this war, which is not a good sign, that will really hurt us.
00:38:19.580The voting is in November. If we're still engaged in active combat operations in Iraq, where we're engaged in active combat operations now in Iran, if other countries like Israel and Qatar and Bahrain are getting bombed, do you think the war will be more of a positive for Republicans or more of a negative, Paula?
00:38:44.000I think it would be a negative, but honestly, I mean, I have no connections to the Department of War, but I have a sense that they're not looking to have this war extend out for a long period of time.
00:38:58.380I think they want to get in, bomb what they need to bomb, and get out, and have, like you said, a decisive victory, because I think that was the mindset going in.
00:39:09.020OK, but here's my concern about that. I think that is literally the mindset of everyone who goes into a war almost all of the time.
00:39:19.940Well, yeah. Russia thought that their special military operation in Ukraine was just going to be a quick thing.
00:39:27.260You know, we thought that we could put 40 advisers in Syria when Obama was president.
00:39:32.200And then Syria kind of turned into a forever war for the United States.
00:39:35.040We were, George W. Bush was saying, mission accomplished in Iraq after really nothing had been accomplished in terms of a security situation there that was improved.
00:39:46.120And so I'm always hesitant when we say, well, we really want this to be a short, limited engagement.
00:39:52.100But we've had generals in the past who say the enemy gets a vote.
00:39:55.880Don't you think we've learned some lessons from that?
00:40:24.360I think I don't, I genuinely don't think that's the intention going into this.
00:40:28.860And I think that's what differentiates this war, even though we're not calling it a war, from all the others.
00:40:33.940Because Trump really does, I think, want to get in and get out, whereas Biden and the rest of them, Obama and Bush and Clinton and everybody else, wanted forever wars, wanted a conflict that never ended because it's in the military-industrial complex interest.
00:40:51.980And that's where they get a lot of their funding.
00:40:57.940I actually think that's probably right on all of those grounds. Bush probably would have preferred just for the bravado to have had a quick one. But once he got into it, the extended nation building, I guess.
00:41:11.460And Trump's not talking about that. He's not talking about nation building.
00:41:13.920Yeah, it's an astute point. But I'm going to lean on your expertise here. You know the Middle East. You study the Middle East. You've traveled in the Middle East. You've done reporting out of Syria during the war there.
00:41:26.240And I want to ask, if the United States tomorrow were to abandon combat operations and say we've achieved our objectives, we've ended the Iranian Navy, we've executed the Ayatollah, we have degraded the missile capability, we've re-obliterated the nuclear program, the war is over, we're out of here, you know, have a nice life, Iran.
00:41:52.500What do you think would happen in Iran?
00:41:56.240that's a really tough question there is so much destabilization there right now
00:42:02.020and there has been for the past couple of months you know tens of thousands of civilians slaughtered
00:42:07.600in the streets but the regime's ability to continue that kind of operation against its
00:42:12.980own civilians i think that's been severely degraded as well what is the evidence of that
00:42:17.520they continue to do it and succeed every time there's some big uprising against the iranians
00:42:21.960you know what happens the irgc goes and kills tens of thousands of people and stays in power
00:42:26.580right and that's again that's why this is difficult that is entirely a possibility but i think we have
00:42:32.420tipped the cards in the populace's favor and they might have the ability to rise up and overthrow
00:42:38.140the government i think that is a neocon fever dream that might be entirely optimistic and i'm
00:42:42.860not saying i want that to happen i'm not saying i think the regime needs to fall and i think it's
00:42:48.120close to falling apologizing for them no no i'm i'm observing that they're not falling no they
00:42:54.400are not falling yet and so i i would hope that we haven't just kicked this hornet's nest just to see
00:42:59.000what happened then walked away i hope we can put flame to the nest and kill all of the hornets in
00:43:04.300there and let the i don't know what the rest of the metaphor would be but let the normal people
00:43:08.420come in and take over ah yes because normal people always take over after middle east regime change
00:43:16.460So, Paul, I want to get to the raw politics of it, you know, with you, a political operative.
00:43:21.620If that is the message from the administration, we broke their stuff, we killed their leader, we wiped out their missiles,
00:43:28.840we're not going to stick around to see what happens next.
00:43:31.580If they, whatever that happens to them happens to them, but we're done.
00:43:35.620Do you think that is a compelling political message?
00:43:38.900No, I think the hope of the American people with President Trump taking these measures against Iran is to actually see some form of sanity come back to Iran.
00:43:52.300Although the person that they elected to replace the Supreme Leader is the Supreme Leader's son.
00:44:00.200But I understand he's severely injured and not in a position.
00:44:07.700And President Trump has said that he would like to have a, you know, I don't know if you call it a say or approval or have some sort of his scale as to who's going to replace the leadership in Iran so that it, I mean, he agrees that it needs to be someone put there by the people.
00:44:29.200But I think he wants friendly to the West, friendly to the West.
00:45:05.740So I think Israel once has an objective, and I'm not exactly sure where that line is going to be for them, but whether or not the U.S. walks away, they have.
00:45:15.200I think there's a certain cohort of voters who really love President Trump and believed in him and elected him and might not have voted in a lot of elections who would hear like what Paula said, which I think is the administration's position in a lot of positions, which is we want to bring some sanity back to Iran.
00:45:33.520And they would say, sanity back to Iran.
00:45:36.340I want to bring sanity back to the, like, San Diego County School District.
00:45:40.980I want to bring sanity back to my own neighborhood where a bunch of immigrants have moved in.
00:45:46.020I want to see the same level of effort that we're putting into Iran put into recovering our own nation,
00:45:50.900defending our own borders, getting these people out of here,
00:45:52.820getting the mass deportations that we were promised that we haven't had yet.
00:45:57.700And let me offer you my own political take here.
00:46:00.060Even if everything goes according to plan in Iran from here on out, even if everything goes exactly the way we want it, we get the pro-Western person acceptable to the populace that we like, de-radicalize them.
00:46:17.180Everything that we've had to do to achieve those objectives risks showcasing to our voters a lack of focus on their needs.
00:46:26.800and and i worry about that like and that's so unfair because it's such a two-dimensional view
00:46:33.400of the world and the world is nuanced and complex and things do impact our lives that we don't
00:46:38.760necessarily see in that moment but just from a raw like i want to win the midterms i know how
00:46:44.320bad it will be if democrats get their levers on anything in power and i worry there's a certain
00:46:49.000cohort of voter that's gonna be like well yeah everything went great for iran but like things
00:46:54.320haven't gotten a lot better for me and i wonder if they would have gotten better for me if the
00:46:58.400people i voted for were less focused on you know whether or not the new leader of iran was i don't
00:47:05.240think that's a certain cohort of voter i think that's the majority of voters it's america first
00:47:09.320right yeah that's what do you think am i am i am i over i've had people tell me i'm overly neurotic
00:47:14.240about that and i i shouldn't be concerned no i do think that people are focused on america first so
00:47:19.880So if the Iran campaign is short lived and they get in, get what they want done and get out, I think that'll be OK.
00:47:28.600But really, most people want the government and President Trump to focus on domestic issues.
00:47:36.380They suffered quite a bit during the Biden administration.
00:47:39.600So now they're looking to get past all that.
00:47:42.400Yes, economic numbers look better on paper and everything on paper looks better.
00:47:47.840But like Pearson was saying earlier, they need to be able to feel it in their paychecks and their daily life when they go to the gas pump.
00:47:57.840They don't want to walk down the streets of downtown San Diego and see tents all over the place.
00:49:09.920No, I think what we've covered, just that Republicans and just a lot of people are disenfranchised with what we've been getting.
00:49:18.940And it's a meme at this point, but nobody cares the Dow's at 50,000, you know, that doesn't affect me.
00:49:24.540What we want to know is that our families are safe, that our border is secure, that we've got these deportations, that inflation is under control, which it came in at 2.5%, which I mean, that's a lot better than 9% we had under Biden.
00:49:38.000this was the core one of the the border and inflation yeah the two big and you know ending
00:49:42.800the crazy woke like stuff yeah but i mean we've still got the 20 million illegals that biden let
00:49:49.400in that's great if we've kind of closed off the border a bit i want them out though you got net
00:49:54.080negative migration for the first time in your life yeah that's what they say that's what they
00:49:58.200say no i mean we had a border patrol guy on here who said that people are still coming across the
00:50:01.800border in droves they're going back the other way too yeah i don't i don't buy it well we will try
00:50:07.300We still have welfare programs that pay people to be here, and we've got to stop that.
00:50:12.280And, again, that's a violation of taxpayers, right?
00:50:16.700They're having to pay for all this, and when people are suffering day to day
00:50:21.700and they don't see grocery prices getting better
00:50:23.880and they don't see the prices at the gas pump getting better,
00:50:26.680but we hear that we're paying health care for illegals,
00:50:29.540we're doing all these services for illegals,
00:50:32.300that's where the rubber hits the road.
00:50:34.720You know, and if these other red states put a kibosh on these programs that have been flourishing under Biden, they're still going to come to California and we're going to get all the other ones that are coming here.
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