00:00:59.060I was dialed in when you were guest hosting a number of shows here.
00:01:02.760But I guess just a little bit for our podcast audience, you know, what got you involved in politics?
00:01:08.740What, you know, you were telling me off camera about some even city council elections where you were throwing elbows and heading around.
00:01:16.580And then I cannot wait for us to educate Pearson on what a grassroots Florida campaign actually looks like.
00:01:23.300There are things you've never even heard of that are central to the background of this.
00:01:27.920But first, David, kind of your entree into politics.
00:01:30.940Well, you know, I didn't know I was going to get into politics.
00:01:35.780I always got involved in my community no matter where I lived, whether it was like code enforcement boards or, you know, at my kids' schools, the education board, whatever I can do to stay involved.
00:01:44.560Because I learned early on that if I didn't step up to do something, somebody else would.
00:01:48.560Inevitably, I'd be annoyed because they wouldn't do as good of a job as I would have done.
00:02:19.780I didn't last long, it was too boring for me
00:02:21.720I mean, I, you know, I didn't last too long on it, but this code enforcement board in Safety Harbor, it was, yeah, it was, you know, I met the mayor one night at a bar and I'm like, hey, I want to get involved in the city because this is how I am.
00:02:48.400Wait a second. Your mayor sounds awesome in this story because he's picking up people to enforce code at a bar, which would only happen in a Florida community.
00:02:57.160Yeah, no, it was great. We were at some great bar. Anyway, we hit it off. But they hated me on the code enforcement board because I'm a lawyer.
00:03:04.300And all these boards, by the way, are set up so that you just go along with whatever the city says.
00:03:10.780Well, I'm not going to do that. What value am I bringing then?
00:03:13.860So, of course, every time the code inspector came and gave his presentation, I'd go through and say, well, did you do this?
00:10:47.760It's the illusion of momentum, of gravitas, of breadth of support.
00:10:55.180And this all plays out in little senior centers and in little cafes and cafecitos across little communities in Florida.
00:11:03.420And, you know, in some ways it sounds silly when you listen to us describe it, but it actually takes work to get a group of volunteers to show up at a place in matching T-shirts.
00:11:14.580And you do need to get supporters that, you know, all the little tickets go to support a local Republican club.
00:11:20.580So if your campaign is contributing to that infrastructure, that could mean more door knockers, more people chasing ballots.
00:11:27.160And so in a weird way, it has developed the ecosystem that has given us Republican control over a state since 1996.
00:11:35.060Yeah. And it's, you know, if you just happen to be a random resident of the community at the pizza hut that night and there's a hobnob,0.59
00:13:31.460They're all there in one place going table to table, and you're shaking hands and you're meeting them.
00:13:34.700The energy there translates to actual grassroots wind at the national level.
00:13:39.380So, yes, you have all these local campaigns fighting for attention, but the community that you build there, regardless of what campaign you're in, translates to national results and even statewide results.
00:13:49.820And so they're actually a really good, like you said, ecosystem for building grassroots enthusiasm, regardless of the, you know.
00:13:55.880Well, we got some enthusiasm this week from the Supreme Court that informs, you know, going now from the precinct community level to a big national picture on the Voting Rights Act, the Louisiana map that has the phony race created districts not given great favor by the court.
00:14:14.680And there's going to be a lot of discussion about strategy, tactics, how we attack the battle space.
00:14:20.780But for me, it is comforting that our jurisprudence is just moving in a way that recognizes race as a defining characteristic in our society.0.92
00:14:29.740I don't think it is. I don't think it should be.0.89
00:14:31.680I think a lot of things matter a lot more than race that dictate your success, your associations, your politics, your hobbies.
00:14:38.820and uh the further we get away from race being such a defining factor i think the happier and
00:14:45.480better we'll be and uh i i think that we ought to marshal that enthusiasm in every single state
00:14:53.120yeah where there has not been a primary or ballots gone out you if you're a state legislator
00:14:59.340do not walk do not drive the speed limit break every traffic law if necessary getting to your
00:15:07.680state capitol and let's let's squeeze another seat out of South Carolina there's no reason that
00:15:12.960old Jim Clyburn seat should exist that's fake anyway and I've been talking to people all week
00:15:18.520I've been talking to my sources other than Florida where Governor DeSantis has been terrific
00:15:22.860I do not see the enthusiasm that we need to see how do you see a Pearson Sharp I completely agree
00:15:29.580and as far as the race goes that's been the Republican narrative the entire time like we're
00:15:33.800moving away from that we fixed racism in the 90s and the democrats brought it back so they'd have
00:15:38.420something to argue about mississippi could go the same way as louisiana did alabama south carolina
00:15:45.020georgia we could get maybe eight seats out of this decision by the midterms that never should
00:15:52.240have belonged to the democrats anyway in the first place no absolutely not so this is phenomenal this
00:15:57.560is i'm never satisfied i am satisfied today like this is a tremendous outcome i don't know
00:16:03.480How are you going to feel if you get this grand opportunity from the court to right a wrong,
00:16:10.540and you heard the governor of Alabama say this week, it's just impossible, can't do it?
00:16:15.860Yeah, that's the Republicans, that's the GOP.
00:16:17.980Louisiana, they've got a terrific governor in Louisiana, Jeff Landry,
00:16:22.240but we're talking about a few days here away, and we need action.
00:16:26.380So how are you going to feel if the response to this is, we'll get them in 2028?
00:16:32.200Yeah. I mean, that's the Republican rallying cry. We'll get them next time. That's all that they ever do. But from what I've seen, we have a legitimate opportunity to get these seats, and it's possible to do that. I don't know about the deadlines and everything in Alabama, but in these other states, in Mississippi, it's possible that we could get a couple more seats.
00:16:52.080It takes courage. We didn't see it in Indiana.
00:16:54.680Do you think we are actually going to realize that opportunity that Pearson is so satisfied by?
00:17:01.400It's hard for a former radio guy turned television host to keep this succinct because this is not a simple answer, but I'm going to.
00:17:09.120Make it succinct because there's so much to unpack.
00:17:13.040And I'll put aside the Supreme Court ruling because it's fascinating from an equal protection standpoint.
00:17:17.520Alito, speaking for the majority, said that equal protection doesn't seek to cure past wrongs but to prevent future ones.
00:17:25.200Big interpretation of equal protection.
00:17:26.740We'll talk about that tomorrow on the show.
00:17:29.120But the interesting part, and you actually brought this up and you had me thinking about it ever since we were talking outside my office when you said,
00:17:34.340yeah, but these seats that are R plus 15, they move to R plus 10 on a week here.
00:21:59.380I think that if you look at the raid of Trump's home as a predicate criminal act as part of the cover-up, that fits within a big RICO charge.
00:22:06.540I'm seeing a new podcast, Two Lawyers.
00:22:09.580That's why you're here to keep us straight, dude.
00:22:11.640That's why you're here to make sure that it doesn't go too far off the rails.
00:22:15.520But this is a huge issue, though, because here's the deal.
00:22:17.900If we don't get a superseding indictment of seditious conspiracy, and the reason why that's important is because of the statute of limitations.
00:22:52.700Because I saw my friends who were in the administration have to endure, like, you know, four rounds of congressional testimony, sell their house so that they could afford, you know, $100,000, $200,000 lawyers.
00:23:05.960I saw people fearing criminal subpoenas that they were getting from grand juries.
00:23:11.300I mean, there was one time I'm on Trump's plane with Susie Wiles, and she's like, you know what?
00:23:14.800It would just be nice to be able to focus on the campaign, talking to voters, and not have to worry about, did some former staffer get a subpoena today, and how are we going to get them a lawyer so that they're not out?
00:23:28.160And all that pain they put on our movement, there are still lives today affected by it.
00:23:35.480Maybe in the Eastern District of North Carolina, we don't ultimately get a conviction on James Coder for this, but I am here for the squeeze.
00:24:05.220Because if we lose in 26 or 28, they've already warned they're coming for us.
00:24:10.280And I'm not saying we play nice with them because they'll never play nice with us.
00:24:12.800Pearson says it's an unreasonable expectation.
00:24:15.440It's not even a question, according to Pearson Sharp, because it's an absolutely unrealistic expectation to deter them from what they're going to do.
00:24:28.760This is why I'm worried about this indictment.
00:24:30.120If this indictment in North Carolina, if this gets dismissed or thrown out or adjudicated before the midterms, people are going to be out for blood yet again.
00:25:20.280But they voted, the Senate voted last night to protect Cuba from Trump, by the way, with Collins and actually it was Paul and Collins voting with the Democrats.
00:25:29.060That's Fetterman on us to let Trump do something about Cuba.
00:26:14.420But you have to have enough votes to do that.
00:26:15.600What I've heard in the Senate is if he makes any move on the filibuster, he loses six, seven more Republicans.
00:26:23.140Now, I, as someone who has had to face these tough choices with a congressional pin on, I have at times said, then we have to force those votes.
00:26:34.020We have to see who that is because maybe we can't stop Mitch McConnell, but we could stop the next Mitch McConnell.
00:26:41.040How would it change our perspective of the John Cornyn, Ken Paxton runoff if you saw a bunch of these people who never had to face the voters again wander off on the SAVE Act, right?
00:26:51.560And so I think it's an illustrative and important exercise to go through it.
00:26:55.820But all of the rules in the Senate exist to allow you to not have to go through it if you don't want to.
00:27:02.600I'm so excited when we get our Merriweather Farm shipments in.
00:27:48.680By Mitch McConnell and, like, you know, the Idaho guys or something like that.
00:27:54.200No, but at the same time, we need to figure out a way as Republicans because if Chuck Schumer was the leader of the Senate, he'd get it done.
00:28:02.180If it wasn't for Fetterman and Sinema, we wouldn't have a filibuster.
00:28:04.980They would lock Fetterman up in, like, some facility if they had to.
00:28:07.980They would find a way to get rid of him.
00:28:09.480They'd find some, you know, and this is what we're up against.
00:28:11.920And so for the Republicans out there, it is really important, the ones that are on the fence and saying, well, I really don't want to break with tradition.
00:32:01.140And you were talking about what happened to your colleagues and the depositions and the hours they sat through and everything else and having to sell their homes.
00:32:09.300Wait until the midterms and they take over.
00:32:11.320It's going to be a bloodbath, absolute bloodbath.
00:32:14.360Every single committee will be a January 6th committee.
00:32:17.940everything you know what they you know what they looked at i'm one of the few members that went
00:32:21.040through those files of the j6 committee scott perry and i went and dan bishop and i went
00:32:26.160they looked at how everyone communicated they got all of your cell phone records were you calling
00:32:31.760your wife were you calling pizza hud for delivery you know every phone record of every target
00:32:37.340how you spent money everybody's bank records and how you moved did you use uber lyft every everything
00:32:45.100I mean, the file on Charlie Kirk, the file on, like, you know, any number of people who were just Alex Jones, Roger Stone, Mark Meadows, you name it.
00:32:57.780They had files on everybody, me, and that was their intent, was to try to just find anything to ruin someone's life.
00:34:11.520Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about that. The war has to end and it has to end quickly. And I think Trump's only got, what, a couple more weeks?
00:34:19.540Oh, okay. A day. Yeah. Yeah. Iran's strategy is to drag this out as long as possible. I think they're very comfortable with the idea that they don't have to win. They just have to outlast Trump. And I think they think they can do that. They could turn this into a forever war if they wanted to.
00:34:39.060So, David, you agree then that Mark Levin is totally wrong, that 10,000 troops to go and snatch up a bunch of uranium in the mountains of Iran is foolish, deploying boots on the ground to Karg Island would be insane, that all of these things are just the fever dreams of neocons.
00:34:59.820I mean, I don't know if Mark Levin is right or not.
00:35:01.500I just know that this operation, and I don't know if we can call it a war technically, and if it's not a war, he has more than one day, by the way.
00:35:07.760Wait a second, wait a second. You don't think this is a war?
00:35:09.880Well, it's not tech. Nobody's declared it, so it's kind of a military operation.
00:35:12.940I don't know. I sort of think when you kill the other side's leader, you've definitely crossed the Rubicon war, despite what you put in the press release.
00:35:19.780But if that's the standard we're putting towards declaring it a war, well, then Iran had declared war against the United States probably for the last five decades.0.59
00:35:28.420Which one of our presidents did they kill?
00:35:30.360Well, they tried to kill Trump, arguably, but they were unsuccessful.0.80
00:35:33.820I think more California teachers have tried to kill Trump than Iranians.0.86
00:35:37.480But regardless, if you go to when the Islamic regime just took power in Iran, I mean, their hostility towards the United States happened immediately.0.91
00:35:45.720They've been the largest funder of terror in the region.0.88
00:35:51.060So do you think they have more negativity toward the United States than Kim Jong-un, who puts up American cities and points to them and says, I'm going to blow this up with a nuclear weapon?0.77
00:36:00.240Do you think the Iranians have more hostility?
00:36:06.060Because when you look at Trump, when he said he was going to, and Marco Rubio as well, when they said we were going to look at our hemisphere a little bit differently, you know, they said America's first.
00:36:15.440When you realign our hemisphere, if you look at what makes America influential in our hemisphere and you look at our border and what the problem is with the border, it all relates to this sort of geopolitical alignment with Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China, and even OPEC for a period of time if you look at BRICS.
00:36:30.360so this is really part of a much larger
00:37:25.180And so if we're going to buy all this stuff from China, and China has maximum leverage over us because we buy their goods from them, well, now we have energy.
00:37:31.960And like you mentioned, nothing more that affects the human condition than energy.
00:37:36.020If we're in control of that, that makes America safer.
00:37:38.280So my argument is that makes it right now.
00:37:41.980I think that is a fascinating lecture that I would love to receive at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.
00:37:47.940But at the end of the day, Pearson has to drive two hours home from work, and he has to put fuel in his car.
00:37:52.760When I fill up my 57-gallon tank, that's because you live in California, and they tax it so much here that it's twice the price anywhere else.
00:38:00.280At the end of that great story, what you have is more pressure on the U.S. fuel market because more of our fuel is going to China, because China isn't getting their fuel out of Iran.
00:38:10.920And I'm just wondering why that's good for Americans or good for the Republican Party.
00:39:40.680And I am so here for the focus on the Americas.
00:39:43.660I think it does affect the condition of our countrymen way more than which guy in the IRGC is calling the shots in the country of Iran, which I actually don't care about.
00:39:55.680I don't go to bed and think about that at night.
00:39:57.720I think about like how much my groceries were and how much it cost every single day.0.85
00:40:01.980You also worry about, David, the opportunity costs on, we know, going back to those hobnobs and the campaign experiences, the type of people who have to be motivated for this Trump coalition to sing.0.53
00:40:14.080And he has shown a unique ability to motivate it.0.94
00:40:16.520And it is a masculine coalition in a lot of ways.
00:40:19.560uh and if people continue to see um gas prices where they are and fuel prices where they are
00:40:27.500i don't i i don't know that even if trump does achieves every military objective even if our
00:40:33.480troops win every battle even if there's never another casualty right even if the iranian iran
00:40:38.700is thrown into it's turned into yemen yeah for all sakes like i just worry about that guy sitting
00:40:43.660there watching tv and saying you know we're focusing on a lot of stuff other than like the
00:40:49.380you know the price of the eggs i get do you worry about that as a messaging pure messaging you you've
00:40:54.700touched on the key issue there in this messaging it just depends on how it is laid out and
00:41:00.360unfortunately other than oan telling the truth a lot of media outlets don't and they want to tell
00:41:06.000the story that benefits their constituents the democratic party and so when a lot of people are
00:41:11.420hearing that, you know, gas prices go up. That's what we need to worry about. A lot of people are
00:41:15.320hearing the negative of all of this. They're not hearing the story about how this realignment
00:41:19.320actually makes America safer. And I believe it does. Yeah, but you don't need to hear the stories.
00:41:23.080You could not watch any news at all and you would still come away with the feeling like
00:41:27.240who's doing anything for me right now? Well, no, that's a fair point. But you know who is?
00:41:31.680Trump. We just had the largest tax cuts
00:41:35.040for the middle class in modern history. You want to talk about affordability?
00:42:50.940Watch affordability increase because our ability to borrow cheap money and start engaging in economic activity will invigorate this economy.
00:42:59.160So a lot of the things that people are feeling aren't Republicans' fault.
00:43:02.220We just can't articulate it because Jerome Powell was serving Joe Biden.
00:43:05.580Interest rates are high because of Joe Biden.
00:43:07.360Groceries are high because the shipping was completely shut down during COVID thanks to Joe Biden.
00:43:12.960All of the affordability issues, the microchips that we couldn't get from the Koreas,
00:43:16.420all of these things are because of Joe Biden's auto pen failed presidency.
00:43:20.380And it's going to take more than a year and a half of President Trump,
00:43:23.260which, by the way, he hasn't had any favors from Republicans to fix these problems.
00:43:27.080And he's doing it faster than any president in history.
00:43:29.640So the story we tell going into November is stop focusing on gas and focus on everything else because as mortgages get cheaper, let me tell you this.
00:43:37.780If your interest rate goes down a half of a point to a point, you'll be able to pay for gas for the next 10 years and you'll be laughing all the way to the bank.
00:43:45.580You can't even afford to own a home now, though.
00:43:46.840If you don't own a home and you want to own a home, I worry that even lower interest rates allows BlackRock to borrow money at a cheaper rate and deploy more capital and keep homes away from regular Americans.
00:43:59.940I think what you said is dead on, but only complete if institutional buyers of homes don't create conglomerates that stand in the way of the American dream.
00:44:12.800From what I've heard, it's only like, it was a surprising number, it's only like 8% or less of homes are actually bought by corporations like BlackRock.
00:44:57.100Now, here's how you fix this. I don't think you do it with regulation because I have to be principled conservative here. You just have to create more attractive investments for BlackRock than housing. So maybe we can provide avenues that would actually benefit America other than giving them the opportunity to buy up a housing supply. Let's find other ways to maybe entice people to invest.
00:45:17.060That doesn't get rid of the legislation, get rid of the regulations.
00:45:22.680Well, no, but the argument, to be clear, you mentioned a Trump executive order that sought to animate policy reforms that would not be celebrated at the John Burke Society or by Ayn Rand, right?
00:45:34.320It is a paleoconservative populist view that it is in the national interest to preserve home ownership, that which is the American dream for American homeowners, not for corporate conglomerates.
00:45:48.580And I ascribe to that theory, even though it is not a libertarian view.
00:45:53.200It is not a like principled, less government view. But I don't want to lecture to somebody about what what limited government can do for them as they continue to write rent checks that don't allow them to build the generational wealth that we saw from from their families.
00:46:08.420And maybe it's the limits on my intelligence, but I don't know how you draw people away from real estate, American real estate, by natural market forces because it is such a – I mean, think about our parents.0.91
00:46:22.200The way people built wealth was through real estate, and we don't know millennials and Zoomers who have those same options.0.80
00:46:28.740I mean, did we ever build wealth in real estate?1.00
00:46:30.340I think if you break it down, the mortgage has become kind of a Ponzi scheme.
00:46:34.880When you look at how much you spend for your home versus what you sell it for, you're basically just – it's like a retirement account.
00:46:53.160What it boils down to is community planning and comprehensive plans.
00:47:03.820And I'm going to be very brief on this, but it's complicated.
00:47:06.660Every municipality does something called a 10-year plan that says this is how much we expect to grow, and we're going to zone our community to be consistent with this growth.
00:47:14.900But then you have a lot of liberal organizations that want to keep single-family homes away and build density, urban density.
00:47:22.460And a lot of real estate developers like those commercial properties.
00:47:25.900Cities like those commercial properties for the revenue.0.93
00:47:28.020But it takes red towns and it makes them blue.
00:47:30.280And this is part of a much bigger socialist strategy to urbanize our suburban communities.
00:47:34.860We've seen this taking place across Florida especially.
00:47:37.360The issue with that, especially in places like Seminole County, is you have all this land.
00:47:41.760They call it the rural boundary in Seminole County.
00:47:43.200You have all this land where you can build single-family homes that Republicans would want to live in, which investors are not going to buy all of them, right?
00:47:49.440Investors like those apartment buildings.
00:47:51.480So if you change the local regulatory environment and you don't zone every piece of R1 residential property as C2 commercial where you can build an eight-story apartment building that invites Democrats to go live there and makes your crime go up, instead you allow these more low-density residential areas to be built.
00:48:08.960We have to look at our local communities the way we're zoning our communities.
00:48:11.920They'll become more Republican, there'll be more opportunities for homeownership, and the federal government doesn't have to regulate that when there's options to buy.
00:48:17.780Because guess what? It's a bad investment to buy a home in a community where they're just going to build more next door.
00:48:23.160I love that rant, Pearson, because it's why you and I won't get the only libertarian hate.
00:48:28.300That also was not a libertarian perspective.
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