00:01:04.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:01:33.000You're the Washington Bureau Chief for the wonderful website, Breitbart.com.
00:01:37.000So, Matt, let's talk your top line thoughts, your analysis on the Tucker story.
00:01:41.000What do you think we're missing that is the most important part of the story?
00:01:45.000Well, look, it appears as though the Murdoch family is trying to silence Tucker Carlson, the Fox News board, which includes Lachlan, James, and Rupert Murdoch, as well as Paul Ryan, the former Speaker of the House, very establishment Republican.
00:01:59.000They want to silence Tucker through the 2024 election.
00:02:02.000Tucker Carlson is currently under, he's not been fired from Fox News.
00:02:10.000His show has been canceled, but he's still under contract.
00:02:12.000He is not allowed to go out there and negotiate something new or go to somebody new until such time as the Murdochs and Paul Ryan and the Fox board allow him out of his contract.
00:02:25.000His contract runs through December 2024 right now.
00:02:31.000And what's really going on here is that, you know, we see these weaponized leaks by Fox staff.
00:02:38.000Irina Briganti, who is the head of corporate communications for Fox News, has been weaponizing text messages, videos, all sorts of different stuff to different places to try to tarnish Tucker's reputation.
00:02:53.000I think people are turning away from Fox.
00:02:56.000They're turning to places like Breitbart and other conservative outlets, places like your show, other conservative media outlets that are seeing a huge spike in attention because people are turning off Fox News, which is an honorable thing.
00:03:13.000But ultimately, what's happening here is that the Murdochs are trying to retake control of their network.
00:03:20.000And it's not just Tucker that they got rid of.
00:03:24.000They also got rid of Dan Bongino, who was their biggest weekend show host.
00:03:28.000So they did that in the span of a week.
00:03:30.000They got rid of their biggest weeknight show and their biggest weekend show host.
00:03:34.000And they're getting rid of all sorts of different other people at lower level, folks that you don't see at home, the folks that help them, the staffers for them are all getting the axe in the boot as well.
00:03:45.000So this is a massive purge, and it's an effort by the Murdochs to try to establish control and reorient Fox News back to not rocking the boat.
00:03:57.000Milk toast is what to expect from Fox.
00:04:00.000That's the word a number of people used with what to expect in terms of their content moving forward.
00:04:07.000They're going to take a step away from being edgy, away from pushing the envelope forward, and back towards being boring observers.
00:04:16.000But I mean, Matt, so that means the company will be cut in half.
00:04:20.000So are they basically saying we want comfort and to be normal and not have boycotts, not have lawsuits instead of being interesting and profitable?
00:04:28.000Is that the devil's bargain that the Murdochs are brokering?
00:04:32.000They want to just go along to get along with everybody out there.
00:04:36.000They didn't like when Tucker was questioning things like the U.S. funding to Ukraine.
00:04:41.000They didn't like when he was questioning the orthodoxy regarding the handling of the pandemic.
00:04:47.000They didn't like when Tucker was questioning the way the national security apparatus focused on certain things and not on other things.
00:04:54.000They didn't like the way that Tucker talked and focused about immigration.
00:05:27.000They want a bunch of people that are not going to actually ask tough questions of the White House or the political class.
00:05:35.000They want to go to their garden parties and their country clubs and get along and drink champagne and have a good old time without rocking the boat at all.
00:05:45.000Are they going to become RNC TV, right?
00:05:47.000And just kind of normal middle of the road.
00:05:50.000So do you have any inside information you could share, Matt, about whether or not Tucker is going to be able to get out of this contract?
00:05:57.000Well, the negotiations are ongoing right now between his attorney and the network, but all of our sources that we've spoken to last week and since I published that first story that you had up there on the screen, I've had dozens more people from inside Fox News and with other folks with inside information coming forward to me, reaching out to me with more details.
00:06:22.000And so we're working on several follow-ups about all of this.
00:06:25.000But from everything we're hearing is that the Murdoch family fully intends to try to silence Tucker Carlson through the 2024 election unless the blowback continues and intensifies.
00:06:36.000And by the way, they're also, they've ordered Irina Briganti, the corporate leadership at Fox News and at the parent company, Fox Corporation, have ordered this woman, Irina Briganti, to weaponize anything and everything she can.
00:06:54.000She has files on every single member of the talent at Fox News.
00:06:58.000She has files on Tucker, but she also has files on all sorts of other folks as well.
00:07:03.000So she has been empowered to weaponize any information that she can to try to destroy the reputations of anyone that speaks out against them, that challenges their authority, that challenges the Murdoch's authority.
00:07:19.000The most interesting thing that I've heard, though, and this we have not reported yet in a story, but I can tell you this for you, that I've got sources that say that Arena Brigante has files as well on the Murdochs, and she's manipulating them as well.
00:07:40.000And look, Fox has presented itself as a fair and balanced network for a long time, but ultimately they're not a conservative outlet.
00:07:50.000They're not a conservative media outlet.
00:07:53.000They're an establishment media outlet of, by, and for the establishment.
00:07:56.000The fact that they are colluding with institutions like the New York Times to attack conservatives should end the question as to whether or not Fox is conservative.
00:08:07.000And the weaponization of leaks against Tucker Carlson to try to destroy his reputation, one of the most important voices we've had in a generation, is disgusting, abhorrent.
00:08:46.000They have this exact thing going on every single anchor.
00:08:50.000If and when the day ever comes that Sean Hannity's gone, they'll do it to him.
00:08:54.000If and when the day ever comes that Laura Ingram's gone, they'll do it to her.
00:08:58.000If and when the day ever comes with any of the other ones, they will do it to any of them.
00:09:04.000And by the way, just in case you think that using some naughty language and text messages is the reason why Tucker is gone and they all of a sudden discovered it.
00:09:28.000Like it's, it's just kind of standard part for the course.
00:09:31.000And the idea that that's the reason why it's just, it's almost like they're trying to justify after the fact this atrocious action that they took, given the intense blowback that is coming.
00:09:44.000And again, that with the latest leak to the New York Times last night of this text about the Antifa incident with the folks beating up on the Antifa guy, whatever.
00:09:57.000What you're seeing here is that they're just scrambling to try to give some kind of a justification.
00:10:04.000Their story doesn't add up and everybody can see through it.
00:10:08.000And because the fact that Tucker is so beloved across the country, they're now facing severe blowback for it.
00:10:16.000They're eventually going to have to tell the truth.
00:10:19.000But again, the hatchet woman at the center of this whole thing is this woman named Irina Briganti.
00:10:24.000She is the one who has been weaponizing the leaks of this information.
00:10:28.000She is the one empowered to go to places like the New York Times and others to plant stories to try to craft this narrative that Tucker Carlson is a racist and so on and so forth.
00:10:40.000Or Tucker Carlson said nasty words about this one or that one.
00:10:44.000I'm telling you right now, there are similar text messages with every single member of Fox News's primetime lineup.
00:10:55.000They're lying through their teeth when they're saying this stuff to the establishment media.
00:11:00.000They know it and they're reeling right now because millions of Americans who used to watch Tucker Carlson tonight are switching to other outlets.
00:12:15.000Matt, you've had the opportunity to interview him a couple times.
00:12:18.000How would you grade Speaker McCarthy as how he's doing right now as head of the House of Representatives?
00:12:22.000I mean, I would say he's pretty much an A plus, right?
00:12:27.000Like, I mean, I think that he's doing everything that he said he was going to do over the course of the beginning of the year.
00:12:34.000And if anything, that really rambunctious first week as speaker or the week leading up to him being the speaker, the first week of the Republican majority, where they had 15 separate speakership elections.
00:12:45.000We talked about this in the interviews.
00:12:50.000We talked about a whole number of different topics: immigration, China, the border, the debt ceiling was a big part of it.
00:12:58.000But one of the things we opened with was the new Republican majority is like.
00:13:03.000And that was very much focused on what that first week was like.
00:13:07.000And he talked about how it was a pretty tough week, 15 rounds like Rocky Balboa, but he made it through it.
00:13:17.000And he said that while it was tough going through it and he wouldn't wish that on anyone, it's still, he thinks that that made it, made the House Republicans come a little bit closer together.
00:13:27.000And I think you're seeing that happen right now, where they just pulled off the remarkable passage of a debt ceiling deal that has forced President Biden to the table to negotiate.
00:13:37.000And now the Senate Republicans are united behind the House Republicans heading into these negotiations next week at the White House.
00:13:44.000So there are a lot of things to like about what McCarthy's done as speaker so far.
00:13:52.000And I think, you know, one of the things he talked about was promises made, promises kept.
00:13:56.000He said that he wanted to follow through on the things that he said he was going to do.
00:14:00.000And for generally speaking, he's done that.
00:14:21.000Again, I don't know if he's changed his position, so to speak.
00:14:24.000One of the, it wasn't one of the topics that, to be to be fair to him, it wasn't one of the topics we got to when I spent an hour with him in the speaker's office.
00:14:32.000We had a lot of other stuff we had to talk about.
00:14:33.000We talked about him releasing some of the January 6th tapes.
00:14:36.000That took up a big part of the interview.
00:14:39.000The big changes that he's made as speaker took up a big part of the interview.
00:15:29.000But he said that they're moving in that direction.
00:15:31.000He also said later at a press conference at the House GOP retreat about a week or so after we taped this interview.
00:15:36.000We published the full thing this weekend, but the interview was taped back in March, right after he had released the tapes, some of the tapes to Tucker.
00:15:48.000But he said in mid-March that any news organization that would like to schedule an appointment with the speaker's office to go in and review the tapes in person in camera at the house, I would be willing to make that happen.
00:15:59.000So I know that we're working on making that happen.
00:16:02.000I know other news organizations are as well.
00:16:04.000So you think we can expect tens of thousands of hours of footage coming out soon publicly?
00:16:14.000If they'll like just dump it all on the internet or not, but he because he said at a press conference at the House GOP retreat that any news organization that would like to come in and review it.
00:17:46.000They love finding loan solutions for people who are self-employed, first-time homebuyers, real estate investors, or people with credit challenges.
00:17:53.000And if you're considering a reverse mortgage, they can help answer all your questions.
00:17:57.000If you or someone you know is having a mortgage challenge, let them help.
00:18:56.000So I have all these charts and graphs in front of me.
00:18:59.000And why don't you just start with the most significant and we'll work our way through it?
00:19:05.000We did this poll and it was a sponsored poll.
00:19:07.000So everybody can go to our website and download this stuff and look at for themselves.
00:19:11.000There's like 20, 25 questions here, really dense.
00:19:15.000But the poll was done for one very specific reason.
00:19:18.000Our sponsor for this poll, Larry Ward from Political Media, was really sick of the infighting that he sees on the conservative side.
00:19:27.000And he thinks that DeSantis is perceived to be very favorable among Republicans, just as Donald Trump is, and that potentially together, the both of them on the same ticket might be better in whole than in part.
00:19:41.000And so that was what we set out to prove.
00:19:44.000And I think we proved it pretty resoundingly.
00:19:47.000So we started by setting a benchmark of how would Trump do alone in a 2024 rematch against President Joe Biden.
00:19:56.000And Donald Trump beats him 48% to 41% in this poll, which is in line with what we saw about a month ago when we ran that same question.
00:20:06.000Then the next thing we did was we said if Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was Donald Trump's running mate against Joe Biden, would you vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris or DeSantis Trump?
00:20:19.000So we have Trump and DeSantis beating Biden and Harris 51% to 43%, which is a slightly larger lead, 8% instead of 7%, but it gets the Trump ticket over the 50% hurdle, which is very important.
00:20:36.000But we've tried, tested the Trump-Biden matchup quite a few times since 2020, and Trump only got above that 50% hurdle one time.
00:20:46.000And it was September of 2021 when Marines were blowing up in Afghanistan and we were leaving billions of dollars of equipment behind in Bagram.
00:20:59.000Now, we also put other candidates in there to test.
00:21:02.000We tested Kerry Lake on the Trump ticket.
00:21:05.000We tested Marjorie Taylor Greene on the Trump ticket.
00:21:07.000And DeSantis brought the most to the ticket.
00:21:10.000Now, when we had tested DeSantis versus Trump and Biden versus Trump, sorry, DeSantis versus Biden and Trump versus Biden a month ago, and we found that they did almost about equally, but Ron DeSantis does better than Trump in a couple of key demographics that you would probably perceive to be lefter leaning, 18 to 39-year-olds, graduate degrees, upper incomes.
00:21:35.000And it turns out he really does bring that support to a Trump ticket a few points here and there, which really amounts to big numbers on the national scale.
00:21:45.000So you asked how likely is that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election?
00:21:57.000We've been literally, I think, the only pollster routinely asking questions about election fraud.
00:22:04.000And the trend seems to be that as time accrues between us and the 2020 election, and as mainstream corporate news media ignores potential evidence of election fraud, people's concerns have not gone away.
00:22:23.000So in this question, now 62% of all likely voters think that it's at least somewhat likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.
00:22:35.000The implication there is that maybe the outcome would have been different if said cheating hadn't happened.
00:23:34.000DeSantis and Trump recently, i.e., last six months, the last couple of times we've asked this question, have all been roughly equivalent among Republicans At least somewhat favorable level, which I'm not sure is the most important number.
00:23:50.000I think it's the very favorable numbers.
00:23:53.000So we're talking like since the 2022 election, Trump has been in the mid to high 70s among Republicans for at least somewhat favorable.
00:24:01.000But Republicans were kind of upset after November, and Trump's very favorable numbers were only really in the high 40s.
00:24:09.000Really, since then, and DeSantis was doing slightly better among Republicans with a number over 50.
00:24:15.000But after we put some distance between November and after we got the speakership battle behind us, and after Trump really picked up his campaigning, he surged among Republicans, coming back up to 80%, which is pretty high, and getting now in the high 50s very favorable among Republicans.
00:24:35.000But what you just put on the screen, to me, is the stunner of everywhere in this poll.
00:24:41.000I was on War Room, I think about a month ago, talking about a recent set of Trump favorability numbers, and I was astounded that we had Trump at 53%.
00:24:50.000Now, keep in mind, that's with Joe Biden in our numbers sitting at about 46% today.
00:24:56.000So with a 7% advantage on Trump over Biden, that was huge.
00:25:01.000But now, today in this poll, we have Trump at 59% among all likely voters, which is, I mean, just absolutely incredible.
00:25:11.000It's almost 13 points more than Biden is doing right now.
00:25:15.000And it's across the board in almost every demographic.
00:25:18.000Now, DeSantis's numbers are kind of similar.
00:25:21.000He does 60% at least somewhat favorable with everybody, but he has a four-point less very favorable number, 33% instead of 37%.
00:25:31.000So I think from DeSantis' perspective, he's gotten less negative press, but he's gotten a lot of nationwide positive recognition.
00:25:41.000And so he's doing just as well as Trump from a favorability perspective.
00:25:48.000That's not necessarily what counts, right?
00:25:50.000What counts is GOP primary vote, right?
00:25:53.000And in our polling, we have Trump winning very solidly among Republicans.
00:26:45.000So we target to get a pretty good spread of like Northeast, South, the West, Midwest.
00:26:52.000You know, because your Northeast Republican is not necessarily the same as a Southern Republican.
00:26:56.000And the way that should be perceived, these are always like these kinds of intercycle polls that aren't doing necessarily like time-sensitive horse races, right?
00:27:11.000And the temperature shows like Trump's doing really great right now.
00:27:14.000Now, obviously, we're a long way from an election.
00:27:18.000And the onus is on people who disagree with these numbers to run their own poll and prove me wrong.
00:27:24.000And what I think they'd find is that they would validate these numbers.
00:27:28.000I'm very confident with our national, I'm pretty confident that we're dialed in.
00:27:33.000So in the 2022, you know, I was on an election night on your show.
00:27:38.000And I was kind of confused about what the signs pointed to because Republicans did have a massive lead coming into 2022 and it ticked away bit by bit.
00:27:52.000And I think the people that answer likely voter screen polls in the middle of a cycle aren't necessarily the same as the one who will answer polls in September.
00:28:00.000I think the issue set shifted quite a bit when the Dobbs decision came down.
00:28:05.000But I also think Democrats have a really great machine.
00:28:08.000And so part of the balance is I go out there, I ask people questions, I get data, right?
00:28:13.000But part of for that data to be accurate, I also have to predict what the election turnout is going to be, which let's just say in a 20 post-2018 world has been incredibly challenging.
00:28:25.000And in retrospect, we in Raspboxon actually did a pretty good job.
00:28:57.000And since then, we've added a point to Democrats to compensate for that fact.
00:29:02.000But the challenge is always the turnout.
00:29:05.000And people say, wow, man, the Republicans should have done better or what a loss.
00:29:09.000If you look at the returnout numbers, the real story is the Democrats had a massive underperformance.
00:29:15.000So Democrats have traditionally turned out in the mid-30s in midterm elections.
00:29:21.000And then in 2018, out of nowhere, before COVID, before all of this massive mail-in ballots, they turned out over 60 million people out of nowhere.
00:29:30.000And of course, some of that was the Trump is a Russian agent vote, but not all of it.
00:29:36.000And it was everywhere across the country.
00:29:38.000And of course, everybody was dumbfounded.
00:29:40.000Now, after 2020, 2018 didn't get a lot of attention.
00:29:44.000But in many ways, the huge, massive Democrat outperformance in 2020 was dwarfed from a percentage basis of what the Democrats did in 2018.
00:29:54.000So with Democrats turning out 61 or 62, something like that in 2018, they only turned out high 40s.
00:30:03.000They only turned out, so they turned out over 10 million less than they did in 2018 in this election.
00:30:08.000And the Republicans kind of did what Republicans do, which is chip along, adding a million here, 2 million there every cycle, and increased.
00:30:17.000And I think in retrospect, it's probably pretty fascinating that the Republicans came out on top and didn't do worse than they potentially could have otherwise.
00:30:26.000So I think a lot of it, there's this massive sort of chess versus checkers game going on.
00:30:38.000From what I understand is that the midterms were disappointing for us while the Democrats had an 11 million less for the 2022 midterms than did an 18.
00:30:49.000Basically, what I'm hearing is that the Democrats have tens of millions of potential voters they can get out in 2024 that Republicans do not have.
00:30:57.000I want to make sure I'm understanding that correctly.
00:31:00.000So Mark, explain to us, was I understanding that correctly, the Democrats have a greater potential for a turnout machine.
00:31:08.000I think since 2018, I think, I mean, it was probably like a three Sigma turnout in 2018, if you go back and look at their past midterm performance.
00:31:22.000I try and learn from the numbers and figure out what I'm seeing and judge the signal I'm getting and be a better pollster.
00:31:30.000And I was just really surprised that the things that I was seeing that I think others would agree with is just the sheer latent opportunity that Republicans had to convert the issue set and the momentum in the polling into an increase in turnout that really was ultimately at the end of the day not too impressive.
00:31:53.000And there's probably a ton of reasons.
00:31:55.000You probably know some of these reasons better than I do, but that's just the fact of the matter.
00:32:33.000I think they should download this poll here and look at it.
00:32:38.000And I think on the positive side of the coin, I would say that MAGA issues are very popular still, that the Democrat Party is more conservative than the current Democrat administration, that Trump's favorability numbers are doing really great right now.
00:32:56.000And Biden's approval, although people become used to him, people think he's less threatening after he lost that Congress.
00:33:07.000And I think that's all still great news.
00:33:10.000I think that there's, you know, Trump turned out more Republicans than any presidential Republican candidate in history.
00:33:18.000I think that he has to have picked up more support since then.
00:33:22.000And I don't see anything in the polling to, you know, really counter that.
00:33:26.000Now, on the negative side of the coin, I will say that the left is very, very effective and manipulating public opinion.
00:33:36.000And as I go through all the historical polling, I find all this evidence.
00:33:41.000We've been in business for almost 20 years and we've polled on not just election horse races, but on really important social issues.
00:33:50.000And the left is getting lefter in a very, very rapid way.
00:33:56.000On some things, you can look at the results and say, all right, that's not as concerning as I would have thought.
00:34:02.000For instance, there are low double-digit peoples in the United States, likely voters, who actually agree that babies should be aborted after six months into the term.
00:34:13.000It's a much lower number than you would think based on how popular the concept of pro-choice is.
00:34:19.000But on other things, it is moving very rapidly.
00:34:23.000For instance, the idea of reparations in America has really shifted a lot in the last five or six years.
00:34:30.000And are they out there every night in the press hammering home how important reparations are?
00:34:35.000No, it's almost this way in which it's just internalized into all of the Democrat platforms.
00:34:41.000And sure enough, the Democrats lead everyone else in the country left.
00:34:47.000It's a pretty solid majority of Democrats now that want reparations.
00:34:50.000And if you go five, six years back, it was, I think it was like less than a third of them wanted it.
00:34:56.000So there's just a ton of examples like that that show that the current paradigm of conservatism reaching public opinion, manipulating, changing, directing public opinion, it's like, again, checkers versus chess.