Fetterman's Faults, and Tomorrow's Red Wave, Plus Tiffany Smiley and Tudor Dixon on Their Potential Upsets | Ep. 428
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 32 minutes
Words per Minute
191.04816
Summary
Today on The Megynkellek Show, Megynlek is joined by Fox News reporter Tiffany Smiley to discuss the latest on the Paul Pelosi attack, why the New York Times is smearing a reporter who asked a question, and why a reporter is being smeared for asking facts. Plus, a look at two women looking to take down two Democratic lawmakers tomorrow night.
Transcript
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Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
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Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
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We are now just hours away from Election Day, and we are gearing up for a big week.
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First, I wanted to let you know that in addition to our regular shows,
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we will also be live on election night from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern Time
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on Sirius XM Triumph Channel 111, and for the first time ever, also, we will be live on YouTube.
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We're going to bring you the results as they come in, an instant, unfiltered reaction
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with some of our friends who will be stopping by, a cast of all-stars, including Dennis Prager,
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Barry Weiss, David Sachs, Camille Foster, Emily Jashinsky, Ryan Grimm, and Larry Elder.
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Not to mention, we've got all the polls covered closely by friends from Real Clear Politics,
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from National Review. Everything that you want will be right here, in-depth, and with some
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personality, unlike what you're going to find most of the other places. This will be our first
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election night, where I'll be on air talking about the results while being allowed to curse and drink.
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Maybe just curse. So anything can happen. Before we get to tomorrow night, though,
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there's a lot of news to get to right now, including the very latest on why NBC News,
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quote, expired. Okay, this is a new, this is a first for me in reporting. I've never heard that.
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They expired their Friday reporting on the Paul Pelosi attack with absolutely no real explanation
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on why. They just humiliated one of their long-term reporters, who's gone totally silent now on
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Twitter. Is he going to be disciplined? What are they going to do? If he was so wrong,
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it's so disgustingly off base, what's going to happen to him? Or is this just a case of them
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bending the knee to some angry staffer in Pelosi's office? Because they're not being specific about
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what exactly was wrong with the report that they, quote, expired. Now, in the wake of this,
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the New York Times is claiming, I am spreading misinformation. What did I do? What was so wrong?
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I did it right in front of you. You're the people I spread it to, allegedly. Quote, I, this is how I did
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it. I, quote, raised doubts that all facts were being disclosed, end quote, on this attack. I'm not
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kidding. In New York Times, we call that being a journalist. You should try it. It could work out
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really well for you. Unbelievable. And I'm not the only person being smeared as a misinformation
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purveyor for asking facts, literally just asking facts. At no point have I suggested a conspiracy
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theory in the Paul Pelosi case. I said the police appear to have egg on their face and that there
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appear to be more facts yet to be disclosed. That's what Miguel did in his piece on Friday,
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which has been, quote, expired. So we'll get into that. We're going to do a deep dive into this story
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during the show, which you don't want to miss. First, though, we are talking with two women
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looking to take down two top Democratic lawmakers tomorrow night. They were once considered long
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shots. Now they have a real shot. Tudor Dixon is running against against Governor Gretchen Whitmer
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in Michigan. And Tiffany Smiley, you've heard her name mentioned over and over again by pundits on
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the show as a comer. You know, somebody you got to watch. She is looking to defeat longtime Washington
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State Senator Patty Murray. And we begin right there with Tiffany Smiley. Tiffany, welcome to the
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show. Thank you, Megan. Good to be on with you. Yeah, it's great to see you again. Many moons ago,
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I believe I interviewed you and your husband on Fox. Yes. Amazing. It's good to see you again, Megan.
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You've been very busy in that time. Your husband is a veteran. His story is very moving.
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Your advocacy of his recovery after a devastating injury while fighting for our country is
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inspirational. And so let's just start broad based for people who don't know you and haven't been
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paying much attention to Washington State. What makes you think you can take down someone like
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Patty Murray, who is I don't know how many times she's been reelected by the Democrats. She's 72.
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She's like about to take sort of senior status on all these important committees. If she gets reelected,
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that can make citizens say, well, yeah, we want her. We want the power for Washington State.
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What makes you think you can do it? Yeah, well, if power really mattered and seniority really
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mattered, then why did she not stand up for us and fight for us? You know, why was my husband
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given a VA system that wasn't ready or prepared to give him every tool that he needed to be successful?
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You know, I saw firsthand the roadblocks that government will put up in front of our heroes
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and their families, the red tape and the bureaucratic government systems. So Senator
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Murray is a part of that system. I was 11 years old when she was first elected. And we are not in
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a better place. In every room I go into, I ask them, you know, are you in a better place? They say,
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no, we are worse off. If seniority mattered, then we would be in a much better place. And it's clear
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in every room I go into across Washington State, we are packing out rooms. Hundreds of people are coming
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out to hear our message. Washington State does not need seniority. What we need is motivation
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and principle. And the voters of Washington State know that that is exactly what I will bring to the
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halls of Congress when they send me there. People want real results. Policy cannot be based on
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intentions. It has to be based on positive impact in people's lives. It has to be based on results.
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We're connecting on common ground with voters all across Washington State.
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Patty Murray has been non-existent, Megan. Like she's not around. She's been phoning it in,
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thinking she just had a hall pass, you know, to go to D.C. And truly all she does is rubber stamp
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vote, go along to get along. That's who she is. Yeah. Let me just, so to what extent, I mean,
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Washington State, Seattle in particular, has been facing a crime wave like much of the rest of the
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nation. So, and I realize you've been running, running like most Republicans on a, on a tough
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on crime platform, unlike Senator Murray, but what could, what can a Senator do to help crime in
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Washington State? I can understand if you ran for governor, if you ran for mayor of Seattle,
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what can a Senator do? Yeah, well, Senator can do a lot. Number one is lead. Um, and you know,
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Senator Murray's dangerous rhetoric is, is not helpful to our police officers here in Washington State.
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She went, actually went on the Senate floor, June of 2020 and called for funds to be diverted away
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from our police force. And then she disappeared and went into hiding as crime ravished our cities
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all across Washington State. So what I can do at the federal level, um, is I will ensure that our
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police officers in Washington State have access to federal grants for $5,000 retention and recruiting
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bonuses. So we retain and recruit good cops here in Washington State. Another component that's
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important to address in this Megan as well is our Southern border. Um, because we talk about crime,
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um, we need to talk about drugs because that's the impetus that a lot of the crime that's going on,
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especially in Washington State. We have a fentanyl crisis across the state. So we need to secure
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our border, ensure that our border patrol agents and law enforcement agencies down at the border have
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every resource that they need, invest in technology and secure our border, stop the flow of fentanyl
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from coming into Washington State and killing our kids there. Seattle has persistently high crime.
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It's dark. It's not, the numbers are not good for 4,379 cases of violent crime so far this year,
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slowly encroaching on last year's total of 5,407, 42 homicides in 2022 in all of 2021 when there were 42.
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So you guys are on track to surpass the homicide record. Um, and then there was a notable murder
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causing headlines as of August 2nd. And I wonder whether this has played a significant role at all
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in your messaging, a disabled 66 year old being beaten to death with a metal pole in Seattle shown
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on footage. Um, and this was allegedly by a serial criminal who'd been freed by a local judge on a
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separate felony charge just eight days earlier. This has caught a lot of attention. Those of us over
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here on the East coast and in the media, I mean, I think we think of Seattle as just far left,
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you know, let's go softer on criminals kind of people, but this case is turning a lot of heads.
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Yes, you're exactly right. Megan, just a couple of weeks ago, I was at an event in Seattle with
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Democrats and independents. Um, and they said their number one issue is their safety. They do not feel
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safe. Um, and that's exactly why they're voting for me. Many are saying you're the first Republican
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that I've ever voted for. Um, homicide rates were so high just a few months ago that our hospitals
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were in a crisis of blood shortage. And so our campaign actually hosted a two day blood drive
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to help bolster that supply of lifesaving, um, you know, blood supplements. So there is a crisis
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here. Senator Murray doesn't talk about it. In fact, um, I filmed an ad on crime and I was standing
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in a parking lot where there were actual murders. Um, I had to have security with me when I was
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filming this ad. Senator Murray came back and mocked me, um, basically said, there's no crime
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here. I'm getting a cup of coffee. Everything's fine in our communities. And this is when everything
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started to backfire really in her campaign because she fails to address this issue. She fails to be a
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leader and stand with our law enforcement and, and protect, truly protect the people of Washington
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state. Um, per capita, we have the least amount of police officers per thousand people. We're in a
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very, very dangerous place. I'm talking to people all over Washington state, you know, women just
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going to lunch at noon and getting violently assaulted, um, and not enough police officers to
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even respond or even, um, track down or, you know, investigate the case. So there's, there's real
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issues on the ground. I always say these are not Democrat or Republican issues. These are American
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issues. This is about the livelihood and safety of our communities. The bedrock of truly who we are
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as a country's law and order. Yeah. No, the crime rate is driving Democrats all across the country to
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go to the polls tomorrow, uh, for Republicans, according to the polls, including in New York
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state, the state from which I hail, um, in that one case I just mentioned with this disabled 66 year
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old, the man who did it, uh, who was accused was arrested. As I said, eight days later, released by a
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judge without bail, um, on a separate charge of felony harassment after he allegedly threatened
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to kill a local city worker. And in a case that we've kind of seen in different forms time after
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time, the superior court judge released him on his own recognizance and asked him not to commit
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any more crime. Uh, this is via the daily mail on the Seattle police crime dashboard. Unbelievable.
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Asked him not to commit any more crime and, uh, ignored the prosecutor's request for $10,000 in bail.
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The guy did not honor his commitment not to commit any more crime. And now a 66 year old disabled
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person was beaten to death. Um, I wonder what this is going to do because for me, as I understand it
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from over here, it all comes down to Seattle for you. You need to get a certain percentage. It's
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sort of like New York city. Um, you know, here, like without a certain percentage of the New York
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city liberal votes, Lee Zeldin's not going to be Kathy Hochul without a certain percentage of the
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Seattle votes. You can't beat Patty Murray, no matter how well you do in the suburbs and the
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other areas of Washington state. And this happened in Seattle, I guess. Um, but you haven't been doing
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a lot of campaigning in Seattle. And, uh, according to the Seattle times, they say that's going to be
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quote, a huge mistake. So do you feel like you should have done more to get Seattle's votes?
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Well, I don't know what they're talking about because I have been in Seattle quite often. I just
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mentioned the two day blood driver that our campaign hosted to bolster the blood supply, um,
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for a local hospital in downtown Seattle. I've actually been in, um, a lot of the homeless
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encampments in Seattle. I visited the Soto homeless encampment, um, in the heart of Seattle,
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um, one of the largest and was helping clean up dirty needles. I was talking with the folks there.
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And what's interesting is I was meeting with a group that's non-political group. They're just
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taking action to help clean up the streets. And when I was there in that homeless encampment,
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there was another woman there helping clean up and do harm reduction. And she yelled my name from
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across the encampment and came over and she said, Tiffany smiley. And I said, yes, you know,
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I don't know what attack ads you're watching, but I'm really, I'm really a nice person. She said,
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no, no, no, no. I'm so happy to be here with you. She said, I have always voted Democrat. I've always
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voted for Patty Murray. And this year I'm voting for you and I'm honored. It was a real special
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moment because here we are in the heart of Seattle in the face of destruction where we're allowing
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people to poison themselves to death. And here was a Democrat and Republican shaking hands,
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coming together, believing in something better for our city and for our state. That's exactly why we
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are going to win this race. Megan, there is no place that I will not go to talk to the voters of
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Washington state. And I've been doing that for 18 months. Um, and the message is resonating all across
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the ground. What percentage of vote do you think you need to get? For those of us who are going to
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be watching you tomorrow night and reporting on this, what percentage of the vote do you think
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you need to get in Seattle? Cause I'll tell you this, the Seattle times says if you're a Republican,
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you have to get close to 40% in liberal King County, which is where they are. Otherwise you're
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toast. And they point out that, um, in the primary, uh, which was just on August 2nd, you got just 19%
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of the King County vote and all Republican candidates combined scored only 24%. So they're
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saying, you know, doesn't look that good. You got to drive up those numbers because there's just not
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enough available vote outside of King County to bring you over the top. What, what, how would you
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put the numbers? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'll say that, uh, you know, the primary numbers that, uh, after
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Senator Murray went negative and started attacking me in June, two months prior to the primary. Um,
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and there were over 12 people on the ballot. Um, so I, I'm not looking at those numbers. I'm focused
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on connecting with the voters. So, um, I, you know, I, I'm not, I would say King County to win this
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election. Um, and that's not, that's not a hard number. Um, we're campaigning hard in Snohomish and
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Pierce County as well, um, connecting with the voters across the ground and, and we're right there.
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I mean, the enthusiasm on the ground is real and, um, that's what I'm going to continue to focus on.
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I'm, I'm ending my race exactly how I started it and it's connecting directly with the voters of
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Washington state, um, all over this great state. We're barnstorming from one corner to the next.
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Every single vote will count in this election. Um, and so we're encouraging people to get out and
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vote. The enthusiasm is real. Megan. What are they saying to you? I mean, honestly, like the Democrat,
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I know what Republicans care about, but like the Democrats who are considering you,
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like what is bothering them? Why, why would they abandon her?
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Crime. Uh, that's, that's number one that I hear, um, especially in Seattle and Snohomish and
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Pierce County, the crime issue, the education of our children. Um, in addition to the cost of living
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and gas prices, we have some of the highest gas prices in the country. Um, we have a fentanyl crisis
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that that is brought up in every single room. Again, these aren't Democrat or Republican issues.
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They're American. In fact, a woman at the event that I just ran in, um, on my bus to this interview,
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a woman stopping outside the bus. And she said, I've always voted for Patty Murray. I'm so honored
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to be voting for you because they want hope. You know, we have got to deliver results. Senator
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Murray is not talking about any of these issues or campaigning on any of these issues. She's not
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talking about the crime that's affecting our families every single day. So that's where we're
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meeting on common ground, um, is addressing, uh, the crime crisis, fentanyl crisis. Um, and, you
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know, Senator Murray was the champion for mandates, lockdown, shutdowns. She ran as the mom in tennis
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shoes, um, who was going to fight for our children's education. And she abandoned our children in
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Washington state. In a CNN interview, she basically doubled down, said she has no regrets with how they
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handled the pandemic. They followed the science. Um, that was a slap in the face to every parent
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across Washington state. So we are the campaign for parents. And, you know, when you're talking
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about our kids, it doesn't matter if you're Democrat or Republican, you want someone who will
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go fight, uh, for your kids to ensure that they have competitive quality education. Um, I'm a mom
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of three young boys who were in the public school system during the pandemic. Senator Murray failed
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to address the issues. Um, you know, she says she's, you know, put all this money into the American
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rescue plan. And my, my answer back to her was if all of this was so great, Senator Murray,
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why is it not working? Um, you know, can I ask you a question? Cause third way, which is a, uh,
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sort of a left leaning, but not far left, uh, think tank. They did a poll of voters to try to
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figure out what's going wrong on the democratic side. They're, you know, they're, they're Democrats.
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They want the Democrats to win. And they were trying to take an honest look at why it doesn't
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look like they're going to. And one of the things that they concluded, uh, in their polling
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is, and I quote, this is on education. Um, they say worse, even in areas where Democrats
00:17:10.940
are trusted more, it is not clear that voters are sold on Democrats approach or ability to
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get things done. Jarringly in a split test between which party will fund the education
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system and which will improve the education system. Democrats lead by 19 points on funding,
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but they trailed by one point on actually improving it. And just to be behind by one point
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for the Democrats on, you know, getting voters approval on education is actually a seismic
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shift. The voters used to just always go with Democrats. When it came to education, it was
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sort of like climate change, abortion and education, net, net the electorate would favor
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Dems. But for them to be saying this democratic group, taking a hard look saying when it comes
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to the way we're actually going to do education, we now favor Republicans. I mean, I think that
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what you're touching on is being reflected by these polls, even the Democrat moms, because
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you're running as a new mom and down, even the Democrat moms have had it.
00:18:08.080
Yes. Yes, you're exactly right. And I've been connecting with them over the last 18 months,
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you know, especially, uh, parents with special needs kids, there's actually a lawsuit into the
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Seattle school district, um, because those kids had no interaction for months. I mean, this
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is exactly why we will win this race because we have solutions versus just money. We don't have
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a money problem. We have a solutions problem. And, and Megan, I think it's also important
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to note that, and I get cheers all over Washington state for this, um, is that we have to decrease
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the stigma that college is for everyone, um, and expose our kids, especially here in Washington
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state to trade at a much younger age, because there are multiple pathways to the American dream.
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And we need to be ensuring that our children have access to competitive quality educations that
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will give them a hand up in this country. Senator Murray does not address this issue. She funds the
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system. She's a go along to get along. And the parents of Washington state know that.
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Hmm. All right. Uh, Donald Trump lost, uh, Washington state to Joe Biden by 20 points, 58 to 38.
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And so what role, if any, does Trump play in this election? Um, he's in the news today for hitting
00:19:23.720
Ron DeSantis as Ron DeSantis. Some Republicans are angry about that. Um, where do you stand on
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Donald Trump and whether you want him to be the party nominee in 2024? You know, this campaign here
00:19:36.240
in Washington state, we will shock the country because it, I have been so successful in this whole
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campaign because over the last 18 months, there's one endorsement that I'm focused on. And that's the
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voters of Washington state. And they know that, um, you know, Senator Murray has spent millions of
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dollars to use the picture of me and the president and smear me across Washington state. And it's
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really backfiring on her because she, she doesn't show the voters, the picture of me and her,
00:20:01.880
and she doesn't want the voters to hear her talking about me on the Senate floor in 2018 saying what an
00:20:08.020
incredible, effective advocate I am. Um, but that's who I am. And the voters of Washington state know that
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I will work with anyone to deliver results. When, when I met with the president, I was fighting for
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every Democrat, Republican, independent service member and their family. That's exactly what I
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will do for Washington state. And we are surging in the polls because my main focus is the voters
00:20:28.120
of Washington state and delivering results. Hmm. Would you back Trump if you were the party nominee?
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I mean, would you, would you back him as the nominee? I I'm just trying to win in Washington state.
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And that's what I'm focused on bringing our country together, um, and moving forward. Um,
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that is clearly what we need here in Washington state. And that is my main focus. We need to retire
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Patty Murray, Tiffany, um, all the best to you and to your husband too, for his honorable service.
00:20:54.000
And I know the whole family family serves and you've been through a lot. His injuries, absolutely
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devastating, but he continued on. They wanted you to sign his retirement papers while he was still in
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the hospital. You refused. Um, and I believe he became the first serving blind active duty,
00:21:10.780
uh, member, right. Thanks to your refusal to sign those papers after all that.
00:21:16.640
Yes, absolutely. Um, that's what I tell everyone across Washington state. That's exactly who I am.
00:21:22.140
Um, I was the first person to not sign that paperwork, um, in, you know, to transition Scotty into the VA.
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I believed in a better purpose. I believed in his life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
00:21:31.660
And that's what I'm fighting for, for all of Washington state.
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Well, you guys are, you truly are American patriots and it's, it's a pleasure to meet you.
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All the best. And we will be right back with Tudor Dixon, GOP candidate in Michigan. And I just
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got back from a weekend in Detroit. And let me tell you, everyone was talking about Tudor Dixon.
00:21:55.520
Our next guest is Tudor Dixon, Republican candidate in the Michigan governor race. In the months leading
00:22:07.460
up to the election, there was a wide polling gap between Tudor and her and the current governor,
00:22:12.180
Gretchen Whitmer. But in the last few weeks, the gap has narrowed considerably leaving the competitors
00:22:17.680
neck and neck. It's now at the point where real clear politics is actually suggesting this is going
00:22:24.680
to be a GOP pickup. Wow. What a reversal that would be. Tudor Dixon, welcome to the show.
00:22:34.440
I mean, that must have like, I know you've been working hard, but you've been way outspent.
00:22:39.220
And your opponent is the clear favorite, according to the polls up until recently. So you must have
00:22:45.420
been taken aback when you saw now you're the projected likely winner by real clear politics.
00:22:51.280
What did you make of it? Well, we've been watching the excitement grow on the ground. We think that
00:22:55.620
the movement of people that have decided they don't want Gretchen Whitmer back in office is growing
00:23:00.900
and growing. Parents are more and more upset that the education system is failing in the state of
00:23:06.060
Michigan. So over time, I'm not surprised. She did come out with a lot of money. They have so much
00:23:11.180
money. It's crazy. She's come out with over $25 million in attack ads. I think that her spend
00:23:17.640
through the end will be closer to 50 million in attack ads. And people said that there was really
00:23:22.560
no way to overcome it. But it's been interesting because I think what happened is that there was
00:23:27.540
a lot of anger around surrounding who Gretchen Whitmer was and her policies, but people didn't know who
00:23:33.800
the alternative was. So she spent all that money and that increased my name ID to over 90% in the
00:23:40.000
state. Then we got to have the two debates and, and, and what she defined me as people really got
00:23:45.600
to see, well, that's not actually who she is. When we see her debate, we understand what her policies
00:23:50.260
are. We understand who she is. And that just really changed the trajectory of the race. So I almost
00:23:55.480
credit Gretchen Whitmer with getting me where I am. Abortion, abortion, abortion. I mean, it was
00:24:00.960
everywhere. I was in Detroit this whole weekend with some friends and prop three, prop three, prop
00:24:05.720
three, prop three. Um, it was all over the place. And as I understand prop three, this is basically,
00:24:10.000
you know, we could, if the voters want to, we can just kick it back to the Roe versus Wade standard
00:24:15.180
on abortion. If, if the voters want to write that into Michigan law. And you said, if that's what the
00:24:21.240
voters want to do, I'm not going to mess with it. You know, I, I will, I will accept the voters
00:24:26.220
decision. This is not how you've been portrayed by your opponents. Barack Obama came out and
00:24:32.600
said, you're the governor Whitmer's, uh, opponent you, um, that, that you think politicians had
00:24:40.960
the right idea, uh, back in 1931. I mean, she probably thinks if she watched the handmaid's
00:24:46.640
tail, she's thinking, well, what's the problem? No, Obama said it was a forced rapes for sterilizations
00:24:54.560
during the Republican primary. Uh, Dixon had praised the law and said, saving the life of the
00:25:00.480
mother should be the only exception. So he's saying your earlier position certainly sounded more extreme
00:25:03.900
than prop three would allow. So what do you make of Obama suggesting you were, you were big time in
00:25:09.240
favor of what you saw in handmaid's tail? Yeah. When you have to bring Barack Obama into the city
00:25:14.820
of Detroit to try to campaign there, you know, you have a problem getting out your base. Now we see
00:25:19.820
them in this desperate mode of attacking Republicans for things that really have nothing to do with
00:25:25.180
policy whatsoever. And it's interesting that you bring this up because there is prop three on the
00:25:29.840
ballot. It is really extreme. It's abortion up to the moment of birth. You don't have to be a doctor
00:25:34.880
to have an abort to, to perform an abortion. It takes away parental consent for a minor wanting to have
00:25:40.540
an abortion. And if you botch the abortion, whether you are a doctor or not, you are legally
00:25:44.740
immune to any recourse from the patient or from their patient's family, if you do something
00:25:49.440
terrible. So it is the most extreme proposal. The only other two places in the world that have
00:25:55.080
something like this are China and North Korea. But the more interesting part about this is that
00:26:00.020
Michigan has already had a judge that has ruled in this matter and said, there will be no ban on
00:26:05.460
abortion because that would be unconstitutional. So we're already at Roe. That's where we are right now
00:26:10.640
in the state of Michigan without anybody having to vote on this extreme ballot measure, without the
00:26:15.260
governor weighing in. And the governor won't weigh in because this has been decided in the courts.
00:26:19.840
But it's still what she's running on, which tells you she has nothing to run on because she's been in
00:26:25.400
government for 20 years. Governor for four of those has done nothing for the state of Michigan to grow
00:26:31.120
economic development. We are losing automotive day by day. You see more automotive shops starting up in
00:26:37.240
Ohio and Indiana and Kentucky and Tennessee and North Carolina, but not in Michigan. She knows that
00:26:42.720
she's losing automotive. That's our legacy industry. And she doesn't want to talk about that. She doesn't
00:26:47.740
want to talk about the fact that the schools are now in the bottom 10 in the nation. And she hasn't
00:26:51.900
done anything to get our kids back on track after COVID, after the lockdowns. She lied in the debate,
00:26:58.280
said our schools were only locked down for three months. Parents are angry.
00:27:01.880
I'll get to that one second. I do want to get your way into Barack Obama campaigning for her
00:27:06.460
on something that has nothing to do. And my goodness, to come out and insult me in that way.
00:27:11.900
Boy, I mean, it's almost a compliment that he has nothing else to say.
00:27:15.280
Yeah. Can't handmaids tell like they use that against Amy Coney Barrett, too, because of her
00:27:18.860
Catholicism. I'm like, OK, wait, but I did hear you criticize Prop 3 quite strongly in there. And I
00:27:25.700
had heard you say before that you would there are, quote, no laws that I will decide not to follow
00:27:32.320
if that is what the people want. So you will uphold Prop 3 if Michiganders vote for it.
00:27:38.420
Absolutely. I am not Gretchen Whitmer. She has come out and said there are laws that I will pick
00:27:42.940
and choose what to follow. If that is what the people vote for, that's what they vote for. This
00:27:47.220
is our process, our system of government. We have to respect the system. The system is that if you put a
00:27:52.960
proposal on the ballot and people vote for it, the governor then and especially this is a
00:27:57.440
constitution change. The governor doesn't get to say, you know what, I'm not going to follow the
00:28:01.480
constitution in this area. If the people vote for this, then absolutely. That's what I will uphold.
00:28:07.120
That is what I'm being elected to do. OK, how about if the people vote for Joe Biden, you'll accept
00:28:13.280
that he's the legitimate winner of the state of Michigan because you've been a little waffly on that.
00:28:17.100
Did he win Michigan fairly? I've said that once an election is certified, that is our president.
00:28:22.140
And I have said that he is our president. I don't like the fact that our secretary of state,
00:28:26.860
you know, she in Michigan, it was kind of unique. She ended up having a judge come out and say two
00:28:31.720
of the things she did in the election were unlawful. So she changed the rules right before just weeks
00:28:37.020
before the election. And she changed it so that our signature match was not you didn't have to have
00:28:42.180
the same strength in the signature match. She also sent absentee ballot applications to every
00:28:47.640
person in the state on the taxpayer dime, which she legally wasn't allowed to do. So I've said,
00:28:52.820
look, there's a lot of reasons people question it when you see the secretary of state break the law
00:28:57.400
during the election. So, of course, people are going to say we want her to run a lawful election.
00:29:02.460
And if she does that, then we won't have a problem. But we have a lot of people on the ground.
00:29:06.040
We feel confident in this election. We know people are watching her now. And a judge is not going to
00:29:10.680
allow her to get away with changing the rules without that going through the proper channels.
00:29:14.820
Mm hmm. What about I mentioned this to Tiffany Smiley, but Donald Trump out that was out there
00:29:20.580
this weekend taking a shot at Ron DeSantis, calling him Ron DeSantis, some Republicans
00:29:24.120
thought it was out of line. What did you make of it? You know, right now we want everybody focused
00:29:29.400
on these midterms. I really do. I want people to look at the midterms and say, this is the election
00:29:35.040
that we have this week. It is key that we get Republicans in so that my focus is there. I want
00:29:40.780
everybody's focus to be there. You want the Trump you want the Trump supporters. You want the
00:29:43.800
DeSantis supporters and you want the Tudor Dixon supporters more than anybody. Fair enough.
00:29:48.740
Let's talk about crime. Crime in Michigan is a problem, just like it is in virtually all the
00:29:53.040
other states. What do you think you can do differently than what Gretchen Whitmer has done?
00:29:59.700
Well, Gretchen Whitmer's record on crime is to first of all, she came into office and
00:30:04.220
sure, her goal was to raise taxes. So she wanted to raise the gas tax by 45 cents a gallon.
00:30:09.440
And when she didn't get that through the legislature, she decided to cut secondary
00:30:14.160
road funding for sheriffs. And so we know that right off the bat, she was cutting funding to
00:30:19.400
police. She also vetoed funding for corrections officers. So we so desperately need help in our
00:30:25.900
corrections department right now. But she decided to veto funding there as well. Her history is to
00:30:31.340
take money away from policing, but also marching with folks that had those defund the police signs.
00:30:37.060
She marched with those folks. She also came out and said she supports the spirit of defund the
00:30:41.920
police. This has been catastrophic for the state of Michigan. We currently have four of the 20 most
00:30:47.480
dangerous cities in the country. Barack Obama, when he was here, kind of joked about crime. He was in
00:30:53.660
Detroit joking about the fact that this happened and we should probably blame Trump for this. But think
00:30:59.360
about the optics of that. You are standing in the second most violent city in the country,
00:31:04.540
joking about crime. The people of Michigan don't think that this is funny. They realize that she
00:31:10.420
has taken her support away from the police. In the last couple of weeks, she's come out and said,
00:31:14.600
no, no, I do support the police. Of course, because she sees an election in the future.
00:31:19.160
But we have heard from police across the state saying, we just can't keep people in the position
00:31:23.660
because they are too nervous that they're either going to get arrested or they're going to get killed
00:31:27.760
on the job in the state of Michigan. And they don't have the support from the chief executive
00:31:32.240
officer. So we know that that has caused us to have a lack of folks in the police force. That's
00:31:38.460
a huge problem. There was an article a few weeks ago that said, this year, we have lost a police
00:31:44.040
officer a day in the city of Detroit leaving the force because it's just a position where they don't
00:31:49.020
feel they're honored. They don't feel they're supported. So the opportunity to create safe
00:31:53.220
communities is wide open in the state of Michigan. It's going to take funding. We want to put a billion
00:31:58.220
new dollars into policing to recruit and retain police to bring honor back to the position to
00:32:04.000
bring people up out of their communities and rise them up into the police force once again.
00:32:09.040
And then I believe that we will be able to combat some of these issues that we have.
00:32:12.860
Even our local crime labs are telling me if we could put a little bit more focus on what we're
00:32:17.500
doing in these labs, we would be able to prevent a lot more crime. We need to. We are fifth in the
00:32:23.720
nation for rapes per capita. We've got to get more protection under sex crimes. We've also got
00:32:28.920
to face the opioid epidemic in a different way. Sensing a theme here as I listen to you and your
00:32:34.800
fellow candidates. COVID is the biggie after abortion in Michigan, I think, for a lot of Republican
00:32:40.560
voters especially. She was the lockdown queen. And now she's denying it. Now she's really engaging in
00:32:49.480
some revisionist history. You mentioned it a second ago and I said we'd get to it. Here's the soundbite
00:32:53.800
of her at your October 25th debate, trying to, I'll tell the audience, this is my factual correction
00:33:02.100
on her, trying to minimize what she did with schools in Michigan during the COVID period. Here it is.
00:33:10.100
We've also had some historic challenges over the last few years, I think, to put it lightly.
00:33:14.480
You know, Mrs. Dixon says that I kept students out longer than any other state. That's just not
00:33:19.940
true. I worked closely with my Republican and Democratic governors and kids were out for three
00:33:25.040
months. Were they? No. And that was, you know, I was shocked by that. As I've traveled across the
00:33:33.340
state, so many parents have said to me, it wasn't just shocking for us. Our kids were in the room and
00:33:38.320
they had an audible gasp saying we weren't out of school for three months. I've had kids at rallies.
00:33:43.060
One of them yesterday in the morning yelled out, I was out for eight months or nine months.
00:33:47.500
Another kid yelled out, I was out for a year and a half. So we have anywhere from really nine months
00:33:53.340
to two years that kids were out of school. Ann Arbor, Flint, and Detroit. All three cities still
00:33:59.280
had schools out in the beginning of 2022. So we have a significant amount of learning loss in the state
00:34:05.620
of Michigan, but it's not even that she lied about it. It's that smug smile, the laugh beforehand,
00:34:11.640
acting like this didn't happen. And I think it really took people back to all those days when
00:34:16.860
Gretchen Whitmer would come out, we would be waiting to hear what she was going to take away
00:34:21.400
from us that day, if we were going to get any freedoms or liberties back. And she would come out
00:34:26.060
and just speak to us in such a condescending manner. In the middle of the pandemic, she came
00:34:30.380
out one day and she said, don't go to Ohio to get your hair done. If you want to get your hair
00:34:36.060
done, then Google how to cut your own hair. I mean, just talking to people like this and the,
00:34:42.560
and the, just the audacity of saying, if you cross the border into Ohio, then you're going to bring
00:34:48.900
COVID back here. Well, why do people in Ohio think it's okay to have salons open? She crushed,
00:34:54.500
crushed our salons. She killed our restaurants. Our restaurants were closed longer than any other
00:34:59.880
state. Eight months, 3000 restaurants gone right off the bat. We're still losing restaurants every
00:35:05.580
single day because people can't come back from these policies. And now she's saying, well, that
00:35:10.960
didn't happen. Well, it did happen. And the people who suffered from it know full well that she's
00:35:18.660
She hears just a couple of facts for the audience. Schools in Detroit and Grand Rapids remain closed for
00:35:25.020
most of the 2020-21 school year. All right. That's the next year after the spring of COVID,
00:35:30.240
the whole next year. While students at Ann Arbor and Flint entered 2022 with remote instruction,
00:35:37.060
Governor Whitmer rebuffed calls from the state Republicans to require Michigan school districts
00:35:41.340
to offer an in-person learning option, at least for K-5 students. She wouldn't do it. During the 2020
00:35:49.000
through 2021 school year, Ann Arbor offered in-person instruction a mere 11% of the time,
00:35:56.080
according to the data analytics company, Burbio. So, I mean, and by the way, Lansing was closed more
00:36:01.240
than Ann Arbor and Kalamazoo students learn via Zoom all year. So it really is bold. And as the
00:36:08.100
mother of young school children myself, I find it outrageous that she's trying to like defend your
00:36:12.560
record, stick to the facts, defend your record. Tell us why you thought that was okay, but she's trying
00:36:16.800
to change the record. And by the way, she was also pro-masking. The state did not lift the
00:36:22.140
recommended school mask mandate until February 2022. Can I just ask you one other thing about
00:36:26.780
the COVID thing? She's a Cuomo. She's somebody who ordered COVID-positive patients into nursing homes,
00:36:34.200
despite the obvious risks of doing that, that were called to the attention of these sitting
00:36:38.760
governors at the time. It's not like they had no idea what might happen to the elderly if they did it.
00:36:42.880
Is that an issue there? Because I mean, in New York, that helped lead to the downfall of our
00:36:47.400
governor, Cuomo. That's why Kathy Hochul is the governor now. In Michigan, it doesn't seem to have
00:36:52.080
been such a big deal. No, and this has been a frustration that the media has not hit her harder
00:36:58.100
on this, because this is something that I came out and talked about in the debate too. She did get a few
00:37:03.300
questions on that afterward, and she has doubled down on this lie because she lied about that as well.
00:37:09.040
She said, oh, I didn't force COVID-positive patients into nursing homes. Well, she did. In fact,
00:37:14.380
when Governor Cuomo backed off of that, she doubled down and she kept putting people in.
00:37:19.600
A third of our deaths were seniors from nursing homes. It was outrageous, the policies that she
00:37:24.440
had. But now it's even more outrageous that, like you said, why isn't she coming out and defending this
00:37:29.760
or saying, you know, I talked to the experts and they said this. Instead, she's saying, I didn't do that,
00:37:34.200
which is completely shocking and outrageous. But we have this leftist media in Michigan that isn't
00:37:39.720
saying, wait a minute, you definitely did do this. We have the numbers. In fact, they tried to alter
00:37:46.640
what they considered long-term care and nursing facilities so that the numbers would look a lot
00:37:51.580
better than they actually were. And when we had an outside auditor come in and do the actual numbers,
00:37:56.840
they were much higher than even what the Whitmer administration was willing to put out.
00:38:00.620
And she won't talk about it. Now, to this day, she is lying about that policy and saying she
00:38:05.440
didn't do it at all. We lived through it. My grandmother was locked into a nursing home.
00:38:09.700
The bizarre thing was you couldn't go see your family members in a nursing home,
00:38:14.240
even if you had a negative test and they had a negative test. You were only allowed into a nursing
00:38:19.020
home if you were positive for COVID-19. It was outrageous and it caused way too many deaths.
00:38:24.860
Yeah. You know what? The difference is that with all due respect to the GOP messaging,
00:38:28.360
you didn't have Janice Dean there. Janice Dean, my pal at Fox News, whose both of her in-laws were
00:38:33.620
killed, they died of COVID in New York state nursing homes around the time of this order by
00:38:40.820
Governor Cuomo. And she was on them like a dog with a bone and was really the person who changed
00:38:44.440
the conversation in New York about it. And there wasn't such a famous person in Michigan. It's sad.
00:38:49.000
You know, you shouldn't need a famous person to have two dead relatives, right?
00:38:52.360
Well, I will say that we have one man, one journalist here, Charlie Leduff, who pushed really hard to get
00:38:57.700
that out. And Janice Dean did share a lot of his stuff, a lot of his reporting, a lot of his
00:39:02.340
research. So we are grateful to Janice Dean for doing that.
00:39:08.360
So let's talk about Colbert for a minute, because we played this on Friday. It was just so nasty and
00:39:14.160
typically just uncharitable of him. You got out there and called attention to a Democrat who would
00:39:20.160
come up to you and said, I'm a lifelong Democrat, but I'm getting ready to vote for you,
00:39:23.040
in particular because of the weird sexualization of children books that we're seeing that literally
00:39:28.860
Democrats called as a conspiracy theory. This is yet another conspiracy theory that the Republican
00:39:33.300
parents, the independent minded parents of the Democrat parents were like, why are you sexualizing
00:39:37.140
my kid in elementary school? For the love of God, keep the books. Remember when we were in school
00:39:41.880
was like Winnie the Pooh or maybe like Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But you did not have this stuff.
00:39:46.820
Um, he basically called you a liar in the following clip. I'll play it. It's not three.
00:39:52.540
Dixon's not the only one worried about this issue. So is this guy. She totally made up.
00:39:57.000
I had a gentleman come up to me just a few nights ago and he said, I found content in my school library
00:40:02.760
describing how to have sex to my son. I went to the Democrats and I said, I cannot believe that this
00:40:09.660
is in there. Okay. Fine. That happened. But even if it did, if someone found a book they didn't like
00:40:20.200
at a school library, why would they go to the Democrats? That's like saying, excuse me, is this
00:40:24.840
Chuck Schumer's office? I didn't like the finale of House of the Dragon. Also, this natural peanut
00:40:31.440
butter is way too oily when it's in the cupboard, but it gets too hard when it's in the fridge.
00:40:35.360
I'm voting Republican. Good day, sir. Then for reasons all her own, Dixon continued.
00:40:41.460
What these parents are talking about are not textbooks that will help children learn about
00:40:46.880
themselves. These are books that are describing to children how to have sex. She's right. We looked
00:40:52.660
it up and there are a lot of classic children's books teaching kids about doing it. There's
00:40:57.500
Where the Wild Things Bone, If You Give a Mouse Some Nookie, and Green Eggs and Butt Stuff.
00:41:05.360
Well, it turns out you were telling the truth. And the man, Khalil Othman, has spoken out saying,
00:41:13.220
I am very real. I am the Democrat who went to Tudor Dixon and a simple Google search would have
00:41:18.560
revealed me to you. I want to give you an update. Stephen Colbert, quote, apologized for the error
00:41:27.300
on his show in the snarkiest way possible. Here's a little bit of this on, I think, Thursday or Friday
00:41:35.160
Therefore, I, Stephen Colbert, acknowledge that you exist and ask that you forgive me. He goes on to
00:41:42.260
say, if this person, and he means me, did his due diligence and started researching or had his team
00:41:48.780
do a little bit of research of who's this person who attended Dixon's rally, they will be able to
00:41:53.860
find my name right away, easy, on social media. Just Google it. Okay, fair enough. But I will point
00:42:00.120
out that Dixon never said your name. So what am I supposed to search for? All she said was, I had a
00:42:06.140
gentleman come up to me and he said, I found content in my school library describing how to
00:42:11.980
have sex to my son. He says that should be enough. So let's, uh, let's Google some key words from that
00:42:20.460
sentence. This guy claimed to be a Democratic politician, but switched after he lost his primary
00:42:26.100
and packed up his toys and went off in a huff to support an election denying transphobic COVID-19
00:42:32.880
conspiracy theorist. What a wonderful example for all of our children. By the way, fella,
00:42:39.620
if you didn't know that about Tudor Dixon before you supported her, you should Google it.
00:42:50.700
Uh, you know, this is actually great because we have so many people saying this is the elitist
00:42:55.980
left that is coming out and belittling parents who say they're concerned about this stuff. I'm a mom
00:43:01.640
of four girls. I'm concerned about this too. Khalil and I have bonded over this and it's been very
00:43:07.400
interesting to see a community. He said to me, you know, I was told the, the Republicans don't want me
00:43:13.180
at their rallies, but I bravely left and came to your rally. And he said, you talked about all the
00:43:17.720
things I cared about. And I said, you know, it's funny because we were told that your community
00:43:22.120
didn't want us to come in. Here is a Muslim American who is saying at this point, I'm putting aside
00:43:28.100
everything else. This is not a partisan thing. This is about him and me fighting for our kids.
00:43:34.280
He gets it. I get it. We're, we are going to fight for our kids and we're bringing people
00:43:38.880
along with us to the Democrats just thought that they always had. But now we're talking about things
00:43:44.800
that matter so deeply to our hearts. We have left because we're, we're up against a heartbreak.
00:43:49.060
Let me ask you, what's your message to Stephen Colbert? What's he not getting?
00:43:52.300
You are not understanding the people of the country. You're not understanding the heartbeat of
00:43:56.860
America right now. And that is to make sure that our kids are protected, that they have a future,
00:44:02.160
that they have safe communities. When you belittle parents who are concerned about their child's
00:44:07.260
safety, no matter what the safety issue is, you are losing people for your own party and we welcome
00:44:12.920
them to ours. All right. Prediction for what's going to happen tomorrow? There's a lot of energy on the
00:44:18.940
ground. You probably hear the rally in the background right now. We think we're going to have a big red
00:44:22.980
wave in Michigan. Wow. We will be watching and reporting on it all. Thank you so much for being
00:44:28.760
here, Tudor Dixon. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. We, we loved it. All right. We'll be right back
00:44:34.860
with much, much more. We got lots to cover, including that NBC retracted reporter expired,
00:44:39.640
like it died, like it died at cause of natural death.
00:44:42.840
The Paul Pelosi story took a strange turn on Friday morning when NBC's Today Show revealed
00:44:53.120
new details about what took place right before the assault. And then NBC expired the video,
00:45:01.900
making it no longer available to view without much of an explanation. Our own executive producer of this
00:45:08.620
show, Steve Krakauer has got another job where he writes a newsletter, which I love. And I highly
00:45:15.400
recommend to all of you called fourth watch. And he took a deep dive into what went down and is here
00:45:20.880
to help explain it. Steve, thanks for being on the show. Hey Megan, anytime. Absolutely. Yes. My,
00:45:26.620
my side did. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, all right. So you set it up in the news letter. Very nice.
00:45:32.400
You talk about how, okay, the Democrats dispatched of this story in the media very nicely. January 6th,
00:45:37.900
this was January 6th, part two, despite the fact that the guy believed in Jesus,
00:45:42.020
he was Jesus for a year. And in little fairies, they were like, no, Trump can Trump caused it
00:45:47.780
January 6th. Right. It's like they had dispatched of this. Yeah, of course. Yes. The focus was not on
00:45:53.300
the blogs about how he's communicating with fairies and he has to build a wooden, you know,
00:45:57.520
space to get to communicate with his fairies. No, it was focused on certain blog posts, which had to do
00:46:02.620
with election integrity, election fraud, COVID, some of the other, you know, the QAnon talking points.
00:46:07.800
And they said, okay, well, that's what it is. Right-wing political violence again,
00:46:11.400
and, and move on, you know, that, and that really was how the story was for about six days
00:46:16.440
all the way up until Friday morning. Just to underscore it for our, for our audience,
00:46:20.420
as opposed to a homeless guy on drugs, who is reportedly in the country illegally,
00:46:26.060
thanks to California being a sanctuary state and San Fran being a sanctuary city breaks into a home.
00:46:32.140
And yet another evidence of crime run rampant in San Francisco. That's the other possible
00:46:37.220
narrative, right? Like, so that one, no, they dispatched of that and they settle on Jan 6th,
00:46:42.240
Republican messaging, and we're good. Okay, great. But then nasty little reporters like yours truly
00:46:49.020
and others started to ask more questions like, well, it doesn't make sense. Like we said on our show last
00:46:54.060
Monday, why would the police open up? Why would Paul Pelosi open up the door and look at the police
00:46:59.780
officers and the police officers are standing there and the defendant is like, all good. And
00:47:04.540
they're just standing there having a convo. And then they started arguing over the hammer. And then
00:47:08.940
the police jumped in and they, the guy hurt Paul Pelosi right in front of the cops, which jumped out
00:47:15.140
at us as odd. And we said, this smells funny and we want more facts. Others went further and jumped
00:47:20.940
into full conspiracy theory, which we did not. But the, the, the blowback has been no questions
00:47:27.300
should be asked. None. So we'll get to that in one second. Enter NBC, which is also a conspiracy
00:47:31.880
theorist as it turns out, because one of their very well-respected and trusted correspondents did
00:47:37.000
what? Yeah. Miguel Almaguer on Friday morning on the today's show, a very prominent perch. This was not,
00:47:42.620
you know, OAN or something that, that this was going on. It was on the today's show talking to Craig
00:47:47.140
Melvin gave a report on quote, new details that he had learned from several sources, uh, on what
00:47:53.400
happened when police arrived at the Pelosi residence. And he, he did reveal, I mean, we're
00:47:57.440
going to, we've got a SADA on it, but he's, he revealed some very interesting new information,
00:48:01.200
not jumping to conclusions and notably also making it very clear that the attack did, did happen.
00:48:07.140
Police witnessed an attack Pelosi when it was, you know, hit in the head with the hammer by
00:48:10.920
DePap. It was all, all of that is true. But the question is, what were these odd circumstances
00:48:15.260
that happened and some new also timeline questions as well, uh, that he put out there on Friday
00:48:20.700
morning. It started blowing up because the today's show tweeted it because they put it on their
00:48:23.820
website. It was, it was a story that, you know, as I would imagine anyone would be proud of because
00:48:28.860
it was new details on a very important story. That's that's in the news. He's California based
00:48:34.080
and thus presumably had the connections to to break such news. Here is just a little bit of the now
00:48:39.260
expired report. After a knock and announce the front door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82 year
00:48:46.660
old did not immediately declare an emergency or tried to leave his home, but instead began walking
00:48:53.040
several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police. It's unclear if
00:48:59.520
the 82 year old was already injured or what his mental state was, say sources. According to court
00:49:06.100
documents, when the officer asked what was going on, defendant smiled and said, everything's
00:49:12.280
good. But instantaneously, a struggle ensued as police clearly saw David DePap strike Paul
00:49:19.440
Pelosi in the head with a hammer. Investigators have previously said Pelosi did not know DePap
00:49:26.460
when the 42 year old broke into his home. Why Pelosi didn't try to flee or tell responding
00:49:32.940
officers? He was in distress is unclear. Fear takes over. Fear freezes people. Law enforcement
00:49:39.680
officials tell us the bottom line here is this was a terrifying situation. We still don't know
00:49:44.060
exactly what unfolded between Mr. Pelosi and the suspect for the 30 minutes they were alone inside
00:49:49.720
that house before police arrived. Officials who were investigating this matter would not go into
00:49:54.900
further details about these new details. You point out, Steve, in your in your newsletter,
00:49:59.960
that timeline is important. Yes. So the timeline, we know that the phone call to the police took place
00:50:06.620
at 223 a.m. And we know police arrived at 231 a.m. We didn't really previously know when the supposed
00:50:13.640
intruder went into the house. We now know that it occurred, I guess, at 201 a.m. So there was a now
00:50:20.040
22 minute period where we know that there was interactions between Pelosi and the intruder before
00:50:25.080
the 911 call took place. That's not something that had previously been that delineated before
00:50:30.440
before this report. And we were all like those of us who are curious journalists had been asking
00:50:36.600
questions like and you outline these in your piece as well. How was Pelosi able to call 911 in the first
00:50:42.200
place? Why did the assault only happen after the police arrived, which is what we were asking last
00:50:46.060
week? How was Pelosi able to open the door for police while being essentially held hostage?
00:50:50.000
Why wasn't there a security system with an alarm that went off after the glass broke at the back
00:50:54.340
door when it was open to 2 a.m.? Instantly alerting the police to a break in. I would add why and how
00:51:00.040
was he able to leave the bathroom that he went in to call the police as well? Why didn't he run into
00:51:04.420
the arms of the cops when they opened when he opened the door and he saw police? Why didn't he run into
00:51:09.880
their arms? You know, they were right there. They have guns like all these are good questions.
00:51:14.780
And San Fran PD has been like, you're not getting the body cam footage. You're not getting security
00:51:20.860
cam footage and really has been holding the cards close to the vest. Yeah, exactly. And that last
00:51:27.500
point, the one about why did he when he opened the door? I mean, that was really, I think, the most
00:51:31.820
eye opening part of Miguel's report. Why didn't he once the police open the door? Because we now know
00:51:36.400
Pelosi himself opened the door for the police. Why didn't he just say, I'm being held hostage here
00:51:41.760
or run away? We don't know. And that was what was raised in the report. And that is, as we as you
00:51:46.760
mentioned a couple of times, that is what essentially we think caused NBC to, quote, expire this video,
00:51:53.560
not just delete the tweet that they had put out from the Today Show, but to literally remove it from
00:51:58.160
their website to where now when you go to that link, it says this video has been expired, which
00:52:03.140
is very rare. As you point as you point out the newsletter, it gets worse than that, because not
00:52:07.260
only did they delete it. And I said this Janisteen and I were actually talking about this over the
00:52:10.880
weekend. She's a star of today's show. I was saying what's what's weird about it is normally
00:52:16.900
if you realize you've made a mistake in a report at NBC, you would post here is how we were wrong.
00:52:22.920
We apologize for, you know, misstating the following facts. We got it wrong. And here's
00:52:28.000
a full clarification. They didn't do that. They did. They just said it wasn't up to NBC's reporting
00:52:33.180
standards. What does that mean? That sounds a lot to me as a reporter like Nancy Pelosi's office
00:52:38.720
called and yelled at them and they bent the knee. That's what you would say. That's how you would
00:52:43.440
cover it. So other reporters called NBC, including you, to try to get an explanation. And as your
00:52:50.140
newsletter makes clear, you say they're basically they tried to release a little to the inquiring
00:52:55.440
reporters and then they tried to launder information through willing reporters like The Washington
00:53:01.140
Post to try to get out more damaging information about their own report.
00:53:06.280
Exactly right. The the you as you mentioned, the editor's note said did not go up to reporting
00:53:10.860
standard. The quote that was given an NBC source, which I got, which The Washington Post, which CNN
00:53:15.120
got, is that a source for the story, a key source, the main source was deemed, quote, unreliable.
00:53:21.980
Unreliable is a really interesting word because I pressed NBC multiple times. What was inaccurate?
00:53:26.240
Was anything inaccurate? And it was very easy for you to say the report was inaccurate in this source
00:53:31.040
statement. They notably did not do that, only that the source was unreliable and that the report did
00:53:35.660
not meet reporting standards. So if there was anything wrong at all in the story, why didn't
00:53:41.180
they just say that in the actual, you know, in any of these these venues that they could have?
00:53:45.720
Instead, as you mentioned, in The Washington Post in particular, there's all of these unquoted,
00:53:50.880
unattributed explanations about, well, there were lots of inaccuracies that people think, well,
00:53:55.440
what were they? Why doesn't anyone say that if that's the case? They're not going on the record.
00:54:00.440
And I checked again this morning to say anything was inaccurate at this point. And the reporter
00:54:04.680
has gone completely quiet as well. Yeah. And Paul Farhi, who wrote it up in Washington Post,
00:54:09.960
clearly being given some background information on what a shitty reporter Miguel is, right? Because
00:54:14.620
they're throwing their reporter under the bus. He got it wrong. The things they won't say publicly,
00:54:18.620
they're kind of like it appears to be leaking to Paul Farhi of The Washington Post. He asked the
00:54:24.040
question, is he going to be disciplined? Good question. If he's this bad, if he screwed up this
00:54:29.480
badly on a story of this magnitude, let's see, what are they going to do to Miguel?
00:54:33.860
Well, and of course, they haven't answered that either yet. They haven't answered any of the other
00:54:37.820
questions. And you have to imagine some of this is the timing. You know, obviously, the election is
00:54:42.760
tomorrow. I don't think that this is a story that NBC wants to be paying a lot of attention to
00:54:47.080
from any of their angles right now, because the election is what they're trying to focus on.
00:54:53.060
And that's unfortunate, because I think that eventually we'll find out more about this story,
00:54:57.160
if at the very minimum, we find out what was wrong about Miguel's piece. You know, what was it? Just
00:55:01.420
let's find out. Why was it expired from the website? That's not going to be happening anytime
00:55:05.700
soon. It doesn't seem. And even despite all this. So you think like this is a good reason to ask
00:55:12.440
questions about what else is there? Why? Maybe the police, maybe it's as I kind of floated in
00:55:17.660
there. Maybe what happened is that the police are trying to kind of spin this because obviously they
00:55:21.780
didn't do their job that great because they actually witnessed the assault before the assault ever
00:55:26.940
happened. That's not great either. And the report sort of raises doubt and gives them a little bit
00:55:31.320
of deniability of, oh, well, we didn't really know it was Pelosi's house. We didn't really know
00:55:35.100
that's part of the story. We don't know any of that. And now everything just gets painted as
00:55:40.120
misinformation for even even daring to ask why we don't know more about this. What the
00:55:45.240
circumstances here. This is what I was trying to ask last week, how I said explicitly the the SFPD
00:55:50.380
has egg on its face because it was standing there within feet of these guys when the guy raised the
00:55:55.260
hammer and and slammed Paul Pelosi in the head requiring brain surgery. So that should not happen
00:56:01.420
with two police officers standing within arm's length of the of the assailant and the victim.
00:56:05.760
So why weren't they releasing the body cam footage and so on? These are the questions that we were
00:56:10.660
asking on this show. What does that get you? It gets you labeled a misinformation artist by the New
00:56:16.340
York Times, which instead of asking questions about this, trying to get more info, decided to do it to do
00:56:22.320
a big piece that hit, I think, today called how Republicans fed a misinformation loop about the
00:56:30.020
Pelosi attack. They say within hours of the brutal attack, activists and media outlets on the right
00:56:35.400
began circulating groundless claims, nearly all of them sinister and many homophobic, casting doubt
00:56:42.920
on what had happened. So first of all, fuck you, New York Times, for suggesting there was anything
00:56:47.200
sinister or homophobic about what we said. We said the San Francisco PD has egg on its face so you can
00:56:52.860
pound sand. Second of all, here's what I and several others, not just me. Here's what my alleged sin
00:56:58.340
was. And I quote, raised doubts that all facts were being disclosed. Steve, is this what the New
00:57:05.220
York Times has become? This is the only way they get to their 21 elected officials and prominent
00:57:11.100
media figures is by including things like asking questions about, hey, maybe we don't know all the
00:57:15.700
facts and including that, grouping that in with people that, yeah, sure, legitimately spread what
00:57:19.920
appears to be conspiracy theories. You know, this was staged. This was like a false flag attack.
00:57:24.520
They it's those are apples and oranges, obviously. And yes, the New York Times is just trying to paint
00:57:30.540
anything that is even a remote amount of skepticism as somehow misinformation. That is so damaging to
00:57:38.840
the credibility of the New York Times that, you know, I don't even think they get it. I don't even
00:57:43.120
think they get that people see this and think, what are they even talking about? It doesn't make any
00:57:47.060
sense. Right. Right. Again, it touches me as several others on here committed the same sin.
00:57:52.720
Michael Pete Hegseth is one raised doubts that all facts were being disclosed. I remember back in
00:57:58.580
the day when most reporters would approach stories like this, especially involving an elite hall of
00:58:03.800
power like the Pelosi household or the couple and say, all right, powerful people, rich people,
00:58:09.460
SFPD, they don't want to be embarrassed. Someone's spinning me. Someone's spinning me.
00:58:14.700
Right. The police. How about we just don't take the police department's word for things? I mean,
00:58:18.160
we've seen that in multiple stories a lot of times from places like the New York Times that would say,
00:58:22.420
oh, yeah, the New York or the police department would spin for their own narrative. That's
00:58:26.760
essentially what we were doing as well in this last week. That's now apparently misinformation.
00:58:32.160
Honestly, like maybe I should sue them. I should sue them for defamation. Guess what? I would win
00:58:37.020
because this is a total misstatement of what I did. But who the hell wants to be distracted by
00:58:42.400
that nonsense? It's more fun just to point out how dishonest they are. Steve, what a pleasure.
00:58:49.620
Yeah. Yeah. We have an important segment coming up right now. Analysis of the main event. And that
00:58:54.100
is the midterms. Biden, Trump and Obama were all on the trail this this weekend in Pennsylvania
00:58:59.000
and throughout the country. But man, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania. Will it make a
00:59:04.840
difference? Joining me now, Eliana Johnson, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon and Chris
00:59:09.960
Steyerwalt, contributing editor at the Dispatch, now also senior fellow at the American Enterprise
00:59:14.800
Institute. That's fun. And together they host the ink stained wretches podcast. Eliana, Chris,
00:59:20.640
welcome back to the show. Good to be with you. Do you care to comment on the ridiculousness of
00:59:25.400
the New York Times? What you just heard? I mean, this sin of reporters like yours truly literally
00:59:31.100
all I said was about this SFPD. They're not sharing all the info. It was none of this conspiracy stuff
00:59:35.360
about Paul Pelosi and his alleged relationship with the guy. And I and others are being accused of
00:59:40.460
raising doubts that all facts had been disclosed. This gets you labeled a misinformation artist
00:59:45.780
by the New York Times, guys. Now, I find it so interesting, Megan, that reporters are
00:59:51.940
they're supposed to question people in authority. And this piece is essentially sliming those who dare
01:00:01.620
to raise questions about what we don't know and of the narratives that we're getting from those in
01:00:06.720
authority. In this case, from the San Francisco Police Department, you talked a little bit about
01:00:11.460
what we've heard from them. And what we've gotten, frankly, is an incomplete picture of what happened
01:00:16.460
here. And the idea that raising questions and asking for a fuller picture of what actually went
01:00:21.200
on here. This is an important event that happened. It's important to the public. It's important to our
01:00:27.340
understanding of politics. And the idea that asking to know more or suggesting that we don't have a full
01:00:32.460
picture of it is akin to peddling disinformation or poisoning the politics, I think, is is far afield
01:00:40.860
and really undercuts what journalists are supposed to be out there doing. Yeah, it's crazy to me. I mean,
01:00:46.820
I I could see Salon doing a kind of piece like this. I you know that James Bennett came out after he got
01:00:54.080
canned by The New York Times for running the Tom Cotton piece and said they want to be Mother Jones,
01:00:58.520
which is a far left publication. And an article like this shows they're becoming Mother Jones.
01:01:04.020
And I realize to a lot of our listeners, there's no distinction between Mother Jones and The Times,
01:01:08.100
but there used to be. And it was an important distinction. And it's it's fading away by the
01:01:14.140
second. And it does matter. I it upsets me. All right, let's get to politics. Let's get to
01:01:18.720
Pennsylvania, Mr. Steyrwalt, where, OK, just looking at the latest real clear politics average of all
01:01:25.720
polling as of today. I think this is the latest. Hold on. This is the updated. It shows Oz up zero
01:01:35.360
point one, which is somewhat significant because he's been behind by, you know, little percentage
01:01:41.860
points all along. But now it shows him up zero point one. So where does that race stand in your
01:01:48.060
view right now? Well, I it stands as a total toss up and we don't know who is going to be coming out to
01:01:54.720
vote in what numbers and who has been coming out to vote in what numbers. We know this is an
01:01:58.360
extraordinarily high turnout election. We have lots of evidence in polling and also in the
01:02:04.140
participation in early and absentee voting that both parties are highly energized. Everybody's
01:02:09.380
turning out to vote. And these races are going to tip on a relatively small number of persuadable
01:02:14.820
voters. And in Pennsylvania, like in Georgia, a lot of those are going to be ticket splitters,
01:02:20.800
right? How many people who in Pennsylvania, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Doug
01:02:25.980
Bastriano is sucking wind. He is the bottom fell out for him a while ago. Yeah. So Josh Shapiro is
01:02:33.580
riding high in Pennsylvania and seems like he is bound to keep the governor's mansion there blue.
01:02:40.940
How many of those folks are going to switch over and vote for Oz? How many of those folks are going
01:02:48.080
to stay on the Democratic column and vote for Fetterman? I guess here's how I would think about
01:02:53.400
Pennsylvania. And I would say the same about Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, which is there's
01:03:00.260
going to be a breeze. We don't know which direction the breeze is going to go. And most of the races,
01:03:05.580
and this is true in the House, too, are going to flop in the same direction. The polls will be wrong.
01:03:11.540
We don't know by how much and we don't know in which direction. And so we'll just be waiting for
01:03:16.760
those first votes to start coming in in Virginia and elsewhere to see what the climate is really like.
01:03:21.540
So for Pennsylvania, it's a toss up. It's a pure D toss up.
01:03:26.460
Meanwhile, Fetterman continues to give interviews and go out on the campaign trail, and he makes no more
01:03:31.640
sense than he made at that debate. In fact, I think you could make the case that he's getting
01:03:34.800
less sensible. Like, I don't even understand half of his soundbites. And I'm trying to. I'm trying
01:03:41.020
to give the guy a fair shot. I understand he's been through something traumatic. I'll give you
01:03:44.800
as one example. He gave an interview on CNN on Tuesday of last week. This one had escaped my
01:03:51.560
notice, but I bring it to you here. Listen. Well, let's talk about inflation, because that's a big
01:03:56.240
concern for voters. What do you think the biggest cause of inflation is? And should the Biden
01:04:00.680
administration be doing more? No, I just do. I think that simply is also we have to talk about
01:04:09.260
the trillions in massive tax cuts to the corporate tax structure as well. True. You know, trillions
01:04:17.900
of dollars that have added to the deficit. And now they still want to support those as well. True.
01:04:23.680
I think in terms of being very serious about addressing inflation is making sure that those
01:04:29.300
rates are brought back into a line with what they should have been, where they're able to
01:04:40.300
I'm just over. Did it stop? I can't. It's right. Sire Wolf, for the listening audience,
01:04:47.880
has got a face like he just had to eat a full lemon. It's not good. It's not good. It's upsetting.
01:04:54.520
So I have found an interesting new piece of notoriety, because I was the analyst on screen
01:05:04.480
after the Fetterman Oz debate. We hosted it at News Nation. And I said, it was hard to watch.
01:05:12.100
And of course, some Republican clip that into the first part of an ad that they put a bajillion
01:05:16.140
dollars behind around Pennsylvania. So I've gotten to hear from all my yinzer friends. I see you on TV
01:05:20.160
10 times a day. And it's hard to watch, right? John Fetterman is hard to watch. And your heart
01:05:27.600
goes out to the guy. You really feel for this person. And you understand how for his personal
01:05:31.860
narrative of redemption, and I'm going to fight my way back from this debilitating stroke, and I'm
01:05:36.320
going to do all this stuff. But if you have the doubts that were raised in that debate, you look at
01:05:42.660
that and you say, man, if Oz is just basically good enough, right? And you notice Oz had Susan Collins
01:05:48.860
in, and some other, and I say this without trying to be pejorative, squishy, moderate Republican,
01:05:57.020
to come in and campaign with him, to tell suburbanites in the Philly suburbs and in suburban
01:06:04.520
Pittsburgh, hey, I'll be okay. I'll be cool. You can cross over. You can vote for Shapiro and come
01:06:08.940
vote for me. Because with Fetterman doing this kind of sounding that way, it instills no confidence.
01:06:15.420
All right. Here's my question for you, Eliana. When I look at the pretty solid support for Fetterman
01:06:22.260
in the polls, even after the debate, it's not like he cratered. He did not collapse.
01:06:27.640
I wonder whether this is Republicans January 6th. Like, they're like, look, this is an issue.
01:06:36.280
For the love of God, would you listen to this guy? But the Democratic faithful in Pennsylvania are like,
01:06:41.640
eh, fine. He'll get over it. He looks like us. He kind of acts like us. And I can't relate to Dr.
01:06:49.520
Oz at all. I don't even understand what planet he's on with the crudités and the Wegners and the
01:06:54.000
drink and the wine at the tailgate. Like, I don't get it. And I don't care. I wonder whether it's
01:06:59.560
that. Like, you can get yourself as upset as you want about those weird soundbites. I'm still voting
01:07:03.200
for him. Well, a couple of things, Megan. We were joking around in the free vegan offices here and
01:07:08.460
somebody said, you know, Biden must have gone out to suburban Philly. Biden and former President
01:07:14.140
Barack Obama were out there this weekend because Biden makes Fetterman look good by comparison.
01:07:19.080
He's not exactly speaking in complete sentences.
01:07:24.180
You know, I think the question you ask is a good one. It's true. Like, it's amazing that Fetterman has
01:07:30.140
not cratered in the polls, but it does speak to the hyper-polarized environment that we live in,
01:07:35.320
where, you know, 40-some percent of voters are voting Democrat no matter who's on the ticket,
01:07:40.920
you know, literally in the case of Fetterman this time. And the same is true of on the Republican
01:07:46.380
side. There are very few persuadable voters. And to the question you raised, people were making this
01:07:52.260
argument about Fetterman after that disastrous debate performance. They were saying on Twitter,
01:07:57.120
like, don't look at what you're seeing in this debate. He's a reliable Democratic vote,
01:08:02.940
and he has a hand that is able that he is able to raise or like, you know, to push the button to
01:08:09.480
cast a Democratic vote. And that is all that matters. That was the narrative coming from top
01:08:15.460
Democrats in the wake of that debate. You know, the New York Times podcast, The Daily, they had an
01:08:20.800
interesting piece on the dynamic around Fetterman and how he's he's like what exactly what Dems were
01:08:25.480
looking for. Somebody who could get the white working class vote in Pennsylvania that had
01:08:29.360
previously voted Democrat but went for Trump. And they needed somebody who acted like them and
01:08:33.360
sounded like them and, you know, looked like them and dressed like them. But and that's Fetterman.
01:08:38.620
But he's pretty far left. Like he's not your he's not like a moderate Democrat. But you got to think
01:08:44.820
of those guys, you know, those guys sitting there and they're looking at Dr. Oz and they're like,
01:08:49.980
I mean, I like Dr. Oz. Don't get me wrong, but I can see why he's not resonating with them.
01:08:53.860
I'll give you an example. On the other side, here he is with his latest sort of elitist gaffe.
01:08:58.520
This is really more like he's not from Pennsylvania and they know it made a mistake
01:09:02.480
on the Steelers. I'll play the soundbite and I'll tell you what the mistake was. It's not eight
01:09:06.260
tomorrow morning when you awaken. I want you to contact 10 people, do it at church,
01:09:13.800
do it for the Steelers game. Just find the time. Here's the question you're going to ask them.
01:09:18.840
Oh, are you happy with the way America's going?
01:09:24.420
Chris knows what the mistake was. This was on Saturday. He said this. What was his mistake?
01:09:29.840
Steelers have a bye week. They lost the Eagles and they've got a bye week. They don't play again
01:09:34.360
until next week. Wow. And he did that in Latrobe. He did that in Latrobe, PA.
01:09:39.480
Fetterman tweeted it out immediately and he's like, the Steelers have a bye week, bro.
01:09:42.580
So can't do it, man. Can't do it. That's the thing. When the contest is over. Look,
01:09:48.940
if he were if these two were having a campaign for Upper West Side voters. Well, no, that doesn't
01:09:54.480
work. But anyway, here's the counterpoint. Here's the counterpoint, Megan. I think Fetterman would have
01:10:02.660
been really helped. He does look like a blue collar voter. He has that kind of attitude,
01:10:08.060
but he hasn't actually been able to articulate a coherent message because of his issues on the
01:10:14.360
issues like inflation and like crime that are resonant in this race. And if you listen to Oz,
01:10:21.320
though Oz has like a very John Kerry-esque, wooden, out of touch quality and bearing to him,
01:10:28.300
he has tried to portray Fetterman as the radical and Oz actually can deliver a message like he's able
01:10:33.680
to talk. And so I think Fetterman really has been hurt. His campaign has been hurt by his inability
01:10:39.100
to talk coherently about the issues that those blue collar voters he's trying to reach care about.
01:10:44.820
Let me offer one contrapoint to this, which is the Democrats had a really good nominee available to
01:10:50.940
them, Conor Lamb. Conor Lamb, the congressman from Western Pennsylvania, would be beating Dr. Oz soundly
01:10:57.540
if the Democrats had not given in to their emotionality and nominated Fetterman, who made
01:11:03.500
them feel good, right? He had an attractive narrative. It was different. He's not a guy in a
01:11:07.640
Brooks Brothers suit. He's something different and something special. And by the way, very progressive.
01:11:13.380
And what the argument Fetterman made in the Democratic primary was, we can't send the squishy
01:11:18.980
moderate to Washington. We need a bold progressive. And then after he had a stroke, the argument for him
01:11:26.440
going was the same, right? We have to have John Fetterman because somebody, if the Democratic
01:11:30.780
Executive Committee replaces him with Conor Lamb, button down Conor Lamb, it's no good for the
01:11:36.420
working families of Pennsylvania. We've got to stay in this fight. And the truth is, by the time he got
01:11:41.400
to that debate stage and subsequently, he sounds, he's saying the same kinds of stuff that Conor Lamb
01:11:47.040
would say, talking about getting the deficit under control, talking about his newfound love of fracking,
01:11:51.780
talking about law enforcement and the need to get crime under control. So the tragedy of this,
01:11:57.340
and what's really evil, and I use the word advisedly here, are the consultants who continue
01:12:03.400
to take millions of dollars to keep John Fetterman in this race, given from hardworking Americans,
01:12:11.200
when what they should have told him months ago was, we can't be part of this. I understand why you can't,
01:12:16.200
but the Democrats have a good candidate we can put on the ballot and win this race. And this is all
01:12:21.440
hubris and greed, and it's very sad. We can't be part of this. Exactly right. It would have been
01:12:26.580
such an interesting race if we had, well, what it was originally supposed to be. Okay, let me jump,
01:12:32.220
because I want to talk about, it's reported in Axios, the full report is also available,
01:12:36.400
and I printed it out a third way. The center-left think tank, backed by some of the biggest names in
01:12:41.540
Democratic politics, sounding the alarm, quoting now from Axios, sounding the alarm about deep-seated
01:12:46.960
party flaws, based on its own new polling from Senate battlegrounds. So I pulled the report
01:12:52.440
itself. This is not good. This is the Democratic introspective look a day in advance of the
01:12:58.220
midterm, saying we're screwed. They say if the Democrats manage to hold on to the House and
01:13:03.000
Senate, it will be in spite of the party brand, not because of it. This is what Third Way itself is
01:13:06.920
writing. Despite a roster of GOP candidates who are extreme by any standard, voters see Democrats
01:13:13.240
as just as extreme, as well as far less concerned about the issues that most worry them. They go on
01:13:20.020
to say they are seen as out of touch on priorities, out of touch ideologically, and out of touch on
01:13:28.120
values. Democrats are underwater on issues voters name as their highest priorities, including the
01:13:32.360
economy, immigration, crime, and voters question whether the party shares essential values like
01:13:38.120
patriotism and the importance of hard work. Even in areas where Democrats are trusted more,
01:13:44.440
including education, it is not clear that voters are sold on Democrats' approach or ability to get
01:13:50.120
things done. I find this fascinating. I agree with every word of it. I feel like we've been seeing
01:13:56.500
this. All my Democrat friends are complaining about all of this, and that's why they're ready to pull the
01:14:00.340
lever for Lee Zeldin in New York, a state that hasn't gone blue in 240 years. No, it hasn't gone
01:14:06.200
red. It has gone red. Not recently. So what do you make of the Third Way report, Starwalt?
01:14:13.280
It's correct, and it's tracking with Liz Smith had an op-ed in the Sunday New York Times saying
01:14:21.120
basically the same thing. You've got to match candidates with voters, right? This is something
01:14:27.920
Democrats used to understand, the Rahm Emanuel, DCCC era, certainly in the Bill Clinton era,
01:14:33.660
which is every district in every state needs a different kind of Democrat, and there can't be a
01:14:38.580
one-size-fits-all progressive utopian approach to politics. You've got to size it right for the state.
01:14:46.200
Joe Manchin works as a Democrat in West Virginia, doesn't work in Oregon. That's one of the things
01:14:52.400
about living in a republic. One of the other things, and I wrote about this in my column for today,
01:14:56.640
which is Democrats have been hectoring the American people that democracy is on the ballot,
01:15:04.100
and a vote for any Republican, speaking of how the New York Times did a category error and lumped
01:15:08.060
you in with kooks, that's what they did in their report on election denialism in the Republican Party.
01:15:14.420
They give away this huge report, 370 Republicans on the ballot this year, election denialism, blah,
01:15:21.340
blah, blah, blah, blah. You have to read two-thirds of the way through the story when it's like,
01:15:24.520
well, actually, fewer than a third of them are actually of the rank kind. Some of them were
01:15:29.100
people who said we should let the system work and had questions about mail-in ballots prior to
01:15:34.100
January 6, 2021, but they just put everybody together to make a bigger number. That kind
01:15:38.900
of approach and hectoring approach in trying to delegitimize Republicans and saying there's no
01:15:42.500
difference between Carrie Lake and Susan Collins, right? It's all just one party. Everybody's
01:15:50.920
exactly the same. And they're all election deniers. Democrats think that American voters believe in
01:15:56.300
them and have high confidence in them. Look at the Gallup numbers of this. 35%. The two parties
01:16:02.280
are tied. The American people have 35% approval for both of these parties, not good guys. And
01:16:08.620
Democrats need to understand where they are with voters and who they are really, really.
01:16:13.500
And this onlook, Eliana says, most of these voters, because they're polling Democrats,
01:16:17.280
Republicans, and independents. This is not just them polling Democrats. And they're saying most
01:16:20.860
people ideologically fall, you know, I always talk about it too, between like a one and a 10,
01:16:25.160
or this was zero to 10. Zero is like the far left libs. The 10 is the far left conservatives.
01:16:30.940
And they say most of these people would average out to a 5.8. And this Democrat report acknowledges
01:16:36.080
the country's center right. It's 5.8. And that they do see Democrats as extreme and they see the
01:16:41.660
Republicans as extreme, but they are closer. They think the Republicans are less extreme than they think
01:16:46.860
the Democrats are. They see themselves as more closely aligned with the Republicans. And then
01:16:51.800
they do care greatly about inflation, about the economy, about immigration, about crime. They are
01:16:59.740
against Biden's student loan forgiveness. They think the Democrat party is too woke and too preachy
01:17:07.640
by majorities. So this is like their own, what was her name? Jackie Spanberger moment. You know,
01:17:14.000
remember she was the Virginia Democrat. It was like, what are we talking about? Defund the police.
01:17:18.420
We're going to get killed. Right. In any event. So this is them saying all that. And Starwalt makes
01:17:24.880
the point about crime. And this point's making the point they care about crime. Like this is a real
01:17:29.780
issue. Stop talking about fucking democracy. Just make a point about you're going to live and your
01:17:35.960
family's going to live. Listen to what Bill Clinton, the off message, had to say about this this past
01:17:46.020
Lisa, she makes it, he makes it sound like Kathy Hoagle gets up every morning, goes to the various
01:17:53.680
subway stop and hands out billy clubs and baseball bats. Everybody gets on the subway.
01:18:02.220
And for the listening audience, he said, well, he meaning Zeldin. And then he made like big muscle
01:18:16.740
arms. Is this as if we Zeldin just to correct Abigail Spanberger, not Jackie. So they're not
01:18:22.300
getting it. Their party is telling them, please try to get it. Please get on message. It's not happening.
01:18:27.080
Right. I think the bigger question, the third way analysis is, you know, is obviously on point. But
01:18:34.000
the bigger question is, will anybody in the Democratic Party listen? And it's funny that
01:18:38.700
you mentioned Abigail Spanberger, who your reference was to what she told her colleagues
01:18:43.740
after Republicans made far bigger gains than expected in 2020 in congressional races. And she
01:18:49.980
told them, stop talking about defunding the police. You know, there have been voices who have
01:18:55.820
tried to speak up and they have not, you know, their calls for moderation have not really been
01:19:01.920
heeded. The other person who comes to mind is David Shore, the progressive data analyst who worked in
01:19:07.180
the Obama, who worked on President Obama's campaigns, who has tried to tell his fellow Democrats that they
01:19:13.880
are perceived as radicals and need to rein it in. But it doesn't seem to me that the powers that be in
01:19:18.980
the party, be they in the Biden White House or in Senate leadership or in House leadership, have been
01:19:27.260
able to quiet the younger and more voluble left wing flank of the party that, by the way, controls a lot
01:19:35.600
of district attorney's offices who control crime all over, you know, who have a lot of say over how crime
01:19:41.460
is handled and prosecuted all over the country and many others at the state level. You played a clip of
01:19:47.840
Bill Clinton campaigning for Governor Kathy Hochul and mocking voters concerns about crime. That's
01:19:54.280
not going to be helpful, I don't think, in in that race. But the far bigger question to me is,
01:20:00.780
is there an audience ready to hear this message in the party? Then is the message correct?
01:20:05.700
That's a very good question, because the reason when I flew back from Detroit, I flew in last night
01:20:10.920
and our our airport bags, they got to the long story. I did carry on for those who are worried about my
01:20:15.880
air plants, luggage disaster. But then it's a long story. It had to come through the luggage
01:20:21.160
terminal delivery thing. Anyway, we're standing there. We've got 45 minutes extra delayed because
01:20:26.740
Biden was landing. Why was Biden landing? Because he was going to Yonkers to give a speech, I think,
01:20:31.620
at Sarah Lawrence. Why is he doing that on behalf of Governor Hochul to keep her job? Because they have
01:20:37.140
no young people who are excited by this Democratic Party. They're already like the numbers amongst
01:20:41.600
Democrats in terms of enthusiasm and the young people are at terrifyingly low levels. So you
01:20:47.520
raise a good question. What would happen if they went out there and told him the truth? What if they
01:20:51.180
actually said all the stuff that Third Way is telling them to say? I don't know that the numbers would go
01:20:55.400
up, Chris. Well, I mean, there's also another reason why Joe Biden was campaigning at Sarah Lawrence
01:21:02.060
College. It's he can't do any harm there. The places where I mean, they sent Kamala Harris to campaign in
01:21:09.340
Boston. Now, if they send you if you're a Democrat and they send you to Boston before a midterm
01:21:15.580
election, this is not a vote of confidence. This is not your party saying you got it. You are you're
01:21:20.840
a powerhouse game changer. They've been looking for places to put Biden to keep him busy and do
01:21:27.400
stuff in races that are that are lost like Florida. Right. You know, Val Deming is going to lose.
01:21:34.360
Rick Scott is not Rick Scott. Charlie Chris. Charlie Chris is going to set a record. I believe he is the
01:21:40.760
only person to have lost statewide office under three different party banners as a Democrat, a Republican
01:21:48.380
and an independent. So congratulations, Charlie Chris. Yeah, you've done it. But Sarah Lawrence College
01:21:54.780
ain't a hotbed of nothing except for probably a lot of the woke, you know, overeducated, blah, blah, blah. So this is
01:22:02.540
kind of stashing Biden someplace so that he can feel busy. Yeah. So this is not the place to walk in,
01:22:07.960
though, and say we've really got to secure the border. We need to fund the police. We've got to
01:22:12.560
get rid of this no cash bail nonsense. We've got this is not. Yeah, I get it. And the thing is that
01:22:18.100
Biden, when he was in his prime, could carry that message. I mean, he mangled it frequently, but he
01:22:24.860
could carry it. And the reason that he was on the Democratic ticket in 2008 was because voters like
01:22:30.560
that people who John Fetterman says that he can reach in Pennsylvania, people that Lee Zeldin says
01:22:35.840
he can reach in New York, the middle of the middle class, a lot of white working class voters in the
01:22:42.080
country believed Joe Biden, and he had a message that he could carry. But a lot of the story of his
01:22:47.340
struggles and the Democrat struggles in this cycle are about a wasted year and a half that Biden engaged
01:22:54.660
in sucking up to the progressive left in his party, trying to get re-nominated in 2024 and
01:23:01.500
trying to appease people who are never going to be appeased. They will not be appeased.
01:23:07.180
Yeah, they will never be appeased. Chris Dierwald has an interesting prediction about what is likely
01:23:11.960
to happen to Joe Biden on Wednesday. On Wednesday, that is where we will pick it up after a very quick
01:23:16.760
break and a quick return. Eliana and Chris, stay with us. Before we go to predictions and so on,
01:23:24.540
I want to ask you about New York. So interesting. So many big names coming to New York State.
01:23:31.900
Trafalgar has Zeldin up by one, but another poll has her up by a lot, like nine. I can't remember
01:23:38.580
style. But is New York, is this a Lucy with the football situation or does Zeldin actually have a
01:23:43.920
chance? So you know the truth that these races are all interconnected, right? That there is going
01:23:51.920
to be a temperature in the country that is somewhere between a... Maybe think of it this way. There are
01:23:59.600
possibilities for a Republican real wave wave. That's the best case scenario for Republicans is
01:24:05.760
a wave wave. But then there's a ripple that flips enough just over the edge, right? They win a bunch of
01:24:12.300
close races with a little breeze behind them. So a ripple that gets them a bunch of seats and a
01:24:17.560
majority in the Senate. And then there's the converse on the other side for Democrats. Which of those
01:24:24.900
scenarios will tell us a lot? Now, New York has a different story to tell. Because in the case of New
01:24:32.740
York, there isn't another big race on the ballot, right? There isn't some Senate race that's driving the
01:24:37.640
discussion. And yes, there are certainly competitive house races in New York, no doubt. But New York
01:24:42.740
City doesn't have anything to go vote for, right? There isn't... Their issues, of course, are settled
01:24:47.500
in the primaries. So this isn't an election that really involves New York City. So weird stuff can
01:24:55.260
happen. I would say that Hochul is favored. I would give her the edge, but not by much. And it
01:25:03.820
wouldn't take much of a good Republican climate to put Zeldin in.
01:25:09.520
Eliana, nobody voted for her. I mean, she's lieutenant governor, was and now is the governor.
01:25:15.020
But nobody voted for her. I think that the New York Democrats would be much more motivated if
01:25:18.980
Andrew Cuomo were still on the ballot. I realize they got rid of him and supported that and the
01:25:22.620
whole thing. But speaking of Janice Dean again. But she's just not... She's not an Obama.
01:25:28.340
She's not a Cuomo. She's totally uninspiring. She's pretty wooden. And there's something
01:25:35.760
happening in New York. Like you see the Zeldin signs everywhere. I went upstate New York to visit
01:25:41.300
my mom everywhere. And, you know, we're in the suburbs of Albany, which is blue. Most of upstate
01:25:46.900
New York is largely red. Albany's blue. So I don't know. I feel like something could happen for him
01:25:53.140
tomorrow, notwithstanding that latest poll that showed her way ahead. I do think she's struggling
01:25:58.380
from never having been at the top of the ticket before. She doesn't have the political skills,
01:26:03.940
obviously, of somebody who's run an intense, high-profile race. And that's clear. And the
01:26:09.500
other thing I think she's really suffering from is being a Democrat in New York, where you don't
01:26:14.900
really face formidable Republican opponents too often. And she clearly, and you can hear it in her
01:26:20.820
campaign messages. And in the messages of the surrogates, you played Bill Clinton coming to
01:26:25.300
some for her. They're not used to running in highly competitive races. And I think the whole
01:26:30.820
infrastructure of the state reflects that. And she's on her back heels as a result of both of
01:26:35.960
those things. It's tough when, you know, every other day someone's getting shoved in front of a
01:26:39.640
subway train. Like, this is fine. You're good. No, enjoy New York. Love the Big Apple. Okay. So we,
01:26:46.880
at the top of the hour, we were joined by Tiffany Smiley in Washington State and Tudor Dixon,
01:26:53.300
who's running for governor in Michigan. I'll ask your take on those two races, Chris. Do you think
01:26:57.760
either one of those women has a real chance? Well, certainly a better chance in Michigan.
01:27:03.980
Whitmer has been divisive. Whitmer and Michigan is a lot more Republican in its demographic makeup
01:27:12.060
than Washington is. And so I'll put it this way. We're talking about waves. For the wave to be
01:27:18.160
strong enough to take out Patty Murray in Washington, the Republicans would have, they'd be
01:27:25.380
looking at 57 seats, 58 seats, because there's a lot of other states that would have come, there's a lot
01:27:31.200
of other races that would come in before that one. That is a big reach.
01:27:34.880
Yeah. And I don't think the Republicans are heading for a veto-proof or a filibuster-proof
01:27:43.420
majority in the Senate. I don't think so. But in Michigan, look, here's the thing. Voters treat
01:27:49.960
gubernatorial races, and this is true in New York, and it's true in Michigan. It's true in a lot of
01:27:54.520
places. Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maryland, very Democratic states, all have Republican governors.
01:28:01.260
Why? Because voters are able to disassociate their votes on state issues from federal issues.
01:28:08.640
They don't mind sending a kook to Washington, right? They don't mind sending a weirdo to
01:28:12.240
Washington because it gets them out of their hair. But then when they say, oh, I got to deal with this
01:28:17.700
person, this person's going to be in charge of making sure the snowplows run and the schools open
01:28:21.840
and all of that stuff, it's a different thing. So there is an opportunity here for Republicans.
01:28:26.920
I think Tudor Dixon has a chance. I would favor Whitmer, certainly. But I think she's got a chance
01:28:32.420
depending on whether it's a ripple or a wave. Right. Are we talking title? Are we talking just
01:28:38.060
a great wave for surfing? Or are we talking a little ripple that you would even let your toddler
01:28:41.520
swim in? Or nothing at all? Maybe it's going to be nothing at all. I doubt that, though.
01:28:45.600
So, Elia, what do we think in terms of like last week, the week before, the trend started to go
01:28:50.220
heavily toward Republicans, the Democrats' advantage that they'd built up over the summer
01:28:53.700
after Dobbs in the wake of the Trump Mar-a-Lago stuff. They were doing so much better. Then we
01:28:59.340
get to September and the bottom fell out so far. You know, one day before the election,
01:29:03.920
I don't see a trend the other way. I don't think the Paul Pelosi thing like nothing in advance of
01:29:09.740
this election day has shifted the tide back to blue. Or am I missing something?
01:29:16.240
I think that's right. And just to piggyback on what you and Chris were talking about,
01:29:21.820
about these races in Michigan and Washington State, one of the things I think is really
01:29:26.360
interesting is that Republicans struggled with candidate quality, which is why you heard a lot
01:29:32.020
of downbeat Republicans in June, July, August. You know, I think they thought Dr. Oz wasn't the
01:29:39.240
greatest candidate. Blake Masters wasn't the greatest candidate in Arizona and worried that
01:29:44.380
races they considered winnable were now imperiled. One of the really interesting things is they
01:29:50.180
fielded fantastic candidates for these really rich seats. I would include Tiffany Smiley out in
01:29:56.100
Washington, who put seats on the map that like we would have never even been talking about in a
01:30:00.060
normal year. And the other one I would mention is Joe O'Day in Colorado. That's a really difficult
01:30:05.140
race. But the candidate quality in some of these like very high level of difficulty races for
01:30:10.980
Republicans is really quite good. And I would keep keep an eye on those seats because the candidates
01:30:16.080
are better in those seats and in some of the tightest races. And I think that will be an
01:30:21.140
interesting dynamic to watch tomorrow. All right. Now, Star. Well, what happens on Wednesday if the
01:30:25.920
red wave comes title surfer or toddler can swim in the ocean? Yeah. Any one of those? What happens to
01:30:31.000
Biden? Well, I mean, look, they're going to blame Joe Biden. And that's that's a fact because they were not
01:30:40.080
happy with him in the first place. And they were blaming him in the springtime when they were
01:30:45.580
unhappy. They'll blame him again. And he's going to have some very hard choices to make. He's a proud
01:30:50.660
man. And he's going to have some very hard choices to make. He says he's determined that he wants to
01:30:55.160
run again. But he hasn't made a final decision. But if Democrats take a shellacking, if they if they
01:31:00.560
get mounted, it's going to be hard for him to convince his party that he's the guy he's going to he's
01:31:06.120
going to run. He's going to be run right out of town and run right. And it's not going to be the
01:31:11.560
run he expects. Last question. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Ron DeSantis fans didn't like it. Trump
01:31:19.640
reportedly, I take it with a huge grain of salt because it comes from Gabe Sherman, who, in my
01:31:23.500
experience at Fox, 50 percent of the time was right on the money. 50 percent of the time was completely
01:31:27.760
making shit up. But he's saying that that Trump that DeSantis has been telling donors he will not
01:31:35.720
challenge Trump if Trump runs, that if Trump runs, he will not. So what do you make of Ron DeSantis
01:31:40.420
demonious and Trump seeing to try to elbow Ron out of this thing? I think DeSantis would be a
01:31:47.880
formidable opponent for Trump. And he's tough. He's smart and he's disciplined. And it would be quite
01:31:55.180
a race. And Trump knows it. And I think the reason he's under his skin is because of that.
01:31:59.760
All right. I got to leave it at that because I got to I got to run. But it was always it's always
01:32:03.200
been a pleasure and it will continue to be a pleasure. And I thank you both.
01:32:06.880
We got you covered tomorrow. In addition to our regular show, we will be live on Sirius
01:32:10.940
Triumph channel and YouTube tomorrow night, starting at nine. See you then.
01:32:15.240
Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.