Dan McLaughlin and Sean Noble on Mainstream Media Mishaps 44:44

Welcome to Broken Potholes. I am your host, Chuck Warren. Sam Stone is out today doing other things to make the world a better place, and we're going to have with us later today in studio, Sean Noble. But right now, our special guest, a return visitor, is Dan McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review. You can also find him on Baseball Crank on Twitter. And just a great writer and a friend of the show. Dan, thanks for coming on. Hi.

Thanks for having me. So talk to us a little bit about the Texas abortion rule. I saw the Supreme Court came out today saying that the abortion providers can sue, is that correct?

They did, but it's actually a very, very narrow victory for the abortion providers and really a defeat for them in practical fact in a lot of ways. The reason is that what they said was that the Texas abortion law – I mean, just to back up here, the idea of the Texas abortion law –

Leaving aside the details of what it says about abortion regulation, it allows private lawsuits in state court against abortion providers. Right. And the law says, look, the state executive branch cannot enforce this law. Now, if that sounds backward, the reason is that it was written this way so that the clinics could not run to court.

and get an immediate injunction against state executive officials. Because, you know, normally you can't sue members of the state government in federal court, except for there's a narrow exception under a case called Ex Parte Young,

that says, look, as the traditional equitable remedy, if the state is about to enforce some unconstitutional law, you can sue the executive officials of the state to prevent them from enforcing it. And Texas wrote this, they came up with a lawyer named Jonathan Mitchell drafted this very clever and maybe too clever by half statute that says,

You know what? Nobody in the state can enforce this law that we just passed. The only way it's enforced is through private civil lawsuits in state court. And

So that's a problem if you're trying to get an immediate injunction in advance, because who do you sue? Right. You can't sue the people who are going to file lawsuits against you until they file a lawsuit because you don't know who they are. And you can't file a lawsuit against the state courts or the state court clerks who accept the filings because traditionally you can't sue state courts. I mean, they're not even responsible.

they're not even adverse parties. They're not people who are trying to enforce the law. They're people who are trying to hear cases. Um,

Now, the reason why this theory, even if you assume that everything works, and we'll get to that in a second, the reason this theory is too clever by half is it only works until somebody files the first lawsuit. Because the minute somebody files the first lawsuit, then the defenses that, oh, the statute is unconstitutional under the federal constitution, all get raised. They get decided in a case.

And the whole thing collapses. And so it really is, it's very clever, but it's too clever by half because you can't use this model unless you're going to have everybody in the state and everybody on the planet, right? Because Texas literally will allow anybody to file a lawsuit. Right.

You have to have everybody on the planet agree never to file a lawsuit. And eventually, if they continue not filing lawsuits for long enough, people will stop worrying about getting sued. So what the Supreme Court did today is they found a narrow piece of the law that they said, look, you know,

Part of this law, the way it is written, could allow the state medical board to punish the licenses of abortion providers who violate the law. And since they're state executive officials, we're going to allow a lawsuit to go forward against them. And so you had five members of the court who were willing to do that.

And or actually eight members of the court are willing to do that, willing to prevent them from being sued. Justice Thomas was the only one who disagreed. But the problem is that a federal the problem there is the federal lawsuit against those state executive officials for an injunction doesn't do anything about civil lawsuits. Right. It can lead now.

Now, it can lead to a court decision that says, hey, this law is unconstitutional. And then if that decision comes out, then other people can assert that as a defense when they are sued civilly. But it doesn't actually get them the immediate relief that they're looking for. All it does is get some kind of judicial decision.

You know, they say the hard cases make bad law. I mean, I think this is a weirdly designed statute, and it resulted in a weirdly designed decision. But, you know, in the long run, and in the long run, it's not really the healthiest enforcement, kind of enforcement mechanism to use these sorts of things. But, you know, if you're reading the tea leaves down the road for where this goes with

The Supreme Court's abortion jurisprudence, of course, is the fact that, you know, you had five votes to, you know, the five votes that were there to at least prevent the lawsuits against court clerks and judges.

are the five votes that you would hope and expect if you're a pro-lifer to be there in the spring to strike down Brody Wade. You know, the court's five conservatives. The, you know, pessimistic view from that point of view is that Chief Justice Roberts

You know, wrote a concurring opinion in this case that pretty clearly seemed to indicate that he still thinks, you know, he still treats Roe and Casey as, you know, good constitutional law, which the majority opinion didn't even get into since this case was all about procedure.

Well, we're with John McLaughlin, senior writer at National Review. You can find him on Twitter at Baseball Crank, where you'll find his writings. I didn't expect to get on this topic, but we appreciate the Supreme Court for giving us a headline to start today. I do not see the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. Do you?

You know, you never know. Well, you never know. You never know. But we're on radio, so I have to be emphatic about what I'm saying. But you never know. But I would – if I was to bet $1,000, I would bet that that stays. Yeah, I actually – I'm cautiously optimistic that they're going to do it.

I think, you know, I think this is a sign that probably if they do do it, it will be 5-4 with Roberts concurring in part because, you know, in the argument on the Mississippi case, the Dobbs case, which is deciding that, you know, the survival of Roe, essentially, Roberts sounded like he was willing to uphold the Mississippi law. But I think he was looking for some sort of compromise way for the court to continue drawing a line that says some...

bans and restrictions on abortions are allowed and some are not. And, you know, he was put in a difficult position because the lawyers for the clinic and the lawyers for the Biden administration basically told him, no, there's no compromise. We're not going to give you any kind of affolope option here. You know, either you're all with us or you're all against us. And, you know,

That put Roberts in kind of a tight spot. Oh, absolutely. But if you were hoping that the court is going to strike down Roe, the questions and the behavior of the other, you know, the five conservatives...

on the court, could not have been more optimistic. So, I mean, they did not show all their cards, but certainly Justice Kavanaugh in particular at the argument sounded like somebody who was talking himself into saying, you know what, what we're doing if we get rid of Roe is actually kind of a middle position because all we're doing is sending the abortion issue back into the political process, back to the states for the people to decide.

For our audience that doesn't understand, tell us how the Supreme Court will come and formulate an opinion on this. How does that work? I don't think people understand it works. They were expecting the ruling in June. Have they really already decided? Has somebody been assigned to write the lead opinion? How does that work? Can you explain that to our audience?

Right. And it's sort of the caveat here, of course, is that, first of all, the court sometimes, even how it does its business is not the way it normally does. Today's decision in the Texas case is an example of that. They rushed ahead and

You know, they tried to rush to get the court to make a decision, you know, earlier this year. And the court said, look, you gave us two days to decide this thing. We're not going to hear it. And then they came back and took the case on an expedited cycle. And that's why we're getting a decision in December, which, you know, has been much criticized recently.

There's been a lot of criticism that the court moved too fast and too slow in this case with a lot of people who were just, you know, it was a strange timetable. But the Dobbs case is proceeding on a much more normal track.

In the normal track, what happens is that the court gets the briefs from both sides, and here's the argument. And then generally the Friday after the argument, at the end of that week, they sit down and they have a conference. And the conference is there to decide a bunch of things, what new cases they're going to take. But they vote. They vote and they decide the case. So it's been decided now. Internally, it's been decided.

It's internally been decided, but with the bearing in mind that the court can change its mind before it issues an opinion. Because what happens then, yeah, is somebody gets assigned to write an opinion. So typically the most senior justice who is in the majority, and the chief justice is always considered the most senior justice if he's in the majority, if it's not the chief justice,

then it would be the longest-serving member of the court other than the chief, which at the moment is Clarence Thomas. So if there are five votes to get rid of Roe, and if Chief Justice Roberts isn't willing to join with that, then Thomas would get to assign the opinion, either writing it himself or handing it off to someone else.

But then what happens is, there's an opinion written, the dissenters write their own opinions, perhaps justices who are joining part of the opinion may write their own separate concurring opinions. And as they circulate these drafts, they go back and forth, right? They add in, you know, the majority opinion, see stuff in the dissent, and then that adds in things to their opinion, saying, well, you know, this dissenter says that we're wrong about this, but here's why we're right.

And so, you know, I think traditionally the majority opinion is circulated first because the dissent is responding to that. But the dissenter is usually a pretty good idea of what they're saying anyway. So, you know, they're all starting work on it at the same time. But, you know, it has been known to happen.

And the court's deliberations are secret. All of its internal operations are secret. But, you know, things do come out. And so we do know that people have switched sides, changed their positions in the intervening months in some of these cases. That's quite the load they have. And you wonder how much politics comes into play for someone like Roberts who wants to – I think Roberts is an establishment individual who wants to protect the Supreme Court.

You know, I can't imagine the vitriol if it is overturned for people like Kavanaugh. You know, I mean, it's just unbelievable. We're going to take a quick break here in about 20 seconds, Dan. But what I do want to talk about is you and I, John Noonan put a tweet out and said, a friendly note to journalists, truly friendly. I am unarmed.

If the narrative sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Reference, Jesse Smollett, Steele dossier, lab leak theory, Comington, Redden House, Russian bounties. Let's talk about where the press has gone wrong here. This is Broken Potholes. We'll be right back. It's the new year and time for a new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start.

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This is Chuck Warren, and welcome back to Broken Potholes. Today, replacing Sam Stone, who's making the world a better place, is Sean Noble. Our guest online is Dan McLaughlin. You can find him at Baseball Crank at Twitter. He's also senior writer for National Review. The past segment, we were talking about the Texas abortion law, the chances of Roe v. Wade being overturned. And now, Dan, I want to talk about

The press, especially New York and D.C. press, just seems to be fumbling almost every major story. They do not seem to come out and report. They will make a quick reaction. And the most recent case is the Jesse Smollett case, which was clearly a cluster in every sense of the word. What has to happen for the press to start being real journalists again?

I mean, you know, I think there's a couple of things going on. I mean, first of all, of course, a cynic would say that it's not really, they're not really doing their jobs wrong. They're just doing a different job than we think they should be doing. True. But, you know, look, and...

that the smaller cases of perfect example i'm i don't think perfect ample the difference between the national political press and the real journalism that is more apt to happen at the local level uh... because actually the chicago press great story other than uh... fantastic yeah and they did a lot of the digging that that you know they're really exposed the hope here

But, you know, I think what happens is that the story, you know, Twitter has, there's also a division of thought. Has Twitter exposed what these folks were always like, or has it made them worse, right? Because I think Twitter, because journalists are all on Twitter, and they're all talking to each other on Twitter, and they're all broadcasting to an audience on Twitter, right?

I think it exacerbates the rush to jump in and, you know, have an immediate take on a story that sounds, you know, either that pushes a narrative along or that sounds decisive when you don't nearly know all the facts. And, you know, the kind of hoax that went on in this case where, you know, you have –

you know, essentially a Hollywood actor, you know, who is black, who is gay, who says he was attacked in a hate crime by, you know, people saying, oh, this is MAGA country.

you know, in Chicago in the middle of the night. In a vortex. Yeah, 2 a.m. vortex, right? It's not just any weather, and that's probably one reason why Chicago Press is like, this doesn't smell right for some reason. It was cold that night. Yeah, literally, I mean, literally that's a perfect example of why local journalism matters, because the

the reporters in Chicago knew what the weather was. And that's, you know, that kind of thing makes a difference. But I think the narrative here was irresistible. It was certainly one that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and a whole bunch of other Democrats jumped on immediately because it fit their idea that, you know, Trump politics leads to more hate crimes, you know. And so,

And so people just couldn't resist pushing that. And then they also couldn't resist sneering at the folks who immediately started saying, you know, this looks like a hoax. And there was, you know, there was like journalistic outlets saying, oh, you know, people are pushing conspiracy theories that this is some sort of hoax. Like, no, this obviously stank on ice from the beginning. And, you know, things that look like hoaxes,

Sometimes turn out not to be oaks, but, you know, it's not unreasonable when you see something that so obviously has so many glaring red flags to say, you know, maybe this isn't what this guy says it is. You know, Dan, I think this, Sean, I think you nailed it on a phrase that you said just a couple minutes ago that

journalists today, they're all on Twitter, but your point about they want to have an immediate take on something is what has caused the demise of mainstream journalism. Because instead of writing an article, fact-checking it, talking to other people, stewing on it for a few hours, and then sending it to the editor, and then it shows up in the paper the next day, they're all in this immediate, I have to get something out right now, and their bias is,

comes through. And then because they're all in the same echo chamber, it becomes a confirmation bias. And, you know, there is, it is exposed who they really are. I mean, we know they've all been liberal Democrats for years, but they didn't report that way when they had some responsibility of patronizing

putting it out in the newspaper, printed the next day because they could get fact checked. You used to have to wake up in the morning. I mean, if you're running a campaign, we're all old enough here. Back in the olden days before Twitter and social media, if you have a story, you have to wait for that stupid paper to be delivered in the morning. Well, I mean, I remember my first campaign when I was running a campaign for Congress for John Shattuck.

I was working. I'd work late into the night and then on my way home at one or two in the morning, I'd stop at the Circle K because I knew that the next day's paper would have been delivered just about then. So I could...

you know, get a head start on the news. And now it's just, it's 24 seven, but they, they're, they've taken all thought and balance out of it. And, uh, it's just become a cesspool. I mean, it is an echo chamber. Twitter is, does not reflect America in any sense, uh, at all. And, but if you talk to quote unquote, mainstream journalists, uh, you know, they think everything that's on Twitter is real.

So does Joe Biden. Yeah, and it also creates this sort of a created, there's this hive mind on Twitter that is in which the national political press is kind of part of a seamless whole with like entertainers and academics, you know, and, you know, left-wing political activists. And so that, you know, that pulls you ever further from, you know,

you know, having the critical distance of a journalist to be able to say, you know, I'm just going to write this. But it really is, I mean, Twitter, you have to work very hard to put a filter, you know,

You know, the thing is that, you know, having editors and fact checkers and all that stuff, it's a filter, right? And so too many people on Twitter are kind of like, you know, they're like drunks, little children and, you know, senile people. Like, they just say whatever, you know, they just let out whatever is inside without thinking through and checking. You know, even people who are very diligent journalists, when they write at length, you

you know, it's just much harder to avoid the knee jerk on Twitter. And, you know, this is exactly the kind of case, frankly, where, you know, I have increasingly tried to just

you know, apply like those 24, 48 hour rules of like, you know, just sometimes there's some stories you just shouldn't jump into at all right away until you give time for things to shake out and you can at least have a preliminary thought on them. The problem is that political narratives get built in those first 48 hours and they endure. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, Twitter's, it's also like people like Norm Ornstein, I think Ornstein, whatever his name is. Yeah. Ornstein, yeah. It's ruined him.

I mean, he used to be, I viewed him used to be very much bipartisan, and he is just purely a hack now. We're with John McLaughlin as we wrap up here. He is the senior writer for the National Review. You can find him on Twitter. One day we'll have to have you back to talk baseball during spring training. I was just thinking, we've got Dan on the phone and we can't talk baseball. Dan, what are stories people should be paying attention to the next month that you think will, if you had a crystal ball, what are stories we should be looking for?

I mean, you know, clearly, I mean, one thing, of course, that I'm writing about that is sort of the big long-term political trend, you know, is the continuing shift of Hispanic voters away from the Democrats. But I think in terms of events, yeah.

I mean, the really big menacing thing to look at right now is what's going on with, you know, the confrontation with Russia and Ukraine. And, you know, we could very well see war or something very much like war, perhaps conquest without war. Well, Dan, we appreciate you being on the show. We look forward to having you back for spring training to talk about real things like baseball and why the Mets will not live up to expectations again. Dan McLaughlin, thanks for visiting us. No problem. Thanks. Bye-bye.

Broken Bottles. We'll be right back. The 2020 political field was intense. So don't get left behind in 2021. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to do list needs to be securing your name on the Web with a your name dot vote Web domain from GoDaddy dot com. Get yours now.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes. I am your host, Chuck Warren. Today in studio with us, replacing Sam Stone, who's trying to change the world, Sean Noble, principal at DC London.

a friend, not only a friend. You say a lot of people are friends in life. Sean's a real friend. I mean, someone we talk to weekly. We've known each other a long time. And we're both very young men still, so that tells you. We met in grade school. Yes, exactly. Dan's always good to have on. I think he's one of these reasonable people who tries to look at the facts. I want to get back to journalism. The case, the guilty verdict yesterday, five of six. CNN had a headline, Jesse Smollett

found guilty on some charges on some charges yeah i unbelievable i don't think they understand what they're doing to cause us a distrust in our institutions in this country well i don't it may be i think some of them understand it i think that i do i think that that but the problem is

That they have a they are due. They are desperate to keep some kind of an audience. And so the likes of CNN and MSNBC have concluded that they can be as dishonest as they want because they know the core liberal base is going to.

be okay. If they get it wrong, they'll be immediately forgiven because the next day they'll say something that throws red meat on the floor for the leftist. The challenge that they face in the long term is that the hardcore liberal base is not that big of an audience. And I mean, you look at the numbers, it is pretty astounding when you think about how few people watch CNN.

Oh, it's minor. And this NBC. I mean, you think of CNN as this big national cable news network that's like, you know, an authority. I mean, for years it was the only thing. When we had the first Iraq war, boy, when you want a news on that war, you went to CNN. No question. You did not hear anybody say they're spinning this, they're putting it a certain way. That was the source we all went to 24-7. Right.

There are less than a million viewers per hour in the evening segments of CNN. That's astounding. I mean, think about a nation of 330 million people. Well, no, you got cable stations like CMT and Hallmark are just killing them. I mean, it's...

I can't even think anymore about even trying to go to CNN on anything. You know, sometimes I'll watch Wolf Blitzer. I don't know if that's more, I don't know if it's more because that's comfort food with his voice. But, you know, I, you just, I don't view them as a real source anymore. And I view most cable news as, you know, it's extremely biased. That's okay. But from there, I just feel like

You know, what crap can I feed people today to fit my narrative? Right. Yeah, the only time I watch CNN is actually on election nights just because I find it fun. Well, it's John King up there. I mean, John King has a good job. He has the board, you know. They have some good people on there, right? And King's probably as good as they get when it comes to, you know, analyzing results and comparing it to different things. But to see, you know, the likes of Van Jones and others just –

Well, every time I've been watching, you know, watching, obviously it wasn't that way with Biden. But this last election, it was with Virginia. It was fascinating. Well, it is definitely an industry. You know, we've talked about on the show, Sean, discuss here. There's been three elements of society that conservatives had just simply dropped the ball on. The first one is universities.

I think you just got to start focusing on universities. For example, I don't think most donors know what their money is going towards. Oh, absolutely. At all. At all. And we always go and have our university. We want to give money to it. And I tell friends, and I'm one that donates a lot, that if you're going to donate to something, make sure you have a person in your circle that's on that board. Don't give it unless you see it's there.

The other one is public schools. As conservatives, we love school choice. It's a great thing. But also in reality, 80% of the kids are always going to go to a public school. And I think that is something that conservatives can find a more equilibrium on if we start getting involved in school boards. And that's the thing. People have to. We've got to be involved in school boards. And we've got the parents that need to be more involved. We talk about parental involvement being a key. And yet even parents,

Conservatives aren't as involved. Oh, no, they just dropped the ball. I mean, look, people are busy. Two incomes, I get it. But that is something conservatives, they really want to make a difference in their local schools. Get involved, school board. They decide what the teachers make, which teachers unions never really want to talk about. But the school board's the ones that decide what to take, curriculum, things of that nature. The third thing is journalism. And I think what has to happen is...

There has to be a movement by conservatives to start financing students to get their journalistic degrees, and then they can't go work at the National Review or the Standard or something, Bulwark or whatever.

They've got to go work at the local papers because if you look at where people get their voting information, for example, 6% only say the newspapers and then 20-some-odd percent plus get it from local news. Well, the local news gets it from the newspaper. And so if you're going to go do this, you've got to tell these young conservative journalists or just plain objective journalists. I don't have to be conservative. You've got to go work for your local paper.

You know, you got to do the day by day. We're with Sean Noble, principal at DC London. He is in for Sam Stone today. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back talking more about press, Arizona politics, life, whatever. We'll be back. Broken potholes. The political field is all about reputation. So don't let someone squash yours online. Secure your name and political future with a your name dot vote web address from GoDaddy.com. Your political career depends on it.

Welcome back to Broken Potholes. This is our final segment. Today we have my good friend Sean Noble in the studio, principal at DC London. We have been talking about basically just the degradation of media and news and what we have in society. And Sean was telling us during the break that he was a journalism student and he was a

- It was. - He has a face for TV, not radio, but today he's brought that face into our studio. - Actually, Chuck, you got it wrong. I'm in politics. I was a broadcast journalism major and they told me I had a face for radio, which is why I stayed with politics. - Isn't it amazing? The one thing I always tell people in politics, which is very funny, is they say, "Oh, he's very handsome." What we rate as handsome in politics versus what's really handsome are two different things. There's this great line in "Modern Family" where the daughter Haley's dieting this mani guy

and she says, "Haley's a stone cold 10, you're a Utah 7." And I think in politics you have, you're a politics six or seven, right? But Sean, tell us about your experience doing journalism school. - So I went to ASU and I was in the Cronkite School. And it was a fascinating experience. I had decided I wanted to be a broadcasting major.

quite some years before it was actually when I was a teenager I my this was during the Mecham trial at the legislature on whether they were going to impeach him and my mom had was very she was a big Mecham fan so she was very outraged that this was going on so we went down drove down from Sholo

to go to a hearing one of the days. Did you live in Show Low then? Yeah, I grew up in Show Low. I did not know that. And so we drove down and stayed at my grandpa's house here and went to the hearing. And I watched it with just fascination. I'm a 16-year-old high school kid.

And then we went back to my grandpa's that night and watched the evening news. And what I saw on the news was completely different than what I had seen with my own eyes and heard. And I was astounded that they could twist it in a way that was different than what I had seen. And it was in that, at that moment, I was like, I want to be a news person and I want to do it factually. Um,

Fair and balanced before Fox was around. This was back in the 80s. You should have trademarked it. TM. But so fast forward, you know, I get a journalism degree. I actually took a year off of school to run a campaign for John Shattuck, as I mentioned earlier in the show. And then he started working for, he got elected, started working for him in his congressional office here in Phoenix. And

Finished my degree, sent out audition tapes all over the country, got one offer, Bismarck, North Dakota. Wanted me to come up and be a reporter and a weekend anchor, which I thought sounded pretty cool. And then I saw that it was Bismarck and I looked up where Bismarck was and I was like, ah, this looks cold. And then...

they were going to pay me 14 000 a year yes yes i was making like 21 22 000 working you're taking a pay cut and go to bismarck yeah and i was like yeah i think i'll stick with politics it's worked out and i've had a chance to be on tv and a lot of radio have a podcast now we've got a i've got a podcast with a friend of mine chris clements called light beer dark money um he's the light beer guy because he came out of you know golden eagle distributors based out of tucson um

And obviously I've been known as the Dark Money Lord, the Darth Vader of Dark Money, or the King of Dark Money, or the Prince of Dark Money. Or I think Lori Roberts called me Dark Money Maestro. I used to chafe at it, but now I embrace it. It's funny, people like Lori Roberts, the Orlando Sentinel in Florida has the same thing. They love to pick on conservatives having...

These dark money entities, they don't mention that there's 124 dark money entities in Arizona that are progressive. Yeah. But I never see a story about it. But regarding your comment at Bismarck, former Congressman Chaffetz is a good friend, and he wanted to go do broadcasting is what he graduated in. And then he went and talked to Bob Evans, who's an anchor in Salt Lake, has been forever, you know, 30-plus years, and he just said—

Do you really want to go work in a small studio in Bozeman or Budsmark or Rapid City?

And he said, no, he goes, that's what you have to do. So you need to make a decision today if you're willing to do that. Right. It's sort of like when people get into politics, like, are you willing to go intern for free? Right. Or get paid nothing and stuffing envelopes, which we really don't do anymore. But all these things and I have found most young people don't want to do that. They say they do. And it lasts about a week. Yeah. When you say that's true, Jamie. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty bad. So, yeah, no, the dark money situation is interesting. Yeah.

You've done a lot. I've done a lot on it. Well, and what people don't realize, most people don't realize because the media never talks about this. We've talked about the bias in the media and their own narrative. Dark money was a very common, has been a very common thing for 60 years. It's not until 2010. It was all done by the left. And, you know, there wasn't really the opportunity for the right to do that until the Citizens United decision came down. Correct.

Because the unions had been doing it for years and years and years. Oh, absolutely. And so all of a sudden, dark money became this evil thing because, oh, these guys get to do it now. That's not fair. You know, we got a little bit of equilibrium. And unfortunately, it's the left has just ratcheted up even more. So they're now outspending us on the left by pretty significant margins in the dark money space. Two to one, at least. Two to one, at least. Yeah.

So what do you think we need to be looking for here in Arizona in 2022? I find this to be a very fascinating cycle. So, for example, we have the election audit, America's audit. And, you know, so Secretary of State would seem to be a race that would gather a lot of attention. It's not. It's probably of all the statewide races, it's probably fourth, fifth tier at best. You're probably going to have here first governor, then Senate, then AG, and then everything else is like third, fourth tier. Yeah.

What do you see? I mean, Republicans should take advantage of this cycle. It would seem to line up in our favor. I think even last cycle, we've had Mike Noble on the show and we're talking about polling. Mike's of the green with me on this. No relation, by the way. No relation at all. But Mike's of the green with me based on polling on issues. This is not a blue state. No, no. This is a maverick red state. And, you know, we like our characters.

As a matter of fact, I'll tell my great Mecham story here briefly, but we like that. But, you know, for governor right now, Carrie Lake just seems to be out hustling everybody. Mm-hmm.

You see somebody start popping up and really start being aggressive on the hustle? Because I don't know what the other ones are doing. Yeah, I mean, I think that this is a two-way race between Kerry Lake and Matt Salmon. I think that it's very early. You know, one thing that, one of the reasons that I feel like I've done a pretty, had a pretty successful tenure in politics is because I was trained by John Shattuck, whose father was the

the master of campaigns. I mean, he wrote the book, How to Win an Election. So I really had some great advantages coming up in politics. And one of the things that Stephen Shattuck, John Shattuck's father, talked about a lot is the importance of timing in politics. Correct. And when to peak. And I think she's peaking and it might be a little bit too early. This is an insanely early cycle. It may.

And, you know, some people say, well, she's got the momentum and she's no dropping. But I it is a long time. Well, you never say never in politics.

And it's like, you know, politics is like love. It's all about time. That's right. But that being said, you know, she is I have to give her tremendous credit. She's doing the work. Well, she's yeah. I think that the challenge that she faces is can she broaden it beyond just throwing out the meat that the Trump voters want? You can't be governor of a Republican in Arizona unless you not only have Trump voters, which are important.

But you also have those funny McCain voters and those Romney voters on the east side who are conservative that if most of the Trump activists met them, they'd probably agree nine out of ten times on the issues. It's a lot of tone. It is definitely a tone issue. And I'll tell you, the one thing that's fascinating when you look at it is in 2016, Trump, when Trump beat Hillary here in Arizona, he

There were 90,000 people who cast a ballot that did not mark for president. 90,000 people. The average is 10 to 15,000 every year. I look back, you know, going back to Eisenhower's election. There had always been some level of people who just don't vote for president. And previous cycles, you know, more recently. Which is just so weird. But we'll continue. I don't understand it. We'll continue. I don't understand it. Yeah.

So so last time in 2020, when Trump lost to Biden and I'll say it, he lost to Biden. There were 60,000 people. So 30,000 of those 90 voted, decided that they were going to vote and most likely probably voted for Trump. But you just had a bunch of people who had decided I'm not voting at all. I'm voting for Biden because he was you know, they had had enough of Trump.

Because Trump just bled suburban women very, very significantly. Well, he bled suburban women. A perfect example is there were probably 15,000 votes for Trump just if he decided not to

continually attack the name and honor of John McGee. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when we were organizing the east side for the RNC, I heard that comment a lot. And it wasn't, you know, you know me enough that when someone says, well, I hear it a lot. Well, how many? You know, a dozen. That doesn't mean anything. But it was constantly, you know, several hundred people told me it. I'm meeting a lot of people, and I'm just like, this is a problem. The other thing is, too, because of COVID response, you know, he won seniors by eight.

in 2016 he only won by two yeah so just those two factors alone that's just that flips the state and one of my favorite conversations is my conservative or moderate fans i'm using air quotes here who voted for biden and ask him how they feel about their vote now yeah exactly you know it's um i i cannot imagine i mean i miss obama yeah i mean i mean obama at least appeared competent um

Obama was a less of the Obama was a less of the Twitter reaction to things. He was always a little more deliberate. We always got mad about it. But now I sort of admire it. Yeah. Well, when he was reading his teleprompter and his teleprompter had something that he shouldn't say on it, he actually knew how to ad lib. Whereas the president now just stumbles and doesn't know where he is. I mean, it's it's sad. It really is sad. And the problem for the Democrats is that.

They're going to have to figure out what to do. I mean, one of the challenges Democrats are facing, we're going all over the place, but that's OK. That's what we do when we talk, especially. Yes. One of the things Democrats are going to figure out is if they if if they recognize that there's a very high likelihood that Biden will not be up for running for reelection in 2024. Do they do they really want it to be Kamala?

Or if, you know, something happens to him and she becomes the president, she's, you know, the nominee. I think there's a decent chance that you will see sometime in the next few months a concerted effort to replace her as vice president.

That'll be interesting. Did you read the Wall Street Journal opinion piece on her this morning? I didn't. Oh, it was very good. But they made a funny comment that she needs to appear more earnest. And you can't fake earnestness. I mean, because she's not earnest. No, she's completely inauthentic. I mean, she, you know, no one wants to talk about the fact that the woman had every advantage in the world to be the nominee and was squashed. Well, she never made it to a vote. She dropped out. No, she was squashed. And I remember I kept it in my locker at the gym.

They had this cover story by Time, and it was supposed to be flattering, but it went in there just talking about how dysfunctional her campaign staff was. And the one thing we talk about in the show when you go to Time magazine or newspapers is –

And we talked to our staff about it. If you want to find what the real facts are, just go to the middle of the story. Skip the first third. Skip the bottom. Just go to the third. Because even if they're a liberal, they're generally putting those facts in. And so they have this Time magazine profile on her. And the whole middle third was like, she's a cluster. I mean, she can't keep people. These are the criticisms. Why? Blah, blah, blah. And then at the end, she's a wonderful blah, blah, blah. Yeah.

And it's just amazing. Yeah. Well, you look at the number of stories that have come out of The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN. Oh, the daggers are out. They really, I mean, that doesn't happen on accident. No, no, no. It's being fed. And it'd be interesting to know who's really leading and orchestrating it. It's Jill Biden. Yeah.

Jill Biden. Quickly, we have one minute left. Give me your predictions. I'm not going to do for governor. Who's your prediction? Who's the Senate nominee for Republicans in the Senate? That's a good one. You know, Brnovich has got the name ID, but I think you have to look at Blake Masters, who's

young and impressive. He's got a lot of support behind with Peter Thiel. I think Jim Lehman, successful business guy who is going to have a lot of money. Mick McGuire is, you know, a very accomplished general. He would be the only, we've only had one two-star general in the Senate in all of history, and it was Barry Goldwater. So it would be kind of nice if we had another two-star. So who goes quickly? We're down to show here. Who is it? Who gets the nomination? I'm going to say McGuire.

Boy, that's throwing it out there. This is Chuck Warren. Sean Noble came in with a horrible prediction. This is Broken Potholes. We'll have a great weekend. We'll be back. It's the new year and time for the new you. You've thought about running for political office, but don't know where to start. Before you start any planning, you need to secure your name online with a yourname.vote web domain. This means your constituents will know they are learning about the real you when they surf the web.

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