Dixie Dems-The Trump GOP Drama

Show Transcript

Dixie Dems: Drama in GOP Trump World

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: Hey guys, welcome to the lean to the left podcast today. We're talking politics and with me are Arthur Hill from North Carolina and Robert Thompson from Georgia. I'm a Marylander transplanted into South Carolina and together with the Dixie Dems. There's a lot to talk about today from the debacle of the Republicans drama of picking a new speaker of the House of Representatives and controversies surrounding him, to continued drama in Trump world with former allies flipping on him in court, jockeying among Trump challengers, to a Supreme Court case based on Trump's size, or lack thereof, a new Democratic challenger for Biden, redistricting in both Georgia and North Carolina that could change the power structure in those states. And then there's Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, blocking a bunch of military types from being confirmed by the Senate because of abortion objections. So stay with us. 

[00:01:05] Now, Arthur Hill is Vice Chair of the Brunswick County North Carolina Democratic Party.

[00:01:11] Robert Thompson's based in Atlanta and founded Peach News Now and its opinion podcast, Got Damn Liberals. Me, I do communications work for the Horry County South Carolina Democratic Party in addition to hosting this podcast and producing the Lean to the Left blog site. So welcome guys to the Dixie Dems on the Lean to the Left podcast.

[00:01:37] First, let's talk about the new house speaker MAGA Mike Johnson of Louisiana, who wants to go first on this one? 

[00:01:45] Robert Thompson: I wish I could. I have no idea who he is. You 

[00:01:49] Bob Gatty: don't know who he is? 

[00:01:51] Robert Thompson: No, let me rewind a little bit. So how long has he been in Congress? Was it like Two terms? No, I 

[00:01:58] Bob Gatty: think three terms. Yeah. Oh, 

[00:02:00] Robert Thompson: six years.

[00:02:01] Okay. But he has no bank account.

[00:02:03] Bob Gatty: Now, nobody's ever heard of the guy until this. They dragged him out of, I don't know where, right? And he 

[00:02:12] Arthur Hill: has a bank account. That's right. Yeah, 

[00:02:14] Robert Thompson: apparently. So Bob and Arthur, I, I assume that you gentlemen get benefits from our government. Now, does our government mail you a check every month or is it direct deposit?

[00:02:24] Arthur Hill: Mine are 

[00:02:25] Bob Gatty: direct deposit. 

[00:02:27] Yeah, mine too. 

[00:02:28] Robert Thompson: Most people do not find it fun to go to the bank on the first or the third and stand in line and cash the check. So it's just odd that the Speaker of the House claims he has no bank account. I'm not sure if y'all saw that. 

[00:02:42] Arthur Hill: Is it that he doesn't have a bank account or that the bank account is so bereft of funding that he doesn't have to report it?

[00:02:50] Robert Thompson: There you go, Arthur. If you don't claim you have it, you don't have to answer those questions. I think is where they're going with us. Yeah. And now we have this random black child that came out of the closet somewhere. And then I also heard another friend said that his wife did not show up to the swearing in, but maybe she was, her knees weren't doing so good because she was praying so much that he was going to be Speaker of the House, right?

[00:03:18] Bob Gatty: I don't know. I didn't hear any of that stuff. The stuff about the black child. I read I think it was BET has a piece explaining all this. And according to that piece, they just adopted this kid when he was little and that he's I don't see anything unusualabout that. It sounded to me like it was a good thing that they did.

[00:03:43] They're making some kind of, nasty thing about this. Are they? 

[00:03:48] Arthur Hill: I think the thing that really put me off was his favorite answer to the media when they were firing questions at 'em was, read your Bible. 

[00:03:56] Bob Gatty: Yeah, that's his answer for everything, isn't it?

[00:03:59] Arthur Hill: Yeah, read your Bible. It it represents another step toward the Christo fascist tone that a lot of Republicans are taking these days. And I think it was telling that none other than the Odious Mike Gates said on Steve Bannon's podcast that he said anybody that doesn't realize that the Republican Party is being, I'm paraphrasing here, that the Republican Party has been taken over by the MAGA side hasn't been paying attention.

[00:04:27] The three of us sitting here I'm sure have been paying attention and it's it's painful to watch. It really is. 

[00:04:32] Bob Gatty: Yeah, it is. It's not just the MAGA side. It's the conservative Christians that are taking over the Republican Party too, and they're trying to turn this country into something that was not intended by the founding fathers.

[00:04:48] Not by a long shot. 

[00:04:49] Robert Thompson: No, so we're supposed to have separation of church and state. So what it and I forgive me. I didn't, it's been a while since I've had civics, but separation of church and state is in the Constitution, right? Yeah. Okay. So if they need to go back and change the Constitution, clearly, because this guy and number two, I was going to about to say.

[00:05:12] I don't think the name Mike Johnson's anywhere in the Bible. So if all of his responses are, go read the Bible why don't we see the name Mike Johnson in the Bible? He wasn't one of the apostles that I remember. On the version of the Bible that I recall reading.

[00:05:28] Bob Gatty: Did you just say that he wasn't one of the apostles?

[00:05:32] Robert Thompson: Not the one that I remember, no.

[00:05:34] Arthur Hill: That would make him pretty old. 

[00:05:36] Bob Gatty: Yeah, it would. One of the problems with the Republicans is that they're all a bunch of old geezers. I guess that, we can say that about some of the Democrats too.

[00:05:47] Oh man. All right. So what else do we have to say about about Mike Johnson, other than the fact that he's homophobic. And just a crazy right wing nutcase. Anything else to say about that? 

[00:06:04] Robert Thompson: Did we also have another, Oh, sorry. Go. I 

[00:06:07] Arthur Hill: was going to say, apparently he has a, he had a radio show.

[00:06:12] Before he came to Congress, so I'm waiting for somebody to come out with some great quotes from that show or from segments of that show episode. I know that's a lot 

[00:06:21] Robert Thompson: of reading the Bible, Arthur.

[00:06:23] Arthur Hill: Maybe. 

[00:06:25] Robert Thompson: But the other thing, so we have a clock ticking for the next debt issue, which is coming up in a couple of weeks, right?

[00:06:31] So my prediction is that the government's going to get shut down again because the Republicans still have this, slim majority. And by the way, they didn't kick that New Yorker guy off this week. So he's still in there cause they need his vote. So the government's going to get shut down a week and a couple of weeks here.

[00:06:49] And it's going to happen just like it happened the last time. And all these rich donors. Because their checks are going to get cut off, which are probably direct to positive, by the way, as well. And and the government's going to be back open, or he's going to get thrown out again, and we're going to be back in this mess all over again.

[00:07:06] They're going to try to find a more crazy person to put up there. 

[00:07:09] Arthur Hill: Yeah, because That rule is still in effect. A single person can stand up and ask if the chair be vacated. So anybody could still do it. It would only take one guy, one person, one, one member to to stand up and say we need to take a vote on getting you out.

[00:07:25] Let's do it. It could happen. It could happen right after the next continuing resolution gets approved by Congress. in a couple of weeks, as you suggest. So he may not be around for long either. We may go back to paralysis. Another thing that is a little bit upsetting is his insistence on separating the legislation to provide more aid to Ukraine and Israel.

[00:07:50] He wants to pass a separate bill for Israel and he doesn't say anything about Ukraine. Yeah. The isolationist wing of the Republican Party seems also to be masticizing and it could really hurt in the long run, it could hurt our support for Ukraine our support for NATO and any number of other consequences that I'm sure are probably intended by the Republicans.

[00:08:15] Yeah, so you know that 

[00:08:17] Robert Thompson: they love their guy Trump who, Trump is a huge fan of Putin. It all tracks back and comes together. So here we go.

[00:08:23] Arthur Hill: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we ought to break into the court trial up in New York. Is that, but that's not on TV, is it? Just to see how junior is doing on the stand.

[00:08:34] Bob Gatty: That'd be a good idea. I 

[00:08:38] Robert Thompson: wish I could, were there enough drugs? I think you needed quite a few drugs to get them to stand on. 

[00:08:42] Bob Gatty: Probably. It'd be interesting to see whether junior stands by his dad or starts to try to cover his own ass to protect himself. 

[00:08:54] Arthur Hill: And then, and I think it's, I think that's more likely to just by looking at their personalities, I think that's probably more, more likely to happen with Eric than it is with Junior.

[00:09:04] Robert Thompson: That is true, Arthur. If you took a a Happy Meal and you took the fries out of a Happy meal I do think that Junior got a few more friess out of that package than than Eric did.

[00:09:15] Bob Gatty: What about her? Maybe she'll show up and. 

[00:09:18] Arthur Hill: She's supposed to. Yeah, she has to show up to 

[00:09:20] Bob Gatty: wonder if she'll wear that. She's 

[00:09:22] Robert Thompson: got her own happy. Daddy's girl got her own happy though. 

[00:09:25] Bob Gatty: Yeah, it'll be winter time. She could wear that coat that says I don't give a shit on the back. Oh, yeah, 

[00:09:32] Arthur Hill: That's true.

[00:09:33] Yeah. That see that she's not even a codefendant in that trial. I don't understand why the judge is making her show up and testify. She's she has nothing to do with this case. 

[00:09:45] Bob Gatty: Then we have in Georgia, we have this Ellis person pleading guilty along with Sidney Powell and the other lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, plus the guy that put up the money for the bail money for Trump.

[00:10:01] What's his name? Scott Hall, bill bondsman. What's all that mean for Trump? Who knows what these people will say if they flip on the guy. He could be in deeper shit trouble than what we think. 

[00:10:14] Robert Thompson: And Bob, Years ago I've lived in Georgia my whole life. And I used to think that my vote and living here didn't make a whole hell of a difference.

[00:10:22] And look at everything revolving around Georgia now. We're a swing state. We got mama Fani behind me here on her. Let's make a deal show. What's behind curtain number two, Mama Fani? We got a plea deal for you. No jail time for you. You can keep your law license, but you got to cooperate with me and talk about the man upstairs.

[00:10:44] Trump is guilty. He's broke. You really, so this bail bondsman, you let him post your bail for you because you couldn't scrounge up the money to do your own bail? 

[00:10:55] Bob Gatty: It's sad.

[00:10:57] Arthur Hill: It never ceases to amaze me how Trump has got the opposite of the Midas touch. He's got the, he's got the shit touch because everything he touches, including the people who come to work for him, get in trouble, they get sued, they get, they gotta go to jail.

[00:11:12] They have to do payoffs to porn stars. It's a reputation ruining scenario for anybody to ally himself or herself with Donald Trump. I just can't understand why people keep doing that. 

[00:11:25] Bob Gatty: That raises the question of why the MAGA people still support the guy.

[00:11:29] I saw a bumper sticker yesterday. I should have taken a picture of this thing, but the car pulled ahead before I had a chance to get my phone out. The bumper sticker said, the only way I will not support Donald Trump is if I find out that he's screwing Hillary.

[00:11:47] Robert Thompson: There's so much to unpack there. 

[00:11:50] Arthur Hill: Yeah, you definitely could be in 

[00:11:52] Bob Gatty: the picture. That's South Carolina. And I will have to say that, that guy I followed him a little ways. He pulled right into my neighborhood. So he's a neighbor. 

[00:12:03] Arthur Hill: You'll probably see that 

[00:12:04] Bob Gatty: bumper sticker again. 

[00:12:05] Probably that's a great bumper sticker.

[00:12:09] Yeah. Then we have this Mark Meadows guy who is his former chief of staff. And Trump's pissed off at him because there have been reports that Meadows might flip in the 2020 election case. On Truth Social, Trump called people who cut deals against him with prosecutors weaklings and cowards.

[00:12:33] He didn't say that Meadows was a weakling or a coward, but he said he might be. I guess he's worried about what Meadows might start. 

[00:12:44] Arthur Hill: Don't you, 

[00:12:45] Robert Thompson: sorry, go 

[00:12:45] Arthur Hill: ahead. Turning against Meadows would be, talk about eating your young. He's the guy that started the conservative caucus when he was a member of the House.

[00:12:54] He is, he's more pro Trump than Then 99 percent of the people who support him and for Trump to turn against him is is just, it's just amazing. Just another example of what happens when you ally yourself with that guy his biggest ally in the house certainly his biggest ally as a chief of staff and and now look what happened.

[00:13:17] It's it's amazing. 

[00:13:18] Robert Thompson: Yeah, and if I'm not mistaken, wasn't that the district that Madison Cawthorn tried to represent? 

[00:13:25] Arthur Hill: No, that was a but in that area, right? Yeah, because they were in Congress at the same time. So yeah, Meadows, but same part of the state, western part of the state, rural part of the state around Asheville, and they both had districts out there.

[00:13:39] Robert Thompson: I've heard that name at least in a while, Madison. Yeah, 

[00:13:43] Bob Gatty: you got all those papers piled up on that desk behind you. That looks pretty official. It looks like you're really an important person. No, that's just my 

[00:13:51] Robert Thompson: bills. Oh, that's your bills.

[00:13:54] I gotta pay, I gotta pay off all my debtors now that I'm making all this money from Dixie Dems

[00:13:59] Hey, how do you like my Trump hat? I was noticing 

[00:14:03] that it's, is that part of 

[00:14:04] your merch? No, it's not my merch. It's the Horry County Democratic Party's March. Oh. Yeah, they had a fundraiser here the other day, and I picked up a couple of these dump Trump hats. I gave one to a friend of mine who is one of my writers on the lean to the left blog.

[00:14:22] And his name is Chris Waldron, and he said that he didn't know where he would wear it. He was afraid he'd get shot. 

[00:14:31] There's 

[00:14:32] always that 

[00:14:33] possibility. I'll tell you one thing, I wouldn't wear it outside of my house, I don't think. Unless it was just at a party with a bunch of Democrats. But I certainly wouldn't wear it shopping or

[00:14:45] Yeah, 

[00:14:46] I've got a, I've got a T-shirt that I'm reluctant to wear outside the house. It's a it's a pro Biden T-shirt and it shows the aviator sunglasses thing, and then it says the copy below it says, will you just shut up, man, . And I just, I like the T-shirt, but I don't know about wearing it in the world.

[00:15:04] Yeah, that's the thing. You always have to be careful. At least I don't want to get shot. That's for sure. All right, so now we got Trump with all this stuff going on, all these court cases and everything, these people that are turning against him and yet he continues to dominate in the Republican sweepstakes.

[00:15:26] Now things are starting to thin out a little bit. Pence quit. Which... I thought that was funny. A poor guy. What a sad case. He is 

[00:15:36] Pence. I think he had an event in the library and only 20 people showed up, which I think is actually more than the Lean to the Left live audience, but we're not running for president either.

[00:15:49] So there've been some reports around here that South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, he could be the next one to fall. And Nikki Haley Arthur your favorite person appears to be overcoming DeSantis as number two. What do you think about that? I'm telling you, 

[00:16:07] she scares the hell out of me.

[00:16:10] If she somehow manages to get the nomination from the Republican Party, and I think I think that's a real threat.

[00:16:17] I really do. I think that she could attract a ton of support and maybe even from some moderate Democrats. 

[00:16:27] Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of, and I, this is another point that I think people are underestimating friend of mine. 3 days ago from Florida about DeSantis he posted a story. A lady was having issues in her retirement home, because a lot of people retire to Florida, and she had to send a premium quote to a lady for a homeowner's insurance policy that was going to be 17, 000 dollars a year.

[00:16:55] This is up from 5, 000 a year than it was. And the article goes through all these details of these. Major sweeping things of DeSantis blueprint for America and Florida that was supposed to be so great, but it's not affordable. And this is a clear example that it's failing, that him just choosing to ignore reality and just follow his campaign dollars and donors is a disaster.

[00:17:26] And proof again that on top of all of the nasty stuff and the guy is a horrible speaker. He's not likable at all. And there you 

[00:17:38] go Nikki, 

[00:17:39] she can get up there and smile and she can be a pretty Karen and put her pearls on and she's more appealing. And I think this is another example of that.

[00:17:47] Very clear. I don't like Nikki Haley either, but if you put the two of them next to each other, get bored. 

[00:17:54] I want to read you guys a short passage from Jennifer Rubin's column today in the Washington Post. Here's what she wrote. Speaking of Nikki Haley, her path, so slim, it's more akin to a thread to victory, would go like this.

[00:18:13] Senator Tim Scott, Short on money follows former Vice President Mike Pence in exiting the race. In a signal to the normal GOP crowd, both endorse her. Haley finishes second in Iowa and, or New Hampshire, chasing out former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and making it impossible, if he is still in the race, for DeSantis to continue.

[00:18:41] She then gets to be the single alternative to Trump. There is no sign that Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin or Georgia Governor Brian Kemp are going to wage a campaign. And then Rubin writes, That's where things get murky, to say the least. Simply being better than all the clumsy, weak, unprepared, and obnoxious alternatives still leaves Haley facing the overwhelming favorite of the GOP base.

[00:19:10] This is not 2016, when Trump could get by with winning 35% or so of the early primary electorate to beat back a crowded field. This time, he's got roughly a 30 percent lead in Iowa in the Des Moines Register poll and about the same in CNN South Carolina poll. 

[00:19:31] What do you guys think about that?

[00:19:34] I agree.

[00:19:35] And, and this whole thing, that they want to bitch and complain about inflation. And it's just the story that I just told you about what's going on in Florida. making florida unaffordable, but you're going out there and saying you've got a better plan. We'll look at your track record in florida.

[00:19:49] You made it unaffordable and you say you're gonna do something about inflation. They have no plan. It's a joke. Yeah. 

[00:19:58] Okay. I think that Haley has the smarts to come up with a plan. She I've seen stories that talk about what she's trying to do with abortion. And Bob, you mentioned that could have a, she might have a carryover effect with some moderate to conservative Democrats.

[00:20:16] And I think the position that she's thinking about adopting on abortion is probably a good example of what you just said. Let me ask you a question. In South Carolina, when she ran for governor did she put together any kind, was there any kind of crossover vote then with the Democrats? 

[00:20:34] She must have.

[00:20:35] I can't tell you that because I was not here then. I wasn't paying any attention, but she must have. And, when you said that. Arthur, it made me think. I was at a meeting of local Democrats the other day, the other weekend, there was this past weekend, there was a fundraiser, and there's an African American guy who's running for Congress.

[00:20:58] He has no chance at all, but he's running for Congress. And he was struggling with positions on two of the very, very controversial issues that he has to deal with here. And one is guns and the other is abortion. Now, among the African American community in South Carolina most of them are religious based, religion based.

[00:21:25] You have to reach them through their churches, you have to show up at the churches and speak and so on and they have to be wary of the abortion views of this group of people which tend to be on the conservative side. And there's a group of people right there, I think, that Haley could pick off.

[00:21:51] I really do. I think she'd have a, she'd probably have the best chance of picking off African American Democrats in a southern state like, like South Carolina is probably any of those candidates. 

[00:22:04] Oh, yeah, I agree with you. One of the things we're doing and in Brunswick County, North Carolina is we as a party are reaching out to rural voters and and the African American voters.

[00:22:18] And we've reached out just like you're saying we reached out. We're reaching out to the churches and we're reaching out to and we're doing. We've got other initiatives underway, like helping them bring broadband to areas that are unserved within the county now and our state chair who herself is from a rural county in North Carolina and northern North Carolina.

[00:22:41] She's made it a top priority to go after the rural vote and to make bigger crossroads into the African American community. That's a priority here very much so with the Democrats and I don't know whether you'll notice. significant results by Election Day 2024, but you'll see progress, I'm sure.

[00:22:59] And that's the way it ought to be. That's exactly the way it ought to be. 

[00:23:03] Are you seeing in, in North Carolina among African American voters the same issue when it comes to abortion? 

[00:23:11] I don't know. I honestly don't know. I can understand why that might be the case, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was. But so far we haven't we're we've got a pretty liberal stand on abortion in the state and also in the county as a party, and we haven't noticed any pushback.

[00:23:31] So not yet, but 

[00:23:32] we'll see. I can say, go ahead. 

[00:24:22] I don't know that everything that I that has happened over the past couple of years with abortion. I have heard more, these are, guys, white guys, just slightly younger than me, I would say that are just scared of the whole abortion thing coming out and saying that this party is insane.

[00:24:43] That, that they are saying that if there's an accident or something like that, and that, that my, my lady, whether she's my wife or not, is going to have to carry a baby to term. This is insane. And this is the position of this crazy, radical Republican Party. Yeah, going back to your other point, you have to also look at the very interesting thing that Brian Kemp did here in Georgia, and he continues to tread this line because, loving or hating, Brian Kemp is not stupid. And he was not the leader when it came to all the Republicans that were trying to run against Stacey Abrams. He came from behind. And, Came out and now twice, won against Stacey Abrams.

[00:25:28] I pulled the statistics because it was going to come up later in our discussion here. Georgia is barely just over 51 percent white and the Republicans. I remember Republican pundits, namely Martha Zoller coming out saying, we are so proud of our brothers on the other side that are black coming over and voting for Brian Kemp.

[00:25:50] Because they claim to have these people there for doing that. It is a thing. And you have this weird thing in politics where some people, I can't explain it you cannot get into people's minds sometimes, why a black person in Georgia would choose to vote for Brian Kemp is amazing to me.

[00:26:11] But I don't walk in their shoes, and I cannot explain that. 

[00:26:15] Hey, what do you guys think of this Representative Dean Phillips, a Democrat from Minnesota, who's announced he's going to challenge Biden for the Democratic nomination saying that the party needs to look to the future. Now Phillips is 54.

[00:26:31] So I guess he thinks that he should be the future. What do you think? 

[00:26:36] I don't know if you guys saw Saturday Night Live. I believe it was this past Saturday night and the opener was quite a jab at Biden's age. It is a thing. I get it. I, I get that a lot of people are concerned about that. 

[00:26:51] At the end of the day, I'm going to support the Democratic, unless somehow Trump is going to try to jump parties and be a Democratic candidate, which he never would.

[00:27:01] But it, at the end of the day, I'm going to support whoever it is. I think we need to be mindful of it because this is also a huge talking point on the other side. Never mind that Trump is ancient and puts on, makeup every day to appear to be younger. But, Trump couldn't even he had to get a golf cart.

[00:27:19] even walk across a golf course or even at these other, summits that he was at. Trump is in horrible shape. Compared to Biden. 

[00:27:27] Yeah, here's the thing. Here's the thing about Phillips. Do we honestly believe that Dean Phillips could have accomplished so much in the international arena?

[00:27:38] As Trump had, as excuse me, as Biden has for the last three years could he have pulled NATO back together? Could he have could he have provided the support that the world is giving to Ukraine now? Could he have? Could he have garnered so much support for Israel and injected himself into that conflict and and be an active participant in trying to restore order in the Middle East?

[00:28:02] I don't think so. I don't think Dean Phillips has, I don't think Dean Phillips has the, I don't know about that. I don't know about the intellect, but he certainly doesn't have the experience. That Biden does in that arena and in the domestic arena. Biden knows how the institution works.

[00:28:15] He knows how the executive branch works. He certainly knows how Congress works. Phillips hadn't been around that long there either. And he hasn't accrued much seniority. And far as I know, he's not, hasn't been the chair of any committees or subcommittees in the house. So what does he bring to the table?

[00:28:30] I 

[00:28:31] don't understand. You want me to tell you? Yeah. All right. His family had the, had a big distilling company, a booze company. All right. So he brings booze to the table. That helps even more important. He ran the gelato manufacturing company Talenti. Now you guys ever had Talenti ice cream or gelato?

[00:28:58] I mean that stuff is awesome. I eat it almost every night. 

[00:29:02] It is good. Okay. 

[00:29:04] That's good. Oh, it is. It is. It is just fabulous. And the best one is chocolate chip with with coffee flavored. It is. It is just so good. Oh, my God. I just love it. That's good. But 

[00:29:20] when was the last time you heard about a Minnesota liquor product getting any blue ribbons?

[00:29:26] Minnesota booze? What? I know. I know. I know. All right. So anyway, there's some people saying that maybe this guy is just a stalking horse for somebody else who is maybe better known and might have a better chance. Do you think that's true or do you think this is just ego that this guy decided that, he should be president so he's going to run?

[00:29:53] That isn't how it works. That isn't 

[00:29:54] how it works. Remember Gene McCarthy when he ran. Back in 66, whenever it was, 60, 66, 68, the 68 presidential campaign. And everybody thought he was a stalking horse for Bobby Kennedy. That turned out not to be true. And McCarthy did very well in the primaries.

[00:30:12] And of course Bobby Kennedy got assassinated as things went along when he finally entered the race, but stalking horses don't work. If, the way it works is if you want to run for president, if you want to be president, you got to be out front and you got to run. You can't get somebody else to be a stalking horse.

[00:30:27] So I don't believe that. So answer your question is who the hell knows what he's doing? I 

[00:30:33] don't get it. Yeah, I don't even, I think, It just reminds me, my whole career, I've just, I've known an awful lot of politicians over the years, and there's one thing that they all have in common, and that's a huge ego, and, sometimes they just think they think, maybe nobody else thinks it, but they think that they're the one that can do it, and that should do it, and have a right to it, and whatever, and I don't know, maybe that's what's going on with this guy, he's a millionaire, yeah.

[00:31:05] Apparently, according to what I've read he's as I said, he's in there to his family's distilling company and he led gelato or he led the gelato company, Talente it says here he's Jewish and he's argued in the wake of the is Israel Hamas conflict that the U S needs to support Israel, although he backs a two state solution longterm.

[00:31:30] It says in Congress, Phillips has been a fairly moderate member of the House Democratic Caucus, falls to the right of about 80 percent of his party colleagues in voteview. com's ideological data, and he belongs to the center left, business oriented New Democrat coalition in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

[00:31:53] So you know, that's... That's who the guy is. And you just have to wonder why all of a sudden is he doing this? 

[00:32:03] Yeah, the other thing that I would say, I think I may have mentioned it in other episodes, in Canada and the UK, they have more than two political parties, for lack of a better term. We have more, yes, But they're not viable when it comes to a presidential election.

[00:32:17] You've had so many people that have tried to do, this third party thing, or they've tried to go against the others. It's not, a very good thing to try to do here in the U. S. And a lot of it comes down to campaign finance. And until that changes here in the U. S. It's, unfortunately, you've got to get on one side of the fence or the other. I've tried to say that so many times. It's just the reality here. And as you were listing out, this new Democrat coalition, the problem solvers caucus, all that, that for lack of a better term, that really is our multi party system here for now. That if you have other ideas versus what the mainstream is, you need to go and get one of those caucuses and try to sway their, because otherwise, for we still have two big parties here and you've got to get on one side of the fence or the other.

[00:33:05] I still fear that you are wasting your vote. If you do go the direction of one of these third party or these off the sheet, candidates are really worried about. It goes back up to the concern about Nikki Haley that she's going to pull, blue votes over to her side. 

[00:33:22] Robert, do you think that do you think that there's about to be a split in the Republican Party?

[00:33:27] There already is. There's so many 

[00:33:31] fractures in the Republican Party that you're going to get splinters all day long in that thing.

[00:33:35] Yeah, but is there a possibility that there could be enough defections that they could start another party? On that side of the aisle, 

[00:33:44] I don't think they can afford to.

[00:33:46] And you had, even the existing candidates, they were all up on that stage and they asked them, are you going to support Trump with all that? And most of them raised their hands. It's that whole BS. And that whole thing that they cannot afford to throw Trump out with the bathwater. They cannot afford to splinter because that's all they have left.

[00:34:07] And they are barely keeping it together. And all that it got them is this slim majority in the House. 

[00:34:13] Hey, I got another Trump thing I want to talk about. These court cases that we've been talking about, that's not the only court case that involves Trump that's important.

[00:34:23] There's actually one before the Supreme Court right now involving Trump. And that's a guy that wants to trademark the phrase "Trump Too Small" for use on t shirts and elsewhere. Now it looks like from what I've read, the justices aren't exactly in this guy's corner.

[00:34:44] Trump too small? What do you think? 

[00:34:48] I was going to ask, what did Lauren Bovert say at the theater about that? 

[00:34:52] What did Lauren Boebert say? 

[00:34:56] She wasn't manhandling Trump. She was manhandling somebody else, right? 

[00:35:03] Allegedly, but that's my point. Maybe she agrees. 

[00:35:08] Maybe she doesn't, but who, who would care?

[00:35:12] How the hell did that, how did that case get to the Supreme Court? 

[00:35:16] I have no idea. Don't they have anything better to do? 

[00:35:20] Yeah, they do have a lot of better things to do. As a matter of fact, 

[00:35:24] the only other thing that this brings to mind is I know that Taco Bell fought for Taco Tuesday.

[00:35:31] Because somebody had trademarked or something about Taco Tuesday, and that got thrown out. So now, Taco Bell can market Taco Tuesday. So maybe follow that as a precedent because obviously there are more Trumps in the world than just Donald Trump. 

[00:35:49] Yeah, I saw in this piece that I was reading in preparation for this very important discussion

[00:35:55] I saw a comment that the justices said the guy can still sell his shirts is we're not stopping him from selling his shirts. We just don't think it should be copyrighted because if you copyright Trump too small, you could copyright Trump to this and Trump to that and there'd be no end to it.

[00:36:19] So it looks like the court isn't going to give this guy the ability to trademark the phrase Trump too small, but you can still buy his shirts online. So that's really important. Don't you think? 

[00:36:32] Yeah. Let's call our Boebert and ask her. 

[00:36:35] Important things to talk about. Redistricting in Georgia and in North Carolina.

[00:36:41] Some big stuff happening. Arthur, talk to me first about what's going on in North Carolina. 

[00:36:47] The Republicans are at it again. First of all, a little background in, in North Carolina, the governor has no say so or authority in redistricting or gerrymandering. He's totally out of the picture. The super majority in the state legislature put together a set of maps for congressional maps and district maps. And in secret reported them out of committee on one day and literally approved them the next. And so as it stands right now the congressional delegation from the state of North Carolina would go from 7 to 7, which is what it is in the current Congress, to as much as 11 to 3 in the next Congress, based on what the Republicans have done with gerrymandering and they, they've also created a nice district for the woman who turned the Republican majority into a super majority by defecting from the Democrats.

[00:37:37] They created a nice, District for her to run for re election that voted for Trump by about 10 or 15 points in the last election. So Gretchen Cawthon is is set for life if she wants to be with the legislature, even though there's talk about her running for Congress.

[00:37:53] But I think there's gonna be some lawsuits. Oh, one other thing. When the legislature passed its budget just a few weeks ago, it included a provision That the that the legislators could destroy any of their paperwork. Nothing has to be, there's no sunshine rule at the state legislature. It's any paperwork that the, that a legislator or state senator has is his own to keep and nobody else has to see it.

[00:38:20] So nobody will know anything about the history of of the gerrymandering and what correspondence or views or anything that went that transpired. Plus, the Supreme Court is now solidly in the Republican camp, so if a lawsuit about the gerrymandering reaches the state Supreme Court it's pretty clear how they're going to rule.

[00:38:40] So it doesn't look good in North Carolina for what's going to happen at the state or in the House of Representatives. Not a good thing. 

[00:38:48] Things are a little bit better in Georgia, right? 

[00:38:50] A lot better. 

[00:38:52] Yeah I was reading up on a couple of updates on this before the call and I went out because I was curious, what, basis.

[00:39:00] I'm not a lawyer. I'm not, trying to be one, but, I figure we are educated and Georgia, gave me a good public education to be able to read through this. So Georgia, as I said earlier, is just over 51 percent white. The other side of that is they're calling it 49. 6 non Hispanic white here in Georgia.

[00:39:20] 31 percent claim to be black or African American here in Georgia. But when you look at our 14 districts here in Georgia, nine are represented by white people, five of them by black people. It should be closer to, that should be six or seven. Non white people that should be representing Georgia's 14 districts here.

[00:39:42] So clearly, I think when they looked at the makeup and how these. I used to literally over in Cobb County, which I take a little bit of credit for, it wasn't all me, but it had to be a portion, but there was a time over in Cobb County that literally across the street from me, they had a different representative than the one that Barry Loudermilk, which is still in Congress, chose to gerrymander me into his district and and basically ignore me. The guy never does town halls. He has campaigned with child molesters. There are crazy, radical people out there, but just because they know, I'm not going to do a town hall. Oh, and by the way, he didn't vaccinate his kids either.

[00:40:22] But, people like this, they're going to have to get off their ass. They're going to have to go out and actually campaign a little bit more and work harder. For the people that, they're gerrymandering into their districts, and then you look on the other side, these five, black representatives maybe they have to campaign a little bit harder, but you look at those districts and how they have drawn them, you've got them so blue and the cook report, one of the districts is blue, plus twenty four.

[00:40:49] Okay, it doesn't have to be that heavily gerrymandered. And when you look at these maps, they're talking about doing a a new district over on the west side of Atlanta that that will probably go. So I'm looking, I'm very excited. That is going to be one or two more blue districts to send our representatives up to the to D. C. But Mr. Josh McCoon, now imagine that you are the Georgia Republican State Party chairman. What a tough job to have right now. But Josh McCoon I actually have been at a bar where he tried to sing karaoke. That is my one small connection to Josh McCoon, and it was not pretty. But he described this as a naked power grab.

[00:41:35] Nevermind that, his Republicans have gerrymandered the shit out of us for years and just that example, when I was in Barry's district for all those years and just, they don't care. That they have the power. It's like a kid on the playground. They are going to run away with it and do it every time 

[00:41:55] because they can.

[00:41:57] Yeah. 

[00:41:59] Yeah. 

[00:41:59] Okay. The last thing I wanted to bring up was this Senator Tommy Tuberville from Alabama. Now we have Veterans Day coming up on the 11th, Saturday, the 11th, and we all need to be thankful to our veterans and express our appreciation for the sacrifices that they've made.

[00:42:23] And we don't need some Senator holding up the confirmation by the Senate of more than 400 military officers that need to be confirmed by the Senate. And the guy, Tuberville, is holding up their confirmation because he's upset that the Pentagon has a new policy that they'll pay for travel when a service member has to go out of state for an abortion or other reproductive care.

[00:42:54] Now, what do you guys think about that? 

[00:42:56] They don't care. Tuberville, last I heard, he lives in Florida. He doesn't even live in Alabama. He just used the name because he was an Auburn coach. And there was a seat over there that they could win. He's an asshole, honestly, for doing this. And he needs to step aside and just let things happen.

[00:43:17] My uncle was in the Air Force and he had to retire when he hit captain and did not make that next rank. He would be up to major there. I have other family members that are in the armed forces right now. That actually could be a fact that I'm not connected with them recently. I have a former stepbrother that was killed in Afghanistan.

[00:43:37] This is horrendous and stupid that an asshole like this is standing up on a podium and trying to make abortion some political issue to hold this back. Bye. Kiss my ass, Tuberville. I think you're an asshole for this. 

[00:43:54] There you go. 

[00:43:54] And just to make things worse. Here is the commandant of the Marine Corps who had a heart attack on Sunday, and he's in critical care in a hospital up around D. C. Somewhere. And and the guy that has to back him up is is the third guy in command because the second guy, the guy who would normally be behind the commandant is being held up in the Senate. It's just appalling to me that anybody would take make so light of national security and and by, by doing, by pulling off a stunt like this.

[00:44:26] And I hope that what Schumer's got in mind works. I don't understand why it's going to take him so long for that to happen. The reports I see that if Schumer's gambit to approve everybody in block has to clear the Senate is going to take weeks, and I don't understand why it takes so long, but looks like a lot of Republicans are starting to lose their sense of humor with their colleague from Alabama, and maybe if it percolates for a little while longer, maybe they'll outright vote against him and vote with the Democrats that want to approve all these nominations.

[00:44:57] And it comes back to, things don't tend to change until they hit home. And we've talked about abortion, that's hitting home. And you've got even going more extreme out in Texas where, these people cannot even drive through a county or a city for fear of getting arrested for, trying to find an abortion for a decision that a woman makes, that wants to make for herself.

[00:45:22] You've got this guy out there, that maybe that there's an officer in one of the armed forces that is in this holding pattern because they don't know what the hell is going on. It's so unfortunate that it has to actually come down to that reality, that maybe these people just, they continue to lose power and this ship just sinks.

[00:45:42] It's sad. It really 

[00:45:43] is sad. 

[00:45:44] It is. It is. I want to put in a little plug for a upcoming episode that'll be on the Lean to the Left podcast. It's an interview with Dr. Paul Lawrence, who is the former Undersecretary for Benefits. In the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs. And Dr. Lawrence has written a book, Veterans Benefits for You.

[00:46:10] And I don't know if you can really see it, but his book is packed full of helpful tips for veterans on how they can maximize the benefits that they're entitled to from the U. S. government. And he was kind enough to be with us to be interviewed, and that show will be streaming in honor of Veterans Day on Thursday November the 9th.

[00:46:38] So with that's all I have. You guys have anything else you'd like to add? 

[00:46:42] I think I need to lower my blood pressure here, but 

[00:46:45] I'm good. I'm exhausted. I am too and my dog is telling me that he needs some attention. And my wife is sitting here and she wants a little attention. So you guys, I'm going to, I'm going to knock it off.

[00:47:00] That's all right with you. All right.