Blaming Raleigh for Washington | Hour 1

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to the peak calendar show.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. And this is Andrew Dunn. He is the publisher of Longleaf Politics. You can find the website at longleafpol.com. And he is also a contributing columnist over at the Charlotte Observer, but we don't hold that against him. And also the author of the book, The Change Agent, Pat McCrory's Rise, Reckoning, and Legacy. Andrew Dunn, how are you, sir? I am doing fantastic. How about yourself? I am all right. I'm doing okay. I just, as you said that, I think you are fantastic every single time I ask you how you're doing. So are you never not fantastic? You know, I try to be. I'm the happy warrior type. You remember that? There was a presidential. Candidate back in the day who coined that term, and I try to abide by that. So you're a happy warrior, and you geek out on policy. I don't even know why we have you on the show, really. Um, that's not, that's no, that's good. It's good. Um, it's, and one of the things I have found as a good antidote to the black pilling, that seems to be all the rage on, uh, the, on the right. Well, in the left, but, uh, I've noticed it now just, uh, becoming increasingly popular on the right where people are just engaged in this doomerism. Uh, and the antidote, uh, I have found is gratitude. Uh, if you, uh, can every day just identify something that you're grateful for. It actually, it changes your entire outlook in life. So, uh, I recommend that to people. And that's what we try to do here between noon and three every day on WBT. I'm not, I'm not successful all the time, but I try. So this actually gets to something that you wrote about at long leaf politics. Um, this doomerism, this black pilling, although you don't use those terms, but I have, I was actually in a, in a Twitter fight, which is super productive, highly recommended for. Anybody who hasn't done it. Good use of time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, and, uh, a Twitter fight with a guy who was like, I'm, I'm Republican and I'm going to sit this one out to stick it to the GOP. And like, I don't understand the logic of this strategy, which is let's empower the people that brought you the worst things that you clamored for change for. Let's empower them because you didn't, you are not satisfied with the pace of successes or victories that you got over the last two years. And the practical impact then It's not just D.C., right? The damage you're going to do is also going to affect you at the local and state level. Yeah, you're exactly right. And I think there's a lot of folks out there like that Twitter warrior that you were speaking to. And what I would recommend if somebody is feeling that way, just feeling so beaten down and like there's no good choices, just treat each race as its own entity. You don't have to go in there and pull a lever for one party or the other, but really do your research, get in there, look at both candidates. On the ballot and make. The choice that you think is the best. Maybe you don't like either of them, but you got to make the best choice of the choices presented to you. But I think where this really comes into play this year has to do with. Our North Carolina General Assembly elections. You know, we've got... There's plenty. Of reasons to be frustrated with Republicans in Washington, and I certainly am. But we have a lot of Republicans here in North Carolina who are in swing districts, could go either way, especially here in Mecklenburg County and up in Wake County, where we've got some really hardworking, fair-minded public servants on the ballot. And I am really hoping that voters, give them a chance and don't just get caught up in the national vortex and really look at them as candidates. Right. So you list a couple of them and they're like, they're like, you got Tricia Cotham on there from Mecklenburg County, Brian Echevarria, who I've been very impressed with Cabarrus County, I believe he's a very impressive guy. I've seen some of his debates on the, on the floor up in Raleigh. He's very impressive. You got Alan Chesser, Jonathan Almond, And Mike Sheetzelt and Mike has actually been very impressive, I have found as well. And all of these. Lawmakers, like they have been advancing the kinds of legislation that supposed Republicans want to see at the state level. Right. And yet you're going to now sit home to punish these guys and gals in Raleigh and empower Democrats to what may be flip control of the House and or the Senate. It's just, again, like I don't understand the logic of this strategy. There's no logic to it. It's a motion. And I would also put Representative Erin Paray in that camp. She's in Southern Wake County. Mike Sheafs, though, he's one of the smartest people in the General Assembly right now. And some of the things that they're doing already have already happened, and we've talked about them. The property tax levy limits constitutional amendment that's on the ballot this year, that's a great one. But Mike Sheetzelt, Representative Sheetzelt, has a great bill that I hope moves forward that has to do with the data centers and making sure that data center companies are paying their own way when it comes to electricity. Representative Alan Chesser is trying to repeal the grocery tax. I mean, there's a lot of. Good ideas out there, and we've got to send these folks back to Raleigh. To get them done. Yeah, and so. You mentioned the constitutional amendment to you. So you already voted, right? You went and did the early voting like a Democrat does. I'm locked in, man. I'm locked in. Yeah. And for the life of me, I don't understand the hesitancy on the against early voting. uh, among Republicans, like you guys need to bank your votes. I early vote. It makes sense. You go out and you vote in this way. If you're going to the polling place and maybe you show up and it's like a really long line, well, you can leave and then come back the next day or at a different time, right? You have more options available to you. Um, and as long as we've got this early voting period, why not bank your vote? Um, you know, a week before the election, and then you don't have to worry about it. If you know, for some reason you get called out of town, um, something bad happens to you, you can't make it to the polling station. What is with this resistance that Republicans have towards early voting? Well, I think it's lessening. Every year that goes by, it seems like Republicans more and more are voting early, and I. Think that's smart. I've got. A fever or something like that is way too high for my liking, so I have to get the vote in early. But to your point, it is super easy to get in and get out most of the time, but I actually tried once over at South Park Library, and there were no parking spots, so I just had to leave and come back the next day, and there. Was no line. Um, but I think, you know, part of the, there is. Some nostalgia around election day, right. As opposed to election month, election season. And I do understand that argument. Uh, but what I would say is, you know, these are the rules of the road. Early voting is a thing. Uh, and there is so much advantages to going and getting your. Vote in early. If nothing else, now that my vote's in, I don't think any of the, uh, door knockers are going to come on. Knock on my door anymore. I'm off the list. Right. That's a key part. The good campaigns and not all of them are. So we can't I can't promise you that you're not going to get any more robo calls or you're not going to. Get another door knock. But the good campaigns, the ones that know how to utilize the information every single day, the Board of Elections publishes a list of who has early voted And so the good campaigns will go through there and take people off of their list because they're not going to devote any kind of resources to chasing those voters. They're now going to go after the voters who are less likely to vote. And so, like, if anything, you should want to vote early because then it frees up the campaigns to go chase down less likely voters and get them to turn out. versus wasting their time going after you or me. So yeah, like you said, these are the rules of the road. We might as well use them rather than just like sort of unilaterally disarm to the Democrats because this is what they're doing and they've been doing this for years. So I mentioned, oh, I wanted to ask you, we've talked about the individual constitutional ballot initiatives and people have asked me, I'm voting for all three of them on the constitutional amendments. Where do you come down on? So two of them I'm a strong yes on. And then the third one, I actually voted no on the 3.5% income tax cap, though I'm not going to be broken up if it does pass, and I expect it will pass. So I'll start there and explain why. I would love to see North Carolina get to a roadmap to eliminating the personal income tax altogether. So I have no qualms at all with a lower income tax rate. However, what I haven't seen is one, a roadmap to continuing to do that, or two, any sort of taxpayer bill of rights or anything like that. that's limiting the growth in the. Well, my vote will cancel yours. Andrew. All right. That's fair. That's fine. I'm not going to. Be broken up if it passes, but it just means I'll have to keep on the folks in the General Assembly not to get us into the vice industry. But the property tax levy limit. is a phenomenal amendment. And I am really looking forward to having that in the state constitution and then seeing the general assembly come back next year and start to rein in some of these out of control local governments that are using rising property values to sneak in tax increases and fund all sorts of crazy stuff. Right. And then the third one is the voter ID measure, putting that into the constitution. So I support that one. And that's the other one you voted yes on, it sounds like. Correct. Yeah, it's a no brainer. All right, so you also made quite the admission over at Longleaf Politics that you voted for Alma Adams. She of the. Hat fashion show. She is a U.S. Representative in the 12th Congressional District. And this kind of gets to the sort of what we were talking about initially about the doomerism and the blackpilling. The Republican. running against her is a guy by the name of Jack, is it Kodiga? Kodiga? Kodiga, yeah. Kodiga. And you've interviewed him before. And so, like, what happened? I guess, what, did the interview not go well? I mean, what happened? No, the interview went fine. And honestly, that's why I felt the need to write this kind of update piece on why I voted for the Democrat in this race. And I'm laughing even saying it because Alma Adams and I. Have nothing in common politically. And normally, if I'm not crazy about the Republican candidate, obviously, I'm not going to vote for the Democrat. I might just leave it blank. However, in this case, I'm deeply concerned about the path that Mr. Kodiga's campaign has taken. It's really gone into some dark places, anti-Semitism, calling people traitors. It's very bizarre, and I'm worried about Mr. Kodiga's health. And I wish him well, but I just could not in good. Conscience vote for him. And honestly, it was to the point where I felt like I had to cast my ballot for the Democrat. Yeah. Well, and yeah. And if you did the interview with them, then it's like you got to tell the people that watch the interview like, hey, this guy's like gone. It sounds like he's a post-liberal. gone down that path, and that's unfortunate. Unfortunately. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, the interview went great. I mean, he came across real normal, smart, maybe a little naive, as anyone would have to be to run as a Republican in the 12th Congressional District, but I'm not sure what happened. Yeah. All right, we'll leave it there. You can read his work at longleafpolitics, longleafpol.com. Andrew Dunn, thanks for your time, buddy. Appreciate it. Thank you, sir. All right, see you. The holidays will be here before you know it, and so now is the time to create precious and priceless family heirlooms that will last for generations. Take your old photos, slides, films, and tapes to create a video in Mint Hill. There, they'll turn those memories into the story of your lives, memories from past family events captured forever to pass down to future generations. Create-A-Video's skilled team will professionally transfer your family's stories onto easy-to-use USB drives or DVDs, that won't deteriorate over time like the old photos and tapes are doing right now. They will create a keepsake video that you can share and copy and keep forever. I can see it now. You're gathered around the holiday table with your loved ones, watching all these memories and people of your lives. You're sharing laughs, maybe some tears, telling stories that make your family uniquely yours. Beat the holiday rush and get your memories in now. Go to createavideo.com or visit them in Mint Hill just off I-485. Your photos and videos are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are. Visit createavideo.com. All right, from the WBT text line driven by Keffer Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, the family store, Kevin says, we are all anxious to know if you were able to get on the list for a flying car yesterday or did they run out just before you got to the front. Of the line? I don't know. What are you talking about? What is that about? I'm confused. Is there a flying car or something mentioned yesterday? Uh, I was not, so I was not here. We did a, there was a big, uh, corporate event here, uh, with the, the cluster of radio stations. And so I had to, and it was scheduled, uh, during my show. So rather than, you know, acquiesce to my pleading to avoid going to the corporate, I'm just kidding. I did. Um, but so I, I, I pre-recorded the program over the weekend. So, I was letting people know that it was prerecorded so you wouldn't text in and then get mad that I wasn't reading your texts because some people get very angry if I don't read their texts, you know? So then I just don't read their texts anymore and I put them in the block folder. But so I just wanted to give everybody a heads up. And so I. May have engaged in a little tall tale telling when I said I was taking my pilot's license and I was waiting in line to get a flying car yesterday. And by maybe, I mean I definitely did. I was definitely lying about that. I did not try to... What do you think they pay people here? Do you think I could afford a Tesla flying car? Give me a break. But no, thank you for your inquiry, Kevin. Kathy says, I am not behind early voting when it gets to be so far in advance from when you're supposed to vote, especially if they're not going to count it in until election day and hold up the results. Uh, how long is it? Maybe a week before I think that ample time to get your vote in. Okay. So you're not opposed to early voting. You're opposed to early voting lasting too long, which would be what longer than a week. Yeah, well, that's fine. That's, that's fine. I got, I just like, there is value in an early voting period. We have it. It's on the books and you may oppose it, that's like the principle of early voting and everybody should only vote on one day, whatever. I've heard those arguments for 20 years. Okay. Um, however, these are the rules of the game. And if you're not going to like that, it's like saying, I'm going to play this football game, but I don't think that there should be three timeouts per team. I think we should only have two. So therefore I'm never going to use my third time out. Well, that, that, that now you're just, now you're just, uh, disarming yourself, right? You're, you're, you're not using all of the weapons in your arsenal and there are benefits to early voting. You, you bank the vote, the parties, the campaigns, they bank their votes, and then they can go off and chase the people who are less likely to turn out and vote. Um, as for delaying the results on election day, I feel like Mecklenburg County does a pretty good job of delaying the vote count, uh, for many reasons, not just that. I kid, I kid. Um, no, they, they, they collect all of the early, uh, early ballots. And now the state legislature changed this law. So now they, they run them all after the polls close. So they used to count them ahead of time, but then people were suspicious that, Oh, you're counting the votes ahead of time. And that means people know what the vote counts are, even though people did not know what the vote counts were. So there was all this suspicion. And so they were like, okay, not going to count any of the votes now until, we uh we close the polls but then they run them and that's the first batch of results that we'll see is from the early vote um. Let me see here next up is tyler i want yeah. I want to vote on voting day for the nostalgia and the tradition of doing so. But I want to vote early because I can go to a different polling place that has a side entrance so I can avoid all of the people begging me to vote for their candidate. And that is incredibly appealing. Okay, there's no side. Okay, you can't sneak into a polling place. You gotta, you just, you just walk through. And when people are like, hey, can I give you a palm card? Can I give you, you know, whatever. You're like, nope, I know who I'm voting for. That's all you need to say. If you say, I know who I'm voting for, they will leave you alone. All right, real quick. Every government number gets revised, right? Every projection gets walked back. Gold does not file corrections like GovCo. Revelation Gold Group helps families hold physical gold and silver, including in a tax-advantaged gold IRA. It's real. It's in your name. And 10 minutes tells you if your retirement account qualifies. If you want to learn more, go to calendarmetals.com. That's calendarmetals.com. There is a link in the podcast description. Or if you want to talk to somebody, you can call 888-465-3049. John from New Jersey writes in on the text line, this time of year makes me nuts. Election season ads, et cetera. And my birthday is on election day. Thoughts and prayers, John. Thoughts and prayers. Allen says, Pete, I'm not buying it. I do not believe Trump voters are staying home. Maybe Tucker, Candace and Nick Fuentes, Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson. But it's not what I hear. What I hear is others telling us we are not motivated and we're disappointed. Tillis and Cornyn are gone. Now we can do the things we wanted to do. As far as Trump, it's not his fault. Tillis and Cornyn stink. Somebody is going to need to explain how Trump not deporting illegal illegals warrants voting in the commies. I also suspect there's a propaganda campaign associated with demoralizing polling happening. Yes. As I say, when you get online, this includes all media, right? We are in an informational battle space. What China calls the smokeless battlefield. There is not to get all Alex Jonesy on you, but there is a war for your mind. Okay. And so yes, demoralization is a tactic. It is a thing. People are engaged in it either knowingly or unknowingly. And yes, It taps into people's pessimism and negativism and all is lost and why bother? And I've heard it. So, like, I know there are people that are making this argument. Now, a lot of them, I think, tend to be more on the libertarian right. I think that that's where a lot of this sentiment is coming from because they feel betrayed by Trump attacking Iran. And I think that's really all that comes down to. There's also this, you know, rising... anti-Israel, anti-Semitic attitude on the right. It's already prevalent on the left. So I think that may be driving some of this. But on the immigration front, the New York Times did a report, by executive action alone, the Trump administration has accomplished the largest cuts to legal immigration since the 1920s. So 100 years of immigration, legal immigration. Muslim and African migration is down 90%. Visa issuance to Asia, including India and China, as well as Latin America, has also fallen across the board. Andrew Colvette from Turning Point USA, he said, Trump has accomplished the largest cut to legal immigration since the 20s, with the immigration rates down 90%. So obviously we need to sit out the election, right? Because that's what people, that's how you reward a political party and its president for delivering the thing that you said you wanted delivered, right? I mean, because who cares if we lose Congress and empower the red-green mob? Right? Because if we lose Congress, if the Republicans lose Congress, and when I say we, I'm not talking about Republicans, I'm saying we Americans, because that's how I view this fight now, because this is the fight that Democrats have been promoting by allowing the DSA to take over their party by espousing anti-American, uh, slogans by embracing Marxists. So the Democrats will then in turn attempt to defund ice border patrol, um, customs, immigration services, the investigative bodies, State Department, right? They'll go after them with investigations and subpoenas, all sorts of resolutions. They'll also stall Trump's appointments, any nominee through the judiciary, right? They're just going to sit on all of those, so you won't get any more Trump judges, which would slow Trump's immigration policy it would slow the deportations and it would prevent him from putting in place these lifetime appointments onto the bench. Now, if that's what you would like to do to reward Trump for giving you what you wanted, I don't know how, I don't know how to take you seriously when you make any further demands. I just, I don't understand that. You can't say I want, The border closed. I want, you know, deportations. I want immigration enforcement. And then you elect the guy that tells you he's going to do those things. He then proceeds to do those things. And your response is, well, gas is $ 4 a gallon, which is actually lower than it was under Biden. But who really cares about that? Right. So I'm going to stay home and I'm going to empower the leftist mob. And then they're going to, wait till you hear, by the way, I'm going to get to this in the next hour, wait till you hear what the left is cooking up for what they intend to do post-election, particularly if they win control of the House and Senate. They've got a plan, and they talk about it in Zoom calls, and the Zoom call video and audio has now been obtained. They're going to pressure the administration through street violence. That street violence will then create the opening for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act. And then from there, they can claim the federal government is illegitimate. And they're lining up attorneys general throughout the country in order to back that play. This is what they say. This is their plan. So, yeah, let's sit it out. I think that makes sense. Just empower that mob. Stan says, okay, well, that's on France. I will be getting to France. This is another John on France. I will keep that until the next segments. the Duke brothers had a flying car about 40 years ago. I believe it was a 69 Dodge. It's fair. That's true. Jeff with a G says, I do not have a problem with early voting. I do have a problem with continuing to count ballots for weeks after election day. And they always seem to be Democrat. Yeah. North Carolina does a good job on this though. You have provisional ballots and you have the mail-in overseas ballots, but remember now that you have to have them all back by, the absentee ballots have to be in by the close of polls on election day. So, yes, they will count those ballots that come in, but they have a 10-day window. And unless a race is very close, it usually doesn't matter. Let's see. Nina, or Nina. Sorry, Nina, My husband and I are devoted regular listeners to your show. Just wanted you to know that we listened to your podcast while we were in Croatia and Slovenia for the past two weeks. So great to listen to you live today. Thanks for all you do. Thank you, Nina. I appreciate that. That explains I was. Looking at my analytics and I thought, man, I'm really taking off in Croatia and Slovenia for some reason. That explains it. I appreciate that. Thank you. You can get the podcast, by the way, at thepeatpod.com. All right, two last texts and then one quick story here. This is from, or Coach says, Pete, I love taking the palm cards at the polling places. I take one from the Democrats so I know who not to vote for. Yes, I do the same thing. Brent says, people are staying home because they don't think it matters. Yes, and they are incorrect. Um, this has been going on for years. Government is above the law. I disagree. Uh, normal citizens go to jail. Congress gets a pass on almost everything. It's a joke. The mob has always been left until it happens outside of democratic cities. Most normal Americans won't care about politics. Um, no voter apathy is across the board. That's why you, uh, you run the get out the vote operations is to get people to vote when they otherwise would not care to do so. Um, A lot of this, a lot of this doesn't matter and all this. You know what it sounds like to me? It sounds like an excuse to rationalize laziness and surrender because that's what you're doing. If you don't go vote against the leftist mob, that wants to impose its will on you, then that is either laziness at best or it's surrender. And that I'm just built different. I'm not going to do that. Um, the nice, Marie says sometimes voting is more, you vote against than a vote for, I'm not a fan of some of the Republicans, but would rather vote against socialism. Right? One thing I have said this for years, ever since the, um, 2012 election, Mitt Romney's lost to Barack Obama. Obama ran with like the worst economy that a sitting president had ever had. And after the election, I remember reading a story about how the Romney campaign, they were super frustrated because they were out there beating the drum on the economy, talking about how bad the economy was. And the media was never covering the economic messaging. They were talking about binders of women, killing big bird, dogs on cars, haircuts of high school students, all of this other stupid things. And that led me to the conclusion, an axiom, if you will, that elections are about. What media make them. And right now, the media is making this election about how terrible the economy is. What's weird, though, John Fund, writing at National Review, Did you know that incomes have increased under Trump? Did you know that? Is history repeating itself in that major media outlets are distorting coverage of the economy to help Democrats in the weeks leading up to a key election? No. Could it possibly be so? In 1992, Republican President George H.W. Bush entered the home stretch of the election with voters being relentlessly told that the economy was faltering and conditions were bad. Bill Clinton amplified that message with his slogan, it's the economy, stupid, and his claim that the economy was the worst it had been since the Great Depression. But the economy was actually on the rise from a dip that had begun in July of 1990, but was already over by the spring of 91. The recession ended in March 1991, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and an expansion began at that time. That's almost 20 months before the November 92 election. However, a 1996 paper published in the American Journal of Political Science found that the network's portrayal of the economy got worse as the economy got better. A Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans thought the economy was in a recession as they went to the polls. A study by Investors Business Daily found found that in October 1992, so a month before the election, 90% of the economic news in the newspapers was negative. The election is held, Clinton wins, and that month in November, only 14% of the economic news in newspapers was negative. Ah, that's amazing. Simply electing Bill Clinton made all the economy better. Isn't that amazing? Ah. Mark Penn said, who was Bill Clinton's pollster, said until the statistics are actually published, people tend to assess the economy primarily through the eyes of the national media. In 92, when Bill Clinton won the presidency based on worries about the economy, the statistics that came out after the election showed that the period leading up to November had actually been a period of record growth. Shocking. It's a miracle. The economy is getting better the whole time. Now, an economic analysis by the website Issues and Insights concludes that the lesson is the economy does not have to be in decline to impact political races. All that's needed is the perception that we are headed downhill toward a cliff. This gets to the demoralization up, right? People, media folks want you to believe things are terrible. And the same thing is happening right now. Yes, fuel prices are high due to the Iran war. But during the first year of President Trump's second term, household incomes for the lowest 25 percent of earners hit their highest level ever. Hispanic and black poverty has dropped to all time lows. There are also signals, positive signals of positive quarterly GDP growth, healthy retail sales, low unemployment claims and industrial output that are at post pandemic highs. Household income is up $ 2, 500 since Trump took office in 2025. But you would never know it. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support. and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to ThePeteCalenderShow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.