Chad Adams Fills In For Pete Kaliner (12-30-24--Hour 1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 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 thepetekalendershow.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.

[00:00:28] Many of us measure our years by our birthdays. You have that birthday and you're like, how do I feel the last year? I can tell you there are certain years that were absolutely horrible. I don't remember them necessarily by January 1st or the fiscal years in October 1st. Anyway, lots of different ways to measure. But by and large, our society looks at January 1st, they look back, it's the top 10 list, top 100 list, every way of looking at things sideways, upside down, whatever. And we kind of take stock.

[00:00:57] And then we have these crazy New Year's resolutions, which last, especially if they're physical, almost if you go to the gym, you know this, I'm not telling you anything you didn't already know, but maybe that's my job. Remind you of things you already knew, but forgot to laugh at the first time. You go to the gym on January 6th and it's packed. You can barely get onto a machine. You're going to get ripped. It's going to be great. You're going to look the best you've ever looked. It's going to be amazing. And about February the 15th, everyone's like, you know what? I think I'll just drive it down to once or twice a week.

[00:01:25] And by March and by May, all the gyms are advertising again. So it's the nature of our lack of focus. A lot of us have the attention span of, you know, like a squirrel with respect to our lifespans.

[00:01:40] I mean, squirrels are kind of instantaneous. They live a lot shorter, so their attention span is much shorter. But ours is, you know, you're going to be, you're going to, you're going to work on an instrument.

[00:01:47] And I would say the people that make it in life. Oh, by the way, the voice is a little strange. This is Chad Adam singing for Pete Callender here on Newstalk 1110 993 WBT.

[00:01:56] Happy Monday to you all. And probably I was kind of do some back of the envelope calculations.

[00:02:00] I think this is like the seventh most likely week to not get a lot done because you got Memorial Day.

[00:02:07] Everyone's getting ready for summer. You have Labor Day where everyone's getting back from summer.

[00:02:11] Certainly Christmas and Thanksgiving, lots of days off, not a lot of productivity.

[00:02:14] So there's four gone. And then you have to look at Easter, which is another one.

[00:02:18] So that's like five. And then it's kind of a toss up.

[00:02:21] You know, banks get off for presidency, Martin Luther King Day, everybody gets off.

[00:02:25] And if you're not doing anything like skiing, then that's just a three day weekend.

[00:02:29] And then you get to January 1st and right in the middle of the week, not a lot of productivity happening.

[00:02:34] Kind of a, it's like a Thursday. So today's like a Thursday.

[00:02:37] And then Thursday will be like a Thursday and then another weekend.

[00:02:39] And then the dreariness of the year ensues and your work and your slaving way.

[00:02:45] And at some point the following year, you're going to be at a gas pump or you're going to be standing in line at, I don't know, grocery store.

[00:02:51] And you're going to think to yourself, I wonder how much of my life I spend or have spent standing in line waiting for something to happen.

[00:03:01] And when I get to the end, I'm going to look back and go, wow, I wonder, you know, if you calculate that up at like 30 minutes a week times 52 weeks times the number of years you're alive.

[00:03:11] And you get to an obscene number of like, yeah, I spent eight weeks of my life in line waiting for crap.

[00:03:17] And if you add a Disney World in there or some kind of theme park, then it's like a lot more.

[00:03:22] But alas, I digress because my attention span is thus.

[00:03:26] So we'll, you'll get through the year and you have these ridiculous kind of things you set up for yourself.

[00:03:32] And I would say that success, and you know this to be true, that the great successes in life that you know, other than people that luck into things, but by and large, 99% are those that have a remarkable work ethic.

[00:03:48] Show up early, leave late and make the sacrifices.

[00:03:53] You know, overnight success is about 15 years for anyone paying attention.

[00:03:57] It really is.

[00:03:58] If you look around, if you're 40 plus and you look back at your friends in their 20s and 30s, there may be a few happenstance opportunities there.

[00:04:05] But by and large, it's the people that stuck with whatever it was they were doing.

[00:04:08] And they became insanely successful.

[00:04:11] Because at a certain point, it's like a rock tumbling down a hill or snowball, for lack of a better analogy, that at a certain point, it picks up steam.

[00:04:21] And then if you're, if you're really, really at it, if you really get at it and have some form of discipline, then you're going to be great at whatever it is you choose to do.

[00:04:31] If you want to be a great musician, I had a friend who was a talented musician.

[00:04:35] I said, man, you're amazing to have that kind of talent.

[00:04:37] He says, it's amazing how talented you can become working an hour a day for 15 years on the same thing.

[00:04:43] And he's right.

[00:04:45] Amazing.

[00:04:45] It didn't just come naturally.

[00:04:47] You just had to work at it.

[00:04:49] So the same thing with everything in life.

[00:04:51] And at a certain point, if you're fortunate and you stick with it enough and you don't take too many risks and you don't do dumb things, which we all will do, then you're going to find a point where it's kind of a snowball, where your worries are not about money.

[00:05:06] And that's a beautiful thing.

[00:05:07] But at a certain point, it's about, you know, your life and taking stock of your life and looking back and saying and looking forward and saying, okay, here's what I've accomplished.

[00:05:16] Here's what I have yet to do.

[00:05:18] And I've got a limited time to do it.

[00:05:20] And what do I want to make of that?

[00:05:22] What do I want to do with my hyphen between my birth date and my death date?

[00:05:24] What is it I want to accomplish?

[00:05:26] And New Year's are often a way to take stock of that.

[00:05:28] If for no other reason than kind of a reflection of where you've been and kind of a window about where you want to go.

[00:05:37] So my hope for all of you is that you take that moment.

[00:05:40] It's not that you give yourself unachievable goals for the next year.

[00:05:44] And as nutty as you thought 2024 was, make no mistake, 2025 will be equally so.

[00:05:50] We find ourselves at an accelerated technological pace.

[00:05:53] We find ourselves at a time when news has self-immolated, where it has become the least trusted aspect of society.

[00:06:04] We also have government agencies.

[00:06:07] So technology is heading forward at light speed for lack – it really is at an unbelievable pace.

[00:06:13] It's an unsustainable pace with respect to how we conduct ourselves and act with one another.

[00:06:17] You look at this – a good example of that is the iPhone was invented or brought to society in about 2007, and we're now get three, four phones free.

[00:06:28] You get these $1,000 phones free, and the small print is so weirdly non-understandable.

[00:06:37] It's cryptic in a way that – like you found a foreign language cryptic.

[00:06:41] And it's like the timeshare of technology, isn't it?

[00:06:43] Because they rope you in for a couple years.

[00:06:46] They say you get all this stuff for free, but it's kind of negated by the plan you get.

[00:06:50] You have to get the best plan, but you don't realize you're getting the best plan because you want to use tech anyway.

[00:06:54] But even though most of your gigabytes are used in your home Wi-Fi or at the coffee shop down the street, and then you go through this, and all of a sudden you need a Rosetta Stone to understand what the hell you're doing.

[00:07:03] Technology.

[00:07:04] And don't think that's going to become easier.

[00:07:07] You know, 15 years ago, your names and passwords weren't that difficult, were they?

[00:07:12] You had one or two.

[00:07:14] Now, do you – how many times have you lost your password on the 20 applications you have to use?

[00:07:20] You think you can use the same one, but you can't because something's been compromised, or someone hacked it, and all of a sudden you have to have 15, 20 different passwords, and you hope that your master password doesn't get messed up because you need that password to keep track of all the other passwords.

[00:07:36] And the level of complexity in our lives is very different than it was 20 and 30 years ago.

[00:07:43] I mean, back in the day, you just had junk mail.

[00:07:45] You had a pile of junk mail.

[00:07:46] You went through and threw it away.

[00:07:47] Now, you're stuck with some junk mail, which is most of what comes to your mailbox.

[00:07:50] It's bills and junk mail.

[00:07:52] But in your inbox, how many of you have run out of room on your Gmail or email accounts anywhere, and you have to go through and figure out, how do I eradicate the past eight years of emails?

[00:08:03] How do I do that?

[00:08:04] You click one at a time, click, click, click, click.

[00:08:05] Some email apps will let you do more than that, but it's difficult.

[00:08:10] And that level of complexity will be added to another layer of complexity until somebody comes along and invents something that makes this rather simple.

[00:08:18] I don't know if it's going to be biometric.

[00:08:19] I mean, a lot of your computers have biometrics in them now.

[00:08:21] I don't know what it'll be.

[00:08:23] Maybe it's DNA.

[00:08:24] Take a hair follicle and you stick it over a scanner, and that's you for all of your passwords.

[00:08:28] Then you steal someone's DNA, but you've got to have two-factor authentication, so maybe it's a hair and an iris scan.

[00:08:33] I don't know.

[00:08:35] But we've got much to talk about today.

[00:08:36] We're going to be talking about the governor of our state's legacy because there's a lot of people that are trying to write the history even though we know it's not true.

[00:08:44] We're going to have to – we will address something about Jimmy Carter as much as there are many people that are giving him great credibility, as well they should in some ways.

[00:08:55] But we also need to be honest about his accomplishments as well, and the National Review did a brutal overview.

[00:09:01] It's almost cruel, but I would say that Donald Trump, what he had to say about Carter was quite kind.

[00:09:06] He said it on Truth Social.

[00:09:07] We may get to that, but definitely Carter's legacy.

[00:09:09] Some strange happenings with the weather.

[00:09:11] As beautiful as the weather may be at the moment, it belies something that's being predicted.

[00:09:17] I don't know how far we'll go, but it could be a brutally cold January, quite wintry for the Charlotte area and all the way into Raleigh and even into eastern North Carolina.

[00:09:26] We'll see.

[00:09:27] And also Longleaf Politics has come out with seven predictions for North Carolina.

[00:09:31] Some of those will be interesting political ones.

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[00:10:35] A lot going on.

[00:10:36] As I mentioned before the break, we're talking a little bit about Governor Cooper's legacy, the Jimmy Carter thing, some weather stuff, the predictions for North Carolina, the Mike Johnson speaker race, and the HB1 visa program.

[00:10:47] And the HB1 visa program is the one.

[00:10:50] And I don't want to make light of people who have strong opinions on that.

[00:10:53] It's just when I look at this, it's like majoring in minor things.

[00:10:58] The H-1B visa program is not a minor thing.

[00:11:00] But the disagreements on it really are.

[00:11:02] It's much ado about nothing.

[00:11:04] It's mountains out of molehills.

[00:11:05] It's important.

[00:11:06] But people's emotion gets so tied in.

[00:11:10] This is not the southern border.

[00:11:13] This is not terrorists coming into the country.

[00:11:15] This is not people committing crimes against the American public.

[00:11:20] This is a work visa program that will be updated and changed.

[00:11:25] We'll get into that because there's an excellent piece on that that – let's see who wrote that.

[00:11:33] Anyway, I will get to it.

[00:11:34] I can't see it right now.

[00:11:35] But it's worth – it's a good one, and I promise I'll get through it.

[00:11:38] Now, I do want to get to long-leaf politics first.

[00:11:40] And if you want to get on the conversation, as I said, you folks are all – okay, blur.

[00:11:47] One was nirvana.

[00:11:49] No, it was blur.

[00:11:50] I guess the whole thing was blur.

[00:11:51] Thank you, by the way, for setting me straight.

[00:11:54] Now, over at long-leaf politics, they're talking about the what's next.

[00:11:57] Now, Governor Cooper, there's Ford Porter who has been Governor Cooper's go-to leftist consultant.

[00:12:04] And I want to go back to how Cooper got to be governor.

[00:12:07] It's very – the gravy train for Democrats to become governors is very lucrative.

[00:12:13] It's been very good.

[00:12:14] It's been good for Cooper.

[00:12:14] It's not going to be good for Josh Stein.

[00:12:16] And if you think about it, Governor Cooper sat at the attorney general's office forever,

[00:12:20] Democrats going, are you ever going to run?

[00:12:22] Are you ever going to run?

[00:12:23] And they waited until they had a wounded candidate because Cooper didn't – Cooper doesn't like to go up against a formidable candidate.

[00:12:29] He likes to go up against someone he really believes it's going to be easy to beat.

[00:12:32] And when he beat McCrory, McCrory was on the heels of the House Bill 1, the transgender issue way before it has turned.

[00:12:40] I mean if that were to happen today, Governor Cooper would not have run against Governor McCrory.

[00:12:45] McCrory would have probably won a second term.

[00:12:46] I mean notwithstanding the issue in northeast North Carolina with the fishing community, notwithstanding the toll road issue,

[00:12:54] but the men and women's bathroom issue is very different than it was when it was first brought up.

[00:13:01] I mean it was just an assail.

[00:13:03] It was just an assault on – and McCrory, who was put in an awkward position by the legislature,

[00:13:08] and Governor Cooper kind of walked in.

[00:13:09] And then when he ran for reelection, they had the cover of locking down everything, and they just lampooned how – I mean not how weathered,

[00:13:16] but they lampooned Dan Forrest for unmasking and talking to people.

[00:13:20] Now, history is going to be kinder to Dan Forrest.

[00:13:22] It's not going to be remembered much, but he was right.

[00:13:25] We shouldn't have locked down as much.

[00:13:26] But it elevated the careers of Roy Cooper and allowed him to go to a second term.

[00:13:30] This is one of the least accomplished governors, most accomplished at winning elections, least accomplished from actually doing things.

[00:13:36] And they're trying to revise what he is.

[00:13:38] And the reason they're trying to revise what he is right now, they're going to be pouring it on thick Ford Porter is – even Governor Cooper is kind of saying, look at me.

[00:13:46] Look what I did.

[00:13:46] I was doing a great job as governor.

[00:13:48] And as I was reading this, I thought this is kind of this revisionist history thing that we're trying to act like we've done such a remarkable job.

[00:13:57] He wrote about himself.

[00:14:00] He said our state has come a long way in eight years.

[00:14:02] Under Governor Cooper's leadership, North Carolina has become the best place on the planet to do business.

[00:14:05] He wrote that about himself, or his team wrote it about him.

[00:14:09] Now, I see about him.

[00:14:10] Then his chief consultant, often a lot of crowing about who deserves credit for economic gains.

[00:14:17] The fact is that Governor Cooper came into office with a deliberate, intentional plan to restore North Carolina's reputation and make our state the epicenter for high-paying growth industries of the future.

[00:14:25] And it has worked.

[00:14:26] Now, what Ford Porter fails to tell you is that Governor Cooper didn't even sign a budget until 2021.

[00:14:33] The first four years of his governorship, he was worked around.

[00:14:37] He was put in the corner.

[00:14:39] He was put in timeout like a child by the legislature with Phil Berger.

[00:14:43] And they were able to just get the budget through.

[00:14:46] In fact, the new tax rate, the individual tax rate in North Carolina is going to go from 4.5 down to 4.25 this year.

[00:14:52] And then next year, it's going to go down another quarter point.

[00:14:54] So your income taxes are coming down, not because of Governor Cooper or the Democrats, mind you, but because of the legislative leadership at the time.

[00:15:02] And Governor Cooper was just – he was kind of – he's just in the corner in timeout being a good little irrelevant governor.

[00:15:07] He had nothing to do with North Carolina's roaring comeback, very precious little, and he didn't even sign a budget until the middle of the COVID pandemic.

[00:15:15] And he will be remembered more for that than anything he had other than maybe Medicaid expansion, a massive expansion of a government program that is insolvent.

[00:15:26] So that's his legacy, even though they're – but the reason they're trying to do this, it's not hard, is because here are some of the predictions over at Longleaf Politics.

[00:15:34] And it's worth noting, Andrew Dunn wrote it.

[00:15:37] So here are the bold and not-so predictions.

[00:15:39] Roy Cooper will run for U.S. Senate.

[00:15:43] Somehow we're already reaching the end of U.S. Senator Tom Tillis' second term.

[00:15:46] The prevailing wisdom is that outgoing Governor Cooper will challenge him for the seat in 2026.

[00:15:51] Cooper certainly doesn't need to.

[00:15:52] He'll be nearly 70 years old by that election day and just served two pretty successful, from his perspective, terms as governor.

[00:15:58] I just told you that.

[00:15:59] But my gut says he'll run, not mine, but the authors.

[00:16:02] Cooper loves national politics too much and has not had the chance to directly participate in it.

[00:16:07] The author says, I think Cooper also values the chance to stay at the head of the state Democratic Party.

[00:16:12] For this prediction to be successful, Cooper will need to announce his candidacy pretty quickly.

[00:16:17] Now, two things here on this prediction.

[00:16:19] One, Tillis is much more vulnerable in a Republican primary than, I think, against Cooper in a general.

[00:16:26] But Cooper does have a very – he's very well known, and he's very well liked, mainly because people don't know anything about him.

[00:16:34] He's kind of the state's Mr. Rogers of politics.

[00:16:37] Comes in, good day, boys and girls.

[00:16:40] He even has the intonation of a Mr. Rogers.

[00:16:42] He speaks in a very third-grade level for everybody.

[00:16:45] It's not complicated.

[00:16:46] Every now and then he gets mad at Republicans, but he sounds like he's scolding them.

[00:16:50] But the issue for Cooper – now, the underside – and underside's a wrong word.

[00:16:55] Let me rephrase this.

[00:16:57] The other conventional wisdom that is from friends I have in circles near him is – and again, I do not know this to be true.

[00:17:05] This was what was relayed to me is that his wife would like some time away from politics.

[00:17:09] He's been in politics the entirety since the 92, 89, 92, somewhere in there.

[00:17:14] And his wife's kind of done.

[00:17:16] She'd like some time.

[00:17:17] Can't say that we blame her, but taking a break, he would have about a year break.

[00:17:21] He'd be raising money for a senatorial rate.

[00:17:22] So maybe the two years would allow him that time away from politics to get back into politics.

[00:17:28] Don't know.

[00:17:29] But that's the first prediction.

[00:17:31] So what does that – the first prediction leads us to the second prediction that they make over at Longleaf,

[00:17:36] which is that Tillis, for his part, has already kicked off his reelection efforts with a high-dollar fundraiser in D.C.

[00:17:42] I would not have been surprised if Tillis had decided to retire from the Senate, but that does not appear to be the case.

[00:17:47] The very online faction of the Republican Party has identified Tillis as a target,

[00:17:53] and there are already rumblings about who might pose a serious primary challenge to the senior senator – sitting senator.

[00:17:59] I actually don't think that'll happen.

[00:18:01] And so you've got to remember, for as much as you may think Tillis may have a challenge from the right, who would it be?

[00:18:07] Who has the name ID?

[00:18:09] Who has the organizational structure?

[00:18:10] Who has the money to challenge Tillis?

[00:18:15] And that list is tiny.

[00:18:18] I mean, right now, the Republicans, though they've won a couple state-level seats, not all of them.

[00:18:23] In fact, they lost – they're actually down one.

[00:18:27] Republicans underperformed relative to many parts of the nation in the Republican circles.

[00:18:31] I don't care what – some people – my several friends are like, no, we've done great.

[00:18:34] The Republicans are doing great.

[00:18:35] They're doing – they're mediocre-ing their way through.

[00:18:38] But there isn't really a name that you can think – now, anything can change in the next year.

[00:18:44] But I don't see any legislator challenging him.

[00:18:47] There's nobody from the state level.

[00:18:48] I mean, you would have had someone like Hal Weatherman as lieutenant governor or Dale Falwell, former treasurer.

[00:18:55] But I don't see that happening.

[00:18:56] So Tillis is probably going to coast because – why?

[00:19:01] The prediction is that Trump will endorse Tillis very early this cycle, preventing a challenge.

[00:19:06] Trump will use the weight of his endorsement to extract loyalty from Tillis and give Republicans a better chance to hold onto the seat in the process.

[00:19:13] Now, from Trump's perspective, if he can get Tillis in line, which – Tillis is kind of a – he's center-right.

[00:19:23] How far will Trump be able to pull him in line?

[00:19:26] But that would be politically in Tillis' best interest to be MAGA heading forward, which would make the race with Cooper fun.

[00:19:35] I think it would.

[00:19:36] The other one is that Governor Josh Stein will veto fewer than eight bills in 2025.

[00:19:41] That's an odd prediction because you don't know how many bills the legislature is going to pass and which ones he would veto.

[00:19:46] Cooper just annihilated the record for vetoes in a gubernatorial term, applying the stamp to a total of 104 bills over the course of eight years.

[00:19:54] That equates to an average of 13 vetoes per year.

[00:19:58] The success of those vetoes was mixed.

[00:20:00] Cooper's last 29 vetoes were all overridden, but the 47 before that were sustained, representing all the vetoes from 2019 through 2022.

[00:20:10] 2025 will also look like the beginning of Cooper's term, more like where there will be a mix of vetoes overridden and sustained.

[00:20:17] But Josh Stein said, what will Josh Stein want to do?

[00:20:20] It will determine.

[00:20:21] But I don't think he'll have as many vetoes.

[00:20:23] I think he's going to – even though his – I think his landings are far more left than Cooper's,

[00:20:28] I think he wants to be seen as someone who gets things done more than Cooper did, and he's much more outspoken.

[00:20:35] So we will see.

[00:20:36] All right.

[00:20:37] Hey, real quick.

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[00:21:03] Again, that's Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com.

[00:21:06] Well, some of the other predictions we were talking about that are being made by – again, these are just predictions.

[00:21:12] They are as meaningful as Usain Kudzu will take over the state this coming year,

[00:21:17] or that an unnamed storm will destroy Raleigh this year.

[00:21:21] These kind of – the Liars Anonymous kind of thing.

[00:21:24] Yeah, that's a ticket.

[00:21:25] So some other predictions.

[00:21:27] But these are – a lot of these are based in observations.

[00:21:31] I do agree with some of these that Stein – they're saying the new governor will sign a budget into law.

[00:21:36] He'll say it didn't go far enough.

[00:21:38] But I don't think he wants the record that Cooper had about being so obstinate.

[00:21:43] Cooper – one thing about him that you know, if you get to know him at all, is that he really doesn't like Republicans at all.

[00:21:48] He doesn't like them.

[00:21:49] He didn't like them in the 90s.

[00:21:51] He didn't like them in the 2000s.

[00:21:53] He has a thin skin.

[00:21:54] He criticized him.

[00:21:56] He doesn't – unlike Trump, who attacks his people, Cooper just stews on things.

[00:22:00] And as much as he's likable from a public standpoint, he stews on them.

[00:22:05] And he's very secretive.

[00:22:08] He doesn't have emails that you can look at.

[00:22:10] He doesn't have text messages that are available for public inspection.

[00:22:13] He's been that way for two decades.

[00:22:17] And that's just the way – and not casting aspersions.

[00:22:19] It's just the way he is.

[00:22:20] Stein is much different.

[00:22:21] Stein is much more gregarious, much more likely to say things.

[00:22:25] So moving forward on this, one of the big predictions and one of the biggest predictions is that Senator Berger from Greensboro, the powerful – probably the single most powerful politician in all of Raleigh and has been for a very long time.

[00:22:39] Kind of since the sun setting of Mark Bassnight and the ironclad Democrat hold on North Carolina politics that Mark Bassnight and Tony Rand and Jim Black had until Jim Black went to prison was broken.

[00:22:53] And Berger's ascent to Pro Tem, who crafted years of budgets, who crafted the income tax cuts.

[00:23:02] I think his goal was to have North Carolina be a zero-income tax state like Tennessee and Florida.

[00:23:07] I wanted to follow suit.

[00:23:08] So what we've seen is this ratchet down.

[00:23:10] They've had several opportunities to do it, but he didn't quite force that in through the Senate and the House.

[00:23:17] It probably could have happened a few times, but they didn't go that far.

[00:23:21] They did go with the Medicaid expansion, surprisingly and shockingly.

[00:23:24] But we will see a state income tax going from 4.5 to 4.25.

[00:23:29] Next year it goes to 3.99.

[00:23:31] At that rate, it'll be the end of my life before the income tax goes away, it seems like.

[00:23:36] And who knows?

[00:23:37] Maybe another group will come in and figure that out, and we can become, because that would be the next big change in the North Carolina business climate.

[00:23:47] It would be a zero-income tax state.

[00:23:48] It would be an economic boom with respect not just to tourism, but to people moving here and building and building these Fortune 500 companies.

[00:23:58] Anyway, back to the prediction.

[00:23:59] Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger has been in leadership even longer than Speaker Moore was.

[00:24:06] Speaker Moore was your House leader for the past decade.

[00:24:09] He kept saying he wouldn't do another term, but he did.

[00:24:12] And then he carved out a congressional district for himself, ran for it.

[00:24:15] And, you know, there's many questions about his behavior, what he did, and some of the court testimony that was against Speaker Moore, if it was ever run in public, would be damning.

[00:24:24] But he carved out a congressional district, won that congressional district that he carved out for himself.

[00:24:29] But he's gone, or will be shortly.

[00:24:31] He'll be heading to D.C. where he could do even more, I guess.

[00:24:35] Pro Tem Berger, since Republicans in control, has been setting the record for the longest continuous term in that role.

[00:24:42] This could be his last bienium at the helm of the state Senate.

[00:24:45] This person from Longleaf Politics thinks 2025 will be the year in which the rank-and-file members of the General Assembly grow discontent with the way things are operating in Raleigh.

[00:24:54] Berger's post will be on the chopping block.

[00:24:56] Rather than retire or pursue higher office like Moore, a lot of people think Berger will run for re-election as a regular member in 26.

[00:25:05] That would be a massive, massive shift.

[00:25:10] Massive shift.

[00:25:10] Now, the new lieutenant governor, another one that people – you may not know the name.

[00:25:14] A lot of people don't know her.

[00:25:15] Her name is Rachel Hunt.

[00:25:16] He's a devout lefty.

[00:25:18] Surprising – I was surprised at how Weatherman lost that race.

[00:25:21] Of all the ones that I thought had a shot, but it was the unbelievable Robinson, the anti-Robinson sentiment,

[00:25:32] and the groups that did a remarkable job of tagging people and connecting them to Robinson that were like Dan Bishop and Hal Weatherman and Michelle Moore.

[00:25:42] All these people were tied into Mark Robinson, even though they had nothing to do with Mark Robinson,

[00:25:47] except sharing the party label that they had.

[00:25:50] Trump was able to overcome it.

[00:25:51] Those three weren't.

[00:25:52] But Rachel Hunt winning that post, she wants a lot more attention.

[00:25:57] This is an individual that will be – I believe – I agree with this prediction.

[00:26:01] She wants to be a high-profile Democrat.

[00:26:05] Right now, the lieutenant governor position in North Carolina is very weak.

[00:26:08] It is constitutionally established as the president of the state senate.

[00:26:11] Over the last decade, lieutenant governors have regularly presided over the senate,

[00:26:14] but it has been exceedingly rare for there to be a partisan difference.

[00:26:18] Now we have that.

[00:26:19] We have a very left-leaning Rachel Hunt presiding over the senate that is run by Phil Berger.

[00:26:24] That's where we find ourselves.

[00:26:26] A lot of people predict that lieutenant governor Rachel Hunt will use her position for a lot of rhetorical effect.

[00:26:31] In other words, she wants to get more national attention.

[00:26:33] At least once this year, Hunt will earn herself a national headline for using her position over the senate

[00:26:38] to blast the Republicans.

[00:26:40] That's the prediction.

[00:26:41] I think it's an easy – I think that's a very easy one because Rachel Hunt is someone who really –

[00:26:47] if she were in D.C., she would be a member of the squad.

[00:26:50] That's how far left she really is politically.

[00:26:53] And I'm not – none of what I'm saying is intended to be mean or disrespectful.

[00:26:57] I'm a conservative, conservative talk show host.

[00:26:59] We talk about conservative issues.

[00:27:01] That's why I'm here.

[00:27:03] It's what I do.

[00:27:03] And I've been that way for decades, even going back to college days when I was managing a conservative newspaper

[00:27:08] in the UNC system.

[00:27:10] So she is a devout lefty.

[00:27:13] She considers herself very progressive, and she does want to make national headlines

[00:27:17] because Josh Stein is going to be term limited to eight to two terms if he can manage to get reelected.

[00:27:22] So where does Rachel Hunt go from there who wants to be known?

[00:27:25] Does she want to launch herself into national politics, or does she just want to be able to replace Stein in eight years,

[00:27:32] if that's the case, because Stein will be the presumptive nominee for 20 or 2030, I guess, or 2028, I guess.

[00:27:40] So that's where we find ourselves.

[00:27:42] If you have some opinions about what might take place, 704-570-1110, yours, News Talk 1110-993-WBT.

[00:27:49] And as I look for it, I hate predictive politics.

[00:27:53] But some people lend themselves to it.

[00:27:57] Some people lend themselves well to predictive politics.

[00:28:01] You can kind of tell by the way they conduct themselves.

[00:28:07] So that's just the way it is.

[00:28:09] Right now, though, WBT, in collaboration with the Mecklenburg County Alcoholic Beverage Control Board,

[00:28:14] is committed to amplifying community voices and providing hope and resources in the mental and behavioral health domains.

[00:28:21] For the month of December, we are navigating the holidays with resilience.

[00:28:24] Providing us with the toolbox needed to navigate is Hope Haven Incorporated's Ms. Karen King, Senior Vice President.

[00:28:30] This program is presented by the Mecklenburg County Alcoholic Beverage Control Board.

[00:28:34] Visit meckabc.com for more information on their community outreach initiatives.

[00:28:39] That's meckabc.com.

[00:28:42] Find out more about that in one of the many ways that WBT continues to be a part of the community and push for the betterment of it.

[00:28:49] Now, when we get back from this break, I don't know how much I want to delve into it because it sounds like it's going to be negative.

[00:28:54] I am reminded after the passing of Jimmy Carter.

[00:28:57] And by the way, Linda Lavin also passed away.

[00:28:59] Those who remember the show Alice, she was kind of a North Carolinian.

[00:29:03] And the last decades of her life, very active in the Wilmington area, directing plays and being active.

[00:29:08] She's even in a Netflix series right now that can be seen.

[00:29:12] But she passed away last night at 87.

[00:29:14] But on Carter's legacy, WBT, I think, did a nice montage about recognizing him.

[00:29:20] He received the Nobel Prize.

[00:29:22] But as we talked about last week, many Democrats do.

[00:29:25] Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize just for being elected.

[00:29:28] Carter is recognized for a lot of his humanitarian work after he was president.

[00:29:32] But it's easy to gloss over.

[00:29:36] I'm kind of in that Mark Antony, Julius Caesar moment where Antony recognizes that Caesar was powerful and must be remembered a certain way.

[00:29:46] You know, that's what 24-24 is like.

[00:29:48] It's like you're always out of breath.

[00:29:50] I wasn't.

[00:29:51] I just walked around for a second and wanted to stretch my legs and take a deep breath.

[00:29:58] Now, moving ahead, as we were looking at some of the predictions, I think there's a couple more predictions that go beyond North Carolina.

[00:30:05] And the big one coming up today, well, not today, but shortly, will be the re-election of Speaker Mike Johnson.

[00:30:14] Now, many of you, whoo, I don't know why I got out of breath so much.

[00:30:17] But so Mike Johnson is Speaker of the House.

[00:30:20] Many on the MAGA right are upset about this.

[00:30:23] And this is one of those issues that I don't fully grasp.

[00:30:29] I get it.

[00:30:30] Look, I've been around the conservative movement for decades, spoke at many a Tea Party gathering.

[00:30:34] I wrote about this stuff.

[00:30:35] I have seen it on the front lines.

[00:30:38] I've been on the front lines of stopping forced annexation.

[00:30:40] I have been against the erosion of property rights.

[00:30:43] I get all of it.

[00:30:46] What I don't get is the hatred of one person.

[00:30:49] And it's really, it's kind of strange because he's not anti-Trump at all.

[00:30:54] I mean, Mike Johnson has took over from Speaker McCarthy and was a narrow election after days and days of going back and forth about who could do it.

[00:31:04] But you've got to look at, you've got to get to 218 votes to get anything done in the King Congress.

[00:31:12] Johnson's been able to navigate those.

[00:31:14] You can't, it doesn't matter if they were to elect Marjorie Taylor Greene to the speakership tomorrow.

[00:31:19] That doesn't mean she can corral 218 votes on any given issue to push the agenda forward.

[00:31:26] Because the further right the speaker's position becomes, the less likely that individual is to be able to get to 218 votes.

[00:31:35] It would be different if there were 260 Republican House members.

[00:31:39] There aren't.

[00:31:40] It's a slim, slim majority.

[00:31:43] And you would have to play all sorts of parliamentary games to get to a majority on any given day.

[00:31:49] You would have to use tricks like waiting until Democrats aren't there.

[00:31:52] You would have to use tricks, you'd have to stack committees.

[00:31:55] There was so much that would be unable to get done.

[00:32:01] And maybe the American public would like that.

[00:32:03] But in many ways right now, what we want to see is D.C. kind of undone.

[00:32:07] And if Johnson can't get to 218, we can't start draining the swamp.

[00:32:12] Because Trump's going to need an ally in the House to get things through legislatively to get it to the Senate so that he can sign it into law.

[00:32:20] He can't just lead because the one thing that would happen if they were to get stymied in the House is it would look like a dictatorial thing.

[00:32:27] So the political left would love for the Republicans to get stranded on this one.

[00:32:32] They've also got to certify the election for the president, which means if it becomes a debate about who's going to be the speaker, then Trump doesn't get certified as the elected president.

[00:32:42] So there's so many things the Democrats are just sitting back and kind of wink, wink, nudge, nudging, saying, look at them.

[00:32:48] They can't even get along with themselves.

[00:32:51] They're playing homage to this kind of way of being.

[00:32:55] And they're enjoying it.

[00:32:57] Now, ultimately, I think Johnson prevails.

[00:32:58] Trump came out and endorsed Johnson for the speakership.

[00:33:01] And people are screaming, how could he do that?

[00:33:03] Because he knows.

[00:33:04] He's pragmatic.

[00:33:04] He wants to get stuff done.

[00:33:05] The only way to get stuff done is to have a speaker that can get to 218.

[00:33:09] And the further right you go, the less likely you're going to get to 218.

[00:33:12] You're not even going to have a speaker.

[00:33:14] And you can say, well, just to heck with the Democrats.

[00:33:16] Throw them all overboard.

[00:33:17] Okay.

[00:33:17] A lot of them are left of left.

[00:33:20] But there's a handful that are moderate, that are questionable, that might even be salvageable, that might be able to be turned to the right.

[00:33:30] But you can't do it by being an extremist.

[00:33:33] And so as much as I get why people want to head in that direction, you have to be pragmatic enough to say, I want to get stuff done.

[00:33:43] Would you rather be right or would you rather get stuff done that you agree with?

[00:33:49] And that's where we find ourselves on the Speaker Johnson stuff.

[00:33:52] It is an odd place.

[00:33:54] We'll probably talk about this later because there are some really good opinions on that subject matter looking out right now.

[00:34:01] And before we went to the break, I alluded.

[00:34:02] By the way, a special thanks to Mike Doan.

[00:34:04] He picked up on that Shakespearean chant right away.

[00:34:06] He went right into everybody remembers that line in high school.

[00:34:09] Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

[00:34:11] They remember that.

[00:34:13] They don't necessarily remember what the rest of the speech was about.

[00:34:16] But I'll kind of frame it because we're talking about Jimmy Carter and going to spend some time about the passing at 100.

[00:34:21] The longest lived ex-president in the history of the country.

[00:34:24] Some would say the most religious.

[00:34:25] I don't know about that because Zachary Taylor is pretty close.

[00:34:28] He wouldn't be sworn in on his inauguration day.

[00:34:31] Short-lived president gets sick and dies.

[00:34:32] Wouldn't be sworn in on a Sunday.

[00:34:34] He's a very religious guy.

[00:34:35] But Carter is being remembered fondly.

[00:34:40] The montage that WBT put together is quite nice.

[00:34:42] I think by every account that I've read and seen, as an individual, he was probably one of the nicest people you could meet.

[00:34:50] And, you know, the Georgia peanut farmer becomes governor, you know, and becomes president of the United States.

[00:34:56] The country is in horrific shape when he leaves.

[00:35:00] And his work subsequent to being president that led to him getting a Nobel Prize with Habitat for Humanity,

[00:35:06] he got into a lot of foreign affair issues after his presidency.

[00:35:09] He was married for 77 years.

[00:35:11] I think his wife Rosalind died last year, if I'm not mistaken.

[00:35:13] I'm not looking at my computer right now.

[00:35:16] And in many ways, the way he's being remembered is very fondly.

[00:35:21] It's very kind.

[00:35:25] Over at the National Review, they had some not as many kind things to say about the ex-president.

[00:35:32] And it just – history is – it can be very difficult to kind of frame things correctly because history can gloss over a lot.

[00:35:44] And it can also make things – I don't know.

[00:35:50] With Carter, I'm kind of torn because some of what I'm about to read about Carter is not friendly.

[00:35:54] I don't mean to be disrespectful.

[00:35:56] He's going to lie in the rotunda and be recognized.

[00:36:00] It's almost a beatification process that we're seeing with him.

[00:36:03] But here's some reality as well.

[00:36:06] And, again, you're going to throw tomatoes at your radio right now for those of you who want to revel in Carter's passing.

[00:36:14] I mean, in a good way.

[00:36:15] Prayers and thoughts for his family, obviously.

[00:36:17] And Trump said some very kind things.

[00:36:18] But here's what the review had to say.

[00:36:20] It's a little bit brutal, so I'll just warn you.

[00:36:23] Carter's true legacy is one of economic misery at home and embarrassment on the world stage.

[00:36:27] He left the country in its weakest position of the post-World War II era.

[00:36:30] That is absolutely true.

[00:36:32] After being booted out of office in landslide fashion, the self-described citizen of the world spent the rest of his life meddling in U.S. foreign policy and working against the U.S. and its allies in a matter that could fairly be described as treasonous.

[00:36:44] His obsessive hatred of Israel and pompous belief that only he could forge Middle East peace led him to befriend terrorists and laid out lash out at American Jews who criticized him.

[00:36:54] That is true.

[00:36:55] He did.

[00:36:56] We don't remember that.

[00:36:57] But he did.

[00:36:59] He was buddies photographed with many of these people who were ardent terrorists against our country's interest.

[00:37:03] But we want to gloss over that.

[00:37:05] And what he did with the economy and with gas prices.

[00:37:08] Remember, we were led to believe in the late 70s that we were about to have no more oil.

[00:37:14] It was – you remember there were people being rash and you could fill up your car on like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or maybe Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

[00:37:20] There was no more oil.

[00:37:22] We were going to run out of energy.

[00:37:24] It was peak oil.

[00:37:24] It was all these – and gas prices surged through the roof.

[00:37:29] And it was a lot of – and the Iranians rose to prominence in such a way that the Russians invaded Afghanistan, which led to decades – led to actually us being there as well.

[00:37:40] So it was rather disastrous.

[00:37:42] But his genteel mannerisms and the niceness with which he approached things the way he spoke make you forget all of that.

[00:37:51] They make you forget what was done.

[00:37:53] That doesn't make him a horrible person.

[00:37:54] It just makes him misguided.

[00:37:56] And I think there was more about him from an international standpoint that was sorely misguided while he meant well.

[00:38:03] And so that's the nature of the imperfections of human beings.

[00:38:07] I mean, his presidency led to the Reagan revolution.

[00:38:12] Don't forget that.

[00:38:13] The way he left the country, he didn't leave it in better shape at all.

[00:38:17] It was worse off by every measure from – I mean, when he left office, inflation was at 13.5%.

[00:38:22] Interest rates were through the roof.

[00:38:24] You know, I think Biden is the only one that could make Carter look better by comparison.

[00:38:30] All right, that'll do it for this episode.

[00:38:32] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:38:33] I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:38:38] So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here.

[00:38:42] You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendorshow.com.

[00:38:47] Again, thank you so much for listening.

[00:38:49] And don't break anything while I'm gone.