Chuck's censure and mixed Mass results | Hour 3

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 thepeatcalendarshow.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. So House lawmakers yesterday in both parties, this was. A 413 to 2 vote. So bipartisan. Uh, voted to censure representative Chuck Edwards, the Republican from Western North Carolina. This is the 11th congressional district. Chuck Edwards, you'll recall beat Madison Cawthorn. Um, Madison Cawthorn was, uh, elected after Mark Meadows held the seat. So that's the seat we're talking about. So all of the, I think it's like 13 counties out West. I want to say, um, This was over the allegations. We covered them at the time of the release of the House Ethics Report. This is over the allegations of inappropriate behavior with female staffers in his office, marking the latest in a string of disciplinary actions against sitting lawmakers this Congress. Mike Lillis and Helen Huiskes from TheHill.com reporting on the vote. fueled by a damning ethics committee report released early last month, which found that Edwards had demonstrated, quote, persistent, unprofessional, and inappropriate conduct towards two young female staffers. That conduct included a series of expensive gifts, extensive travel, and public comments about their appearance. Like, unless you read the ethics report, which we did. We brought to you the lurid details. It's difficult to understand the level of ick, of creepy, involved unless you go through all of the different examples where one of these examples might be like, oh, that's inappropriate, but is there anything else there? And if there weren't, then it would just be like, yeah, you probably should not have sent 30 different ice cream flavors to your staffer when she was feeling blue. You know what I mean? Like, that's just a weird thing to do, but okay, like, that was a one-off thing. But it wasn't. It was persistent. And it wasn't just ice cream. There were singing telegrams. There were poems that were then read aloud in front of other staffers, there were trips, there were gifts, right? There was just a lot, you know? And when you stack it all up, and I said this at the time, the way it read to me was, and Chuck Edwards had said this to the ethics investigators, he said, you know, as a business owner, I have gone through a lot of these, you know, sexual harassment trainings and stuff. So I am very well trained on how to sexually harass people. I'm just kidding. He didn't say, he did not say that part. He said he had gone through all of these trainings. So he knew what's appropriate. What's not. And okay. However, you still did all of these things. And you did not consider them to be inappropriate? Or another way to read that is that you knew where the line was and you went right up to it and you were dancing all along that line because you had the training, right? And it seemed to me, and I have no other evidence than what I read in the ethics report, but. The way it seemed to me was.... He was making it known that he was available if they were ever interested. That's what it sounds like to me, that he knew enough that he's not going to initiate anything, but he is going to send every signal he can to let these younger women know that if at any point they want to act on an impulse, that he's down for that. The committee determined that Chuck Edwards violated the spirit of the chamber's rules against sexual harassment and unwanted advances, and they recommended he be censured. Edwards, of course, dropped his bid for re-election in November, shortly after the report was released. But he has since defended his actions and has argued that the ethics panel cherry-picked specific episodes to fit a narrative. He continued.... Remember what he's saying here, like 413 of the 415 votes went against him. So that means everybody is in on this. Well, except for him, because he was one of the two who voted against his own censure. He was one of those two votes. The other vote, Ralph Norman. I've not seen a quote from Ralph Norman as to why why he voted this way, but. Yeah, but he did. Chuck Edwards continued this defense yesterday on the house floor where he apologized to the staffers, but also insisted that his behavior was not egregious enough to merit censure. So like, okay, okay. Mistakes were made. Gifts were sent. Comments were made. I blew off some votes to decorate a Christmas tree for one of these women. But this does not rise to the level of censure. He said, quote, regret the discomfort that some of my actions may have caused and apologize to those who were hurt by this episode while still disputing a conclusion that the evidence simply does not support. So notice what he's doing here. Like this is really manipulative. He says this, that he has regrets, but that's not an admission. He says this was poor judgment and, He regrets the discomfort that some of my actions may have caused. And I apologize to those who were hurt by this episode as if it was a singular event. It was not a singular event. Again, it was a persistent pattern occurring over a long period of time. Edwards' colleagues disagreed. voting overwhelmingly to censure him shortly afterwards. He is the 29th lawmaker to ever be censured by the House. In April, Congressman Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, and Tony Gonzalez, not the football player, Republican from Texas, they both resigned in the face of expulsion votes after they were accused of sexual misconduct with their staffers with Swalwell also facing an accusation of sexual assault, which he has denied. The Ethics Committee has also opened investigations into representatives Jimmy Gomez, Democrat from California, Corey Mills, Republican from Florida, and Max Miller, Republican from Ohio, involving allegations of sexual harassment, dating violence, or domestic abuse, respectively. Mills lost his Florida primary earlier this month. Miller has vowed to remain in his race. All three have denied wrongdoing. And what's interesting is in these, over at the Hill, the comments, in the comments section under this article, This is an example of Republicans today. Republicans have no respect for women. Republicans see women as nothing more than property. They just voted to censure the guy. And they've been kicking people out. And they've been voting against them in the primaries. Not sure what you're talking about there. All right, for over a year now, you've heard me talking about Create-A-Video, great local company in Mint Hill that has helped more than 2 million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now, Create-A-Video is helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. Introducing Group Travel Videos, perfect for family reunions, church mission trips, and group vacations, destination weddings, student trips, senior adult groups, sports teams. I mean, really any gathering of people that you care about that's traveling together. 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Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. All right, so this from the Charlotte Observer, another piece by Danielle Bataglia. Representative Chuck Edwards apologized Tuesday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives to the two young women on his staff he's accused of sexually harassing and to his family, including his wife, Teresa. But he continued to deny the allegations. of inappropriate behavior. By the way, talking with one of my old colleagues up in Asheville this morning, and people in the district, you know what, they're really ticked off that, like, he was blowing off votes. So he was, like, abdicating his responsibility as a representative in order to go do these things, like to go decorate a Christmas tree. He was missing votes. Edwards said, in his defense, I am imperfect. I have made mistakes. But I do not believe I committed sexual harassment, and the factual findings of this investigation do not justify branding me as though I did. The Republican House Ethics Committee chairman, Michael Guest, stressed that they found no evidence that Edwards engaged in any sexual activity with the employees, adding that that shows the lengths that the committee went to disprove any misstatements about the allegations against the congressman. He added that Edwards engaged in persistent, unprofessional, and inappropriate conduct with two young female staffers. Now, Edwards, in a statement, released more details after the censure vote than we had known beforehand. Because we just had the ethics report that was published. Edwards said, quote, I think there's something deeply troubling about where this leaves us as a society. When helping someone with the difficult task of putting up a Christmas tree. Okay. I have to say this. Why is the boss coming to your apartment to help you put up a Christmas tree? Shouldn't that be something the staffers help each other with? Like, aren't you going to be more friendly with your fellow staffers? they're usually of the same age group, you know, like you would be hanging out with them. You would be friends with your coworkers and stuff like, and then when your coworkers come over to help you put up the tree, then you can like talk a bunch of smack about the boss. You don't invite the boss over to put up the Christmas tree. I I'm just, I'm. So he says, uh, it's the difficult task. Of putting up a Christmas tree. If it's difficult, then you probably bought a tree that was too big. Okay? Number one. But he then adds, giving a mixer to someone who wants to bake for the office. Oh, see? So this was a selfless act. He only bought her the mixing bowl because she was a baker and this would help her bring sweets to the office. See? So it wasn't for her. It was for the whole office. Replacing a broken laptop so someone can better help a campaign. Trying to comfort someone through a difficult time, yet she had broken up with her boyfriend, and then you sent her all the ice cream, sent her to Hamilton. Or simply telling another person that you admire them, like every week. That could all be assembled after the fact into a case for sexual harassment. We should ask ourselves what we are doing to ordinary human kindness and friendship. And he added, sexual harassment is serious, should be treated as such, but that seriousness is precisely why we should not redefine ordinary acts of friendship, generosity, encouragement, or compassion as something that they were not. And he did miss a vote. He missed several votes while decorating the Christmas tree. He bought these women guns, designer bags, shoes, flowers, laptops, cell phones, that KitchenAid mixer, a Roomba, one-on-one dinners, tickets to Hamilton, and 30 different flavors of ice cream sent at one time after that staffer had a breakup. In his letter to House colleagues, he also wrote that he gave a gun to a dude employee and gifts to other male and female employees, but, you know, for some reason you didn't care about that. Well, yeah, I mean, when. all of Capitol Hill is talking about how you may be sleeping with two of your staffers and you're showering them with all of this stuff. And they're saying that they're uncomfortable with this. That's probably why they didn't focus on the gun. You gave a dude. Also, you probably shouldn't be buying guns for people. Are these straw purchases? What's going on here in his letter to, Oh, sorry. I read that already. He said, um, He said he had one of the women stay overnight at his house when he could not afford a hotel for her during one of his campaigns. Okay. You couldn't afford a hotel. Maybe if you bought fewer guns, I'm thinking maybe you could afford a hotel. And the Hamilton tickets, this is particularly interesting to me. He said his 38th anniversary.... Is approaching and his wife wants to see the play. But when, when Edward saw the cost of the tickets, he told his wife that they would need to wait until it comes off Broadway. It's just too expensive. But then he puts up the money for his employees to go. What's the deal with that? What happened there? That's, that's odd. That is odd. Was he paying this stuff out of campaign funds? Otherwise, if he bought it with his personal, his wife might see that purchase and think like, oh, we're going to see Hamilton, I guess. And then you don't go see Hamilton. And then you know that your husband is going to see Hamilton without you with somebody else or something. It's awkward. Chuck Edwards is a federally licensed firearm dealer. So that's why he was buying everybody guns. And it would be why he's not straw purchasing. He's a, that, that makes sense. So, but again, like this thing where your wife wants to go see Hamilton on Broadway, you tell her we can't afford it. And then you buy Hamilton tickets for this young staffer and send her. Like, what are you doing, man? Uh, This is Representative Glenn Ivey, a Democrat on the Ethics Committee. He said those are the types of gifts that jump out at you, but that isn't like a birthday card. This isn't congratulations on your wedding or that a new baby was born. These are gifts that people, members, the members of Congress, should not be giving to their staffers. Ivey said this was not good mentorship. as Edwards characterized his behavior, but something that could harm and follow the women for the rest of their careers. And he added that Edwards knew his behavior was over the line. Now, I've gotten a couple of text messages. Seth says, why didn't the women tell him, no, I don't want you to come to my apartment. People might get the wrong idea along the same lines. Jennifer says, my question is why did these young women accept these gifts and so-called acts of friendship and generosity? Okay. They actually talk about this and we talked about it during the, when the ethics report was released as well. The women said that they were, they were uncomfortable. This stuff did not go over the line into like a physical, you know? Um, and so, um, They did not know how to handle it. They were both young. One of them was like in college at the time. So they're both young. And they're working for this powerful congressman. And they like him, right? They supported his campaign. And they want to be a part of the team. And now he's doing these things for them. And he's constantly— here' s the word that I would use. For it— grooming. Little by little, you sort of normalize this method of discourse where he's constantly flattering them and talking in this flowery prose and writing poems and this sort of thing, and he's never crossing that line, right? As I said, he's going right up to the line. But the women did start feeling uncomfortable. But they were worried that if they said anything or did anything, that they would end up crossing a. Congressman. And that would harm their future prospects if they were going to take another job at another congressional office or whatever. So they were worried about the impact it would have on their careers. So he wasn't doing anything overtly harassing, right? But he was, again, he was up to the line. And then, of course, they start hearing the rumors that were all over Capitol Hill that these relationships were physical, that he was having affairs with them. And then they realize, like, oh, this is also damaging to my career. So now I'm in this position of I'm either going to have this reputation that is unearned or I'm going to cross a congressman and burn a bridge. Um, so that's what they, that's what they said. Um, Edwards sent someone to serenade one of these staffers at her birthday party, wrote a poem for one of them when she left his office and read it in front of the entire staff and created a puzzle for one of them that when you assembled the puzzle, it invited her to go to a concert. Guys, this is, that might work if she likes you. He should have started off with a mixtape. You know? Like, hey, I made you a mixtape. Or I guess a playlist. Could have made you a playlist. Part of this is also, it just doesn't sound like he's got good game. You know? Like, this is just, it's kind of sad to me. Edwards stood alone on the House floor as he defended his actions Tuesday before the vote. He directed his comments to his two former employees, saying, I'm sorry that my actions, my judgment, or the way that I expressed a friendship ever put either of you in an uncomfortable position. My intentions were only grounded in what I understood our friendship to be and in genuine admiration and respect that I had for each of you. Not only as professionals, but as people who were willing to share so much of your stories and your backgrounds with me. I recognize now that my understanding of those relationships may not have always matched yours. Right, well, why would they have? You're the boss. You don't, like, this is an inappropriate relationship to have with your staffers. The chair of the ethics committee Congressman Guest said during his own comments that Edwards acknowledged to the ethics committee that he knew his behavior had led to negative rumors about the two women, but he continued anyway. See, like that right there, that is damning. That's damning. When the ethics committee asks if you were aware of all of the rumors and you say you knew about them, but you persisted anyway because you didn't care? Like, why wouldn't you then have dialed that back to protect them? Isn't that what a friend would do? Why would you let them keep being subjected to these rumors unless you think there may be a benefit that you derive from the rumors being out there? Edwards shifted blame back to the women, saying they maintained a relationship with him and initiated plans to spend time with him after they left his office. One of the women told the committee, though, she didn't feel she could resist Edwards because she did not think it benefited her to have a member of Congress against her. This is the position that he put those women in. And he said in his speech he wasn't asking the chamber to approve of his every interaction. or compliment, or gift. He says, looking back, I don't approve of all of them either. What? I'm asking you to distinguish between conduct that you might personally have handled differently and conduct that warrants the solemn judgment of censure. So you're looking back and you're saying you don't approve of everything that you did. Why didn't you approve of everything you did? Why? Because now you know it was wrong? Or is it that you know you're supposed to say you know it was wrong? Or is it because you got caught? The committee found that Representative Edwards was, at a minimum, blind to the reality and, at worst, dismissive of the impact his conduct had on the career and well-being of the women on his staff. Now, since Chuck Edwards did not resign... he was still eligible for censure. So had he just resigned, they would not have censured him. But now he is the 29th member of Congress to suffer that fate. A couple of the messages on the Chuck Edwards censure from yesterday. The good Jeff says, looks like going from Madison Cawthorn to Chuck Edwards was a major downgrade. Gosh, like that's who would have thought, um, Richard says, sounds like the Jerry Richardson saga. I like you. Do you like me? It does. Remember that? That's how he lost control of the Carolina Panthers. It was kind of just this whole weird, like, what are you doing? What are you talking about women on Jeans Friday? Remember that whole thing? Judy says, we need to teach our young women how groomers behave. I concur, Judy. All right. So there was also a primary up in Taxachusetts. Senator Ed Markey bucked this cycle's recent trend of old guard Democrats losing primaries to younger challengers, easily routing his rival in the primary for Senate in Massachusetts. So Ed Markey. First elected, I believe it was the year after. Yeah, it was the year after dirt was invented. The race was the latest test of Democrats appetite for generational change in Congress. So this is the hill, by the way. And note, all of this framing is like old versus young, you know, new generation taken over and all of this. And I don't see this like that. I think that's a ruse. I don't think people really care about the age of their elected representatives. If the elected representative is doing a good job. See this, like this to me, smacks of the Joe Biden stuff where it was like, Oh, Joe Biden's too old. And that was never the problem. It wasn't that he was old. It was that he had declining mental faculties. right? His cognitive decline. That was the issue. It wasn't his age as is evidenced by the fact that Donald Trump is president. It was just as old. So, um, the race was, uh, so this was a, a progressive incumbent. And remember the, uh, the new framing, all of the radical lefty Marxists are now being dubbed as just progressives. Um, and everybody that's not, uh, you know, in the, the DSA, uh, they're being called moderates. So Ed Markey is a, quote, progressive against a more moderate challenger. The moderate challenger was Seth Moulton, or Moulton, like lava. It featured a flipped dynamic compared to other high-profile showdowns this year. Yes, well, why is it flipped? Why is the dynamic flipped? It's because. The guy in the DSA lane is the old guy. And the guy in the moderate lane is the young guy. And so the young guy lost. See, it's not about the age. It's about the ideology. At the same time, a pair of longtime moderate House Democrats also prevailed, though, against younger, more progressive rivals, defying one of the defining trends of this primary cycle. So what do we make of this in Massachusetts? The old progressive beats the young moderate, but then the old moderates beat the young progressives in the House races. Seth Moulton, 47 years old. Ed Markey, 80 years old. He's been up there for five decades. He won by 30 points. 30-point victory. Amid ongoing debate in the party about age, health, and term limits for long-serving lawmakers by the way I've not heard any of these discussions I like I I'm not in the party to be fair but I've not heard any reporting I'm not seeing any reporting there's some sort of like you know big debate going on inside the Democrat party about age and term limits and, and older people's health. I've not heard any of that. Again, the only example of this conversation I've heard was when Joe Biden was president. The current debate I'm hearing is how, you know, full Marxist do we go? How much are we just going to be Marxist adjacent? Are we going to be Marxist curious? You know, So they say, yeah. Markey's credentials, though, outweighed his status as the oldest Senate Democrat running for re-election. Right, so surprise, surprise, it wasn't about his age. Polling ahead of the race suggested the incumbent had a double-digit advantage over Moulton, with some indications that his progressive record was a boost, despite critiques over his age. He also, here's the key, had support from progressive, Titans, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, a.k.a. Focahontas, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Moulton, on the other hand, was calling for a new generation of leadership, while some supporters also pushed back on his characterization as more moderate. So he was trying to pitch himself as more moderate. And I'm not sure that people were buying that. So if you've, I don't know. Former Obama strategist, David Axelrod hailed Markey's victory saying, quote, despite his age, because in his golden years, he's grabbed onto the green new deal, Medicare for all trans rights and other Markey priorities of the left, despite starting out in Congress as a social conservative. See, So Markey, I mean, which makes sense because running as a Democrat 50 years ago, you could be a social conservative. Most Democrats probably were socially conservative, especially if you compare them to the modern iteration of the Democrat Party. But as with people like Roy Cooper, right, you will see when the party starts moving to the left, embracing more and more and more of the Marxist ideology, They will fall in line. They will embrace these things that years prior they would not because it's about power. There were some other races, real quick. Stephen Lynch, 71-year-old running for a 14th term in the House, defeated 39-year-old attorney Patrick Roath, all but assuring that he'll hold on to the Boston area seat in the 8th District. Roath was backed by David Hogg, And his organization called Leaders We Deserve, so David Hogg has got no juice. And then there's also due to Western Massachusetts First District Representative Richard Neal, 77 years old. He has served in the House 19 terms. He beat back 39-year-old public school teacher Jeremy Whelan. Whalen stressed he was running because of corporate influence in elections and also tried to make it about his opponent's age. Both of those old guys won their primaries by double digits as well. So Massachusetts went for the old guys, which probably says something about the Democrat machine up there more than anything. 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 the Pete Kaliner show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.