Cooper voter: Feelings over facts | Hour 2

All right. So in the. Last hour, I started playing this CNN report by Manu Raju on the North Carolina U.S. Senate race and found it notable because it appears to be the most amount of questions that a reporter has been able to ask of Governor Roy Cooper, former Governor Cooper, in this campaign. And so I'm curious to hear what the questions are, and I'm curious to hear what his answers are. And So we started playing that audio. I'm going to pick it back up. I do have more audio clips, but our pal Jackie has called in. Hello, Jackie. Welcome to the program. How are you? How are you doing, man? I'm all right. It's been a while. Where have you been? I still listen to you, man. I'm just trying to calm down. Okay. I'm doing good. I hope you're doing well, too. My call today has revolved over the course of the last six months, even beyond. You've said everything in the world negative about Roy Cooper that can probably be said. I hope so. So what's the objective today? I mean, what is your objective? Are you running a Michael Watley for Senate? ad today or a campaign spot for him because everybody knows that you don't like Roy Cooper. Correct. I do not like Roy Cooper. Yeah, and I've been saying negative things. Hang on, hang on. I've been saying you're underselling or you're downplaying the amount of time that I have been criticizing Roy Cooper because this goes back actually like over a decade. Sure, sure. Yeah, I have not been a fan of Roy Cooper's from very, very early on. So what's your objective with this type of reporting? Are you actively supporting Michael Watley? Am I actively supporting Michael Watley? Are you asking if I intend to vote for him? My question is, are you supporting him? I would prefer him over Roy Cooper, no doubt. Why? Because I do not trust Roy Cooper to be a voice for reason and sanity when he is surrounded by a Democrat majority in the U.S. Senate. He will bend to the leftist predilections inside the party. But it's extremely obvious that Roy Cooper is liked by the majority of North Carolinians. Yeah, I don't care. I don't care. No, I didn't say that you cared. I said, but it's obvious that he's well-liked. In my opinion, he's probably going to win this election. Okay. Well, fantastic. That's your prediction. Yeah, so what are you trying to achieve? I mean, what's your objective here? To educate people on Roy Cooper? So what makes you the expert on Roy Cooper? You may not have heard, I just went through and I said I have been critical of Roy Cooper for over a decade. So I say that's what actually kind of qualifies me to have an opinion about the guy. Not that I need to be qualified to have an opinion about any elected leader. But if I have to put up some qualifications, I'd say covering him, as I have for over a decade, I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the way he governs. So what are the people in North Carolina seeing that you're not seeing? What are they seeing that I'm not seeing? I think a lot of people, I think they think that he is one of the, quote, good Democrats. That's how people see him. He has also cultivated What I would argue is a fake public persona, as I call it, the, oh, shucks, I'm just a country lawyer kind of person. Kind of approach. And some politicians are very good at doing that folksy kind of thing or whatever. But this guy is a political animal and he plays hardball. He's taken out many of his Democrat colleagues, right? He threatens them and he pressures them to do things. And that also can account for why a lot of people go along with him because they're afraid of the repercussions if they don't. But, but do you think Michael Watley is, is, is the viable solution here? Because when I look at Michael Watley, I don't get excited. That's fine. I don't, I'm not interested in having, yeah, I don't need a politician to, I don't need a politician to excite me. Well, I mean, he doesn't excite me enough to vote for him is what I'm saying. Right. So what, what, what, what particularly do you object to about Watley's positions? I just don't. When I look at him and see him answering questions, I don't get the feeling that he understands what he's talking about. Really? No, I don't. Okay. So it's on feelings. And he's never run for elective office before. That's fine. Yeah, I don't care about that either. That doesn't matter to me. I don't require somebody to have a lengthy political resume like Roy Cooper's 40 years in government. In fact, sometimes that's a disqualification when you've been involved in politics for that long. But I do think it's interesting that you started by saying that you just don't get the feeling. that he knows what he's talking about. You didn't give me any specific. You just got a feeling about it. No, I didn't give you specifics. I just don't get a good feeling. So it's about vibes. It's like Kamala Harris' vibes thing? I don't know what that has to do with Michael Watley. That's what you said. You said that it was about your feelings. But I didn't mention Kamala Harris. No, I know, but when you said feelings, that's what Harris was talking about. Remember when she was running and she was talking about vibes and all of a sudden everybody was talking about all the vibes? Oh, I don't remember that. Okay, well, and so it's just feelings. So it's not even about– and this is what a lot of politicians run their campaigns on, and Roy Cooper is doing this too, which is to run on a feelings-based campaign with no specifics. Right. So if you got the feeling that he's like this, like grandfatherly figure and he, Oh, I get the feeling that he's a nice guy. You know, I get the feeling that he'll do a good job. And so I'm going to vote for him. That works a lot of times. I'm not saying it doesn't, but I require more. You asked me why I, why I didn't like him. And that's, that's one of the things I don't like is when people don't give you specifics. I was going to suggest, why don't you see if you can get Roy Cooper on your show? I already reached out to them. No, no response. They did. No response? No, they'll talk to Manu Raju at CNN. He'll talk to Brian Anderson at the Assembly. They'll give him a question or two at a press availability after some stump speech. But that's it. They're not doing interviews. They're not going to do a debate. They're leading in the polls. There's no reason for Cooper to talk to anybody that's going to ask them any difficult questions. I don't have any pull in that regard, but if I get the opportunity, I'm going to suggest that he come on your show. That'd be a great conversation. I would love to have a conversation with him, but given his track record, remember, this is the guy who locked out all adversarial media during the COVID press conferences. He would not allow a single question to come through that came from any media outlet, including WBT, the North State Journal, the Carolina Journal. Right. Certain reporters from different outlets. They were put into a separate group in the Zoom call waiting room and they never got to ask questions because they were. Perceived to be hostile. So the only reporters that ever got through would ask the softball questions and Roy Cooper and Mandy Cohen could talk about the data and science and talk about, you know, the three W's and then move on. That's the way this guy manages things. See, and this is, this is one of, this is what, what drives me crazy about people who say they have a feeling that that Roy Cooper is a good guy, he's a good politician, or he's a good statesman or something, is that when you actually look at how he practices politics, remember, he also helped to whip up a boycott against his very own constituents in North Carolina so he would personally benefit in his race for governor against Pat McCrory. He did that. He's the one that. Got businesses to boycott us, got the NBA All-Star Game to move out of the state, right? That's what he did. And what did he do it over? The transgenders in bathrooms, the locker room access issue over HB2. And then when Democrats in his own party in the legislature, when they said, hey, we have a chance to work with some Republicans to, quote, fix HB2, he said, don't you dare do that. If you do that, you will have no role in my administration. He did not want a fix. I got one more question. I'll let you go. Who, who, who wins the, uh, who wins the house and the Senate in the midterms? What do you think? No idea. I do not make election predictions mainly because I'm not good at it. Okay. Who wins the governor's race? I don't, any election. I don't make any election predictions. I also don't make predictions on, uh, jury trials because, uh, there's very little, there's very little upside to it. Um, like, okay, so I make a prediction that, uh, you know, Roy Cooper wins and then he wins and it's like, okay, so big deal. Right? Like, what's the big deal there? And if I lose, and then I've lost credibility because I was saying Cooper's going to win and he loses, right? Then I take a hit. And I recognize that, like, I'm just going off of polling like everybody else. So if the polling is not accurate and turnout numbers slide one direction or the other, then my prediction is of no value. And frankly, predictions really are of no value. That's why it doesn't matter. Like, when you say... Roy Cooper is going to win, it's like, okay, that's fine. I don't care. It doesn't matter to me because you don't know the future. Nobody knows the future. No. Yeah. But I don't, I don't have all the information you have. So I'm just going on gut feel. I think my gut tells. Me again with the feelings, right? See, I try to, so I will tell you when I was in college, I took, uh, there was one particular philosophy class I took and, uh, uh, Dr. Craighead was his name. And whenever anybody, any student would start to answer one of his questions with, I feel he would stop them. He'd interrupt them and he would say, no, don't feel, think, That's what separates us, right? So if you're going to have opinions, you have to base them off of more than just feelings. But unfortunately, Pete, that's not the case with so many people. I'm just telling you. I know, I know, but so many of us, our actions are based on emotions. I'm not saying that emotion or your feelings should have zero impact. I'm saying that should not be the basis to form an opinion. You want to use your brain to think through why is somebody better? Like, for example, do you know where Roy Cooper stands on, let's say, packing the U.S. Supreme Court? He's probably a Democrat. He's probably for it. I would have to assume, too, that he would be for it. But we don't know that. Right? We don't know that. Right. How about abolishing ICE? Oh, I'm sure he's against that. Really? Really. He hasn't said so. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Okay. How about opening the border back up? Not sure. How about abolishing the electoral college? No, you're right. I don't know if he's for that, I guess, or against that either. So are those things that would concern you if he were for abolishing all of those things and doing all of those things? Would that be, you know, opening the border, abolishing ICE? packing the Supreme Court, are those things that you would oppose if he wanted to do that or voted. To do that? I don't know if I'm in the middle on some of that stuff, you know, but I certainly don't want to open the border. I'd like to see the court revisit it as far as the number of justices on that. I would like to see that. I don't want to abolish them, but I think there should be some changes in the way they operate. Right, but you don't know what Roy's position is on any of those. Oh, no. No, I don't. Right. Do you think that's a problem? It's not a problem for me as far as voting for him, because, again, I'm going to vote for it right now. If I had to vote today, I'd vote for Roy Cooper over Wiley. Right, but why? You've just acknowledged you don't know where he stands on some pretty important issues, and that's okay to not know? I think he'll be the better legislature. I think he'd be better in that regard. And I just like him more as a person than I like Wiley. I don't get good feelings when I listen to him. There you go. Here's my advice that I give everybody all the time, no matter what party. Never fall in love with a politician. Okay? That's all feelings. I'm an independent, as a matter of fact. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could say that. Registered independent. You're not registered independent. You're registered unaffiliated. I mean unaffiliated. Yeah, no such thing as independent. But I know people say that. All right, Jackie, thanks for the call, man. I appreciate it. Good talking with you. Thanks, man. Hang in there. All right, buddy. You too. Take care. 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 into VHS tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now, Creative Video is helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. 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Check out GroupTravelVideos.com. That's GroupTravelVideos.com. Or call 704-846-7870, extension 206. And when you do that, ask for Katie. But Pete, can I just email? Well, yes, you can. You can email Katie. Katie at GroupTravelVideos.com. Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. James, welcome to the program. Hello, James. Hey, how are you? Hey, I'm good. What's going on? Man, that was a heck of a call there. We're in trouble if that's the current viewpoint of the voting public. Well, Jackie claims to be unaffiliated. I'm unaffiliated as well. I'm totally affiliated. I'm for limited government. Yeah, and I live in a blue area, so sometimes if I'm in a primary season, I have no Republicans to vote for, I can go vote in the Democrat primary. So that's why I'm unaffiliated. No, I understand. I'm fascinated by the fact that the only non-politician in politics is responsible for 50 years of damage and destruction caused by politicians. That's the essence of the argument today. It's frustrating that Trump cannot articulate a better response. He kind of pays more attention to his base maybe than he should. The people that have hung with him thus far aren't leaving. They're going to stay in there. I don't believe that Jackie ever voted for him to begin with. No, no. Jackie claims unaffiliated status to be independent, but. He definitely, he leans Democrat, no doubt about it. In all of the conversations. He's the essence of the Democrat. He doesn't even know what his candidate's positions are. He just blindly votes for him. Well, no, he has his feelings, James. He said he had the feelings. That's the essence of it. That's why he's a total Democrat. That's the essence of a Democrat voter. Yeah. James, I appreciate the call, sir. Good to hear from you. Got to run to news. Thanks. Jackie got y'all riled up. Holy smokes. Text line is hopping. And I do want to get to all of the messages. I do also want to finish the audio clips that I painstakingly edited. over a hot microphone. Well, actually, it was off, so it wasn't hot. But they don't call it a cold microphone. I don't know why. We call it a hot mic, but we don't call it a cold mic. Not sure why. It's lost to the ages, the reason. 704 number says, thanks for handling your last liberal caller. He's no unaffiliated voter, but more so up Ray Cooper's butt. Also, I do need to point out that if the democratic socialists take power, there won't be any legislation votes to pack the court, open the borders, defund police, eliminate ice. It'll be done by government fiat without a vote, just like the COVID laws that were implemented and enforced. Yeah. And by the way, Manu Raju did ask from CNN. He did ask Cooper, about the rising influence of the socialists. But as we heard in the clip I played yesterday, Roy Cooper says he'll work with anybody. We want a big tent. See, this is why you can't trust Roy Cooper because he's not telling you anything about where he is ideologically. He said he won't sign the promise to America, which was done by the moderate Democrats, right? Who were like, we're capitalists, not socialists. We're proud to be Americans. We love our country, all of that. And he won't sign on to that. Congressman Don Davis, Democrat in a tough re-election race in District 1 in North Carolina, he signed it. But Roy Cooper won't. The only pledge I make is to the constituents. Really? Well, I would be a constituent. Are you a capitalist or a socialist? Are you going to bend to the DSA's will? Like, what if Elizabeth Warren runs to be the leader of the Senate? Are you going to vote for her over Chuck Schumer? I think that's a pretty important question. Manu Raju asked him, would he support Schumer? You know what he said? Basically, no comment. He hasn't even won yet. I haven't even won yet. It's a dodge. He's not telling you what he will do if he's elected. That's a problem. unless of course you just have a good feeling about him. All right susan says um like jackie i have a lot of feelings too I have a feeling that voters like Jackie will continue to make uninformed votes and we get stuck with Ray Cooper again. I have a feeling that Cooper will do exactly what the Democrat Party wants him to do. I have a feeling that after 40 years, Cooper will continue to be the smarmy Democratic politician that. He always has been. Thank you, Pete. Love the show, says Susan. Thank you, Susan. 704 number says people like Jackie is what is really scary about voters. Absolutely clueless on issues. but likes the used car salesman lying. Okay. I can't read that part. Uh, Ray Cooper, because he seems like a nice guy. It's just unbelievable. Um, Jackie's call reminds me of the 1960 song hooked on a feeling. High on believing that you're in love with me. It says, Alan, um, Tom says, I notice every morning on the observer online, there's a picture of Roy Cooper for months. Now there's a picture of Josh Stein. I have inquired from the observer if they were paying for that advertisement that we were forced to see every day. And of course the observer has not answered my question, any idea whether it's free publicity or they're paying the observer. Uh, thank you. Well, if it's a news article, then no, they're not paying for that. Um, this is a peaceful Muslim, um, who says, talk about the current state of the country instead of attacking Democrats. I believe I am doing both. Doing both. Cohen, Pete, in regard to the questions you asked the previous caller, I knew the answers to every one of them, and that's why I'm voting for Michael Watley. Also, Roy COVID-19 Cooper was responsible for me having to shut down my prosperous safety consulting company. The Grumpy Major says, Jackie exemplifies exactly what's wrong with so many voters today, particularly on the Democrat side. He votes on how he feels about the candidate without being at all curious or more importantly informed on how the candidate would vote. Your last few questions prove that for everyone to see. Look, I know it's comforting for people on the right to think that, excuse me, to think that this is only behavior on the left, but I can assure you it is not. The reason I know this is because I had the exact same kinds of arguments with Trump supporters in 2015. I'm sorry, but that's the truth. I would argue with them about why I did not think Donald Trump should be the nominee, and people would say very similar things to what Jackie said. Now, big difference, Trump did not have a record. Right? He was not an elected official. So people were again, Trump being a blank slate because he has no record. So they're just, you know, writing upon the slate that which they think he will do because they want him to do things, right? He was making some promises to be sure, but he did not have a legislative record, right? Or a governing record, but people had a feeling he fights. That's what I heard all the time. He fights, right? There were vibes. And, um, And so it's not something that's just on the left. Also, if we're talking about feelings, Roy Cooper makes me feel like he's an arrogant man and he thinks he is smarter than everybody because he talks to his constituents like we are six years old. Yeah, that's Trent. It's one of the most annoying parts of the COVID press conferences. The most annoying things. Just sitting there listening to him and Mandy Cohen, who's got it going on, so I'm told, just talking to me like I'm a kindergartner. Well, that's just the data and the science. Back to ye old text line. 704 number says, please help. I need Watley to explain why he hired a sex offender and how old were the girls slash boys. Uh, this is a little segment we like to call Pete Google stuff for you. Um, So this is what Roy Cooper says, by the way, Roy Cooper, whenever the attack or questions come up about all of the criminals, the thousands of criminals, he set loose his soft on crime agenda, all of that stuff. He always pivots to Michael Wadley hired a pedophile. Okay. And then also claiming that they're just lying about my record. Okay. So I've covered this before. We'll cover it again. The top line bullet points here is that Harvey West was in the North Carolina GOP many years before Michael Watley was. West says that he had served on what's called the Plan of Organization Committee as far back as 2011. Watley became chairman eight years later. So West was already a part of the party, and he was being appointed to positions in or elected to positions by his own district Republicans, people in his district, not Whatley. Whatley did not make him the district chairman. This is the first congressional district chairmanship position when it opened, the district executive committee elected Harvey West and fellow Republicans reelected him. West was never hired, quote unquote, hired by Whatley. He was a party activist. He became an elected party official by the people in his home district. Not an employee, not recruited by Watley, not hired by Watley. In fact, Harvey West told PolitiFact that Watley was not supportive when West first became the district chairman and, quote, didn't want me there. Harvey West said, Regarding the crimes, Harvey West pleaded guilty in 2000 to multiple counts of taking indecent liberties with a child, a charge involving victims under the age of 16 years old, while originally facing statutory rape charges related to incidents with three girls, ages 14 and 16. This was in 1999. Harvey West was apparently a police officer in Washington, North Carolina. He says he took a plea deal for the lesser charges in order to avoid a potentially decades-long sentence. He served six years in prison, was required to register as a sex offender for at least a decade after his release, which was in 2006. He later petitioned to be removed from the registry, and that was granted in 2018. despite his conviction, he has maintained his innocence claiming that he pleaded guilty only to mitigate the risk of a harsher trial outcome. So what he pleaded guilty to was five to 16. That's a range five to 16 counts of indecent liberties, six years in prison. And, uh, to, to, to this, uh, stems from when he was a 28 year old police officer. Um, was arrested and charged with the statutory rape of three girls, two 14-year-olds and one 16-year-old. And rather than face a trial on those charges, he took a plea deal in 2000. Court records show the plea was spread across multiple case dockets. The counts were all from around the same time period, summer of 1999. There were some counts in June of 99, July of 99, and August of 1999. He was ordered to pay restitution, $ 385 to one victim's guardian and $ 2, 000. For another one. And his petition to terminate the, yeah, so he got off of the registry, the sex offender registry in 2018, which would have been a year before Whatley became chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party. And again, The people in Harvey West's district are the ones that elected him. Now, the party has since put in place a prohibition where you cannot hold office inside the party if you've got convictions for stuff like this. Now, Whatley, as the chairman, presided over what are called state central committee meetings. And this is where it's like, well, where the teenagers were in attendance. Well, the central committee meetings bring together all the district party executive committee members, right? That leadership in the different districts, it brings them together and all of the conferences or the caucuses or caucus, if you will, including the North Carolina Teenage Republicans, right? And so when they're all at these big Republican gatherings with all the different Republican groups, one of those groups is the teenage Republicans. And this is why the Democrats are saying that he brought a pedophile to an event with all this, all these teenagers. Okay. Again, Watley did not do that. The people in the Republicans in district one did that. They were the ones that put him in place, but I guess, I guess prison isn't rehabilitation then to all the Democrats. So after you serve your sentence, you're a formerly incarcerated person. Like now. You're not allowed to do anything ever again because that's a different message than you guys have been pitching. 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 thepeatcalinershow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.