Democrats cut ties with candidate who called for violence against MAGA | Hour 3

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to the Pete calendar show.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. And as we do every Monday at 2 o'clock, we chat with A.P. Dillon. She's a reporter for the North State Journal. You can read her work at NSJOnline.com, and she also publishes a Substack newsletter called More to the Story. Hello, A.P. How are you? I'm good, Pete. How are you doing? I'm doing all right. I was just reading through the social media history of North Carolina businesses, Democratic candidate for House District 62, Shelley Hedden. It's kind of problematic. There have been some things. I thought this was pretty interesting, too. I had not seen this reported elsewhere. You have it in your Substack newsletter that she claims to have spent $ 30, 000 on to a firm that was supposed to scrub the. Media reported that. Yeah. The news observer, I'm pretty sure reported that one. Okay. Um, and I happened to see it in another, in another news site too, that that was quoted as she was paying, she paid 30 grand for that to look at her social media. And then, you know, as I commented in my article, I said, she should ask for her money back. Yeah. Because this has gotten so bad. Her old posts have gotten, um, so much attention and it's so bad. that now you've got like her own party pulling support from her. Although I haven't seen, is anybody on Cooper Watch? Do we know if Roy Cooper has been asked to defend or disavow this woman? I haven't seen anything, but I would assume that he's been asked. He probably said that, I think one outlet actually this morning reported that he said that political violence or rhetoric with political violence that it has no place in politics and something along those lines. So, yeah, so some of the top hits. Where she's visiting Dachau concentration camp in Germany and she poses smiling in front of the crematorium ovens. And she takes, I guess somebody takes her picture or she poses for a selfie and she's smiling and she tweets it out or posts it up there and says, visiting Dachau concentration camp in Germany, this is where Trump supporters belong. Not great. That's not great. No, not great. She also then said, we're not sure really when this occurred, but it looks to be about a year ago. She posted on Facebook and I guess it was in response. Maybe somebody was I could see this response being to somebody lamenting the lack of. Unity among Americans, right? I could see because her response was, I think our only hope is an attack on us soil, preferably Alabama, Louisiana, where the stupid people live. Yeah. That was in response to an anti-Trump website. Oh, okay. The post read something along the lines of, you know, things have gone to hell when you start rooting for other countries to put yours in its place on the global stage. Ah. And that was what her reply was to. Even so, it's still not great. Not great. Also not great. Yeah, I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, trying to read, like, because I didn't see what she was responding to. But, no, that's bad, too. Let's see here. She does not like Elon Musk. Surprise, surprise. Said, why would we take advice from someone who is autistic? Yeah. So. I guess using that as a slur, not great. Yes. And also tweeting out at one point that she is ready for the MAGAs to die off. But in her bio, she is all about restoring human decency. So, yeah. I think Sister Told You referred to her as our Jay Jones-like scandal here in North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah, I saw that article. Yeah, so what are the chances that this woman now could actually still win? I'm thinking not so good since the Guilford County Democrats have pulled all their money, funding, and resources from her campaign. So she's going to be flying solo there. The House caucus, Democratic caucus, has denounced her. I think the Assembly reported that the Democratic Party chairwoman had referred to the caucus's statement when asked about it. So she's not getting much love, although there have been several posts out today showing her posing with Roy Cooper, with Associate Justice Anita Earle, as well as the Democratic Party chairwoman. I saw that one on X just a little while ago. So apparently they did not. Vet this candidate and her social media history either. I guess. Yeah. She's up against John Bluff and the, the, the lock foundation has that as a partisan ranking plus two Republican anyway. So now it's going to be an even more uphill battle. Yeah. All right. So that's up in the Guilford County area there. What else do we have? Oh, we had a protest at the North Carolina Supreme Court. This was the Justice Project, which, just reading the name, I have a pretty good idea of their politics. But interesting organizer with this outfit. Yeah, so the News Observer had also reported on this one. Just briefly, there was a protest there. They were protesting Chief Justice Paul Newby. and held up signs before oral arguments about a week or so ago that read, Stop Newby's Corrupt Court. Was it just like a general opposition to the guy, to the man? Yeah, to the man. The Supreme Court races are coming up this year, but then in two more years, we've got at least three seats that are up, including Newby's seat, because he has to retire due to age. And so Phil Berger Jr. said he was not going to run for his seat that term. He's up that term as well. And that basically pointed to him running for the chief justice plot. Right. So, um, this, uh, this organizer that was cited by the news, his name was Eric Hall, H-O-L-L. And so I tracked him down and he appears to have been a former Roy governor, uh, Roy Cooper staffer. Oh, he worked for Cooper. He did during his first term, I believe. And then, uh, he worked for Louisiana governor Edwards, John Bell Edwards. And most recently was an aide with Chattanooga Democratic Mayor Tim Kelly. But I did find an article in the Chattanoogan.com that said that Hull had left Kelly's office in January of this year in order to, quote, take an advocacy position in Raleigh, North Carolina. Bum, bum, bum. The Justice Project. Yeah. He also appears to have written articles at an outlet called the Louisiana Illuminator. It's one of several partisan sites that hangs off of the state's newsroom network. Oh, our favorite organization. Yeah, it also runs NC Newsline, you know, dark money funded, the whole nine yards. So let's see. So the Justice Project focuses on state Supreme Courts. In particular, they only have five courts that they seem to be interested in on their website, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. They're obviously looking to flip seats there. They run a PAC. The Justice Project Action is what it's called. They've gotten a lot of money. They're 527. That means that they can basically, their primary purpose is to influence groups or elections of person or persons at state, national, local level. In other words, they're a partisan political outfit. They took in over $ 4. 52 million between 2023 and 2024, according to Open Secrets. They had filings. Their largest recipient was Planned Parenthood votes with $ 1. 75 million. And there were additional PAC filings on their FEC website. Which makes sense, right? Because if you are the Justice Project looking to flip Supreme Courts in states... from Republican to Democrat, then you are probably going to team up with Planned Parenthood because they want more lax abortion laws. Yes, and they've given money to a group here in North Carolina called North Carolina Families First. That's the same group that's running attack ads against Sarah Stevens, who's challenging Associate Justice Anita Earle for her spot on the Supreme Court here in North Carolina. So they gave them quite a big fat check, $ 1 million. back in 2024. And that's the same organization that was registered by a guy named Michael Weissel in Raleigh. He's an attorney here. And if you go to the Secretary of State and you look up all the things that he's registered, there's at least 35 similar left-leaning groups he's registered as the registering agent for. And, you know, the current attack ad was interesting. You know, it tried to cast her legislative record as being pro-pedophile. It's been quite the opposite. She's actually been a victim's right advocate, including child welfare protections, tightening sex offender laws, that kind of thing. And the ad went out, let's see, it was on September 9th is when it got posted to social media. And Mr. Hall happened to just you know, repost the ad and quoted, quote, said, devastating ad. Of course, he's saying that because he's attacking the courts through his justice project. But the news observer didn't give you any information about justice project or who that person was. So I figured, hey, maybe there's something there. And well, yes, there was. Well, that would take, that would have taken time to, you know, track down these connections and find the money and that sort of thing. And also, like, they probably, well, do they have, I know they just had another round of layoffs, so maybe. They don't have any people. Yeah, but Classy laid off, I think it was the Charlotte Observer, they laid off, like, a quarter of their newsroom. I think that was, like, 8 to 15 people. Yeah, they're down to, like, 20, I think it was, like, 25 reporters left on staff. Yeah, and two of their editors left back in June, so. Yeah, and at one point they had 300, and now they're down to 25. It's crazy. It's slowly narrowing there. And real quick, I got the audio. We'll play it after we let you go. But Roy Cooper does not see the need to sign the pledge, the I'm not a crazy leftist pledge, the promise to America that, like, 20 Democrats have signed. Only 20 Democrats have signed this thing, so he doesn't see a need to sign it. Yeah, that pledge has been up for several months, and it does kind of refute without actually naming them, but the Democratic Socialists of America, their platform, a number of the issues that they sort of refute or rebut on that website are in there. And he told this person on video, undercover video, I guess, I don't see the need to sign something, so I don't see the need to. And We have a big tent. Yeah, he said we have a big tent. He wants the big tent with commies. Yes, he wants to work across the aisle and that he's nonpartisan, but that's kind of the opposite of his record-breaking 104 vetoes and the fact that he and the Democratic Party targeted its own members who broke ranks on those vetoes. Yeah. So there's some cognitive dissonance there. Yeah, if you just didn't know any of his record, like apparently everybody... Yeah, there's this amnesia that happens whenever he runs for an office. Suddenly his record, there's no records. Do you remember– I mentioned this the other day. Do you remember they did McCrory promise watch? Remember that? They were running– I think it was WRAL was running like a tracker. They took all of his campaign promises, and when he got sworn in, they were like, we're going to make sure he fulfills these promises, and they were tracking him. And then, of course, Cooper wins, and they– so we started asking like, hey– where's your promise tracker for Cooper? And then they're like, okay, fine. So they did one and it was called the Cooper meter. Remember that? And it just like withered on the vine. They never did anything with it. It just was taken down at some point. I think they may be followed through on like three or four items on there. And then it just, yeah, gone. Yeah, exactly. All right. We'll leave it there. AP. Thanks so much for your time. We appreciate it. All right. Thank you. All right. Take care. That's AP Dillon. She is a reporter for the North state journal. You could read her work at NSJ online.com and subscribe to her sub stack newsletter called more to the story. All right. 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No, we had, I mean, millions of people have been, you know, raising money for the Alzheimer's association through these walks for years and years. And, uh, we're doing it again. So if you want to come walk with me and help be a part of hopefully the cure to Alzheimer's, um, go to alz.org. Um, and then just do a search for the team name, Pete's pack. You can join the pack, be a teammate, walk with us, or if you just want to make a donation, we're trying to raise $ 5, 000. That's our goal, and I think we're about halfway there, but we only have about two or three more weeks before the walks. So I'm walking in the Charlotte walk. I'm also emceeing the Gastonia walk, and so we'd love to have you be a part of that. So ALZ.org, again, is the website. Search for Pete's Pack. There is also a link in the description of the podcast, as well as over at the Patreon page and everything like that. All right, so I said I had. The audio, and I do have the audio of my good friend, former Governor Ray, cut him loose, Cooper. Not sure where the video was taken, who's asking the questions or anything, just saw the clip circulating. on social media. It appears to be an undercover type of, uh, video. Uh, cause he's kind of like, like half in the frame, you know? So it seems like somebody went up to him and was just talking to him at one of these grip and greed events or grip and grins, whatever. Um, And so the audio isn't great because he got a lot of room noise. There's a lot of hobnobbing going on, and hobnobbing can be quite noisy. So he is asked whether he will sign the promise to America. This is the pledge that a bunch of moderate Democrats drew up. I'll give you some of the highlights of it here, actually. This is from the AP Dillon story. It denounces very specific platforms espoused by the DSA without actually naming the DSA. You know, platforms from the DSA or planks in the platform, I should say, such as, you know, abolishing the Senate, abolishing police, decarceration or emptying the prisons, which Roy. Basically did already. But the platform also calls for an end to the presidency, the Supreme Court, abolishing ICE. And opening the borders and amnesty. So the very first item in the promise to America states, quote, we are capitalist, not socialist. And it includes items such as we want safety, not lawlessness. Regarding fiscal discipline, we are responsible, not reckless. We believe government should solve problems, not create them. We are mainstream, not extreme. We are proud, not ashamed, of America. So, somebody asked Roy Cooper... if he was going to sign this promise to America. And here's how it sounded. What do you think about this thing with the Democrat rep signing this promise to America? Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't. Oh, it's basically saying we're centrist, we're not radical on one side or the other, and about 12 or 15 of them have signed on to it. They're basically kind of shunning the socialist side of the party, so. Well, here's my point. I think the party needs a wide spectrum, particularly at a time when the Republican Party is shrinking. And having all kinds of loyalty tests. I think we need to have all kinds of folks to be a. Part of our party. Particularly now when. We're in such difficult straits and we're all in a foxhole right now. We've all got to be together. To take back our government. We could tilt into autocracy any time if we don't stick together. Absolutely. All right. So again, you could hear the interviewer much better. Than Roy, but he says, first off, he said he didn't know what the guy was talking about, but then seemed like he did. Um, He says, I think the party needs a wide spectrum. A big tent. He sounds like Mike Daisley. Mike, who calls the show. When I asked him a couple weeks back, he called in and I asked him about, are you worried that the Marxists are ascendant in your party and they're knocking off these longtime incumbents and moderate Democrats and all of this? And this is what Mike said. He was like, Oh, I think we should, there's enough room under the tent for all of these ideas. Like even the terrible ideas, big enough tent. So I'm unclear what this part means. He says, I think the party needs a wide spectrum, particularly at a time when the Republican party is shrinking and having all kinds of loyalty tests. I am not the Republican party in North Carolina has actually grown. Um, not as fast as the, as unaffiliated voter registrations, but they've grown and the Democrats have shrunk. So I'm not really clear what he's talking about unless he's, unless he's talking like ideologically shrinking with the loyalty tests or something. I'm not, I'm. Not really clear, but like, this is always the loyalty tests, you know, framing the, You know, you got to be all in for Trump and you can't ever criticize. You got to be loyal to Donald Trump only and all this is the whole, you know, autocracy. We could tilt into autocracy at any time if we don't stick together. Like, how little faith you must have. In our representative republic, in our form of government, in our constitution, in our courts, right? How little faith you must have. Or you're just lying. You're just you're just saying this stuff in order to. To motivate people out of fear that, oh, my. Gosh, the orange man, he's Hitler, he's going to enslave us all. We're going to put you back in chains, to quote Joe Biden. Right. He says we have to have all kinds of folks to be a part of our party. particularly now when we're in such difficult straits and we're all in a foxhole right now. We've all got it. There's more war imagery. Oh, my gosh, like we're in a foxhole fighting for our lives. We got to keep together to take back our government. And then he says, I don't see the need to sign something. You don't see the need. You don't see the need to kick the commies out of your party. That's what he's saying. No need to kick the Marxists out of the party. We need them to win votes. We need their, we need them to be a part of our tent. So this way we can attain power. Now, if we get, you know, a little bit of the Marxism on us along the way, I mean, that's just, you know, oh, well, I guess we're gonna have to go a little commie. Adjacent, I guess. Let's just feed the alligator and then it'll eat us last. We'll feed them. We'll feed the alligator, all these other politicians and parties and stuff. And then it won't eat us until last, but you still get eaten actually. All right. One last thing on the, on the Roy Cooper refusal to sign the promise to America. When asked if this is from Leo Brit, Braceno, Braceno, Braceno, I don't know, at FoxNews.com, when asked if Cooper's platform is at odds with the DSA's views, Cooper's campaign declined to comment, noting that his commitments are reserved for his constituents. The only pledge that I shall sign is to the voters. But actually not, because there is no pledge. I don't even... There's no pledge on his website. There's nothing on his website. So, um, he says the, they said the only pledge Roy makes is to the people of North Carolina. Roy is not a socialist and he will work with anyone, including the commies, sorry, including Republicans as he has done in his entire career to lower costs for hardworking families and fight for North Carolina. Oh, This is AI at this point. AI can write these things. These are getting to be as worthless of a statement, right? These canned responses, they're like the coach's interviews after the game or at halftime. There's no value. There's no value. Although I did see that one coach, he refused to answer the question after the Texas game and he He just like went back to the locker room to celebrate and the reporter got all mad at him. Anyway, back to the story of Shelly Hedden. She is the Democrat candidate for North Carolina House up in Guilford County. And I forgot one of the best parts of this story when I was covering it with AP Dillon at the beginning of the hour. So this is from Brian Anderson writing for the Assembly. Within hours of an assembly inquiry to state party leaders, a spokesman for the House Democratic Caucus said the group will no longer support Shelley Hedden, an accountant from Oak Ridge, who's running against John Blust, the Republican from Guilford, incumbent. Hedden said in an interview that she recalls writing several anti-Trump posts, but not the specific language that she used. She said, quote, I can't remember what I've posted. I've been very vocal against MAGA. Well, okay, yes, that is one way of saying it. Posing in front of the Dachau concentration camp crematorium ovens and smiling and saying this is where all trump supporters belong like i mean i guess you could call that being vocal against maga you i get it you don't want to make america great again you are opposed to making america great but then the best part i can't believe i forgot to mention this Hedden said she will continue to run in spite of resistance from the party, from her own party, from the Democrats. Because they're like, we're not giving you any money. We're not door knocking for you. Your name's coming off our palm cards. Well, I don't know about that maybe, but we'll see. And here's what she told Brian Anderson. Are you ready? Quote, I've sacrificed myself just like Jesus sacrificed himself on the cross and Martin Luther King. and Abraham Lincoln, and all the people that put themselves out there to sacrifice for our country. If a few. Angry moments on social media are the end, then so be it. MAGA will keep winning if we continue with not standing up for what's right. And what's right is, uh, being excited and ready for, uh, MAGA's to die off. She also denied having a Twitter account. Uh, Slight problem, the House Democratic Caucus had linked to it earlier this year. On LinkedIn, she said the damage Trump has done is getting close to surpassing Hitler. It's close to surpassing. Okay. But she's like Jesus and MLK and Abe Lincoln. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support. and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to ThePeteCalenderShow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.