East Wing TDS and leveraging pain for Dem gain (10-24-2025--Hour2)

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 dpeteclendershow dot 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. Last hour I went over a lot of the details of the East Wing demolition and plans for the construction of the new ballroom that has prompted outreach among people who hate Donald Trump, and so I won't go over all of those details, but highly recommend you get the podcast and go back and listen to that. We have some people who have called in want to weigh in on this, and you can as well. Again seven oh four five, seven zero eleven ten, I have text messages on the text line I will get to also. Let's start with Dennis. Welcome to the program. Hello Dennis, Yeah, Hi, Hey, thank you for taking my call. And I'll thought by saying I'm not the Trump painter, I'm whatever Republican. I'm off on this good stuff that he's doing. However, the one thing I don't understand is I realize it's being publicly funded, but you know, there's a long precedent for the government teaming up with private money and all that, but usually it's for infrastructure where they get something back. Now over here, I'm just concerned about undue sort of influence. You know, it's kind of like a lobby. You don't just give up two hundred and fifty and I know it's not a signal in to be your person. That's an awful lot of money being given to the government, and you'd think that, well, you probably can't write it off as a tax write off. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't think you could. And it's like, where are they getting back for it? Are they get in some type of favor or what have you? Just it just seems cleaner, neater. You have two undred fifty millions, a lot of money. But I don't think the United States folks would have really objected to it if it went I. Don't even hang on, Dennis, you don't think you don't think people would have objected if you well. They probably would but yes, billions and trillions of dollars are sent and given no over But. Dennis, you can say that probably right, Yeah, like you you can say that because you say you don't hate him, so you could say that, you know, probably wouldn't matter to you, but for people who hate him, it would just be another another line of attack. And so by doing it at no cost to the taxpayers, then he takes that argument away, which then leaves him obviously open to the argument that you've expressed. And I've heard, you know, I've heard as well that like, who are these who's who's donating the money. His friends that he's getting kicked back. Well, there's a whole bunch of out. Himself up to that he wouldn't necessarily otherwise. And I realized it's sort of you go left to get kicked. You're right, you get kicked. So he probably chose what he considers to be, you know, the easier path or the yeah, and he's the general public. Yeah, and he's done that path with you know, not taking a salary, right, so he like there's a pr value to not having the taxpayers funded. Uh. The the flip side, as you say, is that like people now want to know, well, who's donating the money, and there is a list. I've seen the list, and uh there are all these different you know, companies and leaders and so there's a bunch of them that are on. The list, and why are they doing it? Okay? So, uh, well, I mean I don't know the I don't know every motivation of all of the people or companies involved, but I mean I can I can assume, like one would be one motivation would be staying Donald Trump's good graces, right, But also another motivation might be that you get you know, you get your name or your company's name listed. You know, they usually put. A say you sell navy rights like the station. No. No, but but look if you go you go to any public works project like Charlotte Mecklenberg City Hall. You go to Charlotte City Hall and there's a plaque there on the wall for and it has all of the elected uh city council members, county commissioners that were in office when the project was done. So they put their names on the wall. So I assume that the donors would have their names listed someplace, you know, on a donor wall, thanking them for uh for making it possible, right, And and also there might be some people who donated in order to just help build this ballroom. Maybe they've attended the events at the White House and there is no ballroom and they have to go outside in the tents, and they're like, yeah, you know what, we should have a state ballroom. And they wanted it, they wanted to see it get done. And maybe there are others. Phrase I think, yeah, I think you and I are on the same page. I'm just concerned that there's going to be because almost everything he's touched in his life, and maybe some of it had a little bit of I don't know where to smoke this fire in certain instances, but it just seems like he's really opened himself up for so many more questions and lawsuits and always are going to be grafted. And as his friend, as his cousin and his brother in law, is this that one, you know Kushner and he's a builder himself. Has he got his old guys in there, goombos and he's getting money back. But I'm glad he's getting it done. And I just want to, you know, sort of raise that with you, because I seriously doubt there's a tax right off. It's just another avenue of questions that no matter what he does, he's going to get kicked to ther fort. And he doesn't he doesn't care. Obviously he doesn't exactly. I was just going to say that bless him. Yeah, I was just going to say this guy, I mean, he's very nice. What is he like, seventy eight, seventy nine years old? Like, he does not care at this point. Right he's got his second term elected. He's he doesn't care if people are going to attack him. He's turned the business over to his son. He's running the Trump Enterprise now. So it's it's like he just wants to do this and look for a guy who has been a builder his whole life, I could see why this is he gets to kind of relive his old passion, his old glory, like he now he gets to be in charge of a building project right there at his house. And he loves it. I mean he said it yesterday. I think he was like, oh, I love the sound of the construction equipment, you know, going on in the background. And I think he does. I think he probably does. Yeah, he'll just send a memo to Congress and say we're building this. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Well, thank you so much. I'm sure you got other calls. I appreciate you taking the time. Yes, it's good here for you. Yeah, I have a great weekend. Yeah. No, I think there are different motivations for all the different donors. I don't know. Is it possible that you know there's a quid pro quo and corruption in all of this stuff. Yeah, that's possible. I don't know. I've not seen any evidence of it, but that's totally possible. I've said this since he came down the Golden escalator, which is, you don't do real estate in New York. You don't open a casino in Atlantic City and not have some connection to unsavory people, right, That's just the comes with the territory. So if you know that is the reality on the ground, right, then I'm sure you're going to be able to find some connections along the way. Now, well, we'll have to wait and see. See. I like this is my approach to Donald Trump because I would have gone crazy over the last decade if I were to not accept things as they are right, And that's why I think a lot of people suffer with TDS Trump derangement syndrome because they have this idea that reality is not real. Like again, if you are building a massive project, you are probably going to encounter certain elements in that world that may be a bit unsavory. Just throwing that out there. All right, Lee, welcome to the program. Hello, Lee, Hey, thanks Joing. I need to turn my radio down, Yes you do, as is customary in the radio business. Yes, sir, all right, hold only. All right, this is counting towards This is counting towards your time. Lee. I'm just letting you know this is counting against your clock. All right now, now, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Okay, Okay, Yeah, I was calling. I've been listening to you for a long time. Actxlan from Ashville. Nah. Actually I'm driving between Charles Ashville quite a bit and I'll always listen to your program. Well, thanks, I appreciate it. I was calling to uh, you know, I agree with the fact that we need a ballroom state to those people instead of using tents outside. That that is great. And I know that the outside of this building is going to sthetically look like the White House. Are similar. The only thing I'm worried about is going to be you know, and I'm not going to tell you about my views on Trump, but I am worried that the inside of this thing is going to have a signature of mor Lago or Trumps signature. You know. You talked about the book that his son wrote that he loved beautiful thing. Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I just don't want this thing to be gaudy. And when the next administration come, next president comes in, he's going to change it. That is my concern. And I want to thank you also for clear enough the fact that it's not taxpayer money, because I was I was having a hard time with that. Yeah. No, yeah, I hate Johnny those type things. Yeah. Donald Trump's preferred esthetic is not mine. Okay. I am not a fan of the gold plated everything. Not a fan of it. He is, whether you know, whether he puts too much of it in there. I know people are complaining about all the gold that he put in the Oval office. Yeah, I mean, like, but that's like you said, it's in the eye of the beholder. That's what he thinks looks pretty. He thinks his beauty And yeah, another president comes in, they want to change it, want to redecorate it. They're going to be able to do that too, just like they just like they change the interior of the White House. They do that, right. So you know, we'll see. I mean, that's that's my approach to virtually all things Trump is we'll see you. I agree that we need a place like that. Yeah, and so in that way. And it's not taxpayer money, because if it was taxpayer money, I would have a hard time with that with people not getting paid. Yeah, well, yeah, no, I got you, Lee. I appreciate the call man, Thank you very much. I will get into the shutdown as well. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand aperiences. 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They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. So let me get to some of the massages from the WBT text line driven by Liberty Buick GMC. And this is from Marty who says, why does the White House need so many steak dinners? Well, they serve chicken too, and salmon, probably all sorts of fancy for thinking it's not just steak. Oh okay, that's probably a voice to text thing going on there. He probably means state dinners. So why does the White House need so many state dinners? Well, I mean that's kind of what leaders of state do. They host all sorts of the meetings with foreign leaders, especially Donald Trump. I mean, the guy definitely an extrovert, a bit of a party animal, if you will. But he doesn't drink, but like he likes to socialize, he does his You know, it's about personal relationships. Politics is about personal relationships. Okay, I've said this for years. And you're more likely to get stuff done when you know the person, even if they're across the political aisle. Right, if you know them, you can call them up, you can talk with them. You've got some sort of a relationship that goes beyond just the politics, especially partisan politics. Right. And so leaders of state do this, They welcome other leaders to the White House. They do it all the time. Right, So if you're going to do the big state dinner, then like, why not have it in the ballroom because it also you could use the ballroom for all sorts of other things. It doesn't have to just be a state dinner, right, you can have other gatherings when you like, say you want to host when you're doing the Purple Heart ceremonies and stuff, right, you're doing stuff like that, you're giving out awards, you're having you know, you're bringing like they had, you know, a bunch of the people who had been targeted by Antifa for example, and you know they stick them in some conference room. Well, now you'd be able to go into this larger space and you could do a larger gathering like that. So look, every hotel has a ballroom for a reason, right, I mean, yes, to rent it out, but people, you know, when organizations are looking to do stuff and you've got a large number of people coming, you need that kind of space. And so rather than pitching tents out on the lawn, a ballroom makes sense. And by the way, if you can also you know, refortify the underground bunker which is under there, and you can harden the building so if God forbid, there ever is some sort of attack, that it's protected in a better way and you can create more defensive installments on the roof and around the building and stuff like. Yeah. Again, like I don't see any real downside to this. The only thing, you know is that people were mad that oh this this building got torn down. And that's why I said last time. This is like every development debate that I've ever witnessed in local politics. Whenever somebody comes in for a rezoning or they want to do a project, you always get people that are like, you know, I don't want anything to change. I like that thing just the way it is. It's the same I see it at you know, the HOA level, city level, state level. It's the same stuff all the time. I mean people on our neighborhood Facebook page. In my neighborhood that was clear cut right, forests and stuff that were just just leveled in order to put all of these houses there. And all these people move in over the last fifteen years, and then there's another area of woods and another builder comes in and levels that to build, and the people in my neighborhood are angry that we've disturbed the environment and habitat for the deer. It's like, well, you did that too, right. This is why I called it. You know, this is nimbiism, not in my backyard. It's this idea I got my little slice of heaven. Now I'm going to pull the ladder up behind me. And that way of thinking is prevalent in all of these rezonings and all of these development projects that I've seen throughout the last twenty five years. I've said this before. I would watch city council meetings in Ashville, and about ninety eight percent of the time the public speakers against any development project would start off by saying something to the effect of I moved here eight years ago, and now I don't want you to do anything to change the way things are. I don't want you to allow for more building of housing. I don't want any new development. It's like you just got here. You came here and bought a house because other people built those houses before you arrived. You know. Let me see here. I did get an email from John I cannot believe that Donald Trump just bulldozed the East Wings. So much history is lost. That is where George Washington planned and wrote the Gettysburg Address. That very room is where Abe Lincoln told fireside bedroom stories to Teddy Roosevelt as a young child. Hundreds of years of history just wiped out. I believe that is also where the President learned that the Germans had just bombed Pearl Harbor. Here's a great idea. 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Now, yeah, this is why I call it art by explanation that it doesn't actually have any kind of intrinsic beauty. The beauty is therefore not conveyed to the viewer, and therefore it needs some sort of a placard in front of the piece to tell you what the artist was trying to do. So an explanation of why this is worth your time and detention. And then once explained, oh wow, this heap of trash is supposed to symbolize whatever you know. I've i over the years, I have had a great deal of fun highlighting awful things that are paid for with taxpayer dollars that masquerade as art. I'm not going to go over all of them right now, although the classic one was at the Police Academy when they hired some quote unquote artist who made some chicken wire structure that was supposed to look like the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department shield, which is like representative of the hornet's nest, which dates back to the that's a callback to the Revolutionary War, you know, as a corn wallace came in and stirred up a hornet's nest, that whole thing, and it was so obviously not a piece of art that a janitor threw it away. He did not know it was art, Yeah, because it wasn't. So this is from Melissa. It's a Pete tweet. Everything should have beauty, whether it be functional or not. I watched my father spend twenty years of his life restoring an eighteen fifties Victorian home to its original glory. I grew up with the smell of a butane torch as he stripped baseboard after baseboard of years and of lead paint every evening after he came home from work. Recall the words of the patron and artist of the Sistine Chapel Pope Julius. The second, when will you make an end? Michelangelo said, when I am finished. Well, look Thomas Jefferson, right, he never completed Monticello. That guy was always doing improvements on his home, like it was in a constant state of construction all the time. M Yeah, the helliat says. The orange discs by the light rail. Yeah, like I said, I have done this. I have done this topic so many different times over the years. And the orange the big Claye discs along the light rail line is one of the examples that I cite. Pat McCrory called it corridors of crap. Anybody that brings up cost of the project will not want to talk about why it's that expensive in that town. Yeah, no, that's true. Don't forget about the interactive art piece in the Mecklinburg County Courthouse that broke shortly after it was made. But yeah, I have cited that one as well. It's all these little heads on strings dangling over the lobby, and it was supposed to like change. It was a neat idea. It just it broke immediately, and so they like when you're on the floor looking up at it, it looks like a face and then it just kind of it keeps changing and uh and yeah it broke. Yeah, DEI artists, it's rich. This I don't know who this is from seven oh four number. It's rich when libs are complaining about the loss of history in the White House renovations, when all the historical staff choose were removed from the country a couple of years ago. Yeah, that's why it's I don't believe that they are outraged at the loss of this historical office building. You know, let me see here to do on topic, people, pete everybody has short term memory loss forty four, So who would that be forty four? That would have been Obama spent over three hundred and sixty million dollars ripping up the front lawn and other White House changes taxpayer funded. All. Yeah, yeah, presidents do this all the time. I think what they have a problem with is the fact that he's going to leave his mark on the White House for decades to come, and that's killing them. That's exactly right. That is from David And I'm trying to u this is seven oh four number. Has nothing to do with preservation of the building, per se, or the east wing per say, it's all about hey, hey Trump, I guess hating Trump. That's what That's what it is. They hate Trump. Anything he does, they hate him. The thing is being paid for by donors, that doesn't matter. They hate Trump. Okay, So, and John says here the caller that was worried about the reasons behind the private donations to the White House renovation. If you recall, back in the eighties, the Statue of Liberty was refurbished, and that was all done with private donations as well. Things like this happen all the time when it is something of national interest like that. Yeah. No, it's a good parallel, all right. If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why. Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground dot news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot Ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Alrighty, So the Democrat strategy on the shutdown is pretty obvious at this point. And in case you were unaware, the number two Democrat in the House Catherine Clark, she is the Deputy whip. I believe she said in an interview the other day that there will be families that are going to suffer, but it's one of the few leverage times we have. And by the way, over in the Senate, the Democrats once again blocked a vote to open the government up, and in this case they blocked a vote I think yesterday to pay government workers that were affected by the shutdown, and Democrats blocked that it was just a straight up measure to pay employees, and Democrats rejected it, and this video clip went viral, and the Speaker of the House has been They rolled a TV out in front of the Speaker, Mike Johnson's office. There's a little hallway there and they rolled a TV screen out and they just put this clip on repeat. And so now that's what you see when you walk up to the to the Speaker's office. Because remember Democrats were going to the Speaker's office doing these are stunts, these viral videos they were trying to make like, you know, open a government up and all this. They don't want the government up, opened up unless they get this demand of theirs, which is to make permanent the temporary subsidies for the Affordable Care Act Obamacare. That's what this is about. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that over the next ten years, the Democrat's permanent subsidy expansion would cost taxpayers three hundred and fifty billion dollars on top of the billions and permanent subsidies that's already on the books. David Winston wrote a piece at roll call dot com and he tracks. He documents the history in case you weren't aware of how this all played out with Obamacare. I remember this. I was covering this at the time. Okay, this is a crisis of democrats own making. Goes back fifteen years. Obamacare was rammed through on party line votes in twenty ten. Okay, in December of two thousand and nine, in the Senate, Democrats had a filibuster proof majority of sixty seats, so they had passage all but guaranteed. It passed on a strictly partisan vote without a single Republican on board, and it included a subsidy for low income users, but not the enhanced subsidies, so more subsidies today. Shortly after that, Republican Scott Brown won the Massachusetts special election, and Democrats now did not have their sixty votes, so they could not end the filibuster on a partisan vote, and that forced the House Democrats, a lot of whom had reservations about Obamacare's design. It forced the House Democrats to vote for the Senate bill as is. Additionally, the loss of the Senate seat in Massachusetts worried Democrats about whether or not Obamacare was going to cost them control of the Senate and the House. The healthcare bill went back to the House, which eventually passed the Senate version. All Republicans opposed it, along with thirty four Democrats. That's how that happened. Okay, the bipartisan vote was against Obamacare. The temporary enhanced premiums that are at issue today are the result of COVID nineteen and were added as part of the American Rescue Plan, which was proposed by Biden passed by Democrats in March twenty twenty one. Democrats had the White House, they had majorities in the Senate. In the House, but they did not have a filibuster proof Senate, so the American Rescue Plan was turned into a reconciliation bill so they could avoid the filibuster. Democrats included language that the enhanced premiums were supposed to be temporary. They would expire at the end of twenty twenty two, and then came twenty twenty two, and they didn't want them to buyer, so they did the Inflation Reduction Act. Part of that got spun off as a reconciliation bill so they could pass it on a party line vote. Didn't get any Republican votes in the Senate. This required you'll recall Kamala Harris to cast the tie breaking vote for passage, she being the Vice president at the time. The bill extended the temporary premiums the enhanced premiums through twenty twenty five. See so Democrats, when they were in control, they kept doing this. They kept creating increased subsidies, and they kept sunsetting them. They kept making them temporary. They could have made the credits permanent back then or extended them for ten years. Instead, they chose to extend them only three because there was others spending in the Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats prioritized over these premiums. Despite Senate majority leader John Thuns offered to discuss the enhanced subsidies issue as soon as government reopens, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have refused to budge on their demand for a permanent extension that would add three hundred and fifty billion dollars to the Continuing Resolution. And here is what Jeffries was asked on CNBCS. It said, what you are asking the Republicans to do right now when they control the White House, the Senate, and the House is effectively what the Democrats could not do when they controlled all three of those heads of government themselves. The ten year setup for this, for these the three year setup for the expiration of these credits was intentionally put in. It was put in when you controlled the White House, the House, and the Senate. You couldn't get it passed for longer. And so this is a setup, the kind of your own creation that you all couldn't extend beyond that. Now you want the Republicans to do something you didn't do when you were in power. Yes, it's not a setup. It is beyond what we could do. We extended the Affordable Care Act tax credits in twenty twenty two for three years. Right. The program is working. It's providing healthcare to tens of millions of people in an affordable way. Right. That's why everybody's complaining about the cost of its skyrocketing. Right, And then why the additional subsidies are now needed. Now, this was always an albatross. This was always sold to us as better and cheaper than it actually is. Democrats want Republicans to do the thing that Democrats could not do when they controlled more power than Republicans currently enjoy. 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 dpeteclenarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.