GaetzGate and loyalty tests (11-15-2024--Hour1)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] I'm not going to get into the McFadden stuff. I know there was a development. Somebody else has now come forward and talked about how bad of a leader he is. But I feel like I spent a lot of time discussing the sociopath yesterday. So I'm just going to let that breathe a little bit. We'll circle back. We'll Psaki back to it. Like Monday or so.

[00:00:51] So Matt Gaetz, huh? Yeah. Matt Gaetz as Attorney General.

[00:01:00] I think a lot of people are missing what the real win is with this, if he were to be confirmed as the Attorney General in the Trump administration.

[00:01:11] The real win, I think, is that we're going to get to use Gatesgate and all sorts of other, you know, blank gate, gate, gates, blank gates.

[00:01:26] Like all sorts of scandals are going to get nicknames. All sorts of investigations are going to get nicknames with gate at the end of it or gates rather at the end of it.

[00:01:37] I think that's the real win for America today with the Matt Gaetz pick. Now, you may be asking yourself, how is Pete so smart on this stuff? And I don't know the answer to that.

[00:01:47] You might also be asking, why Matt Gaetz? Yes, he has great hair.

[00:01:57] And I had not noticed this before, but I did receive a message from Andy who said it could be the nice hair, right?

[00:02:10] Gates, but also Marco Rubio, right? Nice head of hair.

[00:02:16] This guy, Burgum, from one of the Dakotas, South Dakota, I think, or North Dakota.

[00:02:23] Great hair.

[00:02:25] He pointed out Kristi Noem, and I guess she's got nice hair too, but a lot of nice hair picks.

[00:02:32] So that could be it.

[00:02:37] He also pointed out it could be the lack of pronouns in their ex or Twitter profiles.

[00:02:43] But, as I mentioned yesterday, in a breaking news development, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has removed her pronouns from her bio.

[00:02:53] So I'm not sure that that matters anymore.

[00:02:56] It's, and it is a, I mean, yes, it's comical, and yes, we can all make fun of AOC for taking the pronouns off of her profile.

[00:03:08] But I don't think it's, I don't think it's a little thing, you know?

[00:03:13] It seems like it's a little thing, but when somebody with the stature and profile of AOC removes her, she, her, whatever pronouns off of her Twitter profile,

[00:03:29] I feel like that might be indicative of a preference cascade occurring, right?

[00:03:37] If somebody of her profile is removing the pronouns, that gives the permission structure for others of lesser profiles to do the same.

[00:03:48] I see these pronouns in people's email signatures all the time.

[00:03:54] I mean all the time.

[00:03:56] We get them all the time.

[00:03:58] Because we get emails from publicists, marketing people, PR, comm staff, you know, all different government agencies and corporations, nonprofits, all sorts of people that send us stuff.

[00:04:11] Hey, can I get so-and-so on the program to talk about whatever, whatever?

[00:04:16] And then you scroll down and you see, you know, oh, it's coming from a PR person, and there's the she, her.

[00:04:24] I don't think I've ever seen in any of the, I don't know, hundreds that I have seen over the last, say, two years or so, I don't think I've ever seen a they, them.

[00:04:34] It's always she, her.

[00:04:37] I mean, that's mainly because mostly people that are in that field are female.

[00:04:43] The marketing field is just packed with women.

[00:04:47] Just a heads up, boys, if you're going to college.

[00:04:49] But seriously, like that's a field that is dominated by women.

[00:04:54] And so all of these PR pitches, they come to us and it's all she, her.

[00:04:59] So I think there might be something to it.

[00:05:02] Now, back to Matt Gaetz.

[00:05:07] There have been several theories that are kicked around now about why Trump would pick Matt Gaetz.

[00:05:13] And you know me, I'm an Occam's razor kind of a guy.

[00:05:16] It gets closest to the skin without causing the razor bumps and stuff.

[00:05:22] And so that's why I generally use it.

[00:05:24] It is, no, it's a way of thinking.

[00:05:29] And I try to kind of always start from there.

[00:05:31] Not to say that I reject any kind of more elaborate explanation or weird explanation.

[00:05:36] But when absent anything else to help me make a determination on what it is that I'm seeing,

[00:05:43] I try to just kind of default to what is the obvious explanation?

[00:05:47] This is the, you know, when you hear hoofs, you think horses, not zebras.

[00:05:54] Right?

[00:05:55] Why?

[00:05:56] Well, Occam's razor kind of lead you to believe that the most obvious or easiest or rational or simplest to explain explanation is the explanation.

[00:06:08] And it might not be, but it's a good bet.

[00:06:11] Right?

[00:06:12] Again, absent any other information.

[00:06:14] So my Occam's razor approach on Trump's pick of Gaetz is that he likes him.

[00:06:22] He likes Matt Gaetz.

[00:06:23] He likes the way, he likes the cut of his jib.

[00:06:28] He looks the part.

[00:06:29] Right?

[00:06:30] That's important to Donald Trump.

[00:06:31] You want to be telegenic.

[00:06:32] You want to be able to go on TV.

[00:06:33] You want to look the part.

[00:06:36] And that makes sense.

[00:06:37] Right?

[00:06:37] Donald Trump comes out of media.

[00:06:39] So that has always made sense to me.

[00:06:42] He wants somebody that can perform well on television.

[00:06:45] Because that person is a reflection of Trump.

[00:06:48] And so he wants somebody on TV that looks good, sounds good, and can, you know, argue well in defense of Trump.

[00:06:56] And I think Matt Gaetz checks those boxes.

[00:07:00] I've watched him for years.

[00:07:02] I mean, whatever your opinion is of the guy.

[00:07:04] And look, I am not a Gaetzophile.

[00:07:08] All right?

[00:07:09] I'm not a big, I'm not a Gaetz lover.

[00:07:11] Okay.

[00:07:12] That was not a good choice of words.

[00:07:15] My bad.

[00:07:15] No, I'm not somebody who is enamored with Matt Gaetz.

[00:07:22] I don't really care for him, actually, as a politician.

[00:07:27] I think he cares way more about just being on TV and sending out fundraising letters and making a name for himself, building his brand and all of that.

[00:07:36] I think he cares more about that than actual public service.

[00:07:39] But as the former congressman, former minority whip or majority whip, I forget, Patrick McHenry, I talked with him over the years on numerous occasions.

[00:07:54] And one of the things that he described was the difference between, you know, being a legislator versus a bomb thrower.

[00:08:01] And when he first got into Congress, McHenry was a bomb thrower for Tom DeLay.

[00:08:08] Was he the Speaker of the House or was he Majority Leader?

[00:08:11] I forget.

[00:08:12] But I think he was Speaker.

[00:08:15] But Patrick McHenry would go and toss bombs at Democrats.

[00:08:20] And what he learned was that you don't get anything done.

[00:08:24] But he doesn't deny the importance of having those types of personalities in the body, right, in the House.

[00:08:30] You need some of those people because they toss bombs at everybody.

[00:08:34] And that helps to keep the Republican Party sort of, you know, between the lines.

[00:08:44] They get too far off.

[00:08:46] Boom, boom.

[00:08:47] Oh, my gosh.

[00:08:48] Minefield, you know, steer back.

[00:08:49] Course correct.

[00:08:50] So there is a benefit.

[00:08:52] But as far as getting things done, getting accomplishments that you think are important,

[00:08:58] you're not likely to succeed because nobody on the other side of the aisle wants to work with you.

[00:09:02] A lot of your own party members don't want to work with you.

[00:09:04] And so that is the mold that I think Gates fits into.

[00:09:10] So why was he selected?

[00:09:12] There are a number of theories going around.

[00:09:14] Matt Vespa over at townhall.com, you know, he asks, is it four-dimensional chess,

[00:09:20] which we know it cannot possibly be that because Trump only plays 72-dimensional chess.

[00:09:27] That's no four only.

[00:09:30] It's way deeper than that.

[00:09:32] It will take years for us to figure it out.

[00:09:34] Maybe it's a ploy to get Gates to resign from Congress.

[00:09:39] That's another theory.

[00:09:40] I don't buy that either, although he has now submitted his letter of resignation.

[00:09:45] State of Florida, Governor DeSantis is already moving forward with, you know,

[00:09:49] doing an appointment and then having a special election to fill the seat.

[00:09:53] But there was a, there's one theory that, again, whatever you think of Matt Gates,

[00:10:02] there's one theory that I find to be pretty interesting.

[00:10:05] I'm not persuaded yet, but I could be.

[00:10:09] A loyalty test.

[00:10:13] Not of Gates, but of all the Republicans.

[00:10:18] Trump doesn't care if Gates, you know, gets in or not.

[00:10:23] It's a test to see who will cross Trump.

[00:10:27] Gates is a loyalty test.

[00:10:30] I thought that was an interesting take.

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[00:11:36] So back to this piece.

[00:11:37] This is from Matt Vespa over at townhall.com.

[00:11:41] Because in case you were not aware about Matt Gaetz,

[00:11:44] he had an ethics report that was supposed to be,

[00:11:48] it was in the House Ethics Committee,

[00:11:51] and they were planning to vote today whether to release the report.

[00:11:56] You know me, I don't really make predictions,

[00:11:57] but I'm going to go ahead and go out on a limb on this one.

[00:11:59] It's going to get out.

[00:12:00] That report is going to get leaked.

[00:12:03] Especially if he goes through the Senate confirmation hearings.

[00:12:07] They're going to find out what was in that report.

[00:12:11] So there are all these rumors and speculations going around Capitol Hill

[00:12:16] about why he was nominated.

[00:12:19] And I think it is, I mean,

[00:12:21] I'm intrigued by this idea that it's a loyalty test of other Republicans,

[00:12:25] but I tend to come down on right now,

[00:12:28] just like I think Trump likes him.

[00:12:30] I think Trump thinks that he's going to take a flamethrower to this place.

[00:12:34] That's a Scent of a Woman reference there.

[00:12:36] Have you seen that one, John Moore?

[00:12:38] Have you seen Scent of a Woman?

[00:12:39] Not yet.

[00:12:40] Oh my gosh.

[00:12:41] I'll look it up.

[00:12:42] Yeah, go write that one down too.

[00:12:45] You watch a lot of programs,

[00:12:50] yet all of these iconic things I'm telling you,

[00:12:53] you haven't seen.

[00:12:55] How is that possible?

[00:12:56] What are you watching?

[00:12:57] Wrestling?

[00:12:57] Brooklyn Nine-Nine, man.

[00:12:59] Get hip.

[00:12:59] Get hip.

[00:13:00] I do need to watch that.

[00:13:01] It's pretty good.

[00:13:02] And Grey's Anatomy.

[00:13:03] That's it.

[00:13:05] I know, my wife made me watch that one.

[00:13:07] Wait, are you going back and watching the old ones?

[00:13:10] Yeah, we started at the beginning and went through, cycled through.

[00:13:13] Okay, well, after like season four or five, it's not worth it.

[00:13:17] Yeah, we're discovering that now.

[00:13:19] That's why Brooklyn Nine-Nine started up with us.

[00:13:21] Right.

[00:13:22] Yeah, there comes a point where you're like,

[00:13:23] yeah, you know what, I'm that way with Yellowstone.

[00:13:27] It's back, you know.

[00:13:28] I know, it's back.

[00:13:28] Do you watch that?

[00:13:29] Yep, we watched the new one the other night.

[00:13:31] Yeah.

[00:13:31] Yeah.

[00:13:32] And I don't even care.

[00:13:33] They took two years.

[00:13:35] It took two years for them to put out the second half of the, was it fifth season?

[00:13:42] I think it is.

[00:13:42] You need to watch a recap.

[00:13:44] Right.

[00:13:45] It's like, I've forgotten the storylines.

[00:13:48] And if you actually go back and watch all of it, it's kind of like, okay, none of this is believable anymore.

[00:13:54] It's just, there's, there's just too, I mean, there's too many like, like actual warfare operations occurring in Montana for this to be a big secret.

[00:14:04] You know, I just.

[00:14:05] It was like somebody needs a trip to the train station.

[00:14:08] Oh, I did see an interview with the guy who, who drives the truck to the train station at old, forget his name.

[00:14:15] Curly?

[00:14:15] Not Curly.

[00:14:17] Larry Moe?

[00:14:18] No.

[00:14:18] I can't remember.

[00:14:19] No, the guy with the big handlebar mustache.

[00:14:21] He's an actual cowboy that they put in the show.

[00:14:26] Yeah.

[00:14:26] It's cool.

[00:14:27] Cool.

[00:14:28] Dude.

[00:14:28] You've heard me say Trump has broken people's brains, right?

[00:14:34] On both the left and the right.

[00:14:36] He broke their brains.

[00:14:38] But apparently he also broke Democrats thermostat.

[00:14:43] I was not even aware that there was such a thing, but apparently there kind of is, at least according to John Byrne Murdoch at the Financial Times.

[00:14:55] And maybe you've seen this.

[00:14:56] I think Elon Musk tweeted out at some point one of these pictures you've probably seen, little stick figures.

[00:15:05] And there's like a guy in the middle and there's, you know, guy on the right side and it's the Republican, a guy on the left side.

[00:15:14] It's the Democrat.

[00:15:15] And then like the Democrat moves way to the left and then calls the guy in the middle a bigot.

[00:15:25] And it's representative of that.

[00:15:29] The Democrats went so far to the left that people who were liberal now found themselves.

[00:15:37] Considered to be, quote, of the right.

[00:15:41] And this fellow, John Byrne Murdoch, says that the main reason the Democrats lost the U.S. election is that inflation kills political incumbents.

[00:15:51] But that doesn't mean there are not other lessons in the results, too.

[00:15:56] Which, by the way, inflation is reckless deficit spending.

[00:15:59] I mean, that's that's what causes the inflation.

[00:16:03] And Democrats are very good at, you know, reckless deficit spending.

[00:16:07] And there are other reasons.

[00:16:12] Like, for example, there was another fellow at the was this the Stony Brook University School of Communication and Journalism fellow by the name of Musa Al Garbi.

[00:16:24] And he published a piece and he asks the questions.

[00:16:28] Did Trump win because of racism, sexism?

[00:16:32] Did he win because the elites bought the election?

[00:16:35] Did he win because of third party spoilers?

[00:16:37] Did he win because of weak turnout?

[00:16:40] Did he win because Harris chose the wrong running mate?

[00:16:43] And he says the answer to all of those questions is no.

[00:16:46] And it's easy to see how people would be drawn to the questions, but none of those hypotheses explain what actually happened.

[00:16:57] So back to the Financial Times.

[00:17:00] Data suggests that the Democrats and by the way, the headline on this piece is called Trump Broke the Democrats Thermostat.

[00:17:08] Data suggests that Democrats lost ground with moderates while holding steady among progressives.

[00:17:15] charges that racism propelled voters to Donald Trump are at odds with the rightward swing among black and Hispanic voters and with a raft of data showing that racial prejudice is in steady decline among Americans of all political stripes.

[00:17:34] I'm going to say that last part again.

[00:17:36] Racial prejudice is in decline among Americans of all political stripes.

[00:17:44] Something to consider.

[00:17:49] Why are people invested in telling you that racial animus has gotten worse?

[00:17:58] Why are people telling you that?

[00:18:01] If the data shows that racial prejudice has been in steady decline, why would you come to a conclusion that it's getting worse?

[00:18:12] Well, because you're being told it's getting worse by people who have an incentive to do so.

[00:18:19] Right.

[00:18:20] As Rush would call them the race hustlers.

[00:18:25] Instead, the data shows that Democrats took a sharp turn leftward on social issues over the past decade.

[00:18:32] This has distanced themselves from the median voter.

[00:18:36] And then he's got some fancy charts here.

[00:18:39] But I will just sort of paint the picture for you in hopefully less than a thousand words, even though a picture is worth a thousand words.

[00:18:47] But it shows three lines, a blue, a red and then a gray one.

[00:18:52] The gray one is the median voter.

[00:18:56] And when you look at the three lines, you got Republicans on the right because this is the test different different issues like affirmative action, immigration, whatever.

[00:19:07] And so you see Republicans, they hold positions that are on the right side of the scale.

[00:19:11] You have the median voter that's in the middle of the scale and you have the Democrat voters that are to the left of median voter going back to like 1996.

[00:19:23] They then swerve.

[00:19:27] Towards the center in 2000 through like 2005.

[00:19:33] And then right around 2006, 2007, they start veering off to the left.

[00:19:40] And by 2012, they take a hard left turn away.

[00:19:44] They are so far off to the left now, so far away from that median voter that the median voter is closer to the Republican line.

[00:19:54] The gray and the red lines are much closer together.

[00:19:59] The shift began in 2016, and it suggests that Trump's election radicalized the left, not the right.

[00:20:10] And I would submit media is responsible for most of that.

[00:20:17] All right.

[00:20:18] So back to this piece.

[00:20:19] It was at the Financial Times.

[00:20:22] America's decades long progress towards racial and sexual tolerance and equality has been a gradual shift led by progressives with the center and the right quickly following the shift.

[00:20:35] The pivots of the past decade, by contrast, have been abrupt and are leaving the majority behind.

[00:20:42] They are better characterized not as moves towards greater tolerance and equality, but as shifts in rhetoric or proposed solutions for addressing disparities where there's plenty of room for disagreement without bigotry.

[00:20:56] Many of these pivots originated with the activists and the nonprofit staffers that surround the Democrat Party.

[00:21:06] In a piece of research carried out in 2021, political scientists Alexander Furnas and Timothy Lapera at a think tank called Data for Progress found that these political elites or tastemakers hold views that are often well to the left of the average voter.

[00:21:26] No.

[00:21:56] No, not spread concern about speech policing among every group of Americans except one group.

[00:22:03] You know what that one group is.

[00:22:04] That's right.

[00:22:06] The progressive left.

[00:22:08] These shifts layered on top of increasing education polarization are change because that's where all of this crap comes from.

[00:22:17] They're changing the image of the Democrat Party in voters' minds.

[00:22:21] Survey data shows that in every election from 1948 through 2012, 60 years, American voters' image of the Democrats was as the party that stood up for the working class and the poor.

[00:22:34] But in 2016, when Trump first won, that flipped.

[00:22:39] Now it is seen primarily as the party of minority advocacy.

[00:22:46] In conclusion, let's skip ahead here.

[00:22:49] Whether or not progressives are ready to accept it, the evidence all points in one direction.

[00:22:54] America's moderate voters have not deserted the Democrats.

[00:22:58] The party has pushed them away.

[00:23:02] What have we been saying?

[00:23:03] There's a realignment happening.

[00:23:05] I've been calling it the Elysium Party.

[00:23:07] This guy at Stony Brook University, he said Democrats saw gains.

[00:23:11] His name is Musa Al-Gharbi.

[00:23:13] He says Democrats saw gains with white people this cycle.

[00:23:17] Harris did about as well with whites as Democrats typically do.

[00:23:21] She saw improvement with whites across gender lines relative to 2020.

[00:23:25] So why did she lose?

[00:23:27] Well, that would be because of shifts among non-whites.

[00:23:30] Non-whites across gender lines moved away from the party.

[00:23:34] Harris put up weak numbers with black women when you compare her performance to Hillary or Obama.

[00:23:40] Democrats' margins with Hispanic women shifted dramatically towards the Republicans.

[00:23:46] They saw losses with Asian women.

[00:23:48] Non-white men shifted even further.

[00:23:52] The preferred narrative on race is helpless to explain the trend lines among whites and the trend lines among non-whites.

[00:24:01] She didn't lose because of whites.

[00:24:04] She lost support among the whites because non-white voters had other ideas.

[00:24:12] She lost despite the solid support among the whites.

[00:24:16] All right, that'll do it for this episode.

[00:24:18] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:24:19] I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:24:24] So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here.

[00:24:27] You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepcalendershow.com.

[00:24:32] Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.