Green scamming, media malpractice, and a new leader for MeckDems (04-28-2025--Hour3)

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 dpeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for your support. It is Monday at two o'clock and that means that we speak with ap Dylan, a reporter for the North State Journal. You can read a reporting at nsjonline dot com. She also publishes a substack dot com newsletter called more to the Story, Ap, How are you today? I'm great, Pete. How are you doing? I'm doing all right myself. So you're like a machine. You just keep cranking out content all the time. So that's why I have you on so this way you can do it all and then I could just ask you about what you've written. So we I think we spoke about the Act Blue fundraising platform for the Democrats in the past, and the smurfing where people are surprised to find out that they have been their name and information has been used to make donations to Act Blue. They haven't actually lost any money, they're just seeing their name appear on these donations. And then also there was the the Act Blue platform. They failed to implement just like your basic safety security safeguards for credit card applications or not applications, but the use of your credit card to make a donation with the little CVV number on the back, you know, they're not they don't ask for that. And so this is now first off, it's now gotten the attention of the administration right and the House under the Republicans had already drawn up a pretty lengthy report about the problems that this Act Blue platform has had. And so why should people care? I'll start there with why should people care about whether this platform was protecting the credit card security? And why people should care about whether or not they were smurfing. Well, the failure of Act Blue to use the credit card verification code. They did that for quite some time where they weren't verifying the credit cards, which means that anyone could buy like a gift card, you know, vius a gift card and make a bunch of small donations in someone's name from anywhere in the world, and that money would get funneled to whatever candidate or whatever you know, campaign that was being run, or even an individual donor group that was running their money through there. So that means that foreign donations could have been coming into elections and to campaigns. And in fact, this was not new. I went over this, I think a couple a week or so ago, that this tactic was not new. Obama did the same sort of thing they allowed. They did not click a button basically to turn off donations from foreign sourcing, and that allowed them to keep pulling in all of this money from foreign sources and not reporting it. And then, of course he won and his FEC declined to pursue the matter after he won. So it's not a new tactic, but it essentially opens the door to foreign influence in our elections. And yeah, and the House Oversight Committee did a report on that that came out last December, right, And if anyone goes to the House Oversite website, you can look up the reports that they filed. There's a tab for that and pull that down. And it went over a number of different instances where they found hundreds and hundreds of donations under a particular universe the visual's name, and that person didn't make those donations, you know, like a little two dollars, like at least six or seven times a day for you know, an entire six month period, you know, totally some thing like fifty or sixty thousand dollars, you know, And those are some of the more egregious ones. There were ones that were there was a couple in there. I think there were over one hundred thousand dollars in donations over one to two year period. So that's a lot of money flowing into that into there. And the Trumble administration, President Trump went and signed a memorandum it said we're gonna we want to see this investigated. So it's hinted it off to Pambondi, the US Attorney General, to look into, right. And one other point is that it allows the Democrats to celebrate in tout we have all of these small dollar donations when in fact they're being made under like straw donors. They those people aren't actually making the donations. You can't even track it. Yeah, so there's that. There's also in your piece, this is at this at your sub stack more to the story. You then make a connection with Democracy Green, all right, what is Democracy Green? Democracy Green was a sort of a green group that received money under the Biden administration through the Inflation Reduction Act. It was part of the Green Deal items that were in there, and I think they got twenty million dollars to do something with removal of lead pipes and homes, and there was another function there. And the Washington freebee Can actually looked into this a couple months back and they found that this group based here in North Carolina. Actually their their address on all their filings is where in Fuquave Arena and was Southern Way County. And it turns out it's just a double wide house on a piece of property. This group has no background in doing any of that kind of work. And in fact, one of the women running, a woman named Wiggington. She her she's the CEO for this thing, and she's also got this very long resume of other organizations that she's involved with, including multiple organizations that were doing get out the vote stuff. So well, that's my kind of adjacent to wetland restoration, right, I mean, voter registration wetland restoration very similar. Yeah, exactly and you know, so I took a look at them, like, wait, what does this have to do with the other thing? And then I saw her. She had done a bunch of different events where she was talking about redistricting, including one with Wiley Nickel, yeah, running for Enco Senate against Tom Tillis, and a couple of other redistricting get out the vote things. Another one had, you know, a current Supreme Court Associate Justice Alison Riggs was the speaking the keynote person at this event, is before she was actually on the Court, before she was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Brod Cooper and then again appointed up to the Supreme Court. So I found that very interesting that this person who's involved with the Democracy Green is also doing all these vote, get out the vote things. So it begs the question where did the money for this twenty million dollar project that they have no experience in doing actually go. Yeah, twenty million for environmental and climate grants and the grant was for wetland restoration and lead pipe removal from Holmes and the Washington Free Beacon did the story that found the group has no capabilities to fulfill the grant's purpose. It also has shady finances and is cited as a grift, which, yeah, that raises some red flegs. I did like whereas it. According to her personal website, her name is Lea Misha Whittington and she is the president and CEO of Democracy Green Now. Her family members are also leaders of the group. This Sanja Whittington co founder Robert Winnington junior co founder. But on her personal website she describes herself as the eco architect is a revolutionary environmental injustice disruptor on the underground railroad of environmental liberation. I'm not sure, Like, if you were playing the woke bingo game, I think you would win. Oh my gosh. That's why I grabbed that quote off over there, because I thought to myself, well, that just packs it all in in one sentence. It's impressive. It really is impressive. Now, I would also point out she also listed her experience with Blueprint NC. Blueprint Yes, Blueprint n c R old pals over at Blueprint North Carolina. She was a point into a border commission too by Governor Roy Cooper. Shocking. Yes, absolutely, commission. You also have a piece at your substack about the librarian who wrote a letter to state Representative Aaron Pare about House Built six point thirty six, which is designed to, you know, let parents have a say in whether or not the dirty books get to be on the bookshelves in their you know, kindergartner's library and such. And she makes this argument that because she is an expert in the librarian science is or whatever they call it, that she knows best, which I think is probably news to parents. They were not aware of that. I'm assuming well. You know, as I wrote in the article, but parents are the experts on their own children, and therefore they should have say about what's good or bad for their child to be doing in the classroom. I don't think a lot of folks understand just how bad some of these books are. I've looked at a number of them, and they are, in my opinion, pornographic and overtly sexual, the kind of thing that you couldn't put on the news and. You can't read at the school district board meetings. Yeah, and you can't read them at school district bard meanings. But yet we've got school boards defending them actually being on the shelves. Now, you know, if parents want to go buy this thing off of Amazon for themselves. That's great, but it's not necessarily the most appropriate thing to be in a public K twelve library. Yeah, it's one of the things I've been on a mission to try to get at least one of the reporters up in to use the word curate instead of book ban because the word is curate. That's what we're describing here, is to curate the material, as all libraries do. Yes, but you know, we've got groups out there, like the American Library Association who have outed these books and actually given them awards, and the school boards or these panels that are viewing these books are using that as a shield to keep them on the shelves. You know, Oh, it won this award or it was you know, approved by the American Library Association. Yeah, well, Lottie does. The leader of the American Library Association a year ago was the overt socialist who basically said it was their mission to go in and change my hearts and minds in libraries. Right, So there's a problem. Track it back too, I did this last week. You track it back to also the lack of American white men who get published writing fiction for young men. They there's like their blacklist did in the industry. So you've got the whole funnel basically controlled by leftist woke and so there's just their books aren't being they're not being written, and they're not being published for the libraries to even put on the shelves. It's crazy. So one other, one other story you got real quick North State Journal Online. The Wait County Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. You guys, congratulations up at Wake County. You're now spending over a million dollars for the DEI office. That's exciting stuff. Yeah, well, you know all these DEI you know, pieces of legislation and the Trump administration, you know, calling DEI and education. That got to me thinking, well, you know what about county offices? What about county level things? And you know, Wake County is you know, a booming thee High area actually from the Raleigh City Council all the way to its border commissioners, and it's in its county level offices. And I took a look at the Longhold. Yes, they have a DEI office. Their website is down and being revamped. I was being told like an access that after I began my record's request, the fight suddenly went down, but you know, iwayback machine everything, so it's on the way back machine and you can see that they have like four or five employees there and their salaries are the bulk of the one point one seven million over you know that million dollars for this current twenty twenty five budget. That just kind of blew my mind. What are these people being paid in two right? And are they going to now be running a foul of federal law state laws that are trying to crack down on this very kind of operation. We'll have to leave its interesting though, Yeah, no, I agree absolutely. You can read or work at nsjonline dot com. The headline on that one is Wake County DEI Office spent nearly one point two million dollars AP. Dylan, thanks for your time. As always, we appreciate you. Thank you, Pete, take care all right? So spring is here a time of renewal and celebrations. You've got graduations, weddings, anniversaries and especial days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by? Are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, eight millimeter films, photos slides. Are they preserved because over time, these precious memories can fade and deteriorate, losing the magic of yesterday. 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On Saturday, they picked their new chair Wesley Harris. Harris defeated Cromer and Vilma Leak, a Mecklemberg County commissioner, black woman. They Yeah. He beat Chromer and Leak with seventy six percent of the vote and pledged to unite the party. The Democrat Party picked Wesley Harris as chairman at their annual convention. He will lead the party through the twenty twenty six midterms as it looks to defend its dominance in local races, improve Democratic margins in the General Assembly, and counter the Trump administration sweeping policy shifts. Despite the record setting fundraising that the previous chairman was able to realize, increased staffing and publicity about efforts to get voters to the polls, in twenty twenty four, voter turnout in Mecklimberg County heavy Democratic, Mecklimer County once again trailed the rest of the state as Democrats failed to flip the battleground state for Kamala Harris. Days later, the county party's then executive director, Manifa Drayton resigned with a letter that compared her experience to that of quote professional black women during the Jim Crow era. This yeah okay. Harris announced his campaign to challenge Cromer in February. He sent an email to supporters saying that his statewide race gave him a front row seat to the dysfunction that has led our core voters to lose trust in our ability to lead. I forget, what did Harris run for? Yeah, forget it's it's in the article. Someplace he lost that that statewide seat. It was a Council of State race. It wasn't auditor treasurer. I think he ran for treasurer. But so he says that gave him a front row seat to the dysfunction in his own party. There was a lot of disappointment on November fifth, he said, But the thing that stung the most to me, the one that was the most personal, was seeing Mecklenberg County drop the ball yet again. Vill Maleak, a fixture in local politics for decades, announced her own candidate see at the convention. So she's just like, yeah, Ron, what the heck? Harris ultimately got seventy six percent of the votes precincts. Get here you go. This is my favorite part of the article. Precincts get different numbers of votes based on how many votes were cast for the Democratic nominee for governor in each precinct in the last election, according to state party rules. This is why I call it the Democrat Party and not the Democratic Party. They wait their votes. So if you are in a precinct that has, you know, one hundred percent Democrat voters for the governor, then you get a bigger share of votes to cast for the chairman. Yeah, some, I guess some Democrat voters are more equal than others. In his acceptance speech, Harris called for or more civil debate within the party. So there's going to be an intensive training and education project on how exactly to be civil if you are a Democrat debating. That's going to be a large enterprise. Notice also that it's just how to be civil within the party. See, you guys got to be able to switch it off. You know, when you're arguing with Democrats, you can't be calling them Nazis and fascists and bigots and sexists and racists and all of that stuff. We need you to reserve that solely for the Republicans that you're debating, because that really works very well, in case you haven't realized, it works really well, the ad hominem attacks. It's a go to to win debates. Just call people a bunch of names and then you win. That's what I understand the tactic to be. Harris repres vent parts of southern Mecklenburg from twenty nineteen through twenty twenty four in the North Carolina House. He ran here it as unsuccessfully for state treasurer. In twenty twenty four he lost to the Republican Brad Briner by a margin of like five points, so he will now be the head of the Mecklenburg Democrats. Good luck to him. Here's a great idea. 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Alex Thompson is a reporter for Axios, and he was the recipient of a prestigious award that also carries with it a monetary prize of twenty five hundred dollars. And so she gave the following intro to Alex for his award winning now work covering the Biden administration. The judges said Thompson's aggressive reporting on President Biden, especially leading up to and after the Trump Biden debate, revealed the president's cognitive decline was impacting his ability to do his job. Information the White House tried to conceal Ladies and gentlemen. The White House Correspondence Association is pleased to give the Aldo Beckman Award to Alex Thompson. Have you ever heard of the word hutzba the audacity you gave Alex Thompson an award for his aggressive reporting on the cognitive decline of Joe Biden before the debate. Please Alex Thompson then gets up there takes his award, thanks a whole mess of people. And I feel the need to point it out because I feel like it's a little relevant here. But the aggressive reporting on Biden's cognitive decline occurred after the debate, after when the coup was launched. To my bones, I believe that reporting and the White House Corresponds association is as necessary as ever. President Biden's decline and it's cover up by the people around him is a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is capable of deception. It the cover up wasn't just with the people around him. So this is them saying, oh, look like we just couldn't figure the story out because they covered it up so well, please. We could tell we were making jokes about it in Biden's first run in twenty twenty. Well, I guess that would be a fourth run for president. But we could tell then they had him locked in the basement for COVID reasons and all of that. We could tell he had he had issues, and it got worse and worse and worse. I was talking about it regularly, and I would I would constantly point out I'm not attacking him. It's this is not something like if you had ever had somebody in your family suffering from cognitive decline, these types of dementia related issues. It is a very difficult thing, and somebody needed to be there to say that, and nobody in that White House Press Corps did. But being truth tellers also means telling the truth about ourselves. We myself included, missed a lot of this story, and some people trust us less because of it. Yes, right, Steven Miller, writer at The Spectator, says, the only people who somehow missed the story just all happened to be in the same room with Alex Thompson Saturday night. Like all of those people were the only people that couldn't see this was happening. We bear some responsibility, true, for faith in the media being at such lows. Oh yes, yes, I bear some responsibility. Let's move on, now, let's move on. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust and being defensive about them further erodes it. We should have done better. I believe our mission is vital in a world where people are struggling to figure out what's true and people with power are not telling the truth. Right, So now that we've gotten past that part where it's like, yeah, yeah, we had some roll in it. I mean we were lied to, they covered it up, they weren't truthful to us, and we bear some of that responsibility. But now let's move on and really stick it to the next administration, right, a renewed sense of purpose. Let's really go after who's in the office now, Oh it's Donald Trump. Well, I guess we're going to have to, you know, just redouble our efforts here because it's our new restated mission or something. Steven Miller pointed out, Yeah, we noticed Biden's weird wandering off three years before his AID suddenly started umbrella in him. That's when Axios reported it, and the first Alex Thompson like they're they're pointing out, where is it here? I've got a yeah, here's the tweet that that is being held up by like his colleagues in the Beltway media. That back in June eighteenth, twenty twenty three. Okay, so this is like a year before the debate, but still two and a half years into the presidency. He says Biden's weird phrases are sometimes weaponized by the GOP to insinuate the eighty year old president is in mental decline. But Biden has been using these unique phrases for years, even as some of his aides remained confused by their meaning. This is the they gave the award to. He's pointing out in June of twenty three that the GOP is weaponizing Biden's malapropisms and him biting his wife's hand while she's giving a speech, remember that one. Yeah, that was all just brushed aside. Oh, that's just Joe being Joe. Oh you know, he's just a he's his uncle Joe. He's Oh, that's just his way. Yeah. No, people were noticing it, and what God. Alex Thompson. The praise from his colleagues was a story he wrote about how they had to surround Joe Biden literally with people when he would walk to the helicopter. Remember that we covered it. The only reason you do that after you put him in some new nikes or actually like some morthodic shoes to help with his balance because he was having gait problems. He was having issue walking and he was shuffling and like he wasn't. Yeah, they would do these like little trots out to the to the chopper and stuff. But people started realizing, as he's walking, he's looking worse and worse and worse. So they slapped new shoes on him and then surrounded him with a bunch of aids. Why to stop him from falling. Maybe probably though, to stop the media from getting video of him. And because they did that, oh well, we just can't possibly tell that his gait has deteriorated. I don't know what. Gosh, they were just so adept at at fooling all of us intrepid reporters. You should quit your job then. If you were that easily duped, then you should not be doing the job that you are doing. 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 probably heard me say get your news from multiples. 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. I mentioned Steven Miller, writer at The Spectator. He posted yesterday. He said, I'll keep saying it that until journalists, any journalist, explains why a Los Angeles Times reporter's question made it onto a typed out note card in the President's hand prior to her asking it. Literally, none of this performative distancing matters, none of it, and as of now, not a single one of these reporters wants to answer it. It is the biggest scandal in American politics in my view. You may disagree, other scandals bigger, worse, whatever, but you have a president who is in cognitive decline. They said they have put up all of these safeguards around him to keep it hidden, even though they couldn't. And the reporter class, the press Corps is now pretending like they were deceived the whole time and had no idea. These are the same people, by the way, who labeled anybody on the right who was pointing this out. They called it cheap fakes. The White House Press secretary called the video of Joe Biden wandering around aimlessly, they called it a cheap fake, and that was then regurgitated by these very same reporters in the Press Corps. And now they want to pretend that, okay, some mistakes were made, we just couldn't see it. Forest for the trees whatever. And now they want to let's turn the page on that chapter and let's just, you know, focus on some other stuff. I want to give credit to a guy named Sam Fragoso. He apparently runs a podcast called Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, and he got Elizabeth Warren on his podcast. I have no idea what this guy's politics are. I assume they are of the left, because I doubt she would go on this podcast if he wasn't. But I don't know that, and it doesn't matter. What matters is he actually asked her the questions and tried to hold her more accountable for her lies than anybody in that DC Press Corps. For all the awards they give themselves, they don't do this. They're not asking that La Times reporter how her question ended up in the President's hand before she asked it. That's uncomfortable. That's awkward. That's almost as awkward as a Bill Belichick interview on CBS. It's awkward. They don't want to do it because they know the answer. They know how it got there. There's only one way it gets there. She gave it to them, They picked her, she wrote it, She gave it to them, and then they called on her and for her, her journalistic integrity was worth the price of her standing up and getting to ask the President that question. So kudos to Sam Fragoso. And here's how it went. I highly urge you look at the video clip. If you can find the video clip, it's out there on the YouTube's because her facial expressions during this exchange lay bare her lie. Do you regret saying that President Biden had a mental acuity. He had a sharpness to him. You said that up until July of last. Year, I said what I believed to be true. And you think he was as sharp as you. At this point, she does like this gag, shrug, kind of a reaction, like like incredulous that you would even compare the way I'm acting now to him. And then she kind of catches herself because that's the lie. She was telling everybody this. She was saying these things a year ago. I said, I had not seen decline. At this point, he raises his eyebrows. Cox's head to his side, to the side, and he's like really, like he's given her this look like really, one eyebrow arched. You know. You had not seen any decline, really, and I hadn't at that point. You did not see any decline. From twenty twenty four Joe Biden to twenty twenty one Joe Biden when. I said that, you know, the thing is heap. Look, he was sharp, he was on his feet. I saw him live event, I had meetings with him a couple of times. Senator on his feet is not praise. He can speak in sentences is not praise. Fair enough, fair enough. Look, he's exactly right, though you're not giving him a compliment by saying, Wow, look at that, he didn't fall over. That's amazing. Good for him. Ooh, he strung together words in a coherent sentence. That's amazing for the leader of the free world. Oh man, look how spry he is. That's not a compliment. Kudos to Sam Frogoso. It is. The question is what are we going to do now? Okay? And that's it. Move on, move along. So we had our moment, we had our accountability moment, and now what do we do now? She said, I think people ask about age. They've got every right. This was oh, hang on. This was from a previous interview on a podcast called Hassan Minhaj doesn't know came out in July, but it was recorded in April. And that's what this guy Fragoso was referring to. That Warren had said Biden was sharp and that he quote knows what he's talking about. And she said, you know, people have every right to ask about the age, and voters can ask about anything they want and make their decisions based on anything they want. That's the deal, she said, quote, it's a sharpness and a pointedness about what he is trying to accomplish. It's like messaging. You can have other issues you want to look at, but the heart of it is what does he deliver and is he delivering? So, in other words, all of your concerns about his cognitive decline are irrelevant because some other people are running the show. Don't worry about it. What is he delivering on it? And by he I mean Jill Biden, sorry, doctor Biden, and Hunter Biden and Jill's chief of staff and whoever was running the auto pen right they're delivering. Shut up about it. Look if he can beat Trump again and be you know, out to lunch mentally, it doesn't matter who cares. What matters is we got a bunch of leftist crazies surrounding Joe, so people can't videotape him on the way to the helicopter. But also then we can protect him, shield him, and then we can also do all of this stuff that you say you want, So just shut n't what the cognitive stuff. That's what happened, and media is gonna they're gonna just move right past it, 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 d Pete Callander show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.