I told you so. Plus, Doug Heye reacts to Tillis announcement (06-30-2025--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 thepeekalendershow.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.

[00:00:29] Now, you know me, I don't get into the predictions game mainly because I am terrible at it. Terrible. And there's really no value to making predictions unless you're going to actually keep a scorecard and say, here's all the times I got it right. And then you also have to give all the times you got it wrong. But nobody ever does that. No one ever comes out and they're like, oh, you know what? I got wrong again, this thing. And then I got this other thing right.

[00:00:58] They'll tell you when they got it right, though. That's why I don't get into the prediction business. I do warn, though. OK, I warn. And so I warned and I warned and I warned for like 15 years. I've been warning about expanding Medicaid in North Carolina. Republicans used to oppose it.

[00:01:23] And they opposed expansion of Medicaid under the Obamacare plan. And which, by the way, as I understand it, that fixed. That fixed the health care industry, which is why now Medicaid is like going to be completely destroyed by the Republicans or something. So, like, which is weird. I don't know. I thought we fixed it all. But now it's not fixed again or something.

[00:01:47] I guess it's like clearing out the backlog of the rape kits at the State Bureau of Investigations crime lab where Roy Cooper said that he had cleared it out. And then Josh Stein ran on a campaign of clearing out the backlog and then touted his success at doing so. So I'm not clear when they got cleared out, if they got cleared out with somebody lying about it. But whatever. Same thing with the Obamacare saving the health care industry, which is now apparently more expensive. But. I warned.

[00:02:17] The North Carolina Republican legislature. Do not expand Medicaid. And for 15 years they were they were solid on it. Then. What, two years ago, I guess it was. They finally caved. And they gave Roy Cooper his holy grail victory. The one thing I mean, to listen to Roy Cooper when he was governor.

[00:02:45] Expansion of Medicaid was the solution to darn near every single problem. That faced the state. In fact, that's why he brought. So goes the rumor up in Raleigh. That's why he brought on Mandy Cohen, who, as I understand it, has it going on. But brought on Mandy Cohen to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Because she was supposed to be there to usher in the expansion of Medicaid. Which did not happen while she was in charge. Happened only after she left.

[00:03:15] Got the gig up in Harvard and then went to work for the Biden administration. Or maybe that was vice versa. But either way, she was gone by the time Cooper finally got to drink from his holy grail. And that was the expansion of Medicaid. And the Republican legislature folded on this. And the claim was that, well, things have changed.

[00:03:40] And the federal government is, you know, still doing this 90% federal match. Which isn't a match. It's a subsidy. Right? If you're paying 90% of it. And so we should go ahead and do this, this 90% subsidy. So we should do it because, look, it's been around now for, what, 10 years. They've been offering this and we haven't taken it. And we should go ahead and do it because it doesn't look like it's going anywhere.

[00:04:08] And I said, you don't know that. You don't know that. Because the reimbursement rate, I want to say it was somewhere, I'm trying to remember what the Medicaid reimbursement rates are. Off the top of my head, I want to say it was like between 70 and 80%, something like that, that Obamacare did. And then they jacked it up to 90% as a big fat carrot to try to get states that were holding out, basically Republican states, that were holding out expanding Medicaid.

[00:04:37] And so you have now these two populations on the Medicaid rolls. The pre-expansion folks and then the expansion folks. And the pre-expansion folks represent a lower subsidy from the feds for the Medicaid. The expansion people represent a 90% subsidy.

[00:05:01] And when we, when the legislature voted to expand Medicaid, they said, look, the program hasn't gone anywhere. It doesn't look like it's going anywhere. It's now the time to do it. And we're going to be able to, you know, expand the rolls with all of these people. And some astute observers, if I do say so myself, like, well, me, pointed out, like, number one, that is going to be an undercount.

[00:05:26] Your projection of how many people sign up for the free service is going to be an undercount. This is what's called the woodwork effect, where people come out of the woodwork, right? People you did not expect to show up for the free service show up for the free service because it's free. And the expansion population are a different class of people. These are younger.

[00:05:54] They are able-bodied. They can work, right? And so, like, why are we extending these benefits to people who now have an incentive not to work? When you incentivize people to not participate in productive means of self-sufficiency, they will not do so unless they are personally motivated through some sort of, you know, moral, ethical, you know, compunction to go out and work.

[00:06:23] Because there is dignity and value in work. But work is hard. Work is boring. And it's annoying when you've got to sit next to that person that brings the smelly fish and puts it in the microwave at the office. Like, yeah, work stinks sometimes. Literally. Right? So you incentivize people not to work.

[00:06:42] And then you have a part of this which is called the welfare cliff where you layer on so many benefits to people of low income that they get to a point where if they are working and they are progressing in their career path,

[00:07:03] they get to a point where they would need to get somewhere, I think the cliff is somewhere around 60 grand, I want to say, and then you would need to jump. Or maybe it's 40K and then you need to jump to 60. I forget.

[00:07:18] It's like a $20,000, $25,000 jump or cliff, which is you're making the money, but as soon as you go past a certain income, now you start becoming ineligible for various welfare benefits, whether it's food stamps or Medicaid or whatever.

[00:07:37] And the drop-off, the value of that drop-off is so high that you would essentially need a $25,000 pay raise. And that doesn't happen. People don't move from, I guess, maybe if you're making six figures, $250,000 a year or something like that, then yes, you could move $20,000 in a year, I guess. But people generally, when you are working class, you're not making that kind of an income jump.

[00:08:07] An employer is not going to say, hey, you know what? We're going to now basically give you a 50% pay raise. And so you've created an incentive for people not to want to work because if they go above a certain amount of money in income, they lose their benefits. It is a completely rational decision for them to make.

[00:08:27] And so people like me were arguing against this expansion of Medicaid, even when Republicans in the state legislature started making the moves that, oh, you know what? We might be open to it now. They wanted to take the issue away from Democrats. Democrats. And lo and behold, here we are.

[00:08:54] The OBBBA, the one big, beautiful bill act, the ABBA, or the ABBA, I don't know. Anyway, this big, beautiful monstrosity that now Tom Tillis said, you can't do this because it's going to jam up the states. That was his reason for opposing the OBBBA. You're jamming up the states on Medicaid.

[00:09:25] And why? Because of the 90% subsidy. Because the thing that North Carolina Republican lawmakers said wouldn't happen, they were confident and wouldn't happen, now looks like it's going to happen. And it may have just cost Tom Tillis his seat. Well, let's be fair. There were a lot of reasons. There were other reasons that people were not too thrilled with Tom Tillis as their Republican U.S. senator.

[00:09:54] 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.ground.news. slash Pete.

[00:10:23] 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.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:10:52] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. All right. So we've got the one big beautiful bill act. It passed the House. It went over to the Senate. And U.S. Senator Tom Tillis from North Carolina, at least for the next 18 months, he voted against it. I have his floor speech. We'll listen to that later on in the program.

[00:11:19] And I will offer a – not a defense of him, but some food for thought, a particular angle that I thought of as I was watching it. And I'm curious what you think of it. So let me start, though, with this because this was June 28th, so this would have been Saturday. I was as shocked as anybody that the Senate was working on a weekend. But they have this vote, and Tillis puts out a statement, and he says,

[00:11:46] I will always do what is in the best interest of North Carolina, even when that puts me at odds with my own party. When Senate leaders of my party presented this bill, I did what every American should expect from their U.S. Senator. I worked to gather the facts and comprehensively analyze what the impact would be on the people I swore an oath to represent. I did my homework on behalf of North Carolinians, and I cannot support this bill in its current form.

[00:12:13] It would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina, including our hospitals and rural communities. This will – and by the way, I am going to go into some detail here about the scams that states have been pulling regarding the Medicaid reimbursements. Okay? And that's part of this issue, by the way.

[00:12:37] He says this will force the state to make painful decisions like eliminating Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands in the expansion population and even reducing critical services for those in the traditional Medicaid population. Now, defenders of the OBBBA, they're saying, well, this is to kick illegals off to make sure they can't get access to this stuff.

[00:13:03] But also, if you are a young, able-bodied person, there should be work requirements, right? So there are all different arguments about the Medicaid population roles. And to the left, they don't discern between anybody. Everybody should be able to be on Medicaid, Medicare, doesn't matter, government-run health care for everybody. That's what they want.

[00:13:31] They want to ration by access, not by price. Because those are your options, people. For health care services, everything is rationed. Everything is rationed in this life. Okay? It's either rationed by access or by price. Pick one. And what the left would prefer is that everything be rationed by access. Why? Control. Control.

[00:14:00] And they get to pretend that they are morally superior. That they care more than you do because they want everybody to have access to free health care. It's not free. Right? At all. It's not free. Number one. And number two, when you make a service free, as I outlined earlier with the woodwork effect, when you make something free, you have more demand for it. Because now people will go and try to take advantage of the free service because it's free.

[00:14:29] There's no cost to them. They're not going to make responsible decisions about their prioritization of certain health care and access and procedures and whatever. Because it's free. It's a rational response. Right? So you have people then that say we want to have it all rationed by access. Although they don't say that because that sounds terrible, particularly if you have examples like the UK, you have Canada, where it takes you, you know, two years to get a hip replacement. Right? Right?

[00:15:01] He says we can and must do better than this. The Senate should return to the House's Medicaid approach. That plan includes common sense reforms. By the way, anytime I see this term, common sense reforms, like I know that you are BSing me. Because what people say, oh, it's common sense. Is it though? Or is that just you telling me that I should just accept what you're telling me? Otherwise, I don't have common sense. It's almost like this implicit insult, you know?

[00:15:32] Common sense reforms, he says, to address waste, fraud, and abuse and implements work requirements for some able-bodied adults to ensure taxpayer-funded benefits are going to our most vulnerable neighbors. What he's talking about here is the amount of money that the hospitals get back. That's what he's talking about. The House had a lower or a higher number. The Senate cut that number. And so he's trying to protect hospitals.

[00:16:02] That's what that sounds like to me. Anyway, he says, there is a lot for North Carolinians to love about the rest of the one big beautiful bill, including extending the historic Trump tax cuts, increasing the child tax credit, providing historic funding for border security, and ending wasteful spending. We can and must accomplish this without hurting our rural communities and hospitals and without jeopardizing access to care for hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians who need it the most. He doesn't say anything in there about the price tag.

[00:16:33] That's a major objection that I have, is that the OBBBA does not seem like it's reducing the deficit. And I understand reconciliation process, and you can't do it through this process. Otherwise, you know, you could have the Democrats and the filibuster. I get it. But nobody's talking about the amount of money this is going to cost. This bill will cost. Now, Trump world says, don't worry, we're going to grow our way out of it.

[00:17:01] And I don't believe that to be the case. Now, I could be wrong, but I just don't see that happening. The amount of money that we are spending is on an epic pace. And very soon, what we just saw last week or two weeks ago, turns out Social Security not going to be able to pay out its benefits in like what? Ahead of schedule, like 2032 or something like that.

[00:17:30] It is unsustainable. We are going to go bankrupt. I am with Elon Musk on this. Like, this is the number one threat that America faces. It is the profligate spending and the interest on the debt. We will be spending like a trillion dollars just on interest payments. It is unsurvivable. And we have leadership that does not want to address it because you end up with these kinds of arguments like Tillis is making here about,

[00:18:00] we can't get rid of this government program because the hospitals will have to eat more of the costs or something. Yeah. Lots of bad decisions have led us to this point. Making more bad decisions isn't going to get us out of it. Here's a great idea. Yep. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina, just a quick drive up the mountain. And Cabins of Asheville is your connection.

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[00:19:18] And they have pet-friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. I want to welcome to the program Doug High. He's a veteran Republican strategist, a political commentator, has worked on U.S. Senate races. And I believe, if memory serves correctly, you are a native North Carolinian, are you not, Doug? From Winston-Salem.

[00:19:46] And I worked for Senator Helms in his 90 race, Locke Faircloth in his 92 race, which is a way of saying I'm old. And Richard Burr in his 04 race. All right, so I think you are properly vetted and qualified to speak on this issue. First off, were you expecting anything like this out of Tillis, or did this come as a surprise to you? It was both a shock and not a surprise if those two things can happen simultaneously.

[00:20:14] I'd say a shock because whenever news like this comes around and it's not leaking, you're surprised by it. And I know a lot of people on his campaign team were caught by surprise. His own top campaign consultant, Paul Shoemaker, didn't know. He heard it through the media the same way everybody else did. But also not surprising because Tillis had made it known for a long time, as so many members of Congress do, that they just aren't happy in Washington present day.

[00:20:42] And so that he was looking for an exit, regardless of what was going around with this bill or previous nominations, means it wasn't a terrible surprise. Well, and some of his comments echo those made by Congressman Dan Bishop from our area when he decided to leave his safe seat and run for attorney general last time around. He said, look, I'm one of 435 people up there. It's like you can't get anything done. It's like nobody wants to get anything done. And he wanted to go get stuff done.

[00:21:12] Yeah, you're one of 435 in an organization that just does less and less seemingly every two years, regardless of what party's in power. You know, Washington isn't a place where things get done these days. And so there's a fatigue that really wears on, I think, a lot of members. Is the dynamic different over in the Senate versus the House? Or are they more insulated from that because of the longer terms? Well, you're not running for reelection every two years.

[00:21:41] And you're one of 100, which is a little different scenario. But Washington is broken. I don't think anybody, Republican or Democrat, would argue that Washington is really firing on all cylinders these days. And it does wear on members. And it's why you've seen several resignations. There was another member of Congress who announced they're not running for reelection this morning. Congressman Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska, announced his retirement just a couple days ago. And this is sort of the time when some of that is going to happen.

[00:22:09] So looking at the nature of North Carolina voter registration and performance, Tillis sort of created this brand as like a more moderate Republican. I know my friends on the left would say that's not true. But there are a lot of people in the Republican camp that were not happy with him. I mean, they censured him. His own party censured him a couple years ago.

[00:22:36] And so he kind of built this brand as like, oh, I can win in a general election. I don't think he ever actually cleared 50 percent of the vote, though. So is that kind of a brand for a Republican? Is that even possible to win in North Carolina? Or was that the right formula that the next Republican needs to try to emulate? Well, it certainly could have been in a general election.

[00:23:00] But one of the problems that Tillis had very clearly was he was on the wrong side on Donald Trump on this bill and almost was with Pete Hegseth when he was nominated. And with Donald Trump, every day is a loyalty test. And he lets people hang in the balance at his pleasure. And certainly Tillis was experiencing that. And I don't think you can win. You don't necessarily need Donald Trump's endorsement to win a Republican primary.

[00:23:25] We certainly saw that with Chuck Edwards beating Madison Cawthorn not too long ago. But you can't win in a primary if Donald Trump's going to oppose you. I think that's pretty clear. Yeah. Just ask Pat McCrory. Exactly. Right. Okay. So now what do you think? Does this become more of a toss-up state? I think I saw Cook Political Report just moved it to a toss-up from a leans Republican. North Carolina is always a close state.

[00:23:52] We haven't had a blowout 10-point victory in any Senate race since 1974. And we're not going to have one this cycle either. So we'll have to sort out who the candidates are. But it's going to be a close and a very expensive race. So let me first start on the Democrat side. Because everybody, it seems like, is waiting on Roy Cooper, or as I call him, my good friend Ray, because that's what Hillary called him. And we're waiting on him to decide. And he has played coy.

[00:24:21] And this is sort of like his playbook when they wanted him to run for governor, like eight straight years. And he just played coy and just stayed in the attorney general's post. So I guess that's the first step for the Democrats to wait to see what he does? Yeah, absolutely. Everybody is sort of on standby. Obviously, Wiley Nickel has announced. But Roy Cooper is the great white whale for Democrats. He's been elected statewide repeatedly. And he can raise money in the state and nationally.

[00:24:51] I'd argue Cooper's never really had a tough race. But certainly, if you're the Democrats, this is the guy you want on the ballot. Yeah, he's the white male Southern Democrat. Talks in a way that is attractive to more rural or more blue dog conservative types. But in his heart, he'll go along with leftist policies. He will do that stuff. He was very close with Kamala Harris. We know that. And he was nearly her pick. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:25:22] But I think, to your point, he has not ever faced the kind of campaign that I think he would be subjected to with, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars pouring in from out of state. His record on COVID is going to be an issue. His record with the rape kit backlogs not getting cleared out. I mean, all of these, his hurricane, his disastrous response to the hurricanes, Matthew, Florence, Helene, like all of that stuff will get dragged out. I'm not sure he's completely prepared to withstand all of that.

[00:25:52] But I think it's also going to matter, right, who the Republicans put up to. So what are you looking at for the Republican side of this equation? Yeah. At this point, and let me say about Cooper, if I were advising Cooper, I'd tell him to stay out. Because ultimately, look, you know, he retires as a successful two-term governor, former attorney general. If he runs, one, he could lose. And if he wins, he goes into the Senate as a freshman in the minority. That's not a fun existence.

[00:26:20] So I personally would tell him that he'd probably be better off staying out. On the Republican side right now, all eyes are on Laura Trump. If she wants the nomination, it is sort of her right of first refusal. Because she can go to her father-in-law and say, I'm your person. And if Donald Trump backs her, it's hard to see anybody else getting in there. But if she doesn't run, you've got a whole lot of people potentially who could run.

[00:26:47] From Michael Watley, the former state party chair, former Dole aide where I first met him. To Richard Hudson, who, you know, we're talking to Charlotte right now. Former class president at UNC Charlotte, long time now. House member. A lot of House members are looking at it. Folks from outside the House are as well. And it could be a battle royal. Yeah. And also, the Laura Trump candidacy was something that was floated the last time around. And everybody waited to see what she was going to do.

[00:27:15] And then she announced she wasn't going to be running for the seat that Ted Budd ended up winning. So, all right. Hey, I appreciate your insight. Thanks for joining us today. Happy Independence Day to you. Doug, hi. Anytime. You too. Thank you. All right. Take care. That's Doug. Hi. He is a veteran Republican strategist, political commentator, and a longtime Senate campaign worker and comms guy. Appreciate his time, as always. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences.

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[00:28:44] He's been waiting patiently, I assume. Maybe not patiently. But George, welcome to the show. Hello, George. George. Yeah, thanks for the chance to blabber for a while. You're welcome. So just two quick things. One, when Tom Tillis was the big dog in the North Carolina Senate, I wasn't too impressed with him. And then one day I was in Asheville and I caught, I didn't know who it was because I came in in the middle.

[00:29:10] I caught an interview with this guy and I thought, wow, this guy's amazing. I love this guy. I'm going to vote for this guy. And then they ended and said, well, thank you, Senator Tillis. And I went, you've got to be kidding me. Nothing he said in that interview lined up with the policy positions he took in the North Carolina Senate. So I say to Senator Tillis, God bless you. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

[00:29:34] So my big question for you after hearing that story is, do you remember who was doing the interview? Was it in the afternoon drive time up in Asheville? Because that could have been me doing the interview with Tillis. No, it was, I think it was a rebroadcast. I was up there on a Saturday morning. Oh, okay. So then that would have been Mark. Yeah. The morning guy, probably. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, that, I mean, that's okay. And Mark's a good guy. So I'm not, you know, my feelings aren't too terribly hurt there.

[00:30:03] Well, I'm glad you're in Charlotte. Well, so am I. Let me just tell you. Yeah, I am too. Here's the second thing. On June the 14th, Pat Harrigan, who I supported, donated to, and campaigned for, was at a Republican men's meeting. And I asked him how he could vote for a bill that projected spending $7 to $8 trillion against revenue of $5 to $6 trillion. And he had no answer for me.

[00:30:32] And I told him my first election as a voter was 1968, Nixon versus Humphrey. And every election, every two years or every four years, every election, they all say, yeah, the deficit, that's the next thing. But first we've got to do this. And now we're at, you know, approaching $40 trillion. And I told Pat, I said, because I've met him, his wife, his children.

[00:30:59] I said, Pat, I'm not worried about you and me, but I am worried about my grandchildren and your children. They are going to go broke in America. So I am so appreciative of you hitting this deficit thing. It's like they go to Washington and their brains, they leave their brains at home. I don't get it. Well, because there are a number of reasons, right? There are so many people competing interests, competing incentive structure.

[00:31:28] You got people that are there because they are, you know, narcissistic psychopaths, basically. And they will say whatever they have to say in order to get the power and control that they seek. And so the ideology doesn't actually matter to them. And it's very difficult to get people to vote in a way that will cause pain to their constituents. Pain being, we're going to have to cut back on the spending. And like, nobody wants to hear that.

[00:31:55] No, but Americans do not want to hear that their favorite thing is going to get cut. Like, I remember, like, when I just remember George W. Bush and when he won re-election, you remember he touched the third rail of politics, which was what? Yeah. To let us take like one and a half percent of the money that's going to Social Security and allow that completely voluntary basis to let me take one and a half percent and stick it in a mutual fund, basically, and let it grow over there.

[00:32:25] And I just saw, because it was like 20 years after his initial proposal, that like you would have made five times or something the amount of money that is now in your Social Security account, which isn't even really there. They're just IOUs. So like it was, and that's the kind of pushback that we get from the left. And you get these, you know, jelly spined, as Mark Robinson would call them, weak-kneed

[00:32:49] Republicans that can't follow through on just some basic fiscal restraint and some reform efforts. And yeah, it's going to be tough for a little while, but it has to be done. Well, and here's my comment, Pete. Since COVID and President Biden, I've been hurting financially. I mean, it's been tough. Yeah. And the price of gasoline alone compared to when Trump left office is killing me.

[00:33:17] But what I asked Pat Harrigan was, why can't we go back to pre-COVID spending levels as a first step? Right. No answer for that. Yeah. I mean, it's so frustrating. Yeah. Well, I just I told him, I said, look, I'm not I'm not coming out against you. I said, but, you know, we need fiscal responsibility above all other concerns right now. Yeah. No, I agree with you, George. I appreciate the call, sir. Thanks so much. Thank you, sir. All right. Take care. So, yeah.

[00:33:46] So Pat Harrigan is actually one of the names that's floated as a potential candidate for this seat. I do agree with Doug High and his expectation that this is Laura Trump's if she wants it. She has right of first refusal. If she says she's going to run for this seat, she's a North Carolina native, but she doesn't actually live here. So that will actually open her up, you know, to the accusation that she's a carpetbagger.

[00:34:13] But North Carolina has elected people like Elizabeth Dole, for example. New York did it with Hillary Clinton. Right. So you don't have to be a longtime resident of the state in order to run for the seat. Now, again, she is a North Carolina native. So she does have a lot of roots here. So I'm not sure that that's going to be that big of an obstacle for her. But if she you know, she's got her Fox News Channel gig now. Right. So it's a lot to give up to go to work in the U.S. Senate.

[00:34:44] Michael Watley that Doug mentioned, Michael Watley, the Republican National Committee chairman. He's former chairman of the North Carolina GOP. And Greg Murphy, his name is thrown out there. Congressman from eastern North Carolina mentioned Pat Harrigan as well. You got Don Brown from the Charlotte area here. He's an attorney, former Navy JAG officer. We've had him on the program. I've known I've known Don for years. And he's got a statement as well.

[00:35:14] I'll read to you his statement next hour. Tim Moore, former North Carolina speaker of the House. He's up in Congress now. He is a potential candidate. Richard Hudson, chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. And then also Dan Bishop. He's, you know, former congressman, but he's like been in the what? OBM budget management, I think, working for Russ Vogt. So I don't know.

[00:35:38] But he he ran statewide last time in that attorney general race and lost to Jeff Jackson, who also, if Roy Cooper doesn't get in, Jeff Jackson is his name is being floated as a, you know, a strong contender for this race. It's wide open right now. But I think like the first refusals are going to be coming from Lara Trump and Roy Cooper. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening.

[00:36:07] 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 the Pete Calendar show dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening. And don't break anything while I'm gone.