Let the dollars flow! MAGA, Inc opens the spigot. | Hour 1

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to the peak calendar show.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. And I'd like to welcome, I believe, back to the program, Matt Mercer, but now in his new role as a writer at Breitbart.com. Matt, how are you, sir? Hey, Pete, I'm doing great. Thank you so much for having me on. Absolutely. So just real quick, people may remember his name. Matt used to be over at the North State Journal, and then he was over at the North Carolina GOP, and now he's at Breitbart. And I went over to Breitbart and I saw you had a story that got quite the, the interaction. I think there was somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,500 comments and they weren't spam. I read every one of them. I did not actually, but it was a lot. I mean, just a lot of comments about this story. So I, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about it. The title is unprecedented spending could be Republicans midterm Trump card. And you reference a thing called MAGA Inc. So first, tell us what is MAGA Incorporated, MAGA Inc. Yes, I reported this yesterday, really taking a look at. where the campaigns stand. And MAGA Inc. was formed shortly after the 2024 election, and it was, you know, one of these super PACs that springs up on the behest of candidates, in this case, President Trump, ensuring that his priorities and his agenda can be continued throughout the duration of his presidential term, and then also potentially after. And so that's where the group got started, got some seed money, and President Trump has put been able to send hundreds of millions of dollars into MAGA Inc., and now I believe it's over $ 400 million cash on hand, and that money is ready to be deployed in elections throughout the country. So this is one of the concerns or criticisms that I hear a lot from listeners here and texters. They don't seem to see as many ads from Michael Watley in our Senate race. So does this indicate then that they may start seeing a lot more ads now? Yeah, certainly. Thank you, Will. And Pete, you may remember this kind of going back in time a little bit, but President Obama had his Organizing for America apparatus set up that he intended to continue throughout his two terms, and it didn't really do a lot. And so this level of engagement especially from the White House and the sitting president, you know, it doesn't happen that often. And so I think where you're seeing with the Whatley campaign and where the North Carolina Senate race stands, you have MAGA Inc., you have SLF, you have Americans for Prosperity. They all have been doing some, but those numbers are going to continue going up, I think, here in the last two months of the election. Really kind of a sleepy ad war to this point. It hasn't been the sort of spending that you've seen in other years. I'm not really sure the reason for that, but it is notable. Do you think, is there a possibility, and last week I had Emma Hall from the NRC on, and I was asking her some of these same types of questions. I relayed the same concern. People aren't seeing a lot of advertising, and people were not satisfied with her answer. They thought that she kind of sidestepped it And I said at the time, like, well, we don't know what the background political thinking and maneuvering is. Like sometimes these campaigns, and you know this as well, right, that they will, or the PACs rather, will say that they're going to spend heavy in a particular state or a race in order to either juice money out of the opponent and have them pour a bunch of money in for them to devote resources or to scare them off. So then they don't devote resources. Right. And then whether or not the original party actually spends that, it's almost irrelevant because the tactic has paid off. And so we don't know what what what kinds of maneuvers may be or thinking may be going on behind the scenes. Do you have do you have any any guesses on on any of these kinds of decisions that like why we are not seeing the massive amounts? Yeah, because they were predicting, I think, a hundred million dollars or something in this Senate race here. Yeah, so I always go directly to the source, and especially for the outside groups, they're under a lot of constraints about when they have to report the spending that they're doing. And so that's why the initial buy that kind of got everyone excited that MAGA Inc. was finally really getting in the game was $ 10 million spent in Texas. And they actually divide that up as $ 5 million opposing the Democratic candidate there, James Tallarico, and $ 5 million supporting Trump. the Republican Ken Paxton. The money that's been committed to the Whatley campaign and boosting Whatley's chances in this race has come in the form of TV ads that have been paid for and will be rolling, mail, and also text messages. And the total of that is over, I believe, $ 3 million combined at this point. And so... That's a good number, but you add that to the $ 17 million that SLF has put in, a couple million from AFP Action, and I believe the Whatley campaign is now getting on the airwaves as well. Certainly, you would like to see that money spent sooner in this case because it's going to take a significant amount of money to really dent the 40 years Roy Trooper has spent on everyone's TV and newspapers and everywhere else over the years. Yeah, I mean, his name is known, right? And the question there is, like, his polling numbers, are those, is that the ceiling for him because of his name recognition? Is that the ceiling? And Watley may have more room to grow, but it doesn't seem like people have gotten introduced to him very well. Yeah, and I think that's one of the long-running frustrations that people have is, you know, obviously you can't be everywhere at once, but you would like to be somewhere most of the time. And I think there's still a deficit in that building that name recognition compared to what people know or have heard about Roy Cooper over the years. And I think really kind of the strategy behind this, and, you know, I'm not giving away any information that's, you know, privileged by any means, but Really attacking Roy Cooper over crime is the thing that, first of all, everything they're saying is true, but then also how do you dent some of that? People say, oh, Roy Cooper, he's a nice guy, you know, all these things. How do you really dent that information with facts and you present the things that, you know, certainly I worked on with the North Carolina GOP, but then also what the campaign has brought out in terms of all of the actions Roy Cooper took siding with crime criminals over people in our communities. And that's time and again been proven out to be true in spite of what you may see, Brian Anderson or the News and Observer. Ah, yes. You could tell Matt's a local. He, uh, he knows Brian Anderson and my audience knows of him as well. Um, yeah. And I know that this was a winning message. I remember talking to, um, Steve Wiley, right at the Stephen Wiley, I think. Um, and that the, uh, and this sort of dovetails into the whole AOC, uh, comment that woke one. Oh, or, you know, it was crazy. And it's like, yeah, it was crazy. And people like you and me, we were saying, this is crazy, but all of the, the decarceration stuff, the defunding the police, all of that was part of the woke 1.0 wave. And so now you mentioned James Tallarico in Texas. He's walking back. He's saying, oh, yeah, I didn't mean what I said about six genders or whatever. He's walking back all of these crazy things that he had said. And I know that this was a the especially the crime issue was a big one for Republicans at the state level in North Carolina for the state races. Is that the thinking, do you think, at the national level as well, and among these groups that are spending, that this is sort of Roy Cooper's soft underbelly, and that's why they've just been hammering that point? Yeah, in terms of, and this is something that I've reported at Breitbart, Roy Cooper has lied about this issue repeatedly when he does talk to media. They give him one question, and he says, well, independent fact-checkers have said that's not true. Well, actually, it is, and in spite of all of their efforts, they've never been able to reconcile the fact that DeCarlos Brown's ID number matches a number that was on the early release list. And Roy Cooper was the only governor who signed a binding legal document agreeing to release convicted criminals from prison. You know, and I reported about this in other states. You have governors in Colorado and even J.B. Pritzker in Illinois fought this a lot harder than Roy Cooper did in North Carolina, which is kind of crazy when you think about it. But really exposing this about Roy Cooper, you need a gateway to say that Roy Cooper is like these other Democrats nationally that are running. And being able to expose him on crime opens that door to be able to do that. And I think that's where you're seeing the campaign start to pivot to once you're able to get more ads on, especially this month and next month. Yeah, I mean, I view him as Abigail Spanberger, right? The Virginia governor who ran as a moderate and as soon as she got into office. She went far, far left. And I would submit that's why Roy Cooper doesn't have anything on his website as far as specific policy positions. He doesn't have any mention of anything all he has up there is like make stuff cost less and it's just these slogans like i'm gonna make this cost less and this should cost less and that's it and he's running as as sort of a a blank slate uh so this way nobody really knows what he stands for and as soon as he wins he's gonna go abigail spanberger's route he's gonna go what with whatever the uh, the leadership wants him to do. And what we are seeing with the takeover inside the Democrat party by the DSA, it's going to go further left. That's the way he's going to vote. I have no doubt. And he doesn't answer any questions from any hostile media. He won't agree apparently to a debate either. So I don't know if anybody's going to hold his feet to the fire before the election. And so that's why people are worried, I think about the ad buys, because it's going to be the heavy lifting apparently has got to come from, from the Watley campaign. And also these super PACs. But you did mention, there's what, a billion dollars that Republican leaders have to spend across party committees and PACs. And that is an astounding amount of money, a billion dollars. And you say this fact went over the heads of establishment Republicans and corporate media. So surely they know, right? Surely they know about the billion dollars. Yeah, you would certainly think so. And one of the points I made in the story was that all the time was spent talking about was, oh, are they actually going to spend the money and not that, oh, a president has never engaged at this level in a midterm before. Let's actually take a look and see if that's going to be helpful. And I certainly think it is. And when you take the totality of the actions that the White House has been able to direct, where you have the mid-decade redistricting, where you're shrinking the field and then piling this money advantage on top of that, you're setting everyone up for success, right? ultimately it comes down to how well the campaigns succeed, and I think that's what you're seeing play out right now. Yeah, voter turnout's going to be key, and I suspect that's why the convention was put on yesterday in Dallas, Texas. So it does appear to be the strategy. Matt Mercer from Breitbart.com. Check out his work over at Breitbart.com. Matt, thanks, buddy. Good to hear from you again. Yeah, thanks as always, Pete. I appreciate it. All right, take care. That's Matt Mercer. All right, for over a year now, you've heard me talking about Create-A-Video, great local company in Mint Hill that has helped more than 2 million families preserve their memories by turning old photos. VHS tapes, film reels, and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now, Creative Video is helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. Introducing group travel videos, perfect for family reunions, church mission trips, group vacations, destination weddings, student trips, senior adult groups, sports teams. I mean, really any gathering of people that you care about that's traveling together. Group Travel Videos gives your traveling pack a private app where everyone can share photos during the trip, send messages, share schedules and important documents, even a traveler safety locator feature that works only during the trip. 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Now here's a little advice from me to the, uh, Republican and conservative and MAGA super PACs or just the PACs, even whatever. I'm not discriminating here. Um, as well as the Michael Watley campaign, I feel like, um, You might want to hammer my good friend Ray, cut him loose, Cooper. You might want to hammer Cooper harder on immigration. Immigration. I know that a lot of people have kind of forgotten about immigration enforcement, but this was the issue that propelled Trump back into the White House, right? We had all of the deportation enforcement actions around the country, and people were all upset about all of that. You got Republicans that for some reason believe that enforcement has stopped, that deportations have stopped. And that's not true. The border has been shut down. So people aren't seeing all of the imagery of, you know, thousands and thousands of people crossing the border. But that's, that's what you have to remind people of because it wasn't that long ago. It was what, three years ago. So, I mean, cause by the end when Biden was, you know, going to run for reelection and or the people around him told him he was going to run for reelection. They started curtailing some of this stuff. But, I mean, the chaos, the mayhem, the overrunning of our border, that was a huge liability, and that was something Roy Cooper was perfectly willing to allow and to enable as governor because he was governor at the time, and he was vetoing bills. That would have forced local authorities to work with ICE to get people out of the country. He didn't want to have anything to do with that. So that's why I say whatever the Democrat Party leadership wants him to do, he will do. And then there's this. From Matt Vespa over at townhall.com. You know Roy Cooper's abysmal record on public safety, the numerous times he vetoed legislation to rid his state of criminal aliens. He blocked ICE from working with local law enforcement. Now we're learning he was an illegal alien's best friend regarding obtaining driver's licenses. Well, okay. The rest of the nation may be learning this. I've known this for a while. This has been, again, part of Roy Cooper's M.O., He opened the floodgates, which dates to his opinion as the state's attorney general. And, as you might have guessed, some illegals at the DMV were marked as US citizens, allowing them to also be added to the voter rolls. We covered this when this report was issued. State lawmakers tried to fix that, but Cooper vetoed it. And now, this year, we have the recent finding from the Department of Transportation. I will pull that up. This is about the commercial driver's licenses. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy revealed 54% of North Carolina's non-domiciled commercial driver's licenses, or the CDLs, so more than half of CDLs that went to non-domiciled drivers. These were issued to foreign nationals, and they were reviewed by federal officials, and 54% of these were issued illegally. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration issued this report and said if North Carolina does not revoke all illegally issued licenses, the DOT will withhold nearly $ 50 million in federal funding to the state. In a letter that was sent to the governor, Josh Stein, Minnie Cooper, and State Department of Public Safety Commissioner Paul Tyne, The FMCSA said that the state illegally issued non-domiciled CDLs to drivers who were ineligible, those whose licenses were valid long after their lawful presence in the U.S. expired, and those whose lawful status in the U.S. Was not even verified. So you had people who had overstayed their visa, and they were still reissued CDLs. The administrator of the... Federal Motor Carries Safety Administration, Derek Bars, said the level of noncompliance in North Carolina is quote-unquote egregious. See, there are a lot of things to hit Cooper on. Immigration should be a big part of that rotation, in my opinion. What do I know? I'm just a radio host. Let's jump over to the phones, and here's Paul. Welcome to the show, Paul. Okay, thank you, Brett. Nice job, too. I agree with you with Cooper with regards to the border, but you also may want to think about how terrible he was during COVID. I have thought about that. I've spent six years beating him up over it. Yeah. Yeah, it's ridiculous. All the places he shut down and you couldn't have a gathering unless you were protesting. And I think he even participated in a BLM protest march while everyone else was locked inside. Yeah, well, and businesses burned and the governor's mansion had to be evacuated and he wouldn't call in the National Guard. Yeah, we've covered all of that. on the show. The problem is, is that if you're going after the mushy middle voters, they don't want to be reminded that they went. Along with all of that. Yeah, good point. That's the problem. It's like you and I who were looking around us and saying, well, this stuff seems kind of crazy. What are you guys doing? We were trying to ask questions and pushing back on this stuff, but there were a lot of people that did not. They went along with it, and they don't want to be reminded that Roy Cooper was the guy that led them down that path. It was terrible. I play in a worship band, and we couldn't even go to worship to play. It was terrible, really. I hope everyone gets out and votes against this dude because he's bad news no matter how you slice it. Yeah, well, I mean, that's what it's going to take. It's going to take a turnout from Republicans and Republican-friendly voters. They're going to have to go vote. And if they sit at home, then I don't want to hear them complaining when Roy Cooper's enacting a new Green New Deal deal. more solar subsidies, and he's doing all of these left-wing things along with his Democrat Party. I don't want to hear any of their complaints. You're right, and I agree. And I have not heard much national against him other than last night at the convention. Trump trashed him pretty hard for a while. Oh, I'm going to have to go find that. I'll have to go find it. I did not watch that last night, so I've got to go back and listen to it. He went off on them. big time with the, all the prison, letting the prisoners out and what have you. Yeah. You got to go check it out. All right. I'll let you go. There's probably a bunch of other people calling. Hey, appreciate you. All right. See you, Paul. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, next up is Marty. Hello, Marty. Welcome to the show. Hey buddy. Great show as usual. I'm up in the mountains. I only picked up a little bit of your TDL thing, but I've been trucking since 79. I want to tell you this, this, blessed president is doing way more than anybody. Matter of fact, nobody else was doing anything to get these illegals out. They're all in it. They're all in on it. And I'm going to tell you, I could tell you some nightmare stories, but These foreigners, I mean, I'm all for guys that need help and are here to work, all right, if they come in the right way. But what you've got is you've got so many illegals here that don't know how to drive at all. And if you look at that Amazon plane here, The first thing I was looking at was I want to hear his accent. Sure enough, he's another foreigner, and these idiots that are in the trucks and the planes, obviously, are just as bad as they can be making stupid decisions, careless decisions, because they're not trained right. And I'm going to tell you. Well, and that gets to the training schools. And DOT want to do some real checking around. Start pulling over all these Amazon prime trucks because they are filled with so many foreigners that don't know what they're doing. And most truckers that are out here a long time know you better watch out for the Amazon drivers. Really? Watch out for them. Oh, absolutely. As a matter of fact, I'm going to tell you something. These things may sound crazy to your listeners, but this stuff has been going on for years. You can ask DOT officers that do the checks at the scales. During the Marxist-Communist-Globalist presidents that were installed, you had the DOT. Told you let them go they were told not to inspect them you got guys coming in there with oversized loads that did not have permits that claimed they didn't speak english and other guys that are waiting in line with their permits us american guys are hearing this thing happen where they say oh you have to leave go ahead what do you mean you have to leave what we were told not to mess with them another thing you got these guys sometimes i'm sure i swear to god this is true Three, four guys to a truck with a hole cut in the bottom for defecating while they're driving. And you can ask DOT officers about this, too, when they pull a truck over and they smell this awful smell. They say, what the heck is this? And during the previous regimes... They were told they couldn't do anything about it. Now, thank God, they are doing something about it. I'm going to say it again. Pull over all the Amazon Prime trucks, man. And matter of fact, even those little ones, I got trucks in my driveway, and I pull a step deck. My Kenworth, my F-350, they're plastered with Trump stickers. When those guys come to deliver, not all of them. But I'll say hello. And man, they got a nasty scowl on their face because you know what? They're DEI hires. That's what it is. And that's what's going on. And this thing about Roy Cooper, he let all these people in, as you have rightly stated, and done everything else just all the way back. If you look at the Democrat governor, Bev Perdue, that's why we got those damn toll lanes. And that is a whole big scam on North Carolinians. Anytime you got tolls, you got corruption because all the taxes that big trucks pay and the gas prices, the gasoline tax and the heavy vehicle use tax every truck pays, you would have plenty of money to do all the work on every highway. There is no reason for tolls anywhere. I don't know if that part is true, Marty. I don't know if that part is true because North Carolina has more state-controlled roads than any other state except Texas. In my opinion, we have way too many roads that are supported by the state budget and the funding has just not kept up with the needs. But hey, Marty, I appreciate the call, buddy. Thanks for calling and stay safe out there. I did not know about the hole in the floor of the Trailers, that was... Or the cabs. I did not know that. So WRAL did a story a couple of weeks ago. Headline, Cooper Watley on immigration. A fight over how to focus enforcement. And that is false. Okay? That is false. This is not a fight... over how to focus enforcement. This is a fight over whether to enforce, not how to focus the enforcement. It's about whether to do enforcement. Will Duran is the reporter here and he starts off the piece. He says, immigration policy is in the spotlight in North Carolina's race for an open seat in the U.S. Senate. And my question when I read that was, is it? Is it really? I haven't seen Roy Cooper talking about immigration at all. I've not seen any ad from Roy Cooper's campaign about immigration. Not a one. Haven't heard him talk about it. Nothing. He's not talking about it. It's nowhere on his website. He's not telling you what he would do if he's in the U.S. Senate with regard to immigration. About 1 million immigrants are estimated to live in North Carolina, including about 440,000 naturalized U.S. Citizens. Okay, well then, why are you putting the naturalized citizens group of 440,000 into the 1 million immigrants in North Carolina? Why are you doing that? This isn't a question about immigration per se. This is a question about illegal immigration. but the media constantly conflates the two. All right, so from this WRAL piece, a million immigrants, but like 440,000 of them are naturalized U.S. Citizens. So like, okay, great. I don't care about the naturalized U.S. citizens. They obviously did it the right way. So now we're looking at half a million. Data is less clear on the other several hundred thousand non-citizen immigrants. Non-citizen immigrants. That's a new one. Non-citizen immigrants. Again, like all of the contortions that Democrats and media, but I repeat myself, that you have to twist yourself into to just avoid saying. The term illegal aliens. Why? Why? I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. No human is illegal. Like, this is the kind of stupidity that we're still dealing with. Control the language. You control the debate. I get it. But some estimates predict that the, what, 560,000 are split about half and half between those who are here legally or not. So my question when I read that was, do you think that's a problem? Do you think it's a problem that we don't know? I know woke one was crazy, letting in 10 million illegal aliens across the border. I know it was kind of nuts, but do you think that's a problem that we don't know? what the other half a million in North Carolina are. Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper hasn't gone as far as other Democrats around the country in calling for the abolition of immigrations and customs enforcement, but he has said immigration agents need to face more accountability. Oh, well, that clears it up. Right? No. No, it does not. It does not clear it up. He has not gone as far as other Democrats in calling to abolish ICE, but that doesn't mean he doesn't support abolishing ICE. He just hasn't said. Him not saying anything is not dispositive of anything. So maybe you could ask him. Ask him, do you favor abolishing ICE? Do you want to abolish ICE? This, oh, you know, they've gone too far. They need to be more accountable. I don't care about that. Hold people accountable for going too far. Fine. I want to know if you want to blow up the entire ICE agency. I want to know if you want to reopen the border like Joe Biden did that you told me to vote for. You told me Joe Biden was awesome. And then when Joe Biden was in cognitive decline, you said he wasn't. And then when he dropped out of the race because of the debate performance, then you said Kamala Harris, she's, you know, former border czar. She's the one that I should vote for. So, yeah, I am curious. What are your positions on immigration? Then he goes to Michael Watley. Watley and his campaign, in speeches, official policy platforms, and responses to WRAL's questions, have said that if elected to the Senate, he would vote for whatever Trump wants on immigration. Really? Did Michael Watley say that? Did the campaign say that? It's not in quotes, so I'm thinking you're saying that. It's not that Michael Watley will vote for whatever Trump wants. And by the way, Watley would only serve two years with Trump as president. The other four years of the term are going to be under a new president. It's not whatever Trump wants. But I'm sure he has said that he has supported and does support Trump's approach on immigration enforcement. Now, if Trump comes along and says, you know what? We're just going to. Start murdering all of the illegal aliens we find. Like, I kind of suspect that some people might not be on board with that. So I doubt that the Watley campaign would say that whatever Trump wants, we'll do. I doubt they said that. As well as whatever is needed after Trump is no longer in office to continue the same approach. So, OK, so you have no problem framing Watley as he'll do whatever Trump wants him to do. but you don't frame Cooper as doing whatever Democrats or DSA wants. Him to do. Why is that? Why does Watley get that kind of assumption and Cooper doesn't? I think we all know the answer to that, of course, is the big D shield. And then Watley has suggested Cooper is too aligned with national Democrats on issues of drugs and the border. But Cooper has appointed to his, uh, has pointed to his record as attorney general to show that he's tough on drug trafficking and willing to deport violent criminals. Yeah, but he vetoed multiple attempts to do just that. So Cooper points to his record and WRAL just regurgitates that. But Cooper's record actually says the opposite. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support. and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to ThePeteCalenderShow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.