Make NC first in voting... plus a massacre at Bondi Beach (12-15-2025--Hour1)

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 thepeakclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. I want to welcome to the program. Back to the show. Actually, Douglas High served as communications director for the Republican National Committees, worked on several successful Republican Senate campaigns here in North Carolina. Doug, welcome back to the show. How are you, sir. It's great to be with you. Thank you, absolutely. Yeah. So you sound fuller now that we are over on the the FM dial once again. So funny how that works. Yeah, all right. So you had a piece at the Charlotte Observer and you wrote it with Andrew Bates. He was the senior Deputy White House Press Secretary under Biden. He also served in the Obama administration. And so you guys are writing about the schedule of the North Carolina primary. But the first question I had is how did you come to write this piece with him? How did that? Well? How did that happen? Andrew and I are from the same town of Lewisville, that's about ten miles outside of Winston Salem. It's a one stoplight town, so everybody sort of knows everybody from that town. Although Chris Paul is from Lewisville as well, and I've not actually met him, but so he seemed like a natural person to reach out to and talk about this idea of whether or not North Carolina should go first or not, because I thought it would benefit the state, it would benefit Democrats and it would benefit Republicans, and he thought the same. All right, So this is for the twenty twenty eight presidential primary, right, this to move North Carolina ahead. We're already pretty early thing, right, didn't they move us up a couple of years ago? Yeah? Yes, And obviously the Democrats have moved there, you know, states in various orders. South Carolina, you know, having gone first to help Joe Biden, they're looking for a new home. Republican team set with Iowa and New Hampshire. Democrats are looking for a place to go. And Andrew and I both think that North Carolina is a natural for a whole lot of reasons. One, it's a perennial close state. It's a close state in the presidential election. You know, Trump won it three times, but his biggest margin was three point seven percent. It's a perennial close state for gubernatorial and Senate campaigns, and we know that we'll have Republican senators and Democratic governors. The last time there was a double digit Senate win in North Carolina was in nineteen seventy four. And it's also great for the economy. A lot of people flying in and out of Charlotte and RDU I mean, and they're stopping at that Bojangles at the Charlotte Airport like I did last week I was there. They're renting cars, they're buying gas, they're buying snacks, bottled water, hotel rooms, office supplies, radio ads. And if you're a restaurant like Midwood Smokehouse or Noble Smoke or Bridges and Shelby, you're gonna be rented out. They're gonna be campaign events, you're going to be doing catering. It is a job growth vehicle, all right. So what is all right? What's the process then for the Democrats to actually do something like this, And is Andrew Bates is a powerful enough to spearhead this thing. Well, no one's powerful enough to do it on their own. But the state party has to make an effort to say we want to be first, and a lot of states want to be first, so they'll have to put together an RFP, a request for proposal, and bring it before the DMC, as other states will. South Carolina doesn't want to lose it. It's been good for South Carolina. Iowa and New Hampshire have been fiercely protective of of their first place status and then bring it up for a vote in front of the DNC. And we think we've made a strong case for why it should be North Carolina, why it would be politically beneficial for Democrats and for Republicans as well. And part of that, by the way, Pete, is it also develops a whole lot of homegrown political talent. If you work in politics long enough, you meet a lot of people from campaigns who are from Iowa and New Hampshire. And that makes sense. Why would we not want to grow that talent? Democrats and Republicans here in North Carolina. If I'm at the state GOP headquarters on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, I want to be able to raise extra money and hire extra people and grow some of that talent and throw some of those spears that you get to do in the early primary states. Talk a little bit about the demographics though, because I'm guessing the Democrats have already expressed through the last primary seasons that they are open to moving it around. So and I don't know if they if they have settled on South Carolina, But what is the what's a comparison between the South Carolina demographics and the North Carolina demographics that would son out Democrats. It's a it's a much more diverse state, and you have cities obviously throughout the state. It's not like in Atlanta. It's not like Georgia where there's one Atlanta and sort of that's it. You have big cities like Charlotte, then you have the smaller cities like Asheville and Wilmington, Winston Salem where I'm from, and a whole lot of rural areas. So any candidate who campaigns there can't just try and win all the votes in the big city and forget the other places. They'll have to go to Charlotte and Shelby, They'll have to go to Winston Salem and Readsville and Greenville and so many places like that. And it is obviously one of the fastest growing states in the country, which tells I think Democrats and Republicans that it's that it's a state that is really on the move and will become more important six years from now than it is today. And another reason why we think that North Carolina should be top of the list for Democrats because they're making this move now, and if Republicans decide that they don't want to be iow in New Hampshire first in line as they've traditionally been, I push for North Carolina for Republicans as well. So is there because I guess I'm thinking, like the Democrat voter base that would vote in the primary in South Carolina does that you know? Is there some sort of are there lessons that the campaigns draw from the turnout or from a candidate's performance in South Carolina? Because I can understand why it's important South Carolina being important for Republicans, but for Democrats it's less clear. Well, it was because Joe Biden felt that he would do very well there and Jim Clyburn was in a position to make it happen, right, and that was it. Part of that was the high African American voter base and voter turnout and the Democratic Party in South Carolina, where Biden did very well. Some of that is obviously still it is true in North Carolina as well. Biden certainly wouldn't be running And the number of HBCUs throughout the state is another reason why, especially for Democrats, you would think it would be a state that is high on their list to move as early as they can. And that's you know, whether you're talking about Johnson C. Smith or Winston Salem State in my hometown Elizabeth City, they are scattered throughout the state, all right. So now look at the Republican side of it, you seem to think that the GOP is not interested in moving states around for its primary. Right now, it is still Iowa and New Hampshire first and second, it doesn't look like that's going to change. And I've worked in Iowa. I ran communications for the twenty twelve Iowa Caucus. I'd love the Iowa Caucus but I would much rather have that come to North Carolina, and I think it would be better for the party both in a primary sense, but also in a general to be in North Carolina early because it forces campaigns to organize. And one of the things if we see, if we look back to two thousand and eight, the fact that the primary process went on so long for Democrats ultimately benefited Obama because he had a campaign structure in place because he was still fighting with Hillary Clinton in North Carolina in that late primary. If that had happened early in the primary, it is a spearhead for his campaign for the Clinton campaign as well, And that is a lot of talent that would have stayed in the state and remained there. And if I'm talking to Democrats now, I would make that case for them as well. What about you just mentioned the Iowa caucus. What about the difference in the format caucus versus primary. Does one of those mechanisms benefit a campaign more to be early. You know, it's really hard to tell. There's nothing quite like the Iowa caucus. You'll have caucus sites that will range from a school gymnasium much like a primary, to somebody's house, which obviously you never see happen in a primary situation. It's a very different process and it certainly benefits organization more than necessarily fundraising and what have you. But they're just very different ways of doing things. In Iowa's a very different state. And part of the reason that Democrats left Iowa was one it wasn't competitive anymore, and the other was the demographics didn't really work for their voting base. South Carolina sort of made sense for the primary for them for their voter base, but it certainly didn't make sense for a general. You know, we didn't have that. The Senate races are never in play, the presidential races are never in play. Gubernatorials. North Carolina has all of that. What about the open primaries? You've got to unaffiliated voters, right, does that open up the parties to shin Anagan's Operation Chaos type of organized efforts or maybe does it produce more quote unquote moderate candidates because you do have a lot of unaffiliateds that may be crossing over. Yeah, Rushian Ball always talked about Operation Chaos, and it was a great idea that never really happened. And it's one of those things that we think that campaigns sort of have the time to pull off, and they really don't. There's been no campaign I've worked on when we've ever had, you know, not enough on our plate that we could meddle in another primary as well. We wish we could have, we couldn't. And for your unaffiliated voters, they're sort of looking at the field as well to determine which way they want to go. But either party can say they want an open or a closed primary. That's up to the political party. Yeah, I'm not aware of any any party leaders that are saying that they want to do that on either side, So I don't see that changing. We'll leave it there. I appreciate you making looking some time for us today, Doug High He served as the comms director for the RNC and on several Republican Senate campaigns as well. Thanks for your time, and you can read the piece of the Charlotte Observer. Thank you, Thanks Doug. Take care. You know. Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life, and our stories are told through images and videos preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family only stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you. And they will tell others to come who you are, visit creative video dot com. All right, So I know, Doug said, Doug High. We just had him on and he said, you know about the operation Chaos and didn't really work, And that was always my understanding of it as well. However, there are examples in North Carolina now that I think there's like four or five candidates that have now filed to run as Republicans in various districts, but they're not. They don't have voting records that match a you know, Republican viewpoint. They have voted in Democrat primaries. So there are several of these people running for you know, local races around the state. I think there's one member of there's one. Yeah, there's one running in Tim Moore's district for Congress. She's not a Republican, but she is registered as a Republican now and she's going to try to primary him. I don't know how she thinks that's going to work if she has to, you know, go and appear in front of any kind of an audience that's voting in the Republican primary. But we shall see. There are a couple of these candidates. Also this story out of the New York Post. The New York City Democratic Socialists of America the DSSA, has issued a rallying cry for its members to infiltrate parent and community groups as they fight to push their agenda through government enemies, including Governor Kathy Hockel. The newly emboldened local chapter of the Democrats Socialist of America's pushing its members in a takeover of lower lefe level government entities to try to supercharge their far left policies under the new face of their movement. The mayor elect Zoron mamdanin quote, we must plug Zoron organizers and supporters into lower level city institutions en mass. That's according to the co chair of the New York City DSA, Grace Mauser. She wrote this in the magazine Jacobin, which is the socialist magazine which I think sells advertising, which is kind of weird, calls itself the leading voice of the American left. She says New York City has hundreds of small semi governmental bodies that are typically ceded to less progressive forces, such as community boards, parent teacher associations, and community education councils. She urged the nearly twelve thousand members as well as other Mamdani supporters, to take advantage of volunteer spots at libraries and parks. If they can't get a city seat like in city government, you can still take advantage of volunteer spots. Quote. We have the opportunity to create a sense of mass ownership over the city and build support for Zorn's agenda from the bottom of city government to the top. She, by the way, sits on Mom Donnie's Transition Committee for Small Businesses. Yeah, okay, aren't you a socialist? Though? Like okay, she's done the committee for the Transition Committee for Small Businesses and Minority and women owned business Enterprise. She said the infiltration would be key in rallying the low levels of government to enact their far left agenda despite the objection of their enemies quote unquote that's the word she uses. Their enemies named specifically Governor Kathy Hokeel because the governor despite the fact that she endorsed Mom Donnie, who then did not endorse her. But she has said that she would not support raising, you know, income taxes in the city. I think she also expressed opposition to the free quote unquote free buses. One political insider quoted in the story here at the New York Post Ken Friedman or Friedman, It's Fry Friedman anyway. He says they're young, politically misguided revolutionaries in a big hurry for the revolution to begin on January first, twenty twenty six. They should use the next month to study the success rates of previous socialist revolutions, but that would be impossible because real socialism has never been tried, or so we are told. Here's a great idea. 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 Ashville is your connection. 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Call or text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. All right, So, a massacre at Bondai Beach, I believe is how that's pronounced in Australia. Australian. This is according to the Associated Press. Australian federal and state government leaders agreed to immediately overhaul already tough national gun control laws after a mass shooting targeted a Honukkah celebration on Sydney's Bondai Beach, leaving at least fifteen people dead. Fifteen dead is the latest count that I have heard. Forty two others injured. The action would include renegotiating the landmark National Firearms Agreement that virtually banned rapid fire rifles after a loan gunman killed thirty five people in Tasmania back in nineteen ninety six, galvanizing the country into action. Remember they went around and confiscated the firearms. Nobody was allowed to buy the guns, have the guns all of that. They melted them all down, and that was supposed to be the model for all Western countries, all countries, everybody really across the planet. That's the way you reduce these types of mass shootings is you take up all the guns, except of course from police and farmers. Yeah, farmers apparently get a carve out, which I was not aware of that but kind of makes sense. But why, I mean, these guys got guns. The two men that opened fire apparently a father and son team from Pakistan. Although the son was born in Australia, the father immigrated and then became a citizen and for some reason was allowed to own a firearm. I'm not sure if he was a farmer. But now they're like, okay, well, you know what we could do is we can overhaul, as they say, the AP says, we can overhaul the law that allows for non citizens or naturalized citizens to get guns, so it would only be open gun ownership would only be permitted for citizens like the son. So not really sure how this law overhaul would actually have prevented this shooting. Also, we find out that the sun was in fact on the government's radar once again a known wolf, if you will, not a lone wolf. The violence erupted at the end of a summer day when thousands had flocked to Bandai Beach, an icon of Australia's cultural life. They included hundreds that were gathered for the Hanukkah by the Sea event celebrating the start of the eight day Hanuka festival with food, face painting and the petting zoo. So a couple of Pakistani guys Muslim as I understand it, opened fire on a bunch of Jewish people celebrating the start of Honikkah. We may never know the motive here. People like that's just the way these things go. Two police officers injured treated in hospitals along with the forty others they killed. These assassins, these maniacs killed fifteen people ages from ten to eighty seven years old, including a rabbi, a Holocaust survivor, and a ten year old girl. Police shot the two suspected shooters. There was a fifty year old father died at the scene. They went over they were standing up above, they were like over this. They were on a pedestrian bridge and so they sort of were at the center at the top of the bridge and they were shooting down into the crowd. His twenty four year old son is in a coma in a hospital. This is why I said, we may never know why they did this. The Prime Minister of Australia not exactly a profiling courage in my mind on all of This guy's name is Anthony Albanese and he confirmed that Australia's main domestic spy agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Agency, had investigated The Sun for six months. Back in twenty nineteen, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that ASIO, which is the Security Intelligence Agency ASIO, had examined The Sun's ties to a Sydney based Islamic state group cell. Albany's did not describe the associates, but said ASIO was interested in them rather than the Sun, So he just happened. So they were actually looking at some other people that were connected to this isis cell. And the shooter, the twenty four year old I guess at that point he would have been like eighteen, and he was just, you know, one of the people that were associated with the cell, so they weren't investigating him, Okay, right, well, because that makes sense Hey, guys, we found an ISIS cell in Sydney. We should look into the people. Oh no, no, but not all of them. We're just targeting like this, these one or two guys over here that are part of the cell. No need to look into all of the other people that are in the terrorist cell. He was examined on the basis of being associated with others and the assessment was made that there was no indication of any ongoing threat or threat of him engaging in violence, said Albany. So that was wrong. No, he did pose a threat. He did pose a threat for potentially engaging in violence, because he did. He was the one that was jumped from behind in that now viral video footage that we have seen from the attack. He had walked down off the bridge and was in a grassy area next to the parking lot, and a guy crouches behind one of the cars and sneaks up behind the twenty four year old, jumps on him and gets the gun from him, points the gun at him, and then apparently he is shot in his shoulder and his arm, and he puts the gun down while the twenty four year old apparently goes back up onto the bridge. He let him go. He goes back up onto the bridge with his dad, where they get taken out. There are also reports that some of the law enforcement officers did not return fire. They were frozen in panic and fear. Don't know if that's true, but that's one that is one of the reports I have heard. All Right, if you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Let me jump over here and chat with James. Hello, James, welcome to the show. Hey, how are you doing this good? How are you well? I'm enjoying watching the usual suspects act in the exact usual manner. The head of the government in New South Wales, which is where this took place, I noticed that before anyone had any information at all, the very first thing he came out and demanded was stricter gun laws and to take more firearms away from people. Yeah, that was Chris Men's the premiere of New South Wales, and who said, if you're not a farmer, you're not involved in agriculture, Why didn't Why do you need these massive weapons that put the public in danger and make life dangerous and difficult for New South Wales police? Right? And the thing is that the last time I checked, you don't use rifles and shotguns to plow fields. No, that's why I was kind of scratching my head on that one too, Like farmers are allowed to have the gun, but I'm not sure exactly how that aids them in the farming. I understand for protection when you're out, you know, you know, tending fields or whatever. But that's the same reason why anybody would want to own a firearm is for Texas. Well, that's true, but you see, it appears that these people are a little bit even further to the left than are beloved progressive as far as the disarmed the law abiding citizen, because the criminal is never going to obey the law anyway. Yeah, precisely. I bet some people wish they had a firearm over the weekend at that beach. Oh. One other thing, yeah, and if I may, Uh, this happened in Sydney and Sydney just a few months ago had a pro terrorist demonstration of newly imported, mostly newly imported members of the religion the Peace who were chanting gas the Jews. Yeah. Yeah, these people went out and protested at the Sydney Opera House. Right, which is broad and walking distance of the beach. Yeah, pro Hamas. Yeah. And then and Australia has had a rash of attacks on Jews over the last two year. Government hasn't done anything. Correct, very little. Yeah, James, I appreciate the call. Great points. Uh the uh. The leader of Australia, the Prime Minister Albany's, had proposed new gun restrictions, including limiting the number of guns that a licensed owner can obtain and reviewing existing licenses over time, just to make sure, like maybe you're like the fifty year old dead father that carried out the attack, who came to Australia in nineteen ninety eight on a student visa and became a permanent resident after marrying a local woman. Officials would not confirm at the time of this publication by the AP, they would not confirm what country he had migrated from. They did not want to say that because I think everybody now, I think we can all agree that the real concern here is the Islamophobia, right, That's the real concern. His proposals were announced after the authorities revealed that the older suspected gunman had held a gun license for a decade and had amassed his six guns legally. So this is the system you put in place, was this is the one you you turned you made everybody turn over their guns. And this is the system you put in place that allowed the jihadist guy who came on a student visa married an Australian woman in order to stay. Well, I don't know if it was if it was in order to stay, but you know that was one of the benefits. He gets to stay, and then he gets a license, and then he can buy an arsenal of six guns, which a lot of my friends would say, it's like, that's not even like you're not even counted as a collector at just six. You gotta get way more. So this is the system that you put in place. His son who did not have a gun license, so that's why he wasn't shooting any of the Oh no weight he was, but he didn't have a license. I guess he shot ads guns. See like, this is the absurdity of it. You built this program. This is what you decided to do when you told everybody else to disarm. And the guy who wants to use the guns for a terrorist attack, which is what this was, right, he is not dissuaded from getting guns. He in fact did it legally, which his son could have done as well, because while he may have been Palin around with ICE's terrorist cells, doesn't mean he was ever the subject of the investigation itself. See it's all very clear. 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 thepetekalanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.