NC increases penalties for political terrorism; disturbing new polling (09-25-2025--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 dpeakclendershow 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. All righty, so this week actually Wednesday? Waite Today's Thursday? So yesterday? Is that right? It doesn't matter the uh, I guess this would have been Tuesday. It doesn't matter. September twenty third, yees. So two days ago Tuesday, the North Carolina House of Representatives passed the Political Terrorism Prevention Act Cenebill thirteen. And I'm happy to say that only six Democrats oppose this. I thought it would be more, but one hundred and five representatives in the North Carolina House voted to approve the bill. The legislation was introduced in response to the shooting death of conservative activist and founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. Bill sponsored by the way, this is a piece at The Carolina Journal by Katie Zender. Bill sponsors point to a nationwide rise in acts of political violence and emphasize North Carolina's commitment to protecting open debate and peaceful political engagement. Senate Bill thirteen defines politically motivated violence as any criminal offense committed against an individual because of their political beliefs, affiliations, candidacy, voting, history, advocacy, or lawful political expression. The bill also includes a Charlie Kirk clause, which stay that politically motivated murder can serve as an aggravating factor in death penalty proceedings. And in case you're not clear on what that means, so in North Carolina, back when we used to actually do death penalty cases and impose the death penalty, they've been on hold for like twenty years. You go to first you do your guilt innocence phase right where the jury decides whether or not you're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and if convicted, then you move into a sentencing phase and the prosecution then presents what they call aggravating factors or aggravating circumstances. This is something like, did you murder somebody while committing another crime. Right, if you're in the process of doing a robbery and you kill the person, that is an aggravating factor. Right. Mitigating factors are what the defense would then present things to mitigate the sentence, to try to make it lower, to say it wasn't that bad. It was a crime of passion, or he was on drugs or whatever. Right, bad childhood, stuff like that, mitigating factors. So this would attach to an aggravating factor if North Carolina actually ever did death penalties again, which the legislature is trying to revive with the peace of legislation that they did the other day. Also on the criminal justice reform. Now, whether that gets vetoed, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Governor Josh Stein will veto it. But Republicans seem to think they've got enough votes to override the veto. They definitely do in the Senate. Not sure if they'll be able to peel anyway in the House, but we'll see. And I watched the debate, I don't have the audio here, I'm on location. So why at Gable? He is a Republican state representative from Onslow, and he's a young guy. He was actually the youngest or is the youngest member of the General Assembly, and he's only when he won his primary in twenty twenty four, he was twenty one years old. So young guy. And he said this issue was personal for him because, like a lot of young conservatives, he was inspired to get involved in public service because of Charlie Kirk. He said, I'm sitting here now because I feel because of Charlie Kirk and what he created. He created an organization that I was able to be a part of. I was able to learn, I was able to grow, I was able to network, and I feel it's why I'm here today. Charlie's assassination was not just an attack on a man. It was an attack on free speech that every member of this General Assembly holds deer. This is why this bill matters. He went on to say that if you commit a felony and are motivated by political terrorism, then you're sentence will be raised one full class higher. So, in case you aren't aware of this, North Carolina, in many states do this also, right, You've got varying classes of offenses, and so if you you know you commit a murder or sorry, commit a felony and it's due to some political motivation or ideology political terrorism, then that's an aggravating factor and it will bump you up to a higher class. So if you were, you know, committing like a class C felony, now it's a class B felony, and that means harsher punishment. If you commit a crime based on politics, there will be no parole, no early release, no sentence reduction. Simply you will serve every single day of your punishment, which, like, honestly, I kind of feel like this should be the case for all serious crimes. I don't think like, if you get a sentence of you know, twenty years for murder, I don't think you should get let out until your twenty year sentences up. Like this is the whole truth in sentencing movement, people would get sentenced to lengthy prison terms and then rack up all sorts of like credits and be able to get out in a quarter of the time. So if you engage in political terrorism, you will not be allowed to get early release, You will not get your sentence reduced, You will serve every day of your sentence. Offenders would become ineligible for parole, early release, or sentence reduction and politically motivated felonies right would be elevated. Also class A felonies, which is the highest class. If there's political motivation in the commission of that class A felony, even if it's not a capital offense, it would now become death penalty eligible. So again, if we were actually doing the death penal, this might matter somewhere. But if they get the death penalty back then maybe then maybe this becomes more operable. So that's what the North Carolina House did. And again glad to see that it was one hundred and five to six, Which brings me to this poll that the Carolina Journal published, and I spent way too much time actually last night I get yeah, looking at the cross tabs. Cross tabs are the data sets that are at the back of the polling. And by the way, good rule of thumb is, if you come across a poll on a website or something and they don't give you the cross tabs, be suspicious, okay, because you want to be able to see what all of the breakdowns are, where all of the different responses crossover with each other, and so you can go pull these cross tabs at the Carolina Journal's website and the headline, and they pulled a lot of different questions here, and the headline is that majority of North Carolina voters believe America is on the quote wrong track. But they asked questions about political harassment of public figures but also political violence, and the numbers here are disturbing. And I saw a poll today. Somebody put out a national poll that was like, oh, look, after Charlie Kirk's murder, everybody agrees that political violence isn't good. That's not what this poll found. And I want to be optimistic, but that's not what this poll found. 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It was conducted by Harperpoling and as I mentioned earlier, a lot of questions, a lot of different questions asked. So some of the top line takeaways for me, after reading through the crosstabs and all of the responses, about ninety five percent of North Carolinians who said that political violence is a concern will probably slash definitely vote all right, So these are likely voters, which is the group that you want if you're looking at you know what kind of impact it will have at the ballot box. So these are likely voters. And ninety five percent of these likely voters say political violence is a concern. Okay, So that's going to become important to understand as I go over some of the other data points. Now, there is concern across all ideological the entire ideological spectrum, it's among all races, it's among all genders. Okay, So everybody seems like they are an agreement that political violence is a concern. However, ten percent of the quote very liberal respondent said violence is acceptable. Political violence is acceptable. Ten percent of very liberal voters people accept violence. Who accept the violence this ten percent are way more likely to support harassing public figures as well. So when you look at the different cohorts as they're broken down, this is the importance of the cross tabs to try to get an understanding of what do these people actually believe. So when you cross the tab if you will, with the very liberal cohort that ten percent of whom say violence is acceptable, and then you look at their views on whether or not it's okay to harass people public public figures. Rather, you find they are the largest group. It's like a third of them say it's okay. That's larger than any of the other groups. Like the question that was asked, is it ever acceptable to harass public figures? And ninety four percent of the Republican respondents said no, it's never acceptable. Ninety four percent say no. Democrats thirty percent say yes it is. You can yes, it's acceptable to harass public figures thirty percent, which this is what their own party leadership tells them is acceptable. So it makes sense that they would have a permission structure to do so, to harass people, right, get in their faces, stop them at the restaurants, stop them at the gasoline stations, right to quote Anti Maxine. So thirty percent of just Democrat respondents said that. But when you dig deeper into the cross tabs and you see the people who identify as very liberal versus somewhat liberal and that sort of stuff, you realize that the very liberals are driving this train. Also, four year undergrad degree or bachelor's degree more likely to say harassing public figures is acceptable. Once again, you see the picture, right, these are the awfuls essentially, although it actually didn't break down by females, so I guess it would just be the A l's affluent liberals. So there is a nexus point between the harassment and the violence. So it's a poll of six hundred likely North Carolina voters. Ninety five percent of North Carolinian shared concern about the rise in political violence. Nearly all said they believe that violence or assassination attempts against political leaders or public figures are never acceptable. A small minority said it could be acceptable, three point eight percent, so almost four percent said it could be acceptable. But registered Democrats were more likely to respond that political violence can be acceptable than Republicans. The Republican total on this is less than one percent. And this is this question was a little bit looser. It says can it ever be acceptable? And even then under one percent of Republicans said yes. Democrats was eight percent. So if I go down into these cross tabs of the violence question, right, eight percent say yes. Among Democrats eighty nine percent no, it's never acceptable. If I then look at the education levels, graduate degree or further, that's when political violence is blamed on politicians in that cohort. So people who have the PhDs and the master's degrees and people who have that those terminal degrees, they are blaming politicians. They are also more likely to harass. They're more likely to say political violence is okay. Like this is the polarization, and this number drags the Democrat numbers, right, because again like nine out of ten Democrats say no, it's not acceptable, but ten percent say yes it is. And that is your radical base. That's part of your radical base right there, and it's dragging your Democrat Party and these numbers to a more radical position. So who's to blame for the radicalization? Oh this was a great question too. Who do the different groups blame for the for the political violence? So when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my mom and my day took care of him as he got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and not much support for caregivers and family. But things are different today because of the work of so many people, including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot to me. I participate in the annual Walk to End Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year, and it's called once Again Pete's Pack. You can sign up and you can join the team and walk with us. It's on October eighteenth that truest field sign up at alz dot org slash walk and then you can search for my team name Pete's pack. There's also a link at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make a team and join that one too, or make a donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars. If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can go to alz dot org slash walk for all the dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's. Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me? For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments. This is why we walk, all Righty? So this Carolina Journal poll asking about all sorts of questions on politics but also political violence. And I was just running some of the math. And just to be clear here, when I took the job, I was told that there would be no math, So you may want to double check my numbers here. But if ten percent of Democrats say that political violence is acceptable in North Carolina, and there are, if memory serves, roughly two million registered Democrat voters. I think it's somewhere around there. But even if it's say one million, we'll call it one million. I mean, that's still one hundred thousand people that think political violence is acceptable. That's a lot. And if those people are in positions like media, for example, or politics right and they are or in the schools and they are perfectly happy to condone political violence against their opponents, that creates the permission structure that I keep talking about. And by the way, we now have more details of this very thing that occurred with the anti ICE gunman from yesterday. This is according to the New York Post, the gunman carefully plotted his assault on immigration officers before taking up a sniper position on a Dallas rooftop, and expressed a desire to instill terror in agents. The FBI revealed a handwritten note recovered by investigators said quote, hopefully this will get ICE agents real terror to think. Is there a sniper with AP rounds on that roof? So that's what the gunman said, That's what he wrote. Of course, if you are over on Blue Sky, where all of the leftists fled to when Elon bought Twitter and said he wasn't going to be censoring conservatives anymore. They think all of this is just these are just lies that cash Bettel is lying that the picture of the AMMO on the rooftop that had anti ice messaging on it, that these are all lies and he's just lying about all of this. The gunman also apparently searched for apps. Here's your permission structure. Searched for apps that tracked the presence of ice agents. You remember this story a couple of I don't know, maybe a month or so ago. This was all in the news and CNN was doing interviews with the creator of the app that would track all of the ice movements and such. This is what the guy used in order to find ice agents. He went looking for well, he went looking for them. I know. One of those apps did get taken down. He also downloaded a document titled Dallas County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which the FBI said contains a list of DHS facilities. The FBI said the trove of evidence recovered in the investigation so far indicates a high degree of pre attack planning. So again, when you are in the media and you promote these types of quote products, an app that allows people to target law enforcement for intimidation and or violence. You are helping to create the permission structure. You're sending a signal that this is okay, this is legitimate, this is just free speech. There's no problem here. Look at this entrepreneur. He found a market niche and oh my gosh, what a great idea permission structure. When asked in the Carolina Journal polling, when asked who deserves the most blame for political violence in America, and then they were offered several potential responses politicians, slash elected officials, media, activist groups, and protest movements. Social media companies are unsure. So the four main categories politicians, media, activists, social media okay, And overall North Carolina voters they're number one target for the blame. Who they blamed overall at about thirty five percent politicians, twenty seven percent said the media, sixteen percent said activist groups and protest movements, and fourteen percent said social media companies. But wait till you hear the breakdown. The breakdown is instructive. When you look at the cross tabs, you see there is a wide disparity between Democrats and Republicans and how they answer this question. For Republicans, they primarily blame number one the media, Number two activists, and number three politicians. What about Democrats? Democrats, they primarily blame politicians. In other words, Donald Trump, that's how I read that. Sixty one percent of Democrats blame politicians for the political violence. It's just you know, Johnson, that is to be Johnson in this war. You know, that's the reason why I have to beat you up, Jenny. No, sixty one percent politicians blamed by Democrats, but only thirteen percent of Republicans blame politicians. That is a difference of forty eight percent. That is a very wide disparity in any kind of polling. That is massive. Next up, number two, who did the Democrats blame? Now, these are all very low numbers. These are all single digit numbers. Number two, they blame the media. Oh sorry, I take that back. Number two, they blame social media companies. Social media, that's the Elon effect fifteen percent. Republicans put that number at eleven percent. So Republicans, they rank them the lowest. Social media is ranked the lowest among Republicans, but second highest among the Democrats, followed by the media nine percent and activist groups and protest movements at just six percent, because that's their people, right, that's them. They're going to blame themselves for this stuff. But the number one response was yeah, politicians, there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats of thirty three percentage points when they blame the media. Republicans blame the media at forty two percent, And there's a smaller difference between the activist crowd Republicans pegged down at twenty six percent versus just six percent for Democrats. That right there, I think is the perfect illustration of where we are and why we think so differently. We are blaming different groups of people for inspiring the violence. You know, stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand aperiences. 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. 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These leaders will need to be prosecuted as criminals inciting this violence. Susie says. Your show is my favorite part of the day. Thank you, Susie. You make me laugh and think, well, that's what I'm trying to do. That's awesome. Thank you. Anyway. A few weeks ago, you spoke about a similar study regarding those on the left being more in favor of violence than those on the right. I read your weekly emails with links to the articles and studies you discuss on air, and I never saw that one. Oh did I not post it? So I post my prep over on my Patreon page. It's free, anybody can look at it. And I don't remember when that was. I don't And every week I blow out all of the links, but I post all the links to everything. Well apparently not Pete. I don't know. Will you link this one in your email? This week? I was telling my daughter about it. She did not believe me, so I would love to have the link to send her. Susie, if you know, if you remember the day I talked about it like that would be very helpful because then I could go and get the or you could just send the podcast over to your daughter. But I can go back and listen, because I usually try to make a point to every time, you know, cite the polling site, the data where it's coming from. But it would have been well, yeah, I don't remember the I don't remember the polling but yeah, we talked about it a while ago, and I guess I didn't put that link up. My apologies and sometimes that happens if I find something during the show and I just get I get behind and putting the sho show prep links in there. But this one is already in the prep sheets, so this will be posted after the program over on the Patreon page. This Carolina Journal poll, which by the way, has some other interesting little nuggets or nuggets if you're west of the Rockies. The poll also asked about the stabbing of Arena Zarutzka and people's confidence in the safety on public transport. Thirty nine percent say they are confident in the safety of their local transit system. Thirty eight percent said they're not confident, so that's basically a tie. And this might surprise you. Charlotteans were the least confident thirty two percent, so a third. Only a third say they're confident in their security on cats. Ashville has the highest confidence, that's a fifty two percent. Also, forty eight and a half percent say they are confident that North Carolina effectively prevents violent criminals from harming the public, but forty five percent not so confident, so that's a split as well. When asked about the cause of crime number one answer, twenty six percent said the sources was judges giving light sentences and releasing repeat criminal offenders sixteen percent, so ten percentage point difference there said economic hardship or poverty, sixteen percent in mental illness, and eleven percent at poor parenting and family breakdown. 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 thepetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.