Nick Craig In For Pete Kaliner (03-17-2025--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 thepetekalendershow.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.

[00:00:28] Did you catch these two polls that came out over the weekend, one from NBC News, the other from CNN showing the Democrat parties polling right now their favorability or unfavorability with the American people? Now, this is not some talk news spin. I want to read to you the first couple of sentences from the NBC News article that they published yesterday morning, Sunday around nine o'clock when they released the poll. This is directly from NBCnews.com. No,

[00:00:57] No, no conservative spin on this at all. Quote, the Democrat party has reached an all time low in popularity in the latest national NBC News poll as it searches for a path forward after a painful loss to President Donald Trump and as the party's voters spoil for a fight between their leaders in Washington and Trump. Is that not the most damning headline you've ever heard from NBC News taking shots directly at the Democrat party?

[00:01:27] And the details. And the details, it makes sense. Just over a quarter of registered voters, 27% say they have a positive view of the Democrat party. Take a listen to this. This is the lowest party's positivity rating in this NBC News poll that they have been doing since 1990.

[00:01:47] This isn't just some brand new poll that they made up a couple of weeks ago. They have been asking this question of both the Democrat and the Republican party now for 35 years. And this is the lowest that it's ever been. 27% of registered voters say they have a positive view of the party with just 7% saying that their view is very positive.

[00:02:11] positive. So that's what NBC News had to say yesterday morning with their poll that came out. We then flip over to CNN, the illustrious cable news network. They've ran a similar poll. They have been conducting their poll since 2006, specifically September 22nd of 2006. And the question was phrased a similar way. Question number one, we'd like to get your overall opinion of some people in groups in the news. This is

[00:02:41] how the pollsters ask the question for each please indicate if you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of these people or groups or if you've never heard of them. When asked the Democrat party, the favorable opinion was a record low 29%. Very similar to what you saw in that NBC News poll. And once again, now, while this poll has not been going on since the 90s, it has been going on since 2006, almost 20 years.

[00:03:11] This poll was conducted by SSRS research. Same thing. The lowest level that that's ever been. So this got me thinking over the weekend. Why is the favorability opinion of the Democrat party so low right now? And obviously, we're stuck in the news of the day today. There's so much going on. You heard in the news break of the court order stopping the deportation flights, the Trump administration going forward with it.

[00:03:39] Anyway, battle over a shutdown late last week in Washington, D.C. But I think we've got to go back further than that. I think to truly understand why the favorability within the Democrat party is so low right now, we've got to go back to prior to the election of last year. When you had many Democrats that were sounding the alarm on what was the final days of the Biden administration.

[00:04:05] Now, obviously, your party loyalists, they operate the same way on both the left and the right. They will carry the water and stick with their party 100 percent of the time. So we're not talking about those individuals. But as you work towards the middle of the political spectrum, you've got this group of voters that fall left, fall right, depending on their political makeup and the things that they believe in.

[00:04:25] Those individuals were starting to call out what was a failing administration and their concerns were pushed to the side. Their concerns were ignored. They were told to shut up, sit down and just get on the bus with everybody else. Don't don't make any issues here. Don't argue with us. We're the Democrat Party. We know the best.

[00:04:48] So as we work through the summer of last year with Biden's failing mental health on public display for everybody, then, of course, the first disastrous debate that took place. Next thing you know, Biden's gone. And those middle of the road Democrat voters, the ones that are not the party loyalists, but tend to vote for Democrats in general and primary and various elections, midterms, whatever it might be.

[00:05:12] Those individuals who had voiced this concern earlier were once again told to stop talking because they didn't get a choice as to who their candidate was. They didn't get to decide who was going to lead their party in a major general election battle that we saw play out in November of last year.

[00:05:34] They were told the vice president, the very unpopular, very ineffective vice president in vice president Harris was going to be their pick. They didn't have a say. They didn't get to vote. They didn't have a choice. This is your candidate. She was she was nominated queen of the Democrat Party overnight. Joe Biden's gone. And here you've got Harris as your candidate.

[00:05:59] Now, you would imagine that if you were one of those middle of the road, maybe even moderate Democrat voters that was not super happy with the Biden administration, was not happy with the upper echelon of the Democrat Party in the way they were operating. How frustrating is that? You knew Joe Biden wasn't up to the task. Yet you were told that your concerns weren't valid. You were told that your concerns didn't matter. You just needed to get in line with everybody else.

[00:06:27] Here's the sheet of music starts singing off of it. Lo and behold, those individuals, well, they happen to be right. Joe Biden did, in fact, drop out. He was not the candidate who ran against Trump in the November general election. So then Harris is the is the gal. She's the one. She's the face of the Democrat Party, even though she's incredibly unpopular. She refused to do media that touched American voters.

[00:06:53] She refused to do shows like Joe Rogan and other various interviews and media outlets that we as we, I believe, saw play out in November were incredibly influential for the election. And Democrats just had to continue to chug along. There was nothing they could do at that point. The match was already set. The race was already set. Ballots were printed. The contest was Trump v. Harris. That was it. So then we roll over to Election Day.

[00:07:20] And while the polling looked pretty good for Trump, we know political polls are not always the most accurate thing in the world. And especially political polls dealing with somebody like President Donald Trump. That's at the time, the former President Donald Trump. How were the polls going to handle him the third time around? Had the pollsters figured out how to pull Trump? Had the pollsters figure out how to deal with him in a presidential contest on a national stage?

[00:07:48] There was a lot of uncertainty, a lot of questions. Third time's the charm, maybe. Who knows? And then, of course, we saw what happened election night, November 2024, where Harris lost all seven of the swing states. Democrats were incapable of holding the Oval Office. They gave up their majority in the Senate. They were unsuccessful and taking away the majority from Republicans in the House.

[00:08:16] Oh, and by the way, maybe I should mention this. Trump won the popular vote for a Republican the first time in 20 years. It's all of this setting the stage before we are even turning the calendar into 2025. All of this before Trump's even in office. I think that sheds a little bit of insight into some of this polling. 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.

[00:08:46] 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. I put the link in the podcast description, too.

[00:09:07] 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.

[00:09:34] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports Ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. We're talking about these two very interesting polls that came out over the weekend, one from NBC News, the other from CNN. The NBC News poll showed that just a quarter of registered voters, 27% say they have a positive view of the Democrat Party, which is the lowest in the NBC News poll since 1990.

[00:10:00] Back when NBC News started asking this question and started conducting this poll and then a similar poll over at CNN that asked individuals what they thought of the Democrat Party. And they were found to only have a 29% favorability in the CNN poll. So both of those polls combined the lowest ranking ever, the lowest percentage ever for the favorability of the Democrat Party.

[00:10:24] And as I went through in the first segment, walking through a couple of the reasons as to why Democrat voters might be frustrated, all of this happened before Trump was even in office. But you had the disastrous debate for Biden, then him being quickly exited stage left and then replaced with the very unpopular vice president. She's supposed to be the savior of the Democrat Party. She shows up in early November and she gets her clocks clean.

[00:10:51] I mean, the Democrat Party just gets shellacked in the November election. Trump wins seven of seven swing states. He wins the popular vote, something he was unsuccessful and Republicans have been unsuccessful in doing for 20 plus years now. Democrats lose control of the Senate at a much larger margin than they were supposed to. And by the way, Republicans retain control of the House. So all of that together, we're now at the midway point through November, early part of December of last year.

[00:11:20] And you can imagine if you're a Democrat putting those shoes on for just a couple of minutes. I know it's tough, but put yourself in the shoes of that Democrat voter. How frustrated must you be with your party? You knew that there was an issue. You knew me and you took Trump as a as a serious political threat as opposition to you and what you stand for as a Democrat and what your party beliefs are and what the party platform and ideas are. You were told to ignore that he's illegitimate.

[00:11:49] He's not serious. There's no chance he can win, you know, so on and so forth. All of the typical Democrat talking points. He's a convicted felon. He's a this. He's a that. All of that materialized to nothing because Democrats could not convince the American people that their ideas, their policies, their platforms were better than that of Donald Trump and the Republicans.

[00:12:10] So now we fast forward to the early part of this year, January 20th, to be exact, inauguration day for now the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump. Once again, Democrats besides them beside themselves. You don't like Trump. You weren't a fan of Trump. And now he's the guy. He's the president, whether you like it or not. Now, of course, some Democrats still screaming that the election was stolen, but we'll ignore those those voices in the corner. He's the president now.

[00:12:38] And what does he start doing day one? He begins dismantling what Democrats have worked for decades to put into effect. The complete and total government bureaucracy that controls each and every element and facet of our day to day lives.

[00:12:57] To the Democrats credit, a very effective tool that they have mastermind over generate over a generation where they have grown the size of the federal government, grown the size of regular regulation, grown the size of the bureaucracy to the point where it's hard for you to operate your life without dealing with the bureaucracy in one way or the other. And of course, where does that bureaucracy fall on the political spectrum? Well, it falls almost exclusively to the left.

[00:13:28] Big government is controlled by and has been controlled by the radical left. You saw it during Trump's first term, 2016 to 2020. Now, at the time, there was a lot of talk from him and other Republicans about draining the swamp. You heard that a lot in the first term. It was a major campaign promise he made to voters throughout 20 late latter parts of 26, 2015, and throughout the entire election in 2016.

[00:13:56] But he was unsuccessful in truly draining the swamp as he wanted to do so, as many Republican voters wanted him to do so. As Trump unfortunately found out the hard way, the problem was much bigger than he was maybe led on to believe. The size and the scope of this liberal progressive bureaucracy was much bigger than he could even tackle.

[00:14:23] And in his first term, he did not have the right people around him to do that. There was a bunch of individuals that did not have Trump or the American people's best interests at heart when they decided they were going to work with the new administration. They misled Trump. They misled his advisors, and they didn't do the job they needed to do.

[00:14:42] And so while he did make some inroads, a little bit here, a little bit there, in regards to the oversized government bureaucracy, the regulation, the red tape, the waste, the fraud, the abuse, wasn't enough. He didn't have enough time. And now he spent the first two years of his administration fighting Paul Ryan and the Republicans in the House because they, of course, didn't want to work with the Republican president. What a novel concept, working with a guy that just won the presidential election for your party. I know.

[00:15:09] What a wild idea, working with the duly elected president. So within just days of Trump being sworn in the second time as the 47th president of the United States, he begins the process of dismantling what the Democrats have worked decades to concoct.

[00:15:29] They have worked decades to install their people, their political ideology, their agenda in every facet of the federal government. From agencies like EPA to Social Security to Treasury, all over federal government, their people exist.

[00:15:50] The only difference now is that Trump and the people around him know what their target is, and they have done a very effective job at cutting that out. They've done a very effective job at relieving those individuals of their duty. And there's a lot more that has been going on over the last couple of weeks, almost 60 days since Trump's been in the Oval Office. 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?

[00:16:20] And Cabins of Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon, maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get family and friends together for a big old reunion, Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that truly matter. Nestled within the breathtaking 14,000 acres of the Pisgah National Forest, their cabins offer a serene escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park,

[00:16:49] it's the perfect balance of seclusion and proximity to all the local attractions. With hot tubs, fireplaces, air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi-Fi, grills, outdoor tables, and your own private covered porch, choose from 13 cabins, 6 cottages, 2 villas, and a great lodge with 11 king-sized bedrooms, Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion. And they have pet-friendly accommodations.

[00:17:16] 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. We are continuing the discussion this afternoon about these two polls out, one from NBC News, the other from CNN, showing the lowest favorability rating amongst the Democrat Party in the case of the NBC News poll,

[00:17:40] 35 years in the case of the CNN poll, going back to 2006, so almost 20 years that that party has seen its favorability at the lowest level that it is right now. So this brings us to where we were in the middle and latter part of last week, where Democrats had a big decision to make. Do they keep open the government or do they shut it down? You heard all the WBT hosts talking about it last week.

[00:18:09] House Republicans worked with the Trump administration to come up with a continuing resolution, which I'll admit is not perfect, not a fan of a CR, but that's what, that's the cards that we got dealt. That's what we're dealing with. So Republicans work with Trump. They get a CR put together. They pass it in the House. They don't need the Democrats' support to do so. Republicans have the majority in the House. Simple majority vote wins. They passed it, and it goes on to the Senate. Now, while Republicans do have control and do have the majority in the Senate,

[00:18:38] they don't have 60 votes, which is what they need to pass something like a continuing resolution. So this brought forward a very interesting question for the leader of the U.S. Senate in Chuck Schumer, at least from the Democrat side of the aisle. The minority leader in Chuck Schumer had to decide what did he want to do. Now, Wednesday of last week, Tuesday, Wednesday of last week, you heard from Schumer that it wasn't going to happen.

[00:19:07] He was not going to vote for a continuing resolution. As the days went on, as we got closer to the Friday midnight deadline, when the government was set to shut down, to close down at least on a temporary basis without this continuing resolution, this stopgap funding bill put in place. Well, old Chuck Schumer's tune started to change.

[00:19:31] And he came out in public, made a statement that said and claimed that he was going to vote for the continuing resolution and that he was encouraging his Senate colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle to do the exact same thing. And from a political standpoint, speaking purely political optics, political, you know, the game that we all talk about, we all love, we all enjoy. Most of us do. That was a smart move.

[00:20:00] He needed to move forward with the continuing resolution. There was no amount of media spin. There was no amount of running to MSNBC or CNN cameras and blaming the Republicans for the shutdown that was going to make this problem good for the Democrats. Republicans are in charge. They passed it in the House. They had all of their votes in the Senate. If the government shut down on Friday, it was exclusively one party and one party's fault.

[00:20:27] That was Chuck Schumer and the Democrats in the United States Senate. There is no amount of dressing up, putting lipstick on the pig that is going to change that for Senate Democrats, change that for the American media and for the American public. There's always an attempt because the mainstream media is such a powerful tool for the left. They always have this ability to spin the narrative, right? We've seen this for generations now.

[00:20:54] We've seen the ability for them to take something and spin it into their favor from a political standpoint. They've been very successful at using the media establishment, whether that be ABC, CBS, NBC, now with the invention of cable news, CNN and MSNBC. Use these tools, use these avenues and vehicles of media to tell the American people what is not the truth.

[00:21:24] Tell the American people that even though Democrats voted against a continuing resolution, it was those gosh darn Republicans that shut the government down. They've been successful at doing that in the past. But I think Chuck Schumer, contrary to if you like him or not, he's a smart political operator. He knows the game. He's been in it long enough to know how this was going to play out for him. And I'll note the polls that we're talking about this afternoon.

[00:21:53] All of these were conducted well before the CR vote took place on Friday around, was it five, six o'clock Friday when the Senate passed the continuing resolution? All these polls were already in the field before that. So this was before the CR vote. And so as he came out boldly and spoke against or spoke in favor of the continuing resolution, claiming that the Democrats will have more power with the government open than by shutting it down,

[00:22:22] something very interesting happened. Something that we have not seen take place on the public political stage in quite some time. You had infighting within the Democrat Party taking place publicly. One thing, if you want to give the Democrat Party credit for anything, one thing you absolutely have to give them credit for is their ability to work out issues behind the scenes.

[00:22:51] Their ability to work out issues behind closed doors, have the knockout drag out battle, but do it privately, do it behind the scenes, and then emerge a unified front. Democrats are incredibly good at doing that. Republicans, not so much. We see their knockout drag out battles in public and making a complete and total mockery of the GOP and their agenda. Democrats don't operate in that manner.

[00:23:18] At least they haven't until Thursday and Friday of last week. Chuck Schumer says, I'm voting for this continuing resolution. I'm encouraging my Democrat Senate colleagues to do the same. And just like that, snap of a finger, you've got Democrats in the House calling out Chuck Schumer. I'd like to read you a quote from the former Speaker of the United States House in Nancy Pelosi, everybody's favorite representative from San Francisco.

[00:23:47] This is what she put out in a statement on Friday morning. Donald Trump and Elon Musk have offered the Congress a false choice between a government shutdown or a blank check that makes a devastating assault on well-being of working American families across the country. Let's be clear. Neither is a good option for the American people. But this false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable.

[00:24:16] End quote. The false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable. That is a complete potshot at Chuck Schumer. That is calling out her colleagues, her friends in the United States Senate over not voting or not stonewalling the continuing resolution and voting against it. And she wasn't the only one.

[00:24:42] We heard some similar comments as well from Hakeem Jeffries. All right. So spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad. Your family's making memories that are going to last a lifetime. But let me ask you, are all of those treasured moments from days gone by, are they hidden away on old VCR tapes, 8mm films, photos, slides? Are they preserved?

[00:25:09] Because over time, these precious memories can fade and deteriorate, losing the magic of yesterday. At Creative Video, they help you protect what matters most. Their expert team digitizes your cherished family moments and transfers them onto a USB drive, freezing them in time so they can be enjoyed for generations to come. I urge you, do not wait until it's too late. This spring, celebrate your past. Visit Creative Video today and let them preserve your legacy with the love and care that it deserves.

[00:25:38] Creative Video, preserving family memories since 1997. Located in Mint Hill, just off 485. Mail orders are accepted too. Get all the details at createavideo.com. Spending a lot of time talking about these two disastrous polls for the Democrat Party released over the weekend. One from CNN, the other from NBC News, showing that the Democrat Party's unfavorability is, or their favorability rather, is the lowest that it's been in the case of the NBC News poll, 35 years.

[00:26:08] The CNN poll, almost 20 years. And this is ahead of what you saw on Friday, which was the first time that at least I've seen, at a big level, Democrats fighting publicly. You had Chuck Schumer, who was encouraging his Senate colleagues to vote in favor of the continuing resolution to keep the government open. And you had the Democrats in the House speaking against it. You heard, I read the quote from Nancy Pelosi. I'll read the final part of it again.

[00:26:39] This is directly from the former Speaker of the U.S. House. Quote, This false choice is, the false choice that some are buying instead of fighting is unacceptable. Calling out Chuck Schumer. And here's a quick audio clip of Hakeem Jeffries saying a very similar thing. He held a press conference about three or four hours ahead of the vote in the U.S. Senate on Friday. This is what Hakeem Jeffries had to say about the shutdown.

[00:27:04] Our general view is that we do not want to shut down the government. But we are not afraid of a government funding showdown. And we will win that showdown. And that's calling out Chuck Schumer. Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democrats in the House, says that he's not afraid of a shutdown. And if there's going to be a public showdown over that, Democrats will win.

[00:27:34] I think Hakeem Jeffries is dead wrong about that. I think when you look at what just happened in November of last year, I don't think the American people, and this polling, which again we didn't have at the time when these clips and this back and forth was happening on Friday, the polling indicates that the American public is not a fan of the Democrat Party right now. The polling indicates,

[00:28:00] especially for those middle-of-the-road voters that voted for split government, and those folks do exist. I've coined the term ping-pong voter to describe these individuals as they work their way down the ballot. They check off some Republicans, check off some Democrats. They exist, and they exist in large part here in North Carolina, as of course our largest voting bloc is unaffiliated voters across the Tar Heel state. So those people do exist. And when they vote for split government,

[00:28:30] that means they want individuals to work together. They want Democrats and Republicans to come together and work on issues like a government shutdown. Now obviously when you get to the hyper-partisan, the hyper-political issues, I don't think individuals expect there to be some big kumbaya moment where Republicans and Democrats all of a sudden agree on everything from a policy standpoint together. But on something like this continuing resolution,

[00:28:58] keeping the government open until September of this year, voters, especially those middle-of-the-road ones, want Democrats to work with Republicans. That's what this polling indicates. So I think Hakeem Jeffries' assertion here that if the government was shut down, which is what he was in favor of, you know, it's easy for him, but his vote and his Democrats' vote in the U.S. House didn't matter. Whether he voted for it or against it, it was going to pass. It's very easy to make a vote

[00:29:28] when your decision doesn't really have any impact at all. When your vote doesn't really carry any weight. So he's throwing shade at Chuck Schumer. He's throwing shade at the 10 Senate Democrats that voted in favor of this CR. He thinks that he's going to win the showdown, as he calls it, in the public sphere. I'm not sure that's the case. I think that's a big issue and a big miscalculation from Hakeem Jeffries coming up. So that's what we're tracking there on the government shutdown.

[00:29:57] I'll have some more details coming up here in just a few minutes. 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 thepetecalendorshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening and don't break anything while I'm gone.