The GOP is becoming the working class party (08-16-2024--Hour1)

[00:00:04] [SPEAKER_02]: 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] [SPEAKER_02]: I have to admit, I'm a little tired today. So if I'm not bringing my A game, I apologize. But my B game is usually pretty good too. Let's be clear, right? Anyway, no, I'm pretty tired. I was up late last night. I did a, this was my first space. I did, I was in space last night. Spaces, multiples actually. Well, really just one, I think.

[00:00:59] [SPEAKER_02]: But, but, so Twitter has a thing called spaces. And they are the gaps between the words when you type your tweets. I'm kidding. No, those are spaces. But no, it's like a, it's like a conference call. That, that, that's my, my closest approximation for people who are not very online. If you're not on Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it.

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm sorry. I just, I cannot, I, I, I can't bring myself to keep calling it X. It's just, it sounds like a porn site. Sorry. So anyway, the Twitter space or spaces, I think it's plural.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Is this, uh, basically it's a, it's a conference phone call, I think, but I guess you could do video on it as well. I don't know. I've never hosted a Twitter space, so I don't know.

[00:01:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, but I was invited to participate in one last night. And so I did. And it went for three hours. It started at 830 and ran through 1130 last night. I believe you can still find it on Twitter.

[00:02:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Uh, I put it up on my YouTube channel as well. Cause I recorded it on my side. So you can watch the, you can watch it from my perspective as well. But, um, it was a, it was a discussion that started.

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And by the way, the host of it is, uh, Cassie Clark. She runs a Twitter account called dogwood blooms. And, uh, she's just, she's a, she's a booster.

[00:02:32] [SPEAKER_02]: She's a cheerleader for all things North Carolina.

[00:02:37] [SPEAKER_02]: And I believe she was, uh, born down East. I want to say Wilmington. And I, uh, forgive me if I get any of the details wrong. I was, uh, just kind of listening last night as people were going through some of their background.

[00:02:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, she was born in Wilmington, but she lived for a long time in Canton, which is Western North Carolina, Haywood County, uh, where they just had the, the big mill close, the paper mill, but just closed.

[00:03:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, I guess it was this year. I want to say, uh, and then she moved back down to Wilmington. So she's been across the state and, um, she took umbrage.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_02]: I would say justifiably. So at a comment that was made by, uh, a leftist moonbat on Twitter who just, oh, by the way, happened to be the candidate who ran against Virginia Fox in, uh, the congressional race.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_02]: The guy's name is Kyle Parrish. And apparently he's not from North Carolina. And he posted up some really stupid tweet, um, which is, I mean, that is his jam. That's what he does.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_02]: So he posted up a tweet and it said, uh, something about how he and his son were driving up to the mountains.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_02]: And while they were going through Western North Carolina, they counted, I forget the exact number because he has since deleted all of his tweets and he's blocked a bunch of people because he, he incurred, you know, wrath as he should.

[00:04:08] [SPEAKER_02]: But when he said that he counted up the number of churches that he could see on the route that he was taking and he counted like 25 or so churches and no libraries, he, he identified not a single library from his vantage point on the interstate or, or what?

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_02]: 74. I mean, like, is there another route that you would take through Western North Carolina? If you're going through it, I think they were on their way to Tennessee or something.

[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_02]: So I think those are the main routes through either on an interstate or, uh, 74.

[00:04:47] [SPEAKER_02]: 74. And he counted all these churches, he and his son, they counted all these churches and then they only counted zero libraries or something.

[00:04:55] [SPEAKER_02]: And they said, I think we have identified the problem.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And so she pushed back on him and then he accused her of just, you know, being some sort of influencer, which is highly ironic because that's what he's trying to be.

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and I, and one of the things I said in the, the Twitter spaces last night, you know, me, I like to ask the question why, or in a, in another form, how so, right?

[00:05:23] [SPEAKER_02]: But why, why would you start if you're think about this, if you're on a road trip with your kid and you're going to the mountains and you're, you know, driving along,

[00:05:34] [SPEAKER_02]: why would you start counting churches? What would, what would prompt you to start looking for churches along the side of the road and count them and keep a tally of them and then try to find and count all of the libraries?

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_02]: So was this something that you, you set about doing before you left, right?

[00:05:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Was this a planned part of your voyage? Hey, you know what?

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I know we're on our way to go see grandma in Tennessee or wherever.

[00:06:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Um, and so while we're on our way there, let's count up all the churches and let's count up all the libraries.

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And as we all know, it is a par for the course.

[00:06:18] [SPEAKER_02]: It is normal to locate the libraries along the interstates, right?

[00:06:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Everybody knows that if you're looking to go to a library, you put it on the interstate because that's where people go.

[00:06:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Right. They just, it's easy access. It's right there on the interstate.

[00:06:33] [SPEAKER_02]: You just pull right off and boom, you're at the library. Everybody knows this.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, you know, land is cheap out there and you don't want to put the library, you know, around people.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_02]: Obviously you want to put it around interstate travelers, people who are just passing through and don't have a library card.

[00:06:50] [SPEAKER_02]: They don't even live in your state, right? That's where you want the library to be.

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_02]: But why, why would you set about your voyage with this kind of metric in mind to collect the data in order to then go on to a social media platform and espouse this?

[00:07:07] [SPEAKER_02]: And then attack somebody who takes umbrage at your completely, I'll say it, BS metric because that's what it is.

[00:07:15] [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, did you know that there are libraries in schools too?

[00:07:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Did you know that? It's true.

[00:07:21] [SPEAKER_02]: They put libraries inside all the schools.

[00:07:25] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're not as big as like your normal public library, but there are libraries in the school.

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, you may want to sit down for this.

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_02]: I've actually seen libraries.

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're much, much smaller built out of like wooden boxes.

[00:07:41] [SPEAKER_02]: They look like birdhouses.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Have you seen these things?

[00:07:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Like a little neighborhood library, little book box where you can go and like open up the little door,

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_02]: find a bunch of bugs and books that nobody wants to read.

[00:07:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, people just put them all over the place too.

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_02]: So they got that going for him.

[00:07:59] [SPEAKER_02]: But he didn't count those.

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_02]: He just counted libraries.

[00:08:01] [SPEAKER_02]: I guess public libraries.

[00:08:03] [SPEAKER_02]: That would be it.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_02]: But he didn't pull off the interstate.

[00:08:05] [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't drive into the downtown areas.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't drive around the schools.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't drive through any of these places to count them.

[00:08:11] [SPEAKER_02]: So what was the point of doing this exercise?

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to assume that he actually did this count.

[00:08:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, just for the sake of this argument.

[00:08:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Because honestly, I don't believe he even did the count.

[00:08:22] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_02]: I think he just made up the numbers.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_02]: But let's assume he did.

[00:08:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Why would he do that?

[00:08:31] [SPEAKER_02]: What would be the purpose of doing such a thing?

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's to denigrate.

[00:08:39] [SPEAKER_02]: I mentioned a piece during this Twitter Spaces event last night.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_02]: It's a piece by Selena Zito written at the Washington Examiner.

[00:08:52] [SPEAKER_02]: And the headline on it is,

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Elites think rural voters can be hoodwinked by a flannel shirt.

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And she talks about the way that rural voters have been disparaged for years with adjectives like bitter clinger, right?

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Clinging to guns and God.

[00:09:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Deplorable.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Extremists.

[00:09:18] [SPEAKER_02]: Threat to the democracy.

[00:09:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Weird.

[00:09:21] [SPEAKER_02]: That's a new one, right?

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Dumb, uneducated, angry.

[00:09:27] [SPEAKER_02]: All of these adjectives have become embedded in the political discourse.

[00:09:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's now being uttered out loud by elected leaders and people who run for office and such.

[00:09:41] [SPEAKER_02]: These are the things that apparently are said within certain circles that then leak out.

[00:09:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Since 2010, rural voters who vote in midterm elections have gone from being pretty evenly split between Democrats and Republicans to far and away more supportive of Republican candidates.

[00:10:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's really, that's really what's prompting the anger from some of the leftists.

[00:10:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Is that in these rural areas, people used to vote for their own interests, vote for Democrats.

[00:10:18] [SPEAKER_02]: And somewhere along the way, these rural voters were like, whoa, we're not voting for you anymore.

[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_02]: And they're angry at having lost that constituency.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_02]: All right.

[00:10:29] [SPEAKER_02]: Hey, real quick.

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_02]: If you would like to get your product or service in front of about 10,000 people multiple times a day, send me an email at Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com and ask me about advertising.

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_02]: It's super affordable.

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_02]: It's baked into this podcast forever.

[00:10:44] [SPEAKER_02]: And podcasts have a higher conversion rate than other social media platforms, making it the best bang for your buck.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Send me a message.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com and I can show you how it works.

[00:10:54] [SPEAKER_02]: Run the numbers with you.

[00:10:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Again, that's Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com.

[00:11:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Selena Zito writing at Washington Examiner dot com.

[00:11:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Elites think rural voters can be hoodwinked by a flannel shirt.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And.

[00:11:09] [SPEAKER_02]: In 2020 or since 20, sorry, since 2010, I should say, which, by the way, coincidentally, is when the Republicans took over control of the state legislature for the first time in 130 years.

[00:11:22] [SPEAKER_02]: But since then, rural voters around America who voted midterm elections have gone from being pretty evenly split between the parties to now far and away more supportive of the GOP.

[00:11:31] [SPEAKER_02]: That year's halfway point between then President Barack Obama's first and second terms marked the tipping point in which Obama, an aspirational candidate promising hope and change who valued having New Deal Democrats in his coalition.

[00:11:47] [SPEAKER_02]: Obama made a calculated move leftward running as a change agent who would run and win with a slimmer but still effective ascendant coalition in 2012.

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Cut off permanently were the majority of rural Democratic voters.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_02]: These voters went from welcomed in their party to being accused of racism.

[00:12:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Never mind that they had voted for Obama twice.

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And by the way, this is the this is the reason why you end up getting Obama Trump voters.

[00:12:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Remember, people were perplexed.

[00:12:27] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't understand.

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_02]: You voted for Barack Obama twice and then you voted for Donald Trump.

[00:12:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Why wouldn't you go for Hillary von Pantsuit?

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_02]: What happened?

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:12:38] [SPEAKER_02]: This is what happened.

[00:12:40] [SPEAKER_02]: As the party moved further to the left, it abandoned one of the constituencies in its coalition.

[00:12:48] [SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things about coalitions is that when you have if you think about it sort of as like a pyramid of power.

[00:12:57] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_02]: And you have coalition groups.

[00:13:02] [SPEAKER_02]: At the bottom of that power pyramid.

[00:13:05] [SPEAKER_02]: They don't they don't get their wishes fulfilled by being a part of the coalition.

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_02]: And at some point they realize us being a part of this coalition is not getting us what we want.

[00:13:18] [SPEAKER_02]: And if the other party makes overtures to them and says, hey, we can offer you this stuff.

[00:13:27] [SPEAKER_02]: We listen.

[00:13:27] [SPEAKER_02]: We see you.

[00:13:29] [SPEAKER_02]: We hear you.

[00:13:30] [SPEAKER_02]: You're good enough.

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Sorry not to get all Stuart Smalley here.

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_02]: But if they make the overtures, then that part of the coalition then looks to that opposing party and says, you know what?

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_02]: I think we may be able to get what we want by being part of them.

[00:13:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And this is one of the things that I think Americans often don't we don't we don't exhibit this belief, which is that politicians are hired agents for us.

[00:14:02] [SPEAKER_02]: I always say, do not fall in love with a politician.

[00:14:05] [SPEAKER_02]: They're going to break your heart.

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_02]: OK, first off, they're human beings.

[00:14:09] [SPEAKER_02]: And and they're going to they're going to say stuff and do stuff that will be at odds with what you believe or you want.

[00:14:17] [SPEAKER_02]: But also they lie to get elected.

[00:14:19] [SPEAKER_02]: And some of them are worse than others, but they're human beings.

[00:14:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And so they're always going to break your heart.

[00:14:24] [SPEAKER_02]: So don't fall in love with them.

[00:14:26] [SPEAKER_02]: They are an employee.

[00:14:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:14:29] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm hiring you.

[00:14:31] [SPEAKER_02]: To represent me at a bargaining table, either in Raleigh or Charlotte Mecklenburg.

[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Or government or up in D.C.

[00:14:41] [SPEAKER_02]: And for me personally, my political philosophy is that I just don't want to get screwed over by all of the other people at the bargaining table.

[00:14:48] [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm looking for people to say no to a lot of stuff.

[00:14:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Just no, no to that, no to this, no to everything.

[00:14:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:14:55] [SPEAKER_02]: That's what I would prefer.

[00:14:57] [SPEAKER_02]: But a lot of people use their agents to get stuff from the other people.

[00:15:02] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:15:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's how you should be viewing your elected leaders, the people that they work for you.

[00:15:12] [SPEAKER_02]: They're elected leaders.

[00:15:13] [SPEAKER_02]: As I'm saying the word, it's like, it's kind of kind of running counter to my argument here because they're not really leaders per se.

[00:15:20] [SPEAKER_02]: They should be looking to fulfill the wishes of the people that sent them there and to protect their interests at the bargaining table.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And so when a part of the coalition no longer believes that their agents are effective and and the other guy that's asking to represent you is offering something else and offering to maybe represent you better than you're going to go there.

[00:15:47] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what we are seeing in the rural voters all across the country, not just North Carolina.

[00:15:53] [SPEAKER_02]: That's how you ended up with Obama voters becoming Trump voters.

[00:15:57] [SPEAKER_02]: They also went from being needed, being courted to being portrayed as lesser than, dumb, uneducated, angry, bitter, a basket of deplorables, if you will.

[00:16:13] [SPEAKER_02]: You got to remember also, Zito writes that these were legacy Democrats who voted the same way their fathers did, their father's father, their father's father's father.

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Right.

[00:16:24] [SPEAKER_02]: They were loyal to the Democrat Party.

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_02]: They carried their union cards.

[00:16:29] [SPEAKER_02]: They believe the Democrat Party was the party of the working man and the working woman.

[00:16:32] [SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't they who changed.

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_02]: It was their party and their party didn't want them anymore.

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_02]: And so when you see the types of messages coming from guys like this Kyle Parrish character who ran for office, now he's got a pack trying to raise money.

[00:16:50] [SPEAKER_02]: He's kind of a grifter.

[00:16:51] [SPEAKER_02]: But like that is the prevailing sentiment now.

[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_02]: That's why I call it the Elysium Party.

[00:16:57] [SPEAKER_02]: The Democratic Party is the Elysium Party.

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_02]: You've got these, quote, elites, you know, with their credentials that are running everything.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_02]: And then you've got the poor.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_02]: But the rural, the middle class, that middle part, they're not needed anymore.

[00:17:13] [SPEAKER_02]: They're not needed anymore.

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_02]: And they realize that.

[00:17:16] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why they're moving to the Republican column.

[00:17:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Let me read a message or two.

[00:17:21] [SPEAKER_02]: Jan says, with the new Democrat mantra of front motors are weird.

[00:17:30] Front.

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't.

[00:17:31] [SPEAKER_02]: OK.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Could give new meaning to the bumper sticker.

[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Keep Asheville weird.

[00:17:37] [SPEAKER_02]: That's true.

[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_02]: It was.

[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, Asheville's branding was keep Asheville weird.

[00:17:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Did you know that?

[00:17:44] [SPEAKER_02]: They had bumper stickers, T-shirts, all that stuff.

[00:17:46] [SPEAKER_02]: I think they stole it from Austin, Texas to be rather than to seem.

[00:17:52] [SPEAKER_02]: So they because the whole and I've called it this to as a joke.

[00:17:55] [SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, cesspool of sin.

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_02]: That was a line from a former state lawmaker years ago describing Asheville once, either

[00:18:04] [SPEAKER_02]: at like a news conference or on the floor of the House or Senate, something like that.

[00:18:08] [SPEAKER_02]: And he made some comment about Asheville, the cesspool of sin.

[00:18:10] [SPEAKER_02]: And so then the people in Asheville, you know, put it on T-shirts like, yeah, with a cesspool

[00:18:15] [SPEAKER_02]: of sin.

[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_02]: And then they adopted from an official like Chamber of Commerce standpoint, Asheville, you

[00:18:22] [SPEAKER_02]: know, keep Asheville weird.

[00:18:23] [SPEAKER_02]: Weird.

[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_02]: So I wonder now, does that mean like J.D.

[00:18:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Vance weird?

[00:18:31] [SPEAKER_02]: It's weird.

[00:18:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Before the Democrats pushed their octogenarian president out of the race in a coup, retired

[00:18:41] [SPEAKER_02]: Colonel Kurt Schlichter, writing at townhall.com, talked about the reason Trump chose J.D.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Vance.

[00:18:50] [SPEAKER_02]: J.D.

[00:18:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Vance was not a Trumper.

[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_02]: He was not supportive of Donald Trump in 2016.

[00:18:56] [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, he was very harsh about Donald Trump.

[00:19:02] [SPEAKER_02]: And Schlichter says, you know who else was?

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Me.

[00:19:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Kurt Schlichter was very critical of Donald Trump.

[00:19:12] [SPEAKER_02]: And by the way, me, Pete Callender, I was too.

[00:19:18] [SPEAKER_02]: I was too.

[00:19:20] [SPEAKER_02]: Like Schlichter, I was a Ted Cruz guy because I did not think Donald Trump was actually going

[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_02]: to do the things that Donald Trump said he was going to do.

[00:19:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And I said so.

[00:19:31] [SPEAKER_02]: Schlichter says I was a traditional conservative and I thought Donald Trump was a New York City

[00:19:35] [SPEAKER_02]: liberal and that he would govern like one.

[00:19:38] [SPEAKER_02]: But he says I was wrong.

[00:19:40] [SPEAKER_02]: So I changed my mind about him.

[00:19:41] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm now a ferocious Trump supporter.

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_02]: And so is J.D.

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Vance.

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And here's the thing about opinions.

[00:19:47] [SPEAKER_02]: You change them when they are wrong.

[00:19:53] [SPEAKER_02]: J.D. Vance had the same experience.

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't think much of Trump at first.

[00:19:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And then Trump proved himself.

[00:19:59] [SPEAKER_02]: And then J.D. Vance began to support him.

[00:20:00] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's how it works, he says.

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_02]: He says I've grown to trust Donald Trump's instincts when it comes to politics.

[00:20:10] [SPEAKER_02]: He says later dumb people will say it's because J.D. Vance flatters Donald Trump.

[00:20:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Again, that wasn't always true.

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And Donald Trump has a long memory.

[00:20:19] [SPEAKER_02]: But Donald Trump is not interested in flattery.

[00:20:21] [SPEAKER_02]: This time he's clearly interested in winning.

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_02]: He has built a strong and effective campaign organization that dominated the primaries.

[00:20:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Colonel Schlichter supported Ron DeSantis because he worried that Trump was going to be hard to reelect.

[00:20:35] [SPEAKER_02]: But then he crushed DeSantis.

[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_02]: He says Donald Trump has also shown incredible discipline, which I disagree with the colonel on that.

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_02]: But he demonstrated courage in his iconic response to the attempt to murder him.

[00:20:55] [SPEAKER_02]: So what did Donald Trump hope to gain from picking J.D. Vance?

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, he's very smart.

[00:21:01] [SPEAKER_02]: He's effective in debate.

[00:21:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Although he says I'm not really sure you really need that to beat Kamala Harris.

[00:21:11] [SPEAKER_02]: Although now he doesn't need to beat Kamala Harris.

[00:21:15] [SPEAKER_02]: He needs to beat Tim Walz.

[00:21:18] [SPEAKER_02]: But he thinks there's something more going on.

[00:21:20] [SPEAKER_02]: He says pundits often reflexively opine that J.D. Vance appeals to the working class based on his impoverished upbringing.

[00:21:27] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think they're on to something, but I don't think they go deep enough in addressing how this dynamic works.

[00:21:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Guys who sweat on the job are not going to vote for J.D. Vance just because his family was poor.

[00:21:41] [SPEAKER_02]: See, J.D. Vance did everything right.

[00:21:44] [SPEAKER_02]: He did everything he was asked within the paradigm of the American dream, right?

[00:21:49] [SPEAKER_02]: A poor but smart kid.

[00:21:51] [SPEAKER_02]: He worked hard.

[00:21:51] [SPEAKER_02]: He rose out of poverty.

[00:21:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Served his country in the Marine Corps.

[00:21:55] [SPEAKER_02]: And then he applied to a prestigious college.

[00:21:58] [SPEAKER_02]: He excelled there, Ohio State.

[00:22:00] [SPEAKER_02]: He was accepted into the heart of the elite training grounds, Yale Law School, where once again he excelled.

[00:22:06] [SPEAKER_02]: He was the editor of the Law Review.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_02]: After graduating, he became a high-tech entrepreneur and did well.

[00:22:13] [SPEAKER_02]: He did everything right.

[00:22:14] [SPEAKER_02]: With his brains and his sweat and his hard work, he checked all of the elite's boxes.

[00:22:21] [SPEAKER_02]: He beat the elite at their own game.

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_02]: And yet, they still want to deny him his reward.

[00:22:27] [SPEAKER_02]: He's still not good enough.

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_02]: And maybe it's because he rejects the ruling class's ideology and because he's a man of deep faith and patriotism.

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_02]: J.D. Vance was picked not because the working class will necessarily love him,

[00:22:42] [SPEAKER_02]: but because the contempt rained down on him by the elite and its lapdog regime media will demonstrate that our ruling class will always hate working people who remain true to themselves.

[00:22:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Right?

[00:22:58] [SPEAKER_02]: This is part of the reason why I just went over the Selena Zito piece.

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Right?

[00:23:03] [SPEAKER_02]: The animosity being directed towards rural people is a result of them saying, you know what, we don't think you represent our interests anymore.

[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_02]: And what does that mean?

[00:23:13] [SPEAKER_02]: It means that it is a rejection of the progressive leftist philosophy.

[00:23:19] [SPEAKER_02]: As the Democrat Party has gone further to the left, part of their coalition says, you've left us now.

[00:23:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why they're angry.

[00:23:30] [SPEAKER_02]: So now they've got to be othered by the elites, quote unquote.

[00:23:34] [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, when I say elites, I don't believe them to be better.

[00:23:37] [SPEAKER_02]: I use it as a pejorative.

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_02]: They, right, they have access.

[00:23:42] [SPEAKER_02]: These are like the rulers, the dynasty families and such royalty.

[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_02]: He's proud.

[00:23:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Or J.D. Proof, rather, is proof that the people who feed, fuel and fight for America will never be allowed to succeed.

[00:23:57] [SPEAKER_02]: He's proof they will always be second class citizens.

[00:24:00] [SPEAKER_02]: And that'll motivate the people who build, run and defend this country to vote against the drooling avatar of an elite that hates them.

[00:24:09] [SPEAKER_02]: The American dream is not about debasing yourself.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_02]: It's about earning what's yours while remaining true to yourself.

[00:24:15] [SPEAKER_02]: And as the elites deny J.D. Vance what he has earned because he thinks for himself, those working class men and women who will make the difference in the Rust Belt will be watching and they will be voting.

[00:24:26] [SPEAKER_02]: That's why Trump picked J.D. Vance.

[00:24:28] [SPEAKER_02]: I got this message from Chris regarding the tweet denigrating people in western North Carolina because this leftist moonbat was driving through and decided to count up churches and didn't see any libraries from his vantage point on the interstate.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_02]: So he said, oh, that's the problem.

[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_02]: Get it?

[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_02]: They're stupid.

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Didn't love libraries.

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_02]: Because we all know you can't read anything unless you have a library.

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:24:59] [SPEAKER_02]: So the church I grew up in, the Greek Orthodox Cathedral on East Boulevard, has a library just outside the gym in the hall of classrooms.

[00:25:09] [SPEAKER_02]: Right?

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_02]: That's the other thing, too.

[00:25:11] [SPEAKER_02]: This false metric that more churches than libraries equals a problem, equals an uneducated population.

[00:25:22] [SPEAKER_02]: By the way, how many churches do you think there are in Mecklenburg County versus libraries?

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Do you think there are more churches in Mecklenburg County?

[00:25:30] [SPEAKER_02]: I guarantee you there are.

[00:25:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Guarantee you there are more churches than libraries.

[00:25:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Does that make Charlotte Mecklenburg students uneducated?

[00:25:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, no.

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_02]: That's for totally different reasons.

[00:25:45] [SPEAKER_02]: Also, more underperforming schools here.

[00:25:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the casual bigotry directed towards Appalachian Americans I find to be weird.

[00:26:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And oddly, it ignores other demographic groups suffering similar circumstances.

[00:26:12] [SPEAKER_02]: I wonder why.

[00:26:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Let me go over to Bruce here.

[00:26:15] [SPEAKER_02]: Hello, Bruce.

[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the program.

[00:26:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.

[00:26:19] [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, sir.

[00:26:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I had a comment on J.D. Vance that I think is important, mostly because I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, and played basketball.

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm familiar with a town called Middletown, Ohio, where he grew up, where he finished, graduated high school.

[00:26:37] [SPEAKER_00]: But in any case, the other thing was when J.D. Vance got out of the military, he didn't go directly to Yale.

[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_00]: He went to a Big Ten school called Ohio State, where he studied very hard, and he got great grades.

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_00]: And by doing very well at Ohio State, he was able to get a scholarship to go to Yale to continue his studies.

[00:27:00] [SPEAKER_00]: And the one thing that I experienced in my own education was, as it happened, although I was from Dayton, I wound up going to Purdue, which happens to be another Big Ten school.

[00:27:11] [SPEAKER_00]: When I was a freshman at Purdue in a dorm, a couple doors down from me, there was a Navy veteran that got out of the military after four years and on the GI Bill went to Purdue, paid for largely by the GI Bill.

[00:27:29] [SPEAKER_00]: And this gentleman, this guy from the Navy, he was the hardest-studying student in the whole dorm, and it was a big dorm.

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm sure.

[00:27:38] [SPEAKER_00]: And we happened to play bridge and chess with him a few times.

[00:27:43] [SPEAKER_00]: But the point is that these people coming out of the military, whether it's J.D. Vance or my associate from Purdue,

[00:27:50] [SPEAKER_00]: they usually, they're coming from backgrounds where getting into college is a challenge.

[00:27:54] [SPEAKER_00]: And one of the reasons I go to the military is that can help them get into college.

[00:27:58] [SPEAKER_00]: And for hopefully some kind of a better future.

[00:28:02] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that whether it's my friend or my associate that lived down the hall from me in Purdue who studied harder, drank less beer than any other freshman student that I ever saw,

[00:28:14] [SPEAKER_00]: I think, I suspect that J.D. Vance was probably the same way.

[00:28:18] [SPEAKER_00]: When he went to Ohio State, he was probably dedicated, which is from all I can read that he was very dedicated

[00:28:24] [SPEAKER_00]: and probably spent more time studying, less time drinking beer and do other things.

[00:28:30] [SPEAKER_00]: And because of that, he was enabled to take the next step up the ladder and go to Yale.

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:28:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that is – yeah, Bruce, I appreciate the call.

[00:28:38] [SPEAKER_02]: That is the trajectory that he took.

[00:28:40] [SPEAKER_02]: It would not surprise me.

[00:28:41] [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, well, he says it in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, talks about that very thing,

[00:28:45] [SPEAKER_02]: that he lacked the discipline when he was in junior high, high school.

[00:28:50] [SPEAKER_02]: So he went to the military and the Marine Corps instilled in him discipline, achieving objectives, right?

[00:28:58] [SPEAKER_02]: This whole different way of thinking.

[00:29:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what then allowed him to be successful.

[00:29:04] [SPEAKER_02]: I want to say he even finished his undergrad work in less than four years, if I recall correctly.

[00:29:14] [SPEAKER_02]: So I got a message from Greg.

[00:29:18] [SPEAKER_02]: He says,

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't think the disdain for rural voters is due to them switching to the right.

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_02]: I believe the root cause for them being angry with rural traditional voters is laziness.

[00:29:27] [SPEAKER_02]: Life is hard when you're a full-time employee, spouse, and parent all at the same time.

[00:29:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Anxiety is with you all the time, which is natural when you have so many responsibilities.

[00:29:36] [SPEAKER_02]: Many of these people either watch their parents struggle in the same way,

[00:29:40] [SPEAKER_02]: or they watch their parents abandon some of these responsibilities altogether.

[00:29:45] [SPEAKER_02]: They want an easier life where they don't own anything, don't work all the time,

[00:29:49] [SPEAKER_02]: and every impulse they have is normalized and even given a name, like pansexual, whatever that is.

[00:29:55] [SPEAKER_02]: Basically, they are rebelling against patriarchal anxiety, which they seem to suffer from the most.

[00:30:02] [SPEAKER_02]: If you ever talk to them, they don't ever shut up about it.

[00:30:05] [SPEAKER_02]: So I believe the rabid leftist's vitriol is rooted in laziness, but I could be wrong.

[00:30:12] [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think part of it is, I'll be a little bit more charitable there.

[00:30:16] [SPEAKER_02]: I think part of it is a lack of understanding.

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_02]: For some, not all, hashtag not all leftists.

[00:30:26] [SPEAKER_02]: But part of it is that they don't understand that some people are content to not run on the treadmill of a corporate gig and all of that.

[00:30:37] [SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of, I've seen these stories over the years.

[00:30:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Women are sold this idea that you're better off graduating high school, going to college, getting a degree, going to work in corporate America,

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_02]: than meanwhile finding a mate, starting a family, raising the kids and doing all.

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_02]: You can have it all.

[00:30:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Or you can not have one of those parts of the equation.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And for some women, they realize that, oh, I didn't want this life of living in a cube or working in a cubicle.

[00:31:11] [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't want that.

[00:31:12] [SPEAKER_02]: That's not how I'm fulfilled.

[00:31:14] [SPEAKER_02]: But that's what they are sold.

[00:31:15] [SPEAKER_02]: That's what everybody is sold, right?

[00:31:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And when you see people who reject that course, it's foreign.

[00:31:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And rather than approach it from a perspective as one might in a foreign country, right?

[00:31:30] [SPEAKER_02]: When you go to a foreign land and you look at that culture and you say, oh, this is how they do things here.

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, isn't that interesting?

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_02]: Instead, it's why aren't these people doing it the way I'm doing it?

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_02]: These are my fellow Americans and fellow North Carolinians.

[00:31:41] [SPEAKER_02]: They should be doing it like me.

[00:31:42] [SPEAKER_02]: All right.

[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_02]: That'll do it for this episode.

[00:31:44] [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much for listening.

[00:31:45] [SPEAKER_02]: I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast.

[00:31:51] [SPEAKER_02]: So if you'd like, please support them, too, and tell them you heard it here.

[00:31:54] [SPEAKER_02]: You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecalinershow.com.

[00:31:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Again, thank you so much for listening.

[00:32:01] [SPEAKER_02]: And don't break anything while I'm gone.