Episode 5318: Send Lawyers, Guns, And Money Virginia's Hit The Fan
Stephen K. Bannon and Sean Spicer dissect Virginia's redistricting loss, where CNN projects Democrats gained four House seats, erasing Trump's previous gambit. Spicer blames a "perverse incentive structure" where consultants spent millions on $40-per-vote cable ads instead of grassroots efforts, costing Republicans despite protecting figures like Ken Paxton against only $10 million in opposition spending. While Raheem Kassim demands transparency on deals involving Chris Lasavita and questions Trump's oversight, the panel concludes that rejecting a "points on the buy" mentality for direct voter engagement is essential to reversing this electoral defeat. [Automatically generated summary]
Now CNN can project that the redistricting effort in Virginia has prevailed.
That means the vote yes side, which largely will give Democrats up to four more seats in the House OF Representatives, has defeated the vote no side.
You can see the numbers there on your screen.
They're still coming in and one of the reasons that we are projecting this now is that the vote in a Fairfax County which is a largely Democratic area, often slow to come in on election nights but it's now beginning to come in.
So when you look at that, as well as the Democratic vote and other Democratic Strong areas.
This is what is projecting the yes side of this.
Anderson, if you step back at this, really a year into this redistricting fight that the president started with the Texas effort, followed by California and now Virginia, it really is about a wash now.
And in fact, Democrats will prevail slightly in the overall map in terms of the number of seats that have picked up.
So largely the gambit that the president started about a year ago to try and help his House majority in November has been erased.
The enthusiasm is still on the Democratic side, there's no doubt.
There will be long-term questions about this Virginia redistricting effort, going from six Democrats and five Republicans to ten Democrats and one Republican.
But clearly, as so many voters have been mentioning to us over the weeks, fight fire with fire.
So that's what Democrats did there.
So for Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, who clearly was central to this effort to push Virginia Democrats to go to the map. and really expand this significantly, this is a major win for him.
So overall, the vote yes side is going to prevail.
CNN is projecting.
So a big deal in the midterm election fight now, just six months away here in D.C. Anderson.
Anderson had that mini magic wall with me because we're on the road.
We could show it on a bigger screen to our viewers, and you can see 51 to 49 or 51 to 50 if you round that up, which, of course, is not math that works.
But it's a nail-biter.
We have a nail-biter in this critical piece of mid-decade redistricting chess, and tonight it's the Commonwealth of Virginia.
No, meaning do not redraw the map, do not help the Democrats get more seats, is leading at the moment.
Okay, let me jump in here because we're absolutely so packed today.
Sean Spicer joins us.
A day of reckoning, a night of reckoning last night.
And I think we've got to face up to some hard facts about exactly how this went down.
So we're going to have Jeff Ryder, John Reed.
Others from the Virginia Republican Party, the grassroots leaders, they really put their shoulder to the wheel here.
This is all of a piece, and we have to understand it as a piece, or we're going to get blown out in November.
You do not have to get blown out in November.
All these doomsayers are saying that it has to happen.
It does not have to happen.
Nothing is written.
You create your own destiny through your actions, through your human agency.
And this is inextricably linked to Texas and the Paxton situation.
We have a system that has a perverse set of incentives for these consultants who are making money hand over fist as we are frittering away the hardest core and most devoted.
Of the Trump followers that are out in the field working their tails off, getting no air cover whatsoever, while a set of consultants make an unlimited amount of money.
That has to stop and it will stop.
It either stops or the blowout in November is actually going to manifest itself.
So we have to have a moment of reckoning on our side of the football.
If we continue on with the structure of how it's structured today and the incentive structure, We are going to lose the Senate big league.
We're going to lose the House big league.
And people in the White House, the administration, and on Capitol Hill better understand the Democrats are coming at us with something you have no earthly idea what they're doing.
This is that these are the most vicious.
You see what they did in Virginia?
Bald face lied, never showed a map.
Spamberg is on Morning Jodas where I couldn't even play the cuts.
It's so offensive of how she positioned it.
I have two people, Sean Spicer and Raheem Gassan.
We're going to break it all down.
Sean, first, you sent the flare up early.
Walk us through, in your mind, the structure of this and what actually happened on something that was very winnable.
Virginia was very winnable.
Rode to the sound of the guns and could have won this if they had even a modicum of support.
Look, I hate to lose, but I really hate to lose when you could have won.
We didn't get blown out because we were outgunned or out strategy.
The Democrats' campaign was over the top.
They oversold Virginia.
I think they jumped the shark on their own political, but there was no rescue to the grassroots.
You and I, Steve, we were out there on Sunday spending hours on end talking to the grassroots.
And what was the overriding message?
We've been raising our hands, asking for help, and we can't even get a pittance.
They couldn't get stuff for phone calls, door knocking, the basics.
But there was plenty of money for bad cable ads that consultants were able to get a cut from.
This was a winnable race.
And for all these people who, in the last 20 minutes, like, by the way, this was on the calendar like Christmas is.
The idea that people didn't know this was coming is ridiculous.
So, to the former governor who decided to go on Fox News a few times in the last few days talking about how we need to get together, we've known about this for months.
There was a special session called last year.
We knew what the strategy was, there was no preparedness.
There's $500 million, half a billion dollars.
Sitting in people's coffers today.
None of it was deployed.
This was the cheapest date in politics that I've seen in 30 years.
We lost four seats.
That's very well the majority, right?
And that's what's pathetic.
And I see a lot of people this morning saying, well, maybe the Supreme Court in Virginia will save us.
The Supreme Court, by the way, that needs to get reappointed by the Democratic legislature.
Hint, hint, what do you think they're going to do?
They're not going to come to the rescue.
But too many people blew it on this who had plenty of money, had plenty of time, and are now pretending like they were part of the solution.
They had nothing to do with the grassroots effort.
They wanted to put a bunch of cable ads up, which was the dumbest strategy I've ever seen.
The same losers that lost in November lost last night.
So here's your point.
And I echo what you're saying in the cold open get the message.
This is like going in to see the doctor saying, if you don't change your behavior, you're going to have serious health problems.
You better get the message today.
If you think a bunch of cable ads are going to save us in November, you're dead wrong.
We need to get out there and sell this door to door, voter by voter, making the case.
But there's no white knight riding in to save us.
That's what I think.
Everyone in Virginia that I talked to kept saying, oh, well, the White House is going to do this.
The NRCC is going to do this.
The RNC is going to do this.
No, we need to do this.
And we got out there, Steve, on a Sunday and got tons of people.
I've been talking about it on my show.
You've been talking about it in the war room.
I wrote a book called Trump 2.0.
If you think this majority, this America First agenda that President Trump has been fighting for, you have to understand if we don't get out there and keep this House majority, it all goes away.
The stakes could not be higher.
This is a power grab, pure and simple.
And one thing about that CNN clip, this BS, the idea that President Trump started this, I'm sorry, what did they do in New York last cycle if it wasn't for the Supreme Court?
They started this.
I don't really care who started, to be honest with you.
That's a media talking point.
The bottom line is this was a winnable race.
We could have picked up four seats.
It was sold as a bill of goods, temporary fair, 10 1 fair, my butt.
I mean, look, guys, get the message.
This is about pure and simple power grab.
That the Democrats crave.
And if we believe that President Trump is driving this country forward, then we need to do everything we can this summer, this fall, to make sure that we re elect a House Republican majority.
The bottom line is it does take money to do ballot chasing, jet out the vote efforts, ID voters, make sure you're chasing them, phones, door knocking, direct mail.
But a bunch of cable ads to people who are over 65 is not going to win the game.
But to your point, bottom line is you don't get a 15, 20% cut if you don't do that.
And there's a bunch of people this morning, because you know the only winners in this are the same losers that lost in November.
They're lining their pockets at doing this.
And we need to wake up because the grassroots could have won this.
And here's the thing.
By the way, this is one other big fallacy.
Don't look at the total amount spent.
I know some people are saying we spent $15, $20 million, but where you spend it and how you spend it matters.
That same money, if it was spent on the ground, on the grassroots, door knocking, talking to influencers, digital ads, mail, phone, we would have won.
81,000 votes made the difference.
I don't think there's a single person that said, wow, I saw a cable ad.
They slow rolled the Dems, the liberals on the court.
The Voting Rights Act, so that now all we're left with is potentially Louisiana and Alabama.
That's a net three, and then Florida, which would go anyway.
But the bottom line is, these guys know what they're doing.
They played a math game, and we sat back.
Think about it.
They'll spend $30 million on one House seat.
$5 million on the ground would have won this race, four seats.
This is a simple math and business proposition that was completely blown out of the water.
I hope that people learn their lesson.
If members of Congress are listening right now, understand this.
If you think you're going to win, In November, by placing a bunch of cable ads and a thousand points on broadcast TV, you have another thing coming to you.
Get out there, talk to those grassroots leaders, get with influencers, talk about putting money on the digital, invest in people.
But so many people I talk to in Virginia because the Dems did a great job of confusing voters.
Oh, I hear this is fair.
I hear this is just temporary.
They worded this great.
They played a better game, frankly.
And you know what they did?
They confused voters, and that's what they wanted.
But we needed a game on the other side that explained what was happening and why, what was at stake.
And how to put the money into the grassroots hands to go voter by voter to say you're a Trump supporter, the Trump agenda is at stake, and here's why.
And they have the worthless former governor of Virginia on Fox, whining the last couple of days.
Fox, totally worthless.
TV for stupid people.
The former governor, good riddance.
It's just an absolute total debacle.
Sean, before I let you go, I want to get all your touch points of people and where they can find the book because it is a lie to think that the Trump base is not motivated.
You saw it in the Commonwealth of Virginia, we've seen it in Texas.
Right, that people are incredibly motivated if properly incentivized, led, and also have some air cover.
They know what they're doing is working to victory, which the people there were working to victory if they had just spent four or five million dollars on kind of support for a grassroots effort to get a couple of pros in there, like they like happened in 2024.
But this points on the buy mentality is what has to be shattered.
We have a perverse incentive structure, and you're seeing this in Texas.
Raheem's going to be on in a minute with the.
You're seeing this $100 million spent to destroy the grassroots in Paxton.
Look, Raheem's got a great piece out at the National Pulse on this.
I posted it on Instagram this morning that lays out what's at stake.
But to your point, look, they spent $80 million, and we came within a point and a half of beating them.
The grassroots is where it's at.
And if you don't recognize that, then you are missing the boat.
Here's the point on the book.
Thank you for bringing it up.
Trump 2.0, go to Amazon right now.
And for any members of the war room posse that order it in the next seven days, if you go on Amazon and send me a screenshot to contact at SeanSpicer.com, I will send you a personalized book plate, personalized to whomever you want, or just sign it.
I'll send it to you.
Just in time for Mother's Day, Steve.
No, every mother in America, that's what they want.
Raheem Kassim told me that.
That's what mothers want.
Polling shows that.
So order Trump 2.0 on Amazon.
But the point is if you actually care about Trump 2.0, you need to understand what's at stake right now.
This Administration will be the most historic because he had four years out of office to plan and to plot and to think about who the people that he wanted to surround him with.
So go to Amazon, order Trump 2.0, and then tune in at Sean Spicer's show every night at 6 on YouTube to get a sense of like, we're talking about this tonight.
We're going to talk about it tomorrow.
I've been up on the Hill talking to members of Congress.
They got to get the message that you, the War Room, Sean Spicer's show, the National Pulse, this is what the grassroots is reading and seeing, not cable TV.
Make sure we get Deshaun's show because he's breaking it all down about what's happening in the Supreme Court with this.
Raheem Kassama, I agree with Sean Spicer.
He knows what the mothers of America want, and that is crystal clear analytics.
Over at the National Pulse, you wrote a piece last night because you connect the dots back.
This is not just some random occurrence.
This is the culmination of a process and a perverse incentive structure where these consultants are making a fortune.
And here's what I'm calling for no one should give another penny to any of these groups, just none.
Until we get total transparency on what these deals are, I don't understand why the political director of the White House goes out to what MAGA Inc. or whatever, and they say to coordinate.
Well, maybe you can't coordinate inside the White House, or it's not a way just to make money.
All the interconnections, the mail, the phones, the ads, all of it.
People have to know people are making a ton of money and getting blown out.
And here's what upsets me so much in Texas, they spent $100 million.
Destroying or attempting to destroy Ken Paxton.
And the grassroots stood up there with no help whatsoever and just a couple of million bucks and has defeated Cornyn.
Cornyn is now eight points down.
And all he does is continue to put his vitriol on television, Raheem, to try to destroy and make it harder for Ken Paxton to win in the fall.
Sir, walk us through this piece you wrote last night.
I think there's going to be a lot of questions about how the money was spent, and that's right.
But if you look at the piece we wrote late last night, it also became very clear to us that when you break it down by cost per vote, the Democrats had to spend about $40 on every single vote that they got last night.
And the Republicans ended up spending just under $14.
On every vote that they got last night, which means that if you extrapolate out and add for diminishing returns, then it would have cost about $2 to $2.5 million to keep those House seats, to hand Democrats a historic L last night, to avoid all of this negative press publicity and whatever.
Well, listen, maybe we needed this because it does shine a spotlight on where the money was actually going.
And when you look at the fact that what you just mentioned, $100 million spent on John Cornyn's incumbency campaign to fail to destroy Ken Paxton, by the way.
Not to try to destroy Ken Paxton, but to fail to destroy Ken Paxton.
Actually, maybe even to help Ken Paxton in the long term is what they ended up doing inadvertently by spending all that money there.
And bear this in mind, right?
$2.5 million might sound like a lot.
It's certainly a lot of money to a lot of people.
But in the grand scheme of what's on hand in these political committees, I'll tell you this, MAGA Inc. has $312 million on hand.
The Senate Leadership Fund has $166 million on hand.
The RNC has $116 million on hand.
CLF has $91 million on hand.
The NRCC has $78 million on hand.
The NRSC has $43 million on hand.
So if you can't find $2.5 million in amongst all of that, hell, I would have done an extra five just to be sure, right?
Then you are committing malpractice and malfeasance at the highest possible levels because this was wildly avoidable.
The GOP writ large, everything put together, there is $808 million sitting there ready to be used.
And the Democrats have $259 million and they were still able to put up the money to get them over the line last night.
Now, look, again, it's not just the money, as Sean said, it's also how the money gets deployed.
But we have to stop dancing around who these people are.
You know, we take consultants, this consultants, that.
It's not every consultant, and not every consultant behaves that way.
But there are a specific set of people now who are in charge of the RNC coffers that do this time and time and again.
And guess what?
To the people who haven't been paying attention to this, guess what?
The people who are in charge of this money, like Chris Lasavita and his team, are also the chief campaign consultants.
For John Cornyn, for Lindsey Graham, and a host of other rhinos up and down the country.
That's who these people are.
We can't be afraid to name them.
This is, you know, they go around Washington, D.C., threatening people and throwing their weight around.
And it's time this thing stopped because it's not their money.
It's ordinary voters' donations that go into this.
They got humiliated in Texas.
What they've done in Texas is criminal.
Let me repeat this.
What they've done in taking people's money and attempting and failing to destroy Ken Paxson and the grassroots movement in Texas.
Remember that.
The grassroots movement in Texas.
The great pagers down there going door to door.
It's criminal.
Also, what happened in Virginia.
Criminal.
They're going to come at President Trump with everything once they take the House.
And right now, this makes it such a steep climb to hold the House.
However, look in Indiana.
Indiana working with banks, we had it at nine to one.
Hell, you went out there and held the.
Held that magnificent town hall early on.
We headed to 9 1, could have gone 10 0, but then the heavy handed nature of Las Vidas and that crew came in there, ticked everybody off.
They're about to get humiliated.
All the big tough talk oh, we're going to run these guys out of Indiana, the state senators.
They're on the cusp of getting humiliated in Indiana.
I think that five of the seven they've targeted are going to win, or it looks like they're going to win now.
And what they've done is turned it, we've gone from 9 1, potentially 10 0, back to 8 2.
We've lost two seats there.
It's just a continual losing streak where they're making a fortune.
We now need to see all the money they made, all of it.
We need to see who is making money on catastrophic defeats.
What they've done on Paxton is a crime.
Ken Paxton is one of the leaders of the Trump movement and one of the leaders of the grassroots movement.
And John Cornett is a total and complete scumbag.
And the folks in Texas know it.
This is why Paxton is up after taking those ads, because I was out in Texas for like two and a half or three months.
We'd watch them.
I'm shocked that Ken Paxton's mother would want to vote for him after those ads.
One ad after the other.
Carpet bombed on both cable and also broadcast television nightly news, the local news, which is incredibly expensive, to destroy Ken Paxton.
Not a policy debate, to destroy Ken Paxton.
And he's come through it to only make the job of the grassroots harder in the fall.
And these guys talk about all this.
In fact, Fox News just had Thune on.
To tell you what a joke this is, Fox News just had Thune on, didn't talk about the Save America Act at all.
You know why?
The Senate is not interested.
So, no money should go to any of these guys until we have a total accounting of who made what, doing what, and then people can make a determination where they want to put their money.
Six, seven, $800 million sitting on right now.
We just lost four seats in Virginia that the grassroots for 45 freaking days went door to door.
Because why?
Because they love President Trump and they back the Trump movement.
And they had no air cover whatsoever.
We left them out on the beach.
This is revolting.
And it's all because of a crass agreed to make more and more money and line the pockets of this consulting class.
You know, since the first week of January, we shifted the showdown to Texas for a couple of months because of that incredible primary, and then right into Virginia with the 45 days of early voting.
So we've been cheek by jowl to the grassroots people.
The Trump movement is still alive and on fire.
Don't listen to the pundits, don't listen to these doomsayers.
Are things perfect?
No, they're not perfect.
Are there certain policies that make us very upset?
But that all goes back to the railhead of these consultants and the pollsters.
We had Brownstone on here, Dr. Jeffrey Tucker with their poll with Bobby Kennedy to show that the poll that Febreze and those guys put out is just dead wrong.
And this is why they chained up Bobby Kennedy.
And this is why they all of a sudden you got to be promoting Roundup.
Same thing with Mike Howe and Rosemary Jenks and the Mass Deportation Coalition.
And Rosemary Jenks and that crowd paid for the poll about where the American people are on immigration, illegal immigration.
And yet you get this amnesty crowd down there.
In South Florida, and all of a sudden, James Blair is telling people you can't use the phrase mass deportations.
Then they go to the Capitol Hill Club and have this big thing and they leak it out to Politico and leak it out to the Hill, and it's redonkulous.
Because I talked to people there and they said it's absurd.
Oh, a drug price transparency.
Is that going to get somebody walking door to door, banging on doors and saying, hey, let me walk you through the Trump plan and let me walk you through why this is a takeover of the Commonwealth of Virginia?
To tell you what a scumbag John Cornyn is.
Is that what's going to do it?
You don't know human nature then.
That's just more consultant lobbyist crap.
And that's where we are.
And we avoided a massive loss in Texas because of the great Texas grassroots, these heroes and patriots.
And now in Virginia, you had something that was so freaking winnable with the people putting Trump on their shoulder and saying, we're not going to let it happen.
And of course, the consultant said, shh.
You don't want to bring up Trump because we might upset Democrats.
That's in Punchbowl today.
The consultants say, shh, shh, you got to be careful.
You can't mention Trump's name.
You can't mention this is about the other thing.
Are you kidding me?
Do you not know where the country is right now?
Nick Friatis has got his tweet up there.
He says, Look where the Commonwealth was 10 years ago, and look at it is today.
And you had Youngkin playing softball with them.
Do you think Spanberg is playing softball?
She's running a color revolution, dude.
She trained by the CIA.
She's like Victoria Nuland in the United States of America.
And they knew that they were going to shut down the rural counties.
This whole thing, this railhead of the lobster, have you seen that map?
Tough to see it because the Democrats never put it up.
I noticed today they didn't put it up on Morning Joe because it basically takes Fairfax County and has it infest, has the foreign born deep state folks up there, right?
The foreign born deep state folks up there infesting the entire Commonwealth.
That's their plan.
And that's their plan everywhere because that's how they win.
Did you not notice, Minnesota?
You think we're playing by conventional rules?
You think Donald Trump's in the White House because he's a conventional politician?
Your conventional politician is Glenn Youngkin.
And look what he's done defeat.
After defeat.
Now it's a crushing.
Now they turned over the whole freaking state to them.
It'll take us a decade to dig out of this.
A decade of those grassroots going door to door.
And thank God you've got patriots down in the cradle of our revolution on the 250th anniversary.
Those people that fought in the revolution would be proud of the people that went door to door and they would be disgusted and revolted by the scum of this consulting class that is stealing.
Look, I am willing to say one thing that I think a lot of people aren't willing to say, and that's the president does have some level of culpability here.
You know, in November of 2024, we were telling him over the course of the campaign that people like Lasavita were bilking from him, bilking from donations.
And he ended up having a conversation with him on Trump Force One.
It was reported by The Atlantic in November 2024, where Trump said to Lasavita, look, if these stories about you, Making so much money out of this campaign, making so much money off my campaign, and all the donations are not true, then sue the people who are making those allegations.
So, Lasovita files a lawsuit against the Daily Beast, and then in February of this year, just quietly drops the lawsuit entirely.
Here's what I will tell you all the media and all the guys sitting there going Trump, hey, I saw it in Texas and I saw it in Virginia.
The Trump base, the grassroots base are prepared to go door to door for this guy to make sure that we're still in power in November.
And right now, folks, take your number two prints a lot and write this down.
We ain't going to be in power.
I'm not playing Warren Zevon, lawyers, guns, and money, because I think it's great to play Warren Zevon today.
That's a message.
The Democrats, what they have in store, what they have in store for everybody, as I said back at CPI's, the talk I gave back during the inauguration, When I went to one of their galas, they're coming for everybody.
These people, look what they did in Virginia.
They have one mode, it's called smash mouth.
And what Sean Spicer said, we need to get back to smash mouth.
What they did in Texas against Paxton was smash mouth.
And guess what?
Paxton, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Ken Paxton, this is why Ken Paxton is such a hero.
And he's not the most dynamic guy in the world.
He's a hero because of what he did at 21 and stood in the breach and what he did here.
Not to back down and not to wilter.
If you saw what they did to him, how many humans would be able to take that?
$100 million, $100 million in TV.
Raheem, before I leave you, I need everybody to go to the National Pulse.
You've been writing some great stuff on China.
I got to really just tell me about this upcoming China trip.
What has to happen real quickly before you bounce?
Yeah, look, the president goes to China on May the 14th.
And, you know, predominantly, we've come to expect what?
In these trade and tariff negotiations, that when things get tough for Xi and his team over there, they immediately say, right, okay, well, we're not buying soybeans, we're not buying beef, we're not buying pork, any of that stuff.
And who suffers in that whole process?
It's the American farmer, right, who doesn't get a seat at that table.
So I wrote a piece yesterday about this thing, the Grown in America Act, which actually would do a lot to stop that card being played by the Chinese.
It would effectively incentivize American companies to buy American products.
From American farmers.
And what it will also do, by the way, is set up a fight that I think we want to have with the World Trade Organization.
I encourage everybody to go and read this piece.
Trump should pass this bill before he goes to China.
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Well, look, the voters turned out in the regions where we needed them.
The volunteers were out there.
I mean, I've been around Virginia politics for a long time, and I've contrasted the real concerted effort where people put their hostilities and the normal interteam rivalries aside and work together.
We saw that over the last two months.
But I mean, it hurts to wake up this morning and realize that that wasn't a nightmare last night.
It's what we're going to be living with going forward, assuming the courts don't step in.
And I have no faith in the courts to do the right thing.
If they were going to do that, I think they would have done it.
Before the election took place.
But, you know, all of the Republican activists that we could possibly get a hold of did answer the call and they put in the work.
And for the most part, everybody got along and we were focused on getting the votes out.
If you had asked me candidly off camera yesterday, I knew this was going to be a miracle if we pulled it off.
I am disappointed that we lost, but it was tight.
And you start thinking, what else could we have done?
What other resources could we have marshaled to try to get the last few thousand people district by district in?
And I think we need to ponder that and what we do going forward.
I mean, I was kind of one of the front guys, but there were a lot of people like me who were just in their personal vehicle driving themselves around every weekend from sunup to after midnight trying to get in front of groups of 50 folks.
But, you know, I saw last year if the Democrats marshal millions of dollars and they go on television and they start doing Targeted digital and texting to the people that they know they can get out.
And this is before we get into the shady stuff that may be happening, who knows?
They can move their voters.
And you've just got to have those resources in a modern election campaign.
But, you know, we did a tremendous achievement getting these folks out with the resources we did have.
What did this show do on the 20th of January, 2021?
You know, we lost about a third of the audience.
They came back in 60 or 90 days, but they were very depressed and said, hey, if they can steal it from Trump, what am I?
I'm just some schmendrick, right?
Who stood in the breach?
I tell you, stood in the breach.
You know, remember our guest that afternoon?
Ken Paxton.
Remember how that turned out?
We won in 22, and then we won again in 24.
Were those easy?
Were those dark days?
Were they dark days in January, February, March?
And look at the crowd that's stealing this money right now.
The consulting class.
Were they there?
Were they standing in the breach?
Were they down the trenches with you?
No, they were not.
They ran from Trump so fast, make your head swim.
In January 6th, we've been here before.
Take a deep breath, have a cup of Warpath coffee, and let's get focused.
The good news, I'm telling you, the good news is that.
The grassroots, and I've seen it in Texas and in Virginia, and you're starting to see it in South Carolina where Lindsay's below 50%, have had a belly full of what's going on and their supporters of Trump in the Trump program.
We just got to get back to the Trump program.
You can't have all this BS, consultant driven, donor driven, K Street driven, lobbyist driven polling, which is all happens to be a lie and a misdirection play.
Jeff Ryder, you fought a heroic fight.
Motivate the grassroots.
This thing was so winnable.
We do not need to be here losing four seats this morning.
And the Democrats know that.
They stole one last night, right?
They had a rigged system, a rigged map, and they played power politics, and they've got four seats.
Well, they told voters that they were voting for fairness.
Which clearly they were not.
They put deliberately misleading ballot language out there.
And I guess we shouldn't be entirely surprised by that.
But I will tell you that people are like, where's the silver lining?
Well, I'll tell you what the silver lining is.
We now have a really a model of how to do this and how to invigorate our grassroots from the start and how they're key to being able to rebuild the party here in Virginia and to get us back into a position where we represent the majority of the state.
Last night, driven Primarily by grassroots activists.
Our party had the best performance that it's had since 2021.
We did actually get, we ended up at a higher percentage than President Trump received in the state.
We're Our grassroots activists are there and they're willing to work and they're willing to do the door knocking and everything else.
And maybe there were some that held back because they didn't think it was possible, but I can't imagine they're waking up this morning thinking, oh, wow, this wasn't possible.
You've got the troops, you've got the troops, and they believe in the cause.
You've got to get until, and look, the youngkin flitting around, that day of politics is over.
Okay.
Then you've got this situation with the consultants.
That's got to be over.
If the consultant class does not get restructured dramatically and the incentives align with grassroots effort, then you're going to lose this House and you're going to lose the Senate in November.
Write that down.
Okay.
Write that down.
It's going to happen.
If you change that and you change all of this, we could hold the House and I think hold the Senate.
It's all doable, like Virginia was doable, but the resources have to be put.
In back of the people that actually deliver votes and are prepared to go door to door for voter engagement for low propensity voters and lower information voters, Jeff.
And that's one of the things that we're going to be focusing on in the weeks and months ahead getting up to within three points on an issue this significant to the Democrats, considering not just the spending disparity, but the true deception that the Democrats practiced.
Uh, is uh, is an achievement of sorts.
I'm not going to confuse it with victory because it's not victory.
They're they're they're gonna confuse, I mean, their whole thing is you know, today, what is the day's the birthday, Lenin's birthday, which is their they aspire to follow that.
Yes, Jeff, where do people go to follow you on, um, and and as the GOP chair, you've done a magnificent last 45 days, just incredible leadership to get people well, and we where they go.
We we are grassroots driven and and we do rely on our party volunteers, and that's where.
Where our strength is.
If you go to virginia.gov, that's our website.
We'll be updating it with new information.
Obviously, we're still on yesterday's election, but you'll see the donate button in the upper right hand corner and also the donate box right below that.
And also, if you click on that support and donate box, you can also volunteer.
Look, we've got active Republican committees throughout the state who are looking for people who are willing to do the work, and we give them meaningful work, work that makes a difference in changing votes.
We're not just giving busy work, we're giving real work.
And by the way, War Room phone calls were extraordinary.
The War Room posse came in and participated very, very actively.
We would not have achieved as close as we got yesterday without their help and support.
They were extraordinarily helpful on the mission.
And as I said, this entire effort was so grassroots driven and grassroots dominated.
It just took quite a while to convince other people that this was winnable.