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May 4, 2022 - Doug Collins Podcast
49:26
Liars, Leakers and some news from the Supreme Court: Hot Takes With Former Acting AG Matt Whitaker
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
This house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Everybody, it's great to be back on the Doug Collins Podcast.
Great friend of this show.
Somebody's been on before.
We talk a lot.
I've been on his podcast.
He's been on mine.
You know, this is what happens when country and country come together.
When Iowa and North Georgia come together, life is good.
Matt Whitaker, former acting attorney general, is here with us today.
A lot to talk about, Matt.
I mean, it seems like, is the election years rolling in?
The world situation's rolling in?
And then, you know, just recently, I mean, What maybe goes down in the history books is one of those law school cases that every law school student is going to have to learn about in their constitutional law class.
This Dobbs case out of Mississippi.
Preliminary it looks like what a lot of us thought that it could be a 5-4 overturning completely of Roe.
Give me your hot take on that.
Well, I'm actually pleased with Alito's leaked opinion.
I think it puts everything in its historical context.
It explains why Roe and Casey and its progeny were incorrectly I have to say this, Doug.
I think the left has put a lot of faith in the court and in Roe and in the power of the Supreme Court.
As you know, those of us that are comfortably on the right and those are from normal places, like you said, North Georgia, Central Iowa, and all parts in between, know that the constitutional structure puts the power in the people, not the courts.
And that's all this opinion really does in Dobbs.
It just says the founding fathers wrote the Constitution, 1792.
It contains nothing related to abortion, the protection of life, one way or another, quite frankly.
And therefore, it is reserved to the states and to the people.
And it's very interesting to me, and I know it is to you and your listeners as well, That everyone's hyperventilating and they don't trust the people to govern themselves.
And that's just a shame.
I do.
You've been elected by the people.
You know what that feels like.
You know how to be responsible.
I was just talking to Joni Ernst yesterday, who's a U.S. Senator from Iowa.
She joined my podcast, Liberty and Justice, and we'll premiere that on Friday.
But, you know, she goes, does a 99-county tour, and she listens to what's on people's hearts and minds, and then that informs her as she does her job in Washington.
I know you were the same way.
You loved the interaction with your constituents, hearing what's on their minds, and then representing them in Washington.
I think too often the left, it's more a dictatorship.
You know, they have power because, you know, they represent these Groups and their bizarre coalition that makes up the left.
And they don't realize that they're actually representing real people who have opinions and who feel strongly about these issues and want to have their voices heard.
Oh, exactly, man.
I think that's been the interesting issue is that not trusting people.
Now, let's unpack that a minute.
Just recently, I did a longer podcast on abortion, on the Dobbs case, talked about, because I, and I said this was a week or so ago, I said this could be, this would be one of the blow-up issues in this election cycle.
Because even if it was, you know, even when it officially does come out, if it is what it looks like it will be, in June, it throws it into the general election cycle.
It throws it into the legislative mix.
But let's go back to that for a second.
When you talked about it being, You know, from the people in that kind of aspect, it should have been there.
Let's remind, and I did this in the podcast, but I want to hear your take on this.
People forget that states were already beginning the process of, you know, against my, you know, I was too young to know it at that point, but that was against my judgment of New York, California, Illinois, Alaska, others, were already legalizing abortion, Colorado.
And what happened is Ginsburg and several of the others They came together with a court strategy instead of a legislative strategy and said, this is moving too slow.
And I think what you said so aptly fits here, they were tired of waiting on legislators who answered to voters to do their bidding, and that's why they took the Griswold case of privacy, then they jumped it into Roe.
And we spent 50 years with a court that has now been just bombarded with an issue that they take up maybe in the last 50 years, they took up three to four times.
That's it.
Yeah, and you're so right.
Supreme Court politics have always fascinated me because when a justice is nominated, you immediately go to What have they said on life?
What have they written on life?
All those types of questions.
And it really, to your point, ignores a lot of the other qualifications that you would look for in a Supreme Court justice.
I think this is one of Trump's greatest legacies that he was able, because in his unique way, you know him, I know him, In his unique way, he was able to vet out, you know, people that were really conservatives.
And, you know, I've had, you know, my complaints about Kavanaugh and Gorsuch especially.
I think Amy Coney Barrett is probably the ideal Supreme Court justice out of those three that Trump appointed.
But, you know, I mean, obviously, you know, I was around in the Bush administration as well and I was promised that John Roberts was a conservative.
You know, I mean, I still kind of scratch my head on that whole deal because I knew that a guy with his kind of pedigree and experience, you know, sort of inside the Beltway, you know, institutionalist, you know, was going to be very dangerous.
And it's proving exactly that.
I mean, if you look, if you believe the leaked document, when I know we're going to talk about leakers and liars, but...
If you believe this leaked draft opinion, Roberts is not in the majority.
I look at life as a litmus test for conservatism.
Somebody once told me on the campaign trail when I was a young candidate for state treasurer in Iowa that I know that if they're right on life, they're going to be right on the economic issues as well.
And I think that, you know, is exactly what you see in the case of, you know, the three Trump appointees on the Supreme Court.
You brought up an interesting, so let's dig in a little bit.
Alito and Roberts, you know, both appointed, you know, basically the same time they did the switch, but those are Bush appointees, have taken divergent paths on the court.
Of course, Roberts being Chief Justice, he'll always get the most attention, but Alito has really mapped out that I want to say Rehnquist style.
In fact, he actually, if you read through the quote from what I'm understanding, and I've read it again, is he actually quotes Rehnquist from back in Casey and talking about precedent and so on.
But how do you think that, because that's been really interesting.
You talk about Roberts being the institutionalist.
If Roberts doesn't join this opinion, and I've mentioned this before and I think I've heard you mention it before, what should be a 6-3 opinion is going to be a 5-4 opinion.
Which I think is problematic, because that's a one-flip kind of thing here.
But the other point is, do you see this growing, this Alito-Roberts sort of tussle, if you would, here as we go forward?
Yeah, so I think Alito and Thomas and probably Amy Coney Barrett are the three most conservative justices.
And, you know, they have a lot of intellectual heft as well, because they're consistently conservative.
And you know, sometimes when you're consistently conservative, One, it's easy to analyze issues because you stand for something, you have values, and therefore the analysis is always the same in similar situations.
You don't blow in the wind, whether it's based on where the population is or where you think the...
You know, the white wine chortling crowd in Washington, D.C. wants you to be so you can get invited to all the parties in Chevy Chase.
I mean, that's, you know, that's I think where, you know, Roberts finds himself at times.
And, you know, I mean, I will tell you, this is, you know, this is kind of too much inside baseball, but, you know, I've met most of these individuals.
John Roberts, when I was Attorney General, was very gracious to me in a, you know, proper and necessary way.
I was, you know, my first day on the job, I Presented the commission when Kavanaugh was placed on the court and the President and Melania were there.
I have a lovely court drawing from my presentation.
I was wearing a morning jacket with tails and all.
No wig, but it was pretty fancy.
Wow!
Okay, you don't show that picture back in an hour much.
It's on my LinkedIn profile.
Everybody really wants to see it.
So Roberts, I don't have anything personal against Roberts.
In fact, he's been always very gracious and kind to me when we've interacted, which hasn't been often.
But from time to time, I would run into him while I was in the administration at various official functions.
He's a product of the Department of Justice.
But I think, back to the opinion on Dobbs, and this is where I think it gets really interesting based on this leaked opinion.
Because if, you know, depending on who leaked it, it sort of depends on their strategy.
If, you know, obviously Roberts only needs one of those five that signed on in this majority opinion to peel off into a concurrence with him To really actually write the opinion that is the law.
And that's what's interesting to me.
I think Roberts still has some power in shaping this.
But as long as the five in the majority opinion stand firm...
Then Roe v.
Wade has been overturned.
Its progeny, its emanations and penumbras and all the kind of things, Doug, that you know, was very frustrating as a law student to read and to say, you know, why is this entirely different than any other, you know, court opinion and analysis?
and it's always been because it took a political issue that was reserved to the people and to the states and turned it into a legal question and and the science you know the left loves to point to the science well the science has evolved and changed and viability and all those kind of issues you know are going to continue to change and that's where again elected politicians that are responsible to the people can handle it much better and write these laws and adjust based on their constituents and their
feedback from their constituents than a court can like you said every you know decade or so when this issue is presented to them Exactly.
It's interesting to me, too, as you look at these opinions and you look at how they've been written.
And again, did you take also, like I did, the pains, it seems, that Alito went to knock down the arguments of, well, if you do this and you're going to knock down same-sex marriage, you're going to knock down biracial marriage, a loving case.
And all of those are red herrings.
You and I both know that.
I mean, the marriage decision was based on the fact that there's tax law involved.
I mean, the marital status is based on tax.
It's not based through the church.
If it was simply through a church process, the Supreme Court would have never been involved in it.
I mean, it was a tax issue that you had.
As we look at this though, wouldn't it be refreshing now?
I mean, and I know this is not going to happen.
I'm not living in a real world.
My coffee is still just coffee and I'm not out here.
But wouldn't it have been nice also in some of these hearings to hear Because there was a TV show years ago called The West Wing.
I think you and I mentioned it.
It was an interesting show, but one of the episodes, they talked about the justices on this court, and the Rob Lowe character said that the big issue for the next generation, and this was in 2000-2001, is going to be privacy.
And not the privacy of the penundrums and these shadows of what...
But the true issues that really go back to the Fourth Amendment, you know, the actuality.
Wouldn't it have been nice to hear some of these judges recently have to deal in those kind of issues as well?
Because those are the ones that affect us every day, business decisions and others.
And this abortion debate and the wrongness of the Roe decision has just dominated everything.
Yeah, it has.
And you're absolutely right.
This, I think, clears the way...
For many important legal developments.
I am sort of an absolutist when it comes to the role of courts.
And any time that they're making law, I think, is very dangerous.
And Roe is a prime example of where law was made.
Because I feel like in our constitutional republic, It is beautifully designed by Madison and Hamilton and others to, you know, have this dance.
And I saw it, you know, we've told the story already, so we're not going to go back there.
But, you know, the accommodation when I was in the executive branch and you were in the legislative branch.
You know, there's this elegant balance of give and take that gets always to the right answer.
No matter how painful it might be to get there.
And to take the people and the elected officials out and to give these decisions to the courts, which the left wants to do.
I mean, remember, their strategy, excluding Roe, their strategy is always to, whether it's to sue and settle, whether it's to go to the courts, And, you know, get a judge to rule in their favor.
I mean, we've obviously, on the right, adopted some of these strategies because, you know, they are effective and frustrate, especially executive action.
I think legislative action is much more sacrosanct in the eyes of the court, especially the Supreme Court.
But, you know, and I know I'm rambling, Doug, and this is when you and I talk, but I have to get to this idea of...
This Supreme Court is probably the first time that we've returned in almost 100 years to the actual and appropriate role of the court.
And you look at kind of where Gorsuch and the rest of them want to take it, which is this idea that these major issues, these issues like mask mandates, vaccine mandates, all those kind of things, It can't be done by the royal executive branch and the president and bureaucrats that are unelected.
They have to be done by the legislature because they affect so many people's lives.
And I just think it's extraordinary to see this court kind of start and begin to put the genie back in the bottle.
And it's really a new era of Supreme Court jurisprudence.
They're going to start teaching You know, sort of strict constructionist and all these kind of things that, you know, have been at work over the last several decades and really now are accepted by both sides as the proper and necessary legal analysis instead of judges just making things up and then looking for ways to explain their reasons.
As we're taking deep dives here, and folks, we want this to be understood, and I think it is, and the way Matt's talking about that is perfect.
I'm going to throw out a doctrine here, and for most non-lawyers, you're not going to know what it is, so I'm going to explain it in good old country terms here, and we're just going to talk about what it is.
Yeah, explain it to me too, Doug.
Yeah, right.
You brought it up.
So you brought this on, Matt.
Come on.
In this deference to the executive branch, there's a doctrine called the Chevron Doctrine.
And basically what it means is the courts will defer or accept on a higher plane, not completely, but if the executive agency can make a prima facie showing that they know what they're doing, that this is it and it was in the best interest, The courts will defer to them if it's even, so to speak.
The problem is that the courts, as you all know Matt, over the last 30 to 40 years, it's not been if it's a tie that gives them the advantage, it's been they're the advantage you have to prove that they're wrong.
This is where I've become concerned though, and you brought up the mask mandate issue.
Even the conservatives have I've taken the view that the governor's actions, mayoral actions, health care actions of these mandates, that they were not going to take them up.
That they were saying that's a political decision, we're not going to deal with it.
And I get that.
But to a conservative out there that looks like, well, this is against my constitutional right.
This is where, I want you to speak to it for a second.
People out there who just throw around, I have a constitutional right, need to be aware that they may not understand what they're talking about.
And I think that's an interesting, talk about that for a minute because Gorsuch, you mentioned the two, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh in particular, they're the sticklers on this and I'm concerned on some, you know, the mandates and the military and others that they're going to run into This doctrine, which I believe Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are completely steeped in.
Yeah.
When I came to Washington, D.C. to be in the Department of Justice in the Trump administration, Chevron deference and whether or not we should push for the repeal of Chevron deference, It's an interesting intellectual exercise.
I mean, obviously, once you're in the executive branch, you sort of enjoy Chevron deference.
It allows you to, you know, sort of get the benefit of the doubt as you're implementing your policies and your interpretations of Congress's legislation.
So, on the one hand, it is convenient when you're in the executive branch to take advantage of Chevron deference.
On the other hand, It allows for, quite frankly, bad policy or policy that is not otherwise necessary and appropriate.
I think it's grown so big now that it's almost like a convenient way for courts to actually get out of constitutional analysis, ultimately.
That being said, I... It'll be very interesting if there's ever five votes to get rid of Chevron.
I think there's too many law firms in Washington, D.C. that most of these folks come out of that can take advantage of that from time to time.
So, I don't know.
It's also an area that I would have to, quite frankly, admit that I'd want to do a lot more studying on, because I don't have a solution, Doug.
I always like and admire people that they can identify the problems, right?
But what's the solution?
Ultimately, the solution If you get rid of Chevron deference and any deference to an administrative body that's passing rules and regulations, then I think you open up a quagmire of unlimited litigation and an inability to get anything done.
But at the same time, I always want to push back and put things on the legislature.
I'm going to turn the tables on you a little bit.
It almost feels like to me that Congress is now too small.
And I mean that, like your staffs are too small.
You don't have an ability compared to the administration and how many people they have in the EPA and all these other bodies to actually, you know, kind of implement or write your own regulations.
And so often there's a...
So deferral, like, you know, these are the principles.
We want clean air and clean water.
You go figure out how to do it.
And then, you know, the cat's out of the bag and you end up with all sorts, you know, you end up with waters of the U.S. Exactly, man.
And I think, look, you and I could go brew another pot of coffee and do the old law school thing here.
Because, I mean, you look at it right here.
I mean, you just hit it.
And look, I'm going to be...
I come at, of course, from a little bit of both, but the legislative side.
And look, I'm the biggest critic of Congress right now as far as legislative intent.
We are terrible at that.
And I've made the point on this show and others that until Congress gets back to actually...
Doing the acts of legislation.
Oversight's there, that's gotta be done.
But actually digging in, having members understand what bills they're writing, doing that kind of thing.
And so if you do want a clean air or clean water or whatever, that you understand the parameters of what you're doing.
I come from a legislative background in the state of Georgia in which if you had a bill, You were the one that presented it at the committee.
You were the one that presented it on the floor.
You had to know the bill.
In D.C., if you're listening out there on this podcast, I got a real shock for you.
Most of the congressmen who have names on bills don't understand the bill at all.
Somebody else carries it.
It's just their name.
They may have an interest in it, but it's not the knowledge.
Matt, you've hit that perfectly.
And I think that's one of the things that we're going to have to continue to go through.
Otherwise, Congress, except for the budget, will make itself irrelevant.
The courts will interpret it as Congress is abdicating its role, and the executive will seize it.
You're right.
And, you know, I think the other thing that is a real problem are these massive bills that no one has any time to read or understand, except, you know, maybe leadership.
And they're Frankenstein bills.
You saw this with Obamacare was a classic example.
They had their moment.
They mushed this thing together and passed it, not really knowing what it did or what it didn't do.
So many other things are like that.
It's hard.
As a member in the House, especially, I think, because you have two years, you're always in election cycle, and, you know, sort of, you know, are you going to sit there, roll up your sleeves, and read a bill, and line edit a bill, and, you know, talk to all your colleagues that have interest in it, and all those kind of things, all the hard work, you know, or are you going to go to the next, you know, dinner, you know, at, you know, Coffee County, because, you know, you need to go back.
I mean, it's...
It's really, I think the lifestyle, especially of a member of Congress, I think senators have a little more, you know, sort of freedom because they have just more time.
But it's just, it's hard.
And the way it was designed in the 1700s is certainly much different than how it is executed now, you know, in 2022. The reality of it.
Yeah, the...
The concern I have is that we have become, and again, before anybody puts a headline out, Doug Collins is saying we're something else, is we've become a quasi-parliamentary style system, especially in the House.
And even the Senate, to an extent, both parties have...
They deferred, and we'll use this term again, to their party's chief executive.
And if you've noticed this, I mean, you know, the Republicans when President Trump was in office were deferring to President Trump.
And Biden now is sort of the same way.
And that's really built up over time.
You don't go back to the time of the 70s, 60s, 70s, 80s, where it was a little bit different.
You still had, again, I think a smaller area of concern, but you had a lot working on that.
We could do this one forever, but you made a comment just a minute ago, liars and leakers.
Speaking of liars and leakers, let's get to the Durham investigation.
Of course, you've been watching this like I have.
Isn't it interesting to me, and again, the stuff that's coming out, The connection to, which we, you included, myself included, have always said the connection between the Clinton campaign, Fusion GPS, the Perkins Cooley, and then, here's where it gets bad, and this is where you were a part of, the DOJ, especially FBI, and Intel.
Do you think we've even gotten, the public even has a vast, even understanding of how serious this case is?
I don't think they do, because as you know, this is a 180 degree turn from really their two year narrative, plus what all of us were led to believe.
I mean, if you think about, and this is, I was just reflecting on this recently.
If you think about when I took over the Mueller investigation, what was believed or what it was, it was that, you know, we, We believed that we needed to, I mean, when I say we, DOJ, FBI writ large.
You know, I'm not subscribing that, you know, I believe this is...
Wow, man, have you changed her?
But...
Wow, we've made headlines today!
I've got to think about how to say this so that, you know, it's clear.
Oh, I understand.
DOJ said...
Rod Rosenstein, who you know well, Rod decided to appoint a special counsel because there was evidence that the President of the United States had committed a crime.
Full stop.
I mean, that's the only way you can, that's, you know, if you read DOJ regulations, that's how you get a special counsel.
You know, he, I think, you know, I think he has since modified a little bit.
He's, you know, he did it in order to exclude Andy McCabe from, you know, the line of, you know, whatever.
It makes no sense because Andy McCabe was still involved.
Even after a special counsel is appointed.
But nonetheless, so I take this over.
We're certainly in the fourth quarter.
I'm told they're drafting the report.
They have a couple of loose ends to clean up, like the Roger Stone case.
But, you know, by and large, it's sort of, you know, I need to land this plane.
And so your choice is, do I fire Mueller, which, remember, under DOJ regulations, requires cause, or do just, you know, let them finish their report, which, you know, I'm told is eminent, and just be done, you know, kind of know that it's going to exonerate the president.
I knew that as soon as I was read into it, and we've talked about that before, and I talk about it in my book, Above the Law.
And so it's just...
I think the original sin was really when people like Clapper and Comey and everyone else knew, found out, knew, understood that the Russian collusion fable was created by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
And the fact that Jim and everyone else, Andy McCabe, you know, I think you could probably throw a rod in there.
I mean, you know, he had full visibility.
If not, there's a problem.
Yeah, but look, I mean...
To a point.
Yeah, I'd love him.
He needs to tell his story and explain exactly whether or not he knew that critical function.
But there were clearly many, many, many others that knew that this connection was created by the Hillary Clinton campaign.
And the fact that ultimately it led to the appointment of a special counsel, I think that is, if that's not criminal, I mean, that is such incompetence at the highest levels that it really calls into question every single one of these people.
Because remember, I mean, you know, now that we know, I mean, this is, you know, you asked about Durham.
Now that Durham has sort of revealed...
How Fusion GPS, how Perkins Cooley, how the Clinton campaign, how it all worked and exactly kind of how they were pulling this DNS server information, somehow intercepting it from the, you know, Trump Tower.
And they, you know, essentially they saw spam emails.
Going from, you know, Trump Org, which, you know, essentially is marketing their winery, their golf clubs and whatever, and going to Alpha Bank and then saying that that was a back door for communications.
I mean, the whole thing is farcical.
And I think those that, you know, the intelligence community knew better.
And so this to me is, you know, kind of, there are several people that need to be held to account.
And explain, knowing that this was created, that this rumor, these facts were created by the Democratic Committee, how was this allowed to turn into a criminal investigation of the President of the United States?
I got there too late.
There's going to be people that hear me say that and say, well, that's just an excuse, Matt.
Well, I mean, so, you know, when you're running the Department of Justice and the Mueller investigation is already, you know, going and you're trying to get it landed, you know, this kind of this, you know, original sin is so far away and there's people that know it and nobody is telling you the truth.
And, you know, and maybe you're not asking the right questions, but my God, how, you know, how do you get to the right question to ask the right person when there's just so much muck to dig through?
Exactly.
The Mueller investigation itself, I mean, unlimited, you know, basically unlimited resources, unlimited talent, whatever they want.
And they could, I mean, they saw this.
I mean, there's no way they didn't see this.
And especially the now coming out with Durham, The emails between reporters and others who knew this was false, they still put it out there.
There's an interesting uh part of this too that when you came in and I think you know it takes you know from what you just said remember uh Attorney General Sessions actually had appointed a U.S attorney from Utah to supposedly look into this but really didn't give him a lot of authority so in some ways I think there was some thought well we're looking into it but really we're not and then when Durham was finally appointed it was saying no look just go at it all together because Mueller I think the interesting part,
and you and I could probably write a book about this, and we could entitle it, What Mueller Didn't Tell Us.
What Mueller didn't look at.
And was it because they were politically motivated?
Was it because it didn't fit their narrative?
There's just so much there, but I think this one is going to be one...
And the reason I bring it up is, and we can do another episode on just the issues around Clinton.
What I'm concerned about, and I know you are as well, is the fact that you had intelligence community assets, you had DOJ assets in the FBI combining, because we know this went all the way to the Oval Office.
They were briefed in the Oval Office.
Obama and Biden both knew this.
That's the part that I think for liberals, conservatives, I don't care your political persuasion, that should scare you to death.
Yeah, it should.
And I think you also, and this is, you know, Bob Mueller was the FBI director when I was a U.S. attorney.
I have...
A lot of respect for Bob Mueller.
Bob Mueller, though, I think had an obligation when he peeled back the onion and realized that the original collusion story was being told by the DNC.
And then it was just being reflected back through the noise exactly as you would expect something like this.
Something pushed out and then it comes back and then they say, oh, well, look.
Bob Mueller is smart enough and his team is smart enough to see exactly what had happened.
And I think at that point in time, he should have raised his hand and said, you know what?
This is actually, you know, since I'm from Iowa, I can say BS.
And, you know, my appointment is actually not proper based on what we've discovered.
But, you know, that's the thing with these special counsels.
I mean, you give somebody a hammer and they're going to find a nail.
You give a special prosecutor appointment, and I think they feel obligated to, you know, find crimes and prosecute people.
And that's, I mean, this chapter...
It's going to be very interesting, and I hope I live long enough to see the actual historical writing of this moment in time.
My role was probably insignificant and very small, but at the same time, we have to learn this lesson.
Otherwise, this is going to happen every four years.
We're going to have people creating false narratives with specious evidence and then trying to, you know, get a criminal investigation launched.
And it's just, it's a shame.
It is.
Well, look, as we switch gears, I mean, there's other time, and I think with some more Durham, I want to hold a time for you and I both on both our podcasts where we can sit and go in depth.
Because I think there's just going to be a lot more there.
I just want to get to your take on that.
But let's do a real quick before we wrap up here in just a few minutes.
Election season kicking in in earnest right now.
May is going to be a big month for Republican primaries, but it's also going to be a big month for the former president, for Donald Trump.
I mean, because he has put a lot on the line here.
I know you're traveling, I'm traveling, we've been seeing a lot of folks.
How do you see this month playing out?
I mean, you got Iowa, you got Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, you know, all these going on.
How are you seeing this play out?
Yeah, so as we sit here right now, today is the Ohio primary, I believe.
And the president endorsed J.D. Vance in that primary, you know, and he did Get a bump in the polls.
I'm going to be fascinated by that race, and I'm watching that closely.
I did not endorse.
Full disclosure, I'm on the president's super PAC, and we support the president's candidates.
Obviously, I salute the flag and say yes, sir, when he picks these.
I've had some opportunities to give him some input.
Where I feel strongly about, and we can talk about those candidates if you would like.
But I think that's going to be interesting.
I think Georgia is going to be very interesting.
You've got that governor's race that the president cares a lot about, full disclosure, Make America Great Again again, has run some ads, making sure that everyone knows that David Perdue and Herschel Walker have been endorsed by the president, Trump.
And You know, there's several congressional people like Vernon Jones, for example, the president endorsed, and others, and so, you know, look into that.
I know that there's a lot of, I mean, because of the Georgia redistricting, I think there's just a lot of interesting races in Georgia.
You know, we could probably spend a whole podcast talking about that, and you know these people much better than I do.
I've met many of them, and they all seem, you know, to be coming from a great place.
But Pennsylvania is also, I just think, you know, I have not endorsed, the president's endorsed Dr. Oz.
I think that race, you know, I've met the three main candidates, Oz, Carla Sands, who was an ambassador, and then David McCormick, who I've known longer than everybody in that race.
And, you know, I like David, but obviously the president picked Dr. Oz.
I think that's going to be interesting to see how that plays out.
You know, but, you know, again, we could just go kind of around the country.
I mean, we have so many critical primaries that if we get the right candidate through the primary, I think we could, you know, do significant gains, both in the House, which I think we will have significant gains, but in the Senate, because, you know, a 50-50 Senate right now is untenable.
You see this morning, based on the SCOTUS opinion that was leaked, that they're already talking about trying to get rid of the filibuster, passing Roe v. Wade, making it law of the land with 50 votes in the Senate.
And again, I finish where I start, Doug, and that is that the people are in charge and the people will decide.
Obviously, President Trump has made his recommendations, made his endorsements.
I think he has certainly, you know, interacted with all of these individuals more than probably most voters could ever because of, you know, everyone pursuing his endorsement and trying to go see him and talk to him and talk about, you know, what's important to him.
So, I just, you know, I think it's going to be fascinating to see how the people want to head into the 2020 midterm, 2022 midterms.
Exactly.
I have my guy who's run my campaigns forever, a good friend of mine, he always tells me in every campaign we're in, he said, Doug, it doesn't matter what we do, at the end of the day, we can talk about what we want to talk about, we can send out what we want to talk about, but at the end of the day, the voters get a say on what matters.
And that's true.
One quick one on that is interesting here in Georgia.
And Georgia is going to be interesting because we're a runoff state.
Governor Kemp is fighting everything he can to stay above, not go to a runoff.
Just announced here recently Mark Short, who you know very well from Pence's camp.
And also former president George W. Bush coming for a fundraiser for Kemp here in Georgia.
That sets up an interesting dynamic, doesn't it?
Yeah, it does.
And, you know, Mark is, like me, follically challenged.
But, you know...
But, I mean, obviously, that's what's going to happen when you have these powerful people on both sides of a race.
And I don't...
I don't know.
The runoffs are very unpredictable to me because not only do they take place weeks later so that the whole ground could shift in the meantime, but it's obviously the head-to-head matchup is a feature that I think is just hard to predict when given the binary choice.
I think one of the things we didn't mention...
That should be mentioned is, you know, Alaska has a Senate primary, and they've gone to, I think it's called rank choice voting, where there's four candidates and you rank them one to four.
And I think if you don't rank all four, that your vote is not counted, ultimately, because the ballot is, you know, not complete.
And so I don't know how that's going to, you know, Murkowski obviously...
You know, against Chewbacca.
And that's the way she pronounces it.
I, you know, I'm a big Star Wars fan too, but I, you know, it's a lot of vowels and consonants.
But, you know, I've met her.
She's lovely.
I think she's very well qualified, you know, served in the Trump administration at the Department of Justice, actually.
And...
I don't know how that ranked choice voting is going to play out.
This will be the first time I think I've ever seen it where somebody, just because they get more second choices than first choices, that they can then be the winner.
It's very confusing as to how it works.
I'm going to have to do a whole podcast on trying to explain it to people.
Well, one of the unfortunate policies, we lost Bruce Poliquin's seat up in Maine because of this ranked vote.
And I still, we won't dig into it deep here, I still don't understand how that comports with one man, one vote.
I just don't see how it happens.
But that's another.
But you also got Wyoming, where you have the primary, Liz Cheney primary there.
And, you know, there's the only discussion out there is the fact that Democrats have basically give up on the seat and are, frankly, going to support Liz Cheney.
As you would expect.
I mean, you know, the interesting thing about Liz Cheney, you know, obviously the president has endorsed her opponent, who's, you know, just an awesome candidate and, you know, I think has a lot of deep roots into Wyoming.
The challenge, though, is Liz Cheney has her own base.
She's got the Bush-Cheney establishment Republican base that a lot of these primary challengers don't have.
You have the Trump endorsement versus everybody else, where in that case you have the Trump endorsement versus the establishment.
It's a more clear definition.
I don't know about you.
My Wyoming friends are going to kill me for saying this.
Western state republicanism is strange.
It gets a lot of different issues in Western states, especially in North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana.
Those voters know these people.
They're neighbors.
I mean, they've met them a hundred times.
You know, so you look at like my friend Ryan Zinke, you know, the Attorney General in North Dakota, Drew Wrigley.
You look at this Cheney race.
You know, those people know and they've met these candidates.
And so it's a little different than you get into, you know, a state like Georgia with big suburbs.
You get in a state like Iowa where there's three million people.
And, you know, I mean, a lot of people know me in Iowa, but they still, you know, I haven't met everybody.
I'm trying, but I haven't met everybody.
I love it.
Folks, the one thing you can always assure when Matt and I get together, we're going to go around the horn, we're going to go back and forth in the horn, and we're going to have a good time at it.
And this was a good time.
We wanted to get on and just do a good...
We've got so much going on right now, and I wanted to get Matt's take on it.
Matt will be back with us, as I am with him, on a lot of these issues and topics.
This is, I think, a good partnership and friendship that you're going to hear a lot from us as we go along.
Matt, it's always good to have you on the show, and let's go out and see what today brings.
Well, you know, eventually, Doug, we're going to probably jointly host a show because we're that good together.
I can say we can have fun with that, you know, getting it all going.
All right, Matt, have a great one, buddy.
All right, good to see you, my friend.
Take care.
In November of 2020, the Democrats were up to no good.
You know, they were trying to win an election, but they were doing it the wrong way.
They were planning to pull off the greatest scheme in election fraud that had never been seen before.
They didn't think anyone would catch them.
But guess what?
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Find out what they did and how they did it in the new documentary film called 2,000 Mules, directed and narrated by renowned filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza and executive produced by Salem Media Group with research from truthevote.org.
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Attend a limited release premiere of 2,000 Mules on May 2nd or May 4th.
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Go and get your tickets at 2000mules.com.
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