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April 26, 2023 - Doug Collins Podcast
29:13
Do people really care about the issues?
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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.
In 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.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Wednesday edition of the Doug Collins Podcast.
For those who have been watching on video, Cree, and I'll welcome you to the show.
Glad to have you.
In just a few minutes, we're going to talk about the presidential election.
Now, I, like you, can't believe that we're talking as much about the presidential election this far out.
As we are, but here we are.
We're doing it.
So I'm gonna talk about some markers.
I'm gonna talk about some things that we need to be looking for that's gonna influence this race.
I mean, right now, the different parties, you got Biden just announced by video that he's running again.
Pretty appropriate for a president who ran for president by staying in the basement all the time.
Now he releases a video saying, hey, I'm running again.
No big tour, no big stadium tour, nothing.
Just, hey, here's the video of things that, you know, they want to highlight.
And also, again, throwing the contrast that they believe against the Republicans, of which most of what they say is not true.
But never let that be a hindrance to the Biden administration.
As we look forward in this, like I said, we lay out these markers in just a few minutes.
I want to talk to you a little bit about that, but that'll be coming in a few minutes.
But right now, before we get there, can you believe this week, from a media perspective, Tucker Carlson, out.
Fox News.
Don Lemon, out.
CNN. The Tucker Carlson one comes as a surprise.
I think we're going to find out more and more about that as it goes along.
Tucker has been a driving force of conservative politics, populist politics now for five or six years and has really set the tone many times for campaigns and the narratives around a lot of the, especially the Republican primary campaigns.
So that's going to be interesting to see What happens there?
I'm sure there'll be more coming out about this.
The Don Lemon's only about 15 years too late getting rid of Don Lemon.
But, you know, the changing landscape of media is something we're probably going to have to investigate more as we go along, maybe in the podcast in the coming weeks, because it is really, I think, changing the dynamic of what we're seeing on how this is going to play out, which ties in to the topic of the day, which is markers for the presidential election coming up, things we need to be aware of for both parties As you, the voter, get ready to decide.
So just a minute, we're going to come right back with those things here on the Doug Collins podcast.
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As I said in the intro, it's hard to really put into words sometimes that we are still dealing with or that we're dealing already with a presidential campaign.
We've been dealing with an active presidential campaign ever since really a little bit of a week or so after the election.
Last general election, which Donald Trump announced for his candidacy for president.
Since then, we've had Nikki Haley.
We've had Vivek Rabaswamy.
We've had Tim Scott.
He's got an exploratory committee out there.
You've got Larry Elder possibly out there running for president.
You've got...
I mean, on the Republican side, you know, there's just a lot of different...
You know, voices coming out.
One of the main voices that have not made it clear yet, but has had a rise in the polls and then has now had a drop in the polls significantly.
That's Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.
So it's going to be...
The Republican Party has got a lot to shake out.
I don't think that is done yet.
We're not going to really get into that...
As far as the who today, I think right now Donald Trump has a commanding lead.
He still controls about 35 to 45 or higher percent of the Republican primary voters in especially red states.
If higher in some of those states, even with the field that is out there.
So again, something's gonna have to take him off track and get voters to say this is not something they want to do again.
Whether that'll happen is left to be seen.
Right now, the challengers to him have not gained traction.
Trump is being Trump, and he is doing what he does very well, that is connecting with people, that is putting a narrative out there, that is a fighting narrative, and he attacks Uh, those who are running against him and, and Ron DeSantis is, you know, I don't know what they're thinking, but if they don't get busy and Ron's either going to run or not run and the governor needs to decide because he is taking a beating, uh, from the Trump campaign and it's sticking.
You can tell it in the poll numbers and his style of campaign, his, his, uh, I think is catching up.
I've made this known for months now that, uh, Ron DeSantis has not had a national vetting, if you would, among voters.
And, um, Believe me, Donald Trump's campaign is going to give their version of that vetting, and you're going to have reporters starting to do more and more of it.
So it's going to be interesting to see where this lays out.
Now, if this actually turns into a race in which it becomes a race in these primaries, we'll see what happens.
But right now, that's one of the areas.
Joe Biden announced, as I said earlier, his campaign.
He did it in a video yesterday, and There's nothing to it.
I mean, it's the talking points that the White House has been giving for a while now.
And this is going to set the narrative stage for what I think will be an interesting...
You know, next 18 months, if you would.
So, what I want to do for the next few minutes is you're listening, you're riding with me, you're going.
If you have questions, go to the DougCollinsPodcast.com.
Hit that email button and send me your thoughts, your ideas.
I would love to hear what you would like to delve into more.
I'm going to hit a lot of topics today, but I want to hear if you believe these topics are the relevant ones as well.
If you believe that there's one of these going to be more in tune to others than really what, you know, Maybe I'm thinking now, or, you know, maybe, you know, what is going to affect voters in, say, that last 19 days.
Senator Durbin had an interesting comment earlier this week about Joe Biden running for president.
He said, well, you know, we're 19 months out.
Those elections are not decided to the last 19 days.
And in many ways, he's right.
These elections are not cited until the very last part of the election, but they are set up by issues and incidences that occur in these next 19 months that get you to that 19 days before.
I believe that we're long gone for a while unless something drastically changes from elections for president that are not exceedingly close.
And I think you've learned Republican voters and Republican parties in different states have learned that they can't just let Democrats play by one set of the rules as it deals with early voting, ballot harvesting, or whatever may be legal in those states.
If it is legal, then Republicans need to be doing it.
If it is not legal in that state, then nobody needs to be doing it.
But you can't have a system in which one party, for instance, on ballot harvesting and other ideas like at early voting, you can't have one party playing in the space while the other party just sits back and yells about it.
I mean, I'm sorry.
There are a lot of problems to early voting.
There are a lot of problems to some of these ballot harvesting states.
There's a lot of corruption that could go on in these things.
But also this is legal in these states.
So again, until the people decide they want something different through their elected officials, this is what's on the table, this is fair.
I've made this comment before.
Why do the Republicans, you know, tend to play, especially in some of these elections, we will talk about issues we don't like, but yet if they're legal in the state, Work to change them, but use them while you can.
I mean, it's like, you know, playing baseball and having your team only have seven batters and the other team gets nine batters or, you know, something else that you look at.
You're playing by different rules.
It doesn't work.
As we look at this race going ahead, and I think there may be actually Joe Biden, although he's announced this week, I think you may actually possibly see a credible challenger coming up.
There's not a lot on that side of the field, but it would be interesting if you saw a credible challenge on the Democratic side to see, for lack of anything, to get Joe Biden out on the campaign trail, which he's not been in, in, you know, Almost eight years, nine years.
If you want to go back to the second Obama-Biden presidential campaign, it was the last time he really had to be out campaigning, because in 2020, he didn't have to.
He stayed in the basement, and he took a pass in 2016. So these are the kind of things that are laying out there.
But let's lay out a few markers.
If we were sitting here having a cup of coffee and saying, what are going to be the ending...
Or what are going to be some of the shapes?
I've sort of divided them into...
Three sort of areas, and I think factors facing the race.
Now, the first one is one that Joe Biden's going to have to overcome.
At the end of the day, most presidential races, unless there is a national security threat, which I believe there is, but when I say that, we go back to 2004 in the Iraq War, Iraq-Afghanistan Wars.
This sort of overwhelmed a lot of the discussion.
John Kerry never got traction.
George Bush won that race.
Because there's a lot of people, there's this thought that you don't change the leaders in the middle of a military action.
Well, right now we don't have that.
Could that, God forbid, happen in the next 12 to 19 months?
Maybe so.
But if we do, you'll have to deal with that in the electorate as it comes.
But I think as you look at it, inflation and cost are going to be two of the things that That Joe Biden, no matter what he wants to put out as far as infrastructure plan, the Build Back Better plan, the Infrastructure Inflation Reduction Act, which was a joke in many ways, it's going to be ending up where this actually happens.
Now, they have been fighting to get inflation back under control.
Now, it's the highest it has been in 40 years.
All that has happened.
It is coming back down.
But this is one of the markers of the Biden administration.
How, though, the Republicans, Donald Trump, DeSantis, whoever else, the candidate, like I said, I'm not focusing necessarily on individuals right now.
Those are the things that they're going to have to capitalize on.
Are your economic situations better than they were under Donald Trump?
And if they say yes, then you're going to have a hard time getting that off of a Biden voter.
If they say no, then there's a possibility that you can affect them through economics.
At the end of the day, most people vote on how they feel economically.
Do they feel economically secure?
Secure?
Do they feel economically safe?
If they're a business owner, can they expand their business?
Can they grow their business?
If you're a worker in a facility or a larger company, will I have a job?
Will I be able to keep my job?
Will my raise or what I get from my paycheck actually keep up with inflation?
And right now it's not.
So, this is one of the biggest issues for the Biden administration starting back.
Also fighting the Biden administration, since they are the incumbent, we'll deal with it in this vein, there is a strong feeling That the economic plans of the Democrats have not worked for them.
And you see this in poll after poll where people say the economy is bad.
And at the same point in time, you'll have the Biden administration come forward with these just frankly ridiculous statements that say something to the effect, oh, that's the best economy we've had.
We've added all these jobs.
Failing to take into account these job ads that they had, most of which came from a post-pandemic era in which people were finally going back to work.
And the government subsidy part of that was tailing off.
So it's an artificial economic recovery under Biden.
If you look at it, you're just in, frankly, real terms.
That's one of the things that they're going to have to overcome because in the end of the day, people do vote with their checkbook.
They do vote with their pocketbook and they want to know where the direction is coming from inflation, jobs, economy in general.
Now, feeling is another part of this.
I thought this is a number two, but it's a...
Amorphous kind of thing because you can't really judge where the feelings are right now because they do change based on world events, based on economic events, based on all these other issues that we have going on.
And the feeling in the economy right now is that it's not good.
Most polls you see, especially Republicans, independents in particular, but even Democrats are saying the economy is not where it needs to be with this, what we've talked about inflation, cost, gas prices, those kinds of things.
Now, how do we frame that?
Well, it's going to come in saying, if the person doesn't feel we're in the right direction, are you going to make an argument that there is a better direction?
Are you better off when?
The pandemic threw that into a shambles for many, and we're just beginning to come out of it.
So if the Republicans can make the argument that the pre-pandemic economy under Donald Trump was far better than what we're seeing now, which is not a hard lift to make, You'll see, I think, independence coming back.
The candidate from the Republican side, they may not agree with on all the issues, but if they do feel like their homes, their money, their security is going to come back, then that is an opening that Republicans have to take.
Now, the Next issue is going to be one that all candidates are going to have to watch out for.
Now, the first one, though, is age.
Now, this one is going to affect Joe Biden, possibly Donald Trump, the most.
Just the other way, Terry Moran in ABC, I believe it is, said this.
He said, I just don't see people voting for an 81-year-old.
Now, again, let's be very clear here.
There are a lot of very competent, very astute 80-year-old people in this country and older who do great things.
It is not the absolutely overwhelming majority norm.
Most people by that age are retiring.
They're not wanting to stay in active life.
Joe Biden is going to be asking this country to do something it's never done.
He's already the oldest sitting president.
And they're going to say, he's going to ask, hey, I want to do four more years of this.
And what they're seeing, and I'm going to talk first about the Democrats, Republicans have to watch out for this, is they're seeing that Joe Biden over his entire career has been a gaffe problem.
In other words, he says stuff.
I mean, it's documented.
Go to YouTube and look up Robin Williams and Joe Biden.
I mean, this was back 13, 14 years ago when Robin Williams is making fun of Joe Biden and not being able to make coherent sentences and put things together.
Biden got a gift in 2020. The 2020 election allowed him to stay away from people in a basement, so to speak, and put out videos and take in Zoom calls.
And then when he did finally start getting out toward the end of 2020 in the election, it was some of the craziest scenes you ever want to see.
You have these big open fields outside and you have these large circles drawn around and 40 people in an event.
Now, the contrast, you say, well, it won.
Okay, fine.
But you also see the contrast of the Republicans, Trump, In much larger events, it was like a tale of two cities.
What it did for Joe Biden was keep the gaffes down.
This is what gets most campaigns, is saying stuff that then is used against them as they go forward in this campaign.
And also the records of these candidates, especially if they've been in elected office before.
Biden has the most to overcome here.
Biden is the one that's now going to have to actually go out and give speeches.
He's actually going to have to take random questions from reporters.
And he's going to have to lay a groundwork to say, look, at 81, I'm competent.
At 86, I'll still be competent.
Because that'll be how old he will be if he won a second term.
It's going to be interesting to see how they overcome that.
I think they're going to try and do the campaign again from more of a bunkered state in which they don't get him out.
They're worried about what he said.
I mean, think about how many times the White House has had to clean up the Joe Biden-isms over the last little bit.
We'll see how that turns out as we go.
Now, on the other side, the Republicans have to be very aware of what they say and how it actually plays with independent voters.
I had a person ask me the other day, how do we expect Republicans who have gone in red states, and they were, I think, probably meaning DeSantis, even Trump and some others, who were saying, look, you go to war with teachers unions, you go to war with labor,
and in a state like Florida, that might be okay, or a state like Georgia or even Texas or others, but in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, And Nevada and others, those are not areas of messages that went over independence and especially the old, what we call Reagan Democrat, because it's just different setups.
How do you actually get there?
I think that message is going to have to be a lot more specific.
They're going to have to talk about economic opportunity.
They're going to have to talk about less government intrusion while at the same point still...
You know, dealing with, you know, teachers, teachers unions, public sector unions, and others, and private sector unions, those are just voting blocks in these states that do turn out.
So, how they talk about these issues cannot be one thing in a red state and one thing in a blue state.
They're going to have to find a message that actually they can use in all states.
If they're going forward.
So as you as a voter looking at this, the one thing you do is if you're keeping score at home, so to speak, is you look and see what has the person said?
What has their record been?
And are they saying something different in one place as opposed to what they're saying in another?
And it's the day of internet and it's the day of instant videos and instant YouTube moments, rumble moments.
It's all there.
And people will be able to see it in real time.
So this gaffe and contact and age is, I think, right now plays to the Republicans' hands.
They have much better candidates who can speak on their feet.
They have much better candidates who can hopefully tailor a message.
Now, some of you may be saying Donald Trump's not that way.
Donald Trump is his own...
Phenomenon.
Donald Trump can handle media.
Donald Trump can get away with things that nobody else can.
And it frustrates me to no end to see candidates out there who think they're Donald Trump.
You're not Donald Trump.
There's only one Donald Trump and only one Donald Trump can do what Donald Trump does.
So why don't you just try being yourself and talk about your ideas and not try to be the candidate that Donald Trump is.
He has the corner of the market.
He knows what to do.
He knows how to push it.
And he has the credibility built in, or the history built in, if you want to put it that way, to get away with it.
So again, Republicans, as a cautionary note to my fellow Republicans out there, quit being somebody you're not.
Be who you are.
Be a conservative.
We've got to get back to conservative principles here in this country.
And if we're not in this conservative mode, then we cannot convince people that we have the best vision for our party.
Last point I want to talk about, it goes back to a little bit of that mood feeling.
And there are three real issues that we'll define.
And let's see who actually is able to capitalize on them most.
The first is going to be abortion.
Democrats will run on abortion.
The Roe v.
Wade overturning, they're going to run on it.
We've seen it on ballot initiatives.
We've seen it.
It generates a turnout change.
Boost for them in states, and especially when the Republican can't articulate what they actually feel about abortion.
So number one, look out for abortion.
It's going to be another issue topic.
This may be the last one for a little bit that we see as it goes along, but we'll just have to see how the topic is handled.
I think Republicans will be better able to handle questions, but now you're also going to have states in which have total bans on abortion.
You We have others who had trigger laws that did not allow abortion in their state.
You've got others who have now tried to go past the 15-week Mississippi decision, and they're trying to implement the six weeks.
We just saw this already in Georgia from a prior legislature, but now Ron DeSantis just signed it in Florida.
This is an interesting area where Donald Trump is trying to...
Divide the line, so to speak, and saying that there has to be some, especially the moderation on maybe weeks or even the exceptions for rape incest and life of the mother.
We'll see how this plays out.
So it's going to be on both sides.
Democrats think it's the winning issue for them.
In these close elections, Republicans can't run from it, especially after campaigning on it for so long.
They just got to find a better way to discuss it.
That's the first topic.
Second one is border.
Wait for this one.
The border issue and fentanyl will be huge issues.
I believe this time next, getting ready after the primaries, you're firming up our two candidates in these races.
And then by the time the debates hit next year, especially for Joe Biden, the open borders will become an issue.
People, no matter where across the board, I've seen polling after polling.
Independents especially do not understand an open border.
Republicans definitely don't understand an open border.
And they're losing touch with Democrats over this issue as well.
So immigration border, fentanyl, the effects of fentanyl, and the basic fact that right now the Biden administration is letting it come into the United States unfettered in many ways is going to be a process in this election that will play out.
The last one is my overall...
It goes to mood, it goes to feelings, but it also goes to the American psyche, and that is our foreign policy.
Three areas you need to watch over the next year, and by this time next year, as the primaries are coming to a close, these three areas, what is happening in these three places will, I think, affect the mood and sentiment we talked about earlier.
The first one is Afghanistan, an abject failure of the Biden administration.
I mean, No matter how you look at it, abject failure, the Taliban.
I watched the old movie Charlie Wilson's War the other day, and at the end of it, Charlie Wilson was saying, look, the ball still bounces.
We've got to stay here.
This was in the 90s.
And after we helped the Afghan rebels beat the Soviet Union, the Taliban, And the fundamentalists came into the country, took it over.
The late 90s was nothing but a horrific scene in, I mean, not even a third world version of Afghanistan with the Taliban going there and Osama bin Laden and the training and the treatment of women.
And we're already seeing that again building up.
And it seems like the prophetic words of Charlie Wilson said, the ball still bounces.
You know, we've still got to be engaged.
We're not.
And now the failure that happened in Afghanistan Is going to be one that is, I think, going to come back many times in the campaign, but also the fact of what is the Taliban doing right now, and the more and more reports that we're hearing out of there is they're reverting back to the late 1990s, and That will present nothing but a long-term problem for us.
Number two, Ukraine.
We're one year plus into this war, Russia, invasion of Ukraine.
Biden administration has made it very clear that they are behind Ukraine.
They're gonna give the funds and the equipment.
The question is, will they have to up that commitment?
And will it involve other possibilities of use of troops or use of funds along with other allies in NATO? That's going to be, again, it's very much of a burdensome point on the Democrat side, but also the Republican side.
Where Ukraine stands a year from now, we'll go a long way to this debate.
And then it's the continuing conversation about China.
And the fact that China is not our friend, we have got to work out a way in which we work together, but this idea of backing down from China, this idea of moving away and not engaging China in areas across the world is going to be the next big area for foreign policy for not only weeks, but months and years to come.
So, that's where I see this race right now.
I've had people I can come up to.
I speak at a lot of events.
And by the way, if you ever want me to come and speak at an event, a Republican Party, a Conservative Party, maybe just a Rotary Club or wherever, I speak all across the country.
Go to the DougCollinsPodcast.com, that email button right there.
Please hit it and say, hey, we got an event coming up.
We'd love to have you.
Just let me know.
If we can work it out, I'd love to come speak at your events.
And when I go to these events, I'm asked these questions.
What are we looking for in this race?
Can the Republicans do it?
Do the Democrats have an advantage?
What I've laid out for you today gives you a good look at just some high-level topics, but they're the things that are going to begin to cause this race to get more clarity as you go forward.
Individual candidates, especially on the Republican side, you're going to see the very vicious, normal fighting that goes on between candidates.
And when Ron DeSantis gets in this race, if he gets in this race, I think...
It was interesting enough, he just said the other day, while he was in Japan, he said, well, I'm not in the race.
We'll see what the polls look like later.
I think they're going to have to make a decision pretty quick if he's getting in or not, because right now Donald Trump is eating their lunch and it's showing up in the polls.
So those are things we'll talk about at different times during the year.
But I want to lay out the big picture plan on here are the topics at this moment we see affecting this next 2024 presidential race.
That's all we got for today.
We'll see you next time on the Doug Collins Podcast.
Remember, Friday's Finest, coming up this week, James and I will get all over the best topics.
And if you have a topic that maybe just struck you, maybe it was a stupid criminal story, maybe it was just one of those stories that is perfect for Friday's Finest, again, go to thedougcollinspodcast.com, hit the email button, and send us an email, or you can see me at at repdougcollins or dougcollinsga on Instagram.
Talk to you later.
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