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 podcast today.
Got a special, special friend of the show.
Just a great time to have Michelle Tafoya back with us.
And I'm excited to talk all things political, world, and just life as we get ready to have a good time here on the podcast.
A lot of things going on lately as you are We're very much aware of.
We went through a lot of political scene with RNC, with the things going on with Biden and his attempts to throw off the rest of the DNC and stay on as the ticket while they attempt to throw him off the ticket.
We got a lot to talk about here with Michelle today on that topic, but we will continue to look at it.
DougCollinsPodcast.com is where you find everything.
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So right after the break, we'll be back with the great Michelle Tafoya.
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All right.
We're back.
Michelle, welcome back.
It's always good to have you.
It's great to see you, Doug.
It is.
I mean, every time I look up, you're somewhere.
You got podcasts coming out.
By the way, everybody check out Michelle's podcast.
We're Salem...
I guess we're Salem...
We're Salem brethren.
There we go.
We'll do it.
Sometimes I went from outcast to brethren to faculty, whatever.
I don't know, but you and I will get the joke.
Yeah, exactly.
I'll go as Sebastian Gorka says, you're part of the Salem faculty.
Oh, the faculty.
Do we have tenure?
I doubt we have tenure though.
No, we're on that at-will employment list.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was all good.
But I mean, a great time of the year to get back together, especially that converges the worlds that we've all lived in, and that is politics and sports and life and everything is going on.
So just tell us how you've been first and what's going on.
Been doing great.
My son graduated high school, so we're going to be half the population of children in this house next year.
But, you know, really, it's been interesting because with the news being so massive, Doug, I mean, this is like, for the first time, my daughter, who's 15, is interested in politics.
Oh, wow.
This is interesting, Mom.
This is...
Because of this assassination attempt, it became very real for her.
I want to share with you what she said to me when she first saw the video.
She said, this is a 15-year-old girl, and she said, I don't get it.
I don't understand.
That's a living being.
How can anyone want to shoot another living being, no matter how you feel about them?
And, you know, that's the beauty of having a 15-year-old daughter that I have.
I just put it in such perspective for me.
So we're all good.
You know, it's summertime and we're here in Minnesota, which has turned into, I think, a swing state right now, Doug.
Good.
I think so as well.
And that's something I want to talk about as we go through here.
And look, last week during the convention, we've seen a lot of things go on, and we're taping this a little bit early, but some of the speeches that have been coming, the vast unity.
Has that struck you a little bit about the convention, the unity factor that you're seeing?
Yes, and I honestly think it was...
Solidified by the assassination attempt.
I do.
I'll tell you something, Doug.
When I first saw the video, because I didn't see it live, it was shortly thereafter, but I saw the video and I saw the president go down and then I saw him come up and there was the whole scuffle, like, let me talk, let me, you know, and then he put his fist in the air and it wasn't just the fist in the air, it was the look on his face.
Yeah.
He looks so determined to let people know they're not going to do this to us.
That's what I heard and saw in that whole gesture.
They're not going to do this to us.
Keep fighting.
And for anyone on television to say, oh, that was an inappropriate thing.
Excuse me?
You don't get to dictate what someone who's just been shot tells his crowd of supporters.
So that moment, I don't know, it's hard to describe, but something like I felt an internal switch go on.
And I was sort of like, I don't remember the last time I've been that inspired by a politician.
It was the look on his face.
It was the blood streaming down.
You know, the photos, of course, are iconic, but that moment of making sure that people saw his determination was unbelievable to me.
Oh, it was.
I think that was the time.
I, like you, the first thing I know, I was actually working outside when it was going on, and I got a text, and I was in the back, and it said something about Trump or something, you know, getting shot or something.
And I said, what?
And I turned it on.
So I, I'm getting it within like three or four minutes.
I would have five minutes actually happened.
And I watched it from the perspective of when he went down, you know, my question was because I got concerned for a minute.
Cause I, again, nobody knew.
I didn't, I didn't know, but I was watching it sort of a replay in real time without watching the play.
So I didn't know he had made it to the car.
Right.
And, um, so when I'm watching this, um, You start hearing the sacred service talk.
You start saying, you know, and he says, you know, get my shoes.
I need to get it.
But you didn't know if they were picking him up.
Yeah.
If they were carrying him out.
Yeah.
You didn't know what was that.
Again, I have so much from my, you know, from my military background, from my, you know, being in Congress, being around these events all the time.
There's just so many questions about, you know, the procedure there and some of those things that I've heard.
A lot of this is coming out now.
You know, one, Cheadle needs to be gone.
She is completely, I mean, first off, gone, and then start the investigation.
Do whatever.
She can lawyer up, do whatever she wants to do.
But no way the top doesn't roll here.
And especially saying, well, it was a slanted roof.
That, Doug, to me, was one of the silliest, because while she's saying that, you see in all the video, the sniper who took the assassin, the would-be assassin, out was on a sloped roof!
A bigger sloped roof.
It was more slopey than his sloped roof.
So to suggest that the Secret Service can't handle a, what was it, probably a nine-degree slope on a roof is embarrassing.
Absolutely embarrassing.
It instilled no confidence in me and this woman at all.
No, and you feel bad for the Secret Service agents.
I did an interview just yesterday, and they played the clip from Cheadle saying that she wanted to have a 30% DEI, you know, women.
And I said this, I said, look, I don't care what color you are, what race you are, or what sex you are, I want 100% qualified.
Exactly.
That's what I want.
That's exactly right.
Look, I've known female Secret Service agents, female officers, female military members that were, you know, they were 100% competent.
It didn't matter that they were women or men.
It just mattered they were competent.
Competent, yes.
And I think that's the part that is really sad here.
But, you know, again, now as the days have progressed since then, you know, we're getting the, well, did he get shot really or was it the glass from the teleprompter?
I'm like, Oh, I am so over.
At some point, MSNBC has got to be considered a political arm of the DNC. Listen, it's tough to disagree with you because from Jen Psaki to Joy Reid to Rachel Maddow, It's almost hysteria that you hear from these folks.
And it's, again, it's from the assassination point of view to he's going to put us in jail.
I'm afraid for my job.
I'm afraid for my people.
When has this man ever demonstrated...
Ever.
That those things are going to happen.
Where's the evidence?
You know, any child psychologist will tell you, if you're scared of sharks being in your house, where's the evidence that there's a shark in your house?
There is no evidence.
So that's where you start.
But these people...
They might need child psychologists.
I don't know.
Look, there's only one president in the last seven and a half years that has defied the Supreme Court ruling.
You know who it was?
Joe Biden.
Not Donald Trump.
Every time they tell me that Donald Trump's going to do something constitutionally wrong, I said, when did he do it?
He didn't.
Everything they accused him of, he didn't do.
And they won't admit that.
Well, he talked about it.
He did the Muslim ban.
As soon as the court had a ruling on that, they made adjustments, they changed.
I mean, again, and I hate to say this, because some people say, well, Doug, it means that he was giving in to the court.
No, he was following the rule of law.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And, you know, again, they have a way of saying things.
And listen, Trump has a way of labeling people as well, so we're even Stephen there.
But a Muslim ban, it sounded so pernicious, and it was something that was not as pernicious as they made it sound.
And that's what they've been doing all the time.
The most glaring example of that is Is the bloodbath thing.
Here's Donald Trump talking about the auto industry and how it's gone down the tubes.
And if he's not elected and Biden is reelected, there will be a bloodbath in this industry.
I have never seen anyone run to a microphone as fast as Nancy Pelosi did to say, did you hear about the bloodbath?
It's violent.
He's promising a bloodbath.
I guess what tickles me about it almost is she thinks we're so stupid.
And for someone to think that lowly of the American people that we're just so stupid, and yet people have been continuing to parrot this bloodbath line, and it is absolutely insane to me.
Yeah.
Well, what kills me is they don't...
They are...
Very much of, if you remember the movie Nemo, I mean, they have the memory of a fish.
Yeah, of Dory, yeah.
Because, I mean, all you gotta do is point them to their own words using the same words, bloodbath.
Yeah.
Oh, well, what a movie.
You know, sometimes I wonder, you know, there's the old saying in life, is it better to know everything or know nothing?
Democrats, especially some of the top-level Democrats, have made a living out of just, I don't know nothing, and they just keep moving forward.
How does it practically play?
I'm interested.
You started off today, we said Minnesota becoming more of a swing state.
How do you see that playing out?
What are you seeing up there?
I've been up there many times before.
We thought this a couple of years ago.
It didn't, unfortunately, tend to play out.
What are you seeing now?
Well, I see that when I drive 20 minutes out of what we call the metro area, Minneapolis-St.
Paul, you see Trump flags all over the place.
Now, we saw that in 2020 as well.
But let's remember that 2020 was COVID. There could have been a dip in attendance at the polls because of that.
We don't know.
Whatever.
I think that people are so tired of what they've seen over the last four years and that they see their prices going on.
My mother-in-law saw me the other day and she said, how are families doing this?
How are families surviving?
She goes, I just went to the grocery store and I had two plastic bags of groceries and it was $90.
She said, how are families doing this that live paycheck to paycheck?
She said, I barely had any groceries.
And it was $90.
And there was no chicken, no meat, nothing like that in my grocery bag.
It was just groceries.
$90!
She was flabbergasted.
And I don't know how families are doing it.
I really don't.
But, you know, this is a state that's a little wacky.
We have Ilhan Omar, our congresswoman, who I... There are really no words to describe how I feel about her.
But this is, you know, in a very select part of the Twin Cities.
So how do I see it playing out?
I think people are exhausted and everywhere, and the polls seem to be shifting toward Trump.
So let's see if the voter turnout is there.
Well, I think you got several things and we're still in the early stages here, but you always have at least a minimal one to two point post-convention bump.
You see it on both sides.
There's going to be some assassination attempt movement probably in those numbers a little bit as well.
That'll take away.
That's a real ethereal bump if it does or not, because you just don't know how that'll play.
That's emotional driven.
But what I'm seeing, and I brought this up, and I'd love to get your take on this.
I brought it up several months ago, and I did some, every so often, about every month or two, up until I've been doing a, what does it look like for the election?
So I'll go through the Senate races, the House races, and the presidential race.
And one of the things I talked about about the presidential race, and I said this back in early spring, was, The interesting thing to me will be, I think this is going to be a very tight race up until October, and I think it's going to be reminiscent of the 80 election with Carter and Reagan.
And I said that because at the end of the day, and everybody forgets this, that race was a dead heat, okay, up until the very last week and weekend.
And the polls, they couldn't catch it.
They didn't catch it until it was almost at the end.
But people began to look.
And remember, Carter was dealing with hostages in Iran, were dealing with a terrible economy, and it was still a dead heat.
That, again, we lionized Reagan, rightfully so, but when he first won, there was a lot of sort of similar things that you hear about Donald Trump.
He's going to get us into war, he's going to do all these other things.
But at the end of the day, they looked at it, and I think they looked at Reagan, they looked at Carter, And they said, I can't keep going the way I'm going.
I think there's a little bit on the opposite direction when you had Clinton and H.W. Bush.
Right.
I think there was a little bit of that in there as well.
Well, there was Ross Perot as well.
And you had Perot thrown in there.
Now, Michelle, that's not very helpful here.
I just told them that they were not capable of running a Burger King.
Now, that's just not a mistake to the Burger King, but it's just there.
Now, you know that.
That's pretty good.
But he did take like 90% of the vote, didn't he?
Oh yeah, he did.
Best third party.
That really, I think, crushed H.W. It did.
And also, here's another interesting issue on the losing side of that.
H.W., and I mean this, I mean, it's sad.
A gallon of milk.
How much does it cost?
I have no clue.
He was so disconnected.
So now, right forward to here, 2024, you've got a president who cognitively is not sure of a lot of things.
And you've got now, though, a one who gets shot, and as you said, stands up.
And I was sort of waiting for that.
I finished my story from earlier.
I was waiting.
Okay, is he going to indicate he's okay?
Almost like the football player who gets up from being...
Correct.
Gives the thumbs up.
Yeah, I guess I'm okay.
I'm a stretcher going off.
Yeah.
And he did.
And so now you see that image and you see...
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Exactly.
I'm surprised...
That's typically October, but you see it happening now.
Yeah.
Yes.
And so, yeah, how long can this...
What's going to happen over time?
And by the way, who's going to be the candidate as we're recording this on the day that Adam Schiff has said, I want Joe Biden to withdraw.
It's up to him, but I want him to withdraw.
Yeah.
Who do they put in?
What happens next?
And Joe Biden has even said now, you know, the third thing that could take him out of the running is if doctors tell him there's something really wrong with him.
So now it's, if the Almighty tells me so, if there's 0% chance that I can win, or if the doctors tell me there's something that is going to stop me from performing.
So he's given three caveats.
I don't think the Almighty is going to tell him to quit, but, you know, the other two might happen.
So, you know...
Yeah, I always knew God was a woman.
But anyway, so you ask yourself, you know, what are the logistics of this?
How does it play out?
Does it wait until the convention, etc., etc.?
I don't know who wants to be the sacrificial lamb.
I'm not sure there's any Democrat right now.
That could beat Trump and this unified party.
The speeches from Nikki Haley, from Marco Rubio, from Ron DeSantis, from people who used to be enemies of Trump were outstanding.
The everyday American speeches at the convention were phenomenal.
And the fact that Trump and J.D. Vance have shaken hands after a...
By the way, proving that Trump doesn't always hold grudges if he's going to do what's best for the party or for the country.
And so it's really interesting.
This is the last convention I remember watching prior to this one was the Mitt Romney convention.
And where he had, was it?
It was Charlton Heston, wasn't it?
Not Charlton Heston.
Clint Eastwood.
I said Chuck Heston.
Clint Eastwood come out and talk to an empty chair.
Yeah, it was classic, but not a lot of people found it funny.
You had all the lines from Mitt Romney, and you had Barack Obama, who was really popular.
Biden's not so popular right now.
I'm surprised we're not seeing bigger swings in the polls yet, but I think that contrast that you talked about is so stark.
And I would even say this, that Trump's appearances at the early stages of the RNC showed a more placid, more grateful, more humble person than I think we've ever seen.
I agree.
And it's just going to be interesting to see how that plays out.
Look, and we talked off before we started taping about Adam Schiff.
I'm not a fan.
He's not a fan.
I think he's scared of me.
But...
I'm going to step back for a second as a commentator on Adam Schiff doing that.
Adam Schiff has zero to gain by that.
I mean, again, this is Adam Schiff in his own mind playing Adam Schiff games.
Adam's going to win California.
Closer possibly than he wanted to.
I mean, Garvey, I think, is going to run a decent race out there.
But look, California, for all the hope and dreams, it's just a gone state for Republicans right now.
And so he wasn't gaining.
He's not one of the...
In Ohio or Montana, he's not Tester or Sherrod Brown.
He's not where Biden really takes out those candidates.
Pennsylvania, which is McCormick's running further behind than I thought he would at this point.
That's going to be an interesting race to watch.
So we're looking at this.
And so you begin to say, why is he doing this?
What is Schiff besides putting his name in this hat or is he protecting?
The question then comes up for me, Michelle, is he protecting the Cloonies and the Hollywood donors?
Is he having to...
Now pair it to sort of give them cover.
Well, that's a strong possibility.
And everyone in California is so beholden to the Hollywood money that it's, you know, that is a strong possibility.
Speaking of California, though, and all of this activity there, I want to ask you this.
How influential do you think Elon Musk is?
He announced after Gavin Newsom signed a law saying that teachers are banned From telling a parent if their student wants to change genders or change their pronouns or their name at school.
They are banned from telling the parents.
I can't imagine any parent wanting to go along with this when it comes to their own children.
I can't imagine it, but Gavin Newsom signed this into law.
That was the last straw for Elon Musk.
He's moving everything to Texas.
Everything.
Yep.
And it seems that tech is now leaning more toward Trump.
Tech wants to make money.
Tech wants to do business.
Tech wants less regulations.
And they've made money at a tech fundraiser up in Silicon Valley, which is shocking to me, the Trump campaign did.
So between Elon Musk and tech, how influential do you think that can be in the state of California?
Yeah, tech is starting to show a little bit of what you see in other industries, your television movie industry, your others, in which you have some at the top, at best, play both sides in political races because they understand.
Now, underneath, the rank and file, still very liberal in very many ways.
I think you've seen that.
I see a very strong correlation between Donald Trump and Elon Musk in what I'm about to say.
Everybody loved, all the liberal media, movies, TVs, everybody loved Donald Trump until Donald Trump ran for president.
Maybe starting in 12 when he started having some stuff where he didn't like Barack Obama and he was making comments about that.
So it started a little bit there.
But the minute he come down the escalator in 15, it was over.
That love affair was gone.
Now they loved him when he wasn't.
Musk is going through the same thing.
They loved Musk up until he bought Twitter and said, by the way, this needs to be a free platform, not a government control platform.
And so I think you're seeing that.
So look, I think it would be bigger, but I mean, if it's so bad in California that Gavin Newsom can sign that with a straight face and not worry about political ramifications At the same time, by the way, I believe they also could not make, I think they had the bill back up again in this past week or so, and I may be wrong about this, but I know it just came up recently, where it's not a felony to have sex with a child.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, they couldn't even get it to the floor.
That shows you where California is.
And Michelle, our similar generations, mine and your similar generations, I remember watching TV growing up in the 70s, 80s.
And California, the old shows, there's a network out there, and I wish they would sponsor both of us, but if they won't do great, it's called MeTV.
All they do is show old shows.
And they show M.A.S.H., they show the Beverly Hillbillies, Carol Burnett.
But they also show Hogan's Heroes, but they show Dragnet, Adam-12, you know, and I think even they did Emergency.
And that was California.
I mean, that was what I thought of when I saw, you know, Adam-12.
I thought of California.
I saw the movies through the 80s.
We've just recently, my family sat down and watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
I mean, you know, that whole...
You know, that was California.
And remember, folks, if you're listening to this podcast and you don't do history, please, you know my thoughts on this.
You've got to do history.
We had Republican governors, even though they may not have been, you know, Southern Republican governors, but they were Republican governors in California, you know, as little as 15 years ago.
Yes.
And if you go back, if you want to skip over Schwarzenegger, just go back to Wilson.
I mean, they've been there, but we haven't had a senator out there in 30, 40 years.
And one of my favorite all-time movies, and I think you and I may have talked about this before, is The Candidate with Robert Redford.
Oh, yeah.
That's a California movie.
Yeah, it is.
I mean, amazing.
I think that, listen, if I had a dollar for every time I've been asked to run for office, I could finance a campaign.
Make sure they give it to you before you do.
Yeah, no kidding, right?
What I think happens, but here's what holds me back from time to time, Doug, is that do I want to put my family through that?
And do I want, because I know what the radical left is like here in Minnesota, and I know how they would potentially go after my family.
Is it worth it to put my family through that?
I can take it.
I can handle their barbs.
I don't care.
Honestly, I don't care.
There's nothing they can say that would offend me.
That's my choice to be offended.
But I would imagine out in California, there are a lot of hardworking Republicans who have thought about running for office, but who know the money they'd be up against from Hollywood.
Hell, Hollywood is helping finance Al Franken out here.
In Minnesota when he was still active.
Oh, yeah.
So the Hollywood money seems to be unending.
It's like live golf.
They can just throw tons and tons of money at candidates and help them win.
And so I think in California, you probably think in the senatorial races, not necessarily in your communities, but I got no shot.
And do I want to really traipse up and down this state and give my all?
And hopefully you would like to think that your ideas would trump everything.
But politics is, as someone once said, is a blood sport.
And I hate saying that now in the wake of the Donald Trump assassination attempt, but clearly it is.
I think if that proves it, if nothing else does.
So I think people are, it's really sad.
That's why I think we need term limits in the biggest, baddest way.
Yeah.
Well, the biggest problem we've got right now is that people are turning away.
We've allowed not policy discussions, we've allowed image and money to dominate a situation or a race in which if you can put in 10 to 20 million of your own money, you all of a sudden have a shot, whether you have experience or not.
We've also downgraded experience, Michelle, and I think this is another issue.
You know, from your previous work in sports and TV and everything.
I mean, you take a young kid out of journalism school and throw them on the sidelines of the NFL, it's going to be a disaster.
Well, yes.
I mean, look, yes.
But at the same time, I... You know, and I heard Brit Hume say this on Fox News the other night, that experience does matter.
And what you're saying right now is experience does matter.
It didn't seem to matter so much for Barack Obama, who was, what, a term and a half in the Senate before he was nominated?
And so people are going to throw the experience thing at J.D. Vance as well.
We know that.
They already have started doing that.
I disagree on a different principle.
Look, I think it did matter with Obama.
I think it mattered greatly in the sense of what we got out of President Obama.
He was an ideologue elected president.
He was elected because he gave one good speech in 2004 at the Democratic Convention.
Don't get me wrong.
Look, you can have good people come from different places, not the purpose of it.
What I am saying, though, is that money and image and the And Democrats are better at this than we are, by the way.
They play identity politics.
They play it on a professional level.
We're still in the- We're semi-pro, yeah.
I wish we were there.
Because look at how many candidates, and I'll say this, and just honestly, Herschel Walker in Georgia is a football icon and idol, okay?
And people looked at him and said, okay, here's Herschel.
He's an African-American football hero who has money.
Everybody will just vote for him.
And nobody followed through with, well, can he...
Speak to issues.
Can he generate crowds?
Can he motivate people who are not politically or football-minded to do it?
And we lost a seat in that regard.
I mean, I endorse him.
I voted for him.
He's a Republican.
When he gets down to shirts and skins, I'm where we need to be.
So I think what we're seeing in this is, and you hit it right, is people are wanting to not run, which is sad.
They're not wanting to run because here's the other truth.
Very few people get elected these days based on, here's what I want to do.
Okay?
They're going to get elected on a campaign of, here's what I'm doing, here's my party, but also, here's how bad the other person is.
Yeah.
Okay?
Yeah.
And that's just a fact.
And I hear it all the time from people who want to run for office.
They say, well, I'm going to run positive ads and talk about how great the nation is.
I say, well, are you going to get beat?
They say, no.
People respond to that.
I say, no, they don't.
It's a sad truth, isn't it?
I mean, it's just a sad truth.
I hear that all the time.
Negative campaigning, everybody hates it.
But the bottom line...
Oh, let me do it in the Joe Biden voice.
The bottom line is, it works.
So, you know, apparently negative ads work.
Well, the problem is all you got to do is you look at it and hear, you know, when negative ads come, they come and people respond.
They don't respond to the happy look.
Who knew you were so multi-talented?
My goodness.
Yeah, but they don't respond.
And it's just proven over and over and over again.
Okay?
Yeah.
That says something.
And again, you're also going to hear something from me that you may or may not understand.
I believe in it.
Negative ad is a negative ad.
Now, they're crossing the lines, ads, and then there's contrast pieces.
Right, right.
If I'm running against a person who says, I am for late-term abortions, I'm going to run a negative ad.
This person favors killing babies in the womb up to 40 weeks.
That's contrast.
Right.
If I run an ad that says something about their family, their character, their race, implying they do something, those are what I call over-the-top ads.
Those are ads that, and look, both sides have been very prominent in those kind of ads.
You go back to Willie Horton ads, you go back to all kinds.
Those happen.
So you have to draw the distinction, and most people can't, but that's what moves numbers.
And it's been doing this way too long.
The dog even agrees.
He couldn't agree.
They don't want to vote for positive ads.
You know what the dog just said?
What?
The dog just said, fight!
Keep fighting!
Fight!
That's just, he's saying it in canine.
If you don't think you're going to see that in the last two or three weeks of this campaign...
You know what?
Here's the thing...
Let's just go back to that moment for a second since I made a joke about it with the dog.
You talk about the athlete who's being wheeled off and puts the thumbs up like, I'm okay, because they want their family at home to know and they want the TV cameras to catch them doing this.
Trump could have done this, but what he did was, and a reason again that this switch flipped inside of me, and I've even heard Democrats say this, That it was so inspiring because it was more like a...
They are not going to...
It wasn't just, I'm okay.
He got up ready to fight.
He got up ready to fight!
It was, you know, and I think, Doug, that that's part of why some people are saying this was so staged because, you know, it allowed him to look this way.
I'm sorry, you don't stage something where one person ends up dead, God bless him, and two others wind up in critical condition.
No, no, no, no.
Look, and it goes back to what I said earlier.
I think they're now processing this in July, and they were processing it two weeks ago after debate.
Here is a gentleman who blamed a bad debate performance on traveling too much and having a cold.
And a cold, yeah.
Okay, and then you have somebody who gets, who is Biden loves to say, I'm only three years older than Trump.
And, you know, Biden's gotten some ad lately.
He actually calls him Trump and not the other guy.
I have.
Have you noticed that?
Yes, I have.
Maybe you forgot.
I don't know.
I have.
I have.
But he said, I'm only three years old.
Okay, you just proved my point.
You're three years older, and he just got up off the floor after being tackled and shot, and you have trouble remembering which way to go offstage.
Yeah.
That's your big issue.
This is where age is not a number.
This is where you are in the process of your age.
And unfortunately for Biden, and look, I don't like when people make fun of or they say derogatory things about bodily functions that come along with being older.
I don't like that.
And I feel bad.
And I've lost both my parents, so I've seen all of these processes play out.
And I actually have sympathy for Joe Biden on that level.
Where I don't have sympathy for Joe Biden at all is how he has lied about the border, about how he has sat in that role and let other people make devastating decisions for this country.
In fact, I can sit here today and say, who's running the country today?
I wake up every morning, Doug, and go, huh, who's running the country today?
Because while he may sit in the oval behind that desk, He's not running the country.
He's just not.
Where he can come out and yell at us and off a teleprompter, as he did in front of the NAACP recently, where he's just shouting and screaming and yelling at us off a teleprompter.
Looks strong, Joe.
There you go.
That looks strong.
I don't believe that he is making the decisions.
Well, you know, he left Las Vegas and went back to Rehoboth Beach.
He didn't go back to Washington.
Look, I think this is what people are seeing, and I think this is what makes people frustrated.
And again, But, and this is something we'll talk about on another show, your show, my show, we'll talk about this later.
Number one, I think Republicans can't get too confident.
No, I agree.
I think we're stretching the field in the right way, but it's still, look, it's still close.
This is just like, I go back to the 80s election, it's still too close.
And you've got four months and they've got $100, $200 million.
I mean, and they're- But here's another Elon Musk thing we should talk about, him pledging $45 million a month For get out the vote efforts.
Get out the vote efforts.
Especially if they run that pack right, that can be very effective in Nevada, Arizona.
And Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, I think is back in Pennsylvania from the presidential race perspective.
Potentially Minnesota.
And Minnesota.
So really what you do is you take the pot of money that was here, and now you've increased the pot of money on the other side, which is perfect timing for them.
So we'll see how it goes through.
But then my next question will be, and I've been there on both sides of this, we've got to have a workable plan when he Let's just assume Trump gets elected.
We take at least one to two seat majority in the Senate and hopefully hold the House or gain two or three seats in the House.
Then we got to realize there's no excuses.
It's a three part.
We got all three parts.
And so there's none of this.
I'm going to hold up something because I'm pissed about this little part over here.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And they better get on board with that.
If we have majorities across the board, people better stop playing their games.
Stuff has to get done.
And I just feel like that's the difference, though.
I think Trump does get stuff done.
I think he's the person who's able to sit with people in a room and say, Enough of this BS. Get in line.
I think he's that kind of personality, the way that Reagan did.
We always talk about the air traffic controllers strike back in the day, but that's what Reagan did.
So yeah, I agree with you.
I think that that's absolutely essential.
Hint, hint, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, you better just fall in line.
Well, I think it's going to be important.
And I think they're going to come together.
And a lot of us have talked about this.
And there's a lot of plans that are there that a resource is going to be available to the administration that were not available in 2016. But also, let's just also not kid ourselves.
There'll be constant attacks.
Oh, no question.
They may try to impeach him again.
Let me ask you.
Well, if the Democrats take the House, that's, I mean, look, we got to get the Senate to get the confirmations and the judges and everything else.
You lose the House, he's impeached again.
Yeah.
Okay, just face it.
He is, as we go.
Hey, before we get going today, I want to turn, I want to switch gears.
Number one, I want to send a greeting from a friend of, a very good friend of mine and yours.
Chan Gailey said to say hello.
Hi, Chan.
And Chan is just, he comes on right regular with the show.
Well, we may need to get y'all all three on there together.
That'd be good.
Oh, that'd be good.
I got to brush up on football.
I've been so immersed in politics.
I got to get back on the horse.
You know, and you and I talk, I mean, this is why I love my podcast.
We just talk like, as friends we are.
I couldn't do it all the time.
I'm in this all the time, and I talk politics, I talk, you know, racism.
So we, and I think you and I have talked about this offline, we do a Friday, every Friday we do, it's called Friday's Finest.
Yeah.
We just do off the wall, talk football, we talk everything.
James, my producer, he gets in.
Chip Lake, my former political consultant, we just have fun.
But anyway, Chan was on today, and he made an interesting comment, and I would love to get your take, because you covered this for a long time.
Media days, especially the college media days, which he thought was just hilarious.
Yeah.
But we both had a laugh.
Did you not get a laugh out of the fact that Saban, in his first job outside of coaching, forgets his credentials at the SEC media days and they wouldn't let him in the door?
Well, it's ridiculous that they wouldn't let him in the door.
Who's going to impersonate Nick Saban?
Nobody can.
But it is funny.
I have left the hotel without my credential from time to time.
Not very often at all because there was someone in our staff who would just glare at me when I did that.
And I will not name him Vinny Rao.
But anyway, it is funny, because I'm sure he's never really needed one before, you know?
He's Nick Saban!
He's Nick Saban.
Media days are funny, and particularly, they have changed so much.
You know, sports...
On all levels now, it's just become the entertainment industry, right?
It's much less about the games you're playing.
It's a little bit of that, but I mean, you've got people from all kinds of backgrounds and networks and you've got kid reporters and all these people there and it's a lot of fun.
So, but yes, you know, that'll probably be the last time he forgets his credential or they need to assign a person to him to have the credential with them and then give it to him when he's walking in the door.
Don't let him lose it.
I know up in Minnesota, you're up there and you've got the Vikings.
You've got all the year.
James, my producer, is a diehard Viking who's went from the throes of misery through the offseason.
Now he's getting ready to be euphoric.
Michelle, tell him it's going to be okay.
It's going to be okay.
We've got Justin Jefferson.
That's all I got, really.
I don't know.
Hey look, McCarthy's going to come in and save the day.
There you go.
Right.
There we go.
That's what it is.
Exactly.
It's always entertaining.
It's always entertaining.
It's always dramatic.
It always is.
And folks, that's why we come and that's why we love Michelle.
That's why we love having her on.
That's why you love her, why her podcast is so great.
You need to check it out.
Also on the silent network, just go anywhere you can find the podcast and you'll find Michelle.
She's making a difference.
You watch her on Fox.
She's outstanding on Outnumbered.
She's making a difference.
So, Michelle, I'm glad you're with us and glad to be a part.
We'll keep this up.
And we're going to get together a little bit closer to football.
We'll all get us together.
You warm up.
We'll have some fun with that.
Yeah, I got to get the reading out and we'll be ready.
There we go.
I love it.
All right, folks, that's it for today on the podcast.
Thanks for joining us.
If you have any questions, again, go to DougCollinsPodcast.com.
Check that email button and let me know about it.
Also, don't forget, check out Michelle's podcast as well.