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Rubio Replacement Rumors
00:03:16
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| Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on SiriusXM Channel 111 every weekday at Noon East. | |
| Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. | |
| Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show. | |
| The election was just one week ago and Mar-a-Lago is now the center of the political universe. | |
| As president-elect, Donald Trump is quickly making picks for his next administration. | |
| Will it be Senator Marco Rubio as Secretary of State? | |
| The New York Times broke the story. | |
| We haven't yet seen a Trump truth on it. | |
| He's starting to get congratulations now from people like Byron Donalds, who's a surrogate for Donald Trump and is also a Floridian. | |
| And some are kicking his name around as a possible Rubio replacement in the Senate. | |
| So maybe it's just a matter of time. | |
| Maybe it's not correct information. | |
| We just don't fully know until we hear from Donald Trump. | |
| Or maybe we'll know in just a bit because I'll be joined by another U.S. Senator from Florida, Rick Scott. | |
| He is here to talk about the leadership elections that are happening tomorrow morning. | |
| This time tomorrow, he'll be in the U.S. Senate and they'll be voting on who's going to be the next Mitch McConnell. | |
| You know, Mitch McConnell, of course, now the minority leader. | |
| And now the Republicans have won control of the Senate, so they need to find a majority leader. | |
| Mitch McConnell has already announced, he did, I think it was February, that he's going to be stepping down. | |
| He's going to stay in his role as a senator, but he's going to be stepping down from leadership. | |
| And there's a bunch of, I think there's some palace intrigue here because Thune, John Thune and John Cornyn are his chief rivals, Rick Scott's chief rivals for this role. | |
| And they're seen as more establishment. | |
| Rick Scott is seen as more Trumpy, more MAGA. | |
| And he's got a lot of support. | |
| Elon tweeted out his support for Rick Scott. | |
| Tucker tweeted out his support for Rick Scott. | |
| You've got a bunch of pro-MAGA fans on X pushing for Rick Scott. | |
| But then you've got a lot of people who are not on board. | |
| I think Josh Hawley is backing Cornyn. | |
| And Thune is reportedly the quiet favorite because he's well-liked amongst the senators. | |
| And it's a secret ballot, you see. | |
| So they can vote for whomever they want. | |
| Anyway, it's all getting kind of interesting. | |
| Will these other senators who aren't as pro-MAGA as Rick Scott push the Trump agenda? | |
| Can they be relied upon to stand shoulder to shoulder with Trump as he gets through his legislation, some of which undoubtedly will be controversial? | |
| Or will they be fair weather fans? | |
| Will they be more Susan Collins-ish or Mitt Romney-ish? | |
| That's the concern by some. | |
| Rick Scott is, of course, getting a ton of support from the online right. | |
| And we're going to ask him all about what he thinks the dynamics at play are. | |
| He's in an interesting position in this interview because he doesn't want to alienate his fellow senators, right? | |
| But he definitely wants Thune and Cornyn not to win. | |
| So this will be kind of a fun one to listen to. | |
|
Skip The Trump Signs
00:03:03
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| The October 15th tax deadline has come and gone. | |
| Are you prepared for what's coming? | |
| Do you owe back taxes? | |
| Are your tax returns still unfiled? | |
| Missed the deadline to file for an extension? | |
| Now that October 15th is behind us, the IRS may be ramping up enforcement. | |
| You could face wage garnishments, frozen bank accounts, or even property seizures if you haven't taken action yet. | |
| But there's hope. | |
| Tax Network USA has helped taxpayers save over $1 billion in tax debt and has filed over 10,000 tax returns. | |
| They specialize in helping people reduce their tax burdens. | |
| So visit tnusa.com slash Megan or call 1-800-958-1000 for a free consultation. | |
| Their experts will walk you through a few simple questions to see how much you could save. | |
| Give it a try now before the IRS takes more aggressive steps. | |
| Take control and visit tnusa.com slash Megan or call 1-800-958-1000. | |
| In the meantime, I want to get you up to speed on all the things that are happening in the world news-wise. | |
| Let's just start with what's happening with FEMA. | |
| An extraordinary development here over the past couple of days. | |
| So FEMA, as you know, is responsible for helping Americans in the wake of natural disasters, including the hurricanes that we saw come through Florida twice and the first one hit North Carolina badly too. | |
| And there were claims by Donald Trump and others that FEMA was not getting help to Republican households intentionally, like that they were skipping over Republican households and ignoring Republican households. | |
| And this led to a spate of articles on the left by the New York Times and others saying, these are lies. | |
| There's no evidence, no evidence. | |
| So to their credit, the Daily Wire sent a reporter down there to Florida in particular to start actually knocking on doors and figuring out what was going on and to do some investigative reporting. | |
| And they found it was true that FEMA was intentionally skipping houses that had Trump signs on their front lawns. | |
| It's pretty remarkable. | |
| And not only that, but they found internal correspondence showing the supervisor, the FEMA supervisor on site, telling people to skip the houses with the Trump signs. | |
| So it seems pretty clear. | |
| What did FEMA do? | |
| They fired the woman. | |
| And now the woman, she's a supervisor who was fired. | |
| And it's all in writing, you know, her telling them to skip the Trump sign, the Trump houses, the ones with the signs. | |
| Now the woman's speaking out saying, look, I'm a Patsy. | |
| They told me skip the Trump signs houses. | |
| And she's claiming this all had to do with, you know, a house here or there didn't want her help or said something not nice to the FEMA workers. | |
| And therefore it was a safety issue, which sounds like a complete CYA. | |
| You know, if you really don't want FEMA there, you're supposed to paint some like a purple X on your house and then FEMA knows not to come. | |
|
Supervisor Fired Over Signs
00:11:48
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| A Trump sign is not a purple X. | |
| And just because some Trump supporter says to you, what are you doing here? | |
| Or I know you guys don't like Republicans or something less than I love you, FEMA, doesn't mean you get to skip them, madam. | |
| And FEMA. | |
| So the only question really to be investigated at this point is how high does this go? | |
| Because she's saying it went up higher than her and that she's being scapegoated. | |
| And how much rot needs to be cleaned out at FEMA? | |
| Because political messaging from one of the people that they're not huge fans of FEMA is not grounds for skipping their homes. | |
| And nor are there Trump signs. | |
| So we need to get to the bottom of what's going on here because there will be more natural disasters. | |
| And just because Trump is president-elect doesn't mean he will instantaneously be able to get to the bottom of the rot that's in so many of these federal agencies. | |
| The absolute loathing for him, yes, and for the right half of the country. | |
| Okay, in other news. | |
| Kamala Harris in the news this week for, among other reasons, having run her billion-dollar campaign down to the studs when it comes to her cash. | |
| She's reportedly $20 million in debt. | |
| We told you the story the other day. | |
| Well, now the reports are that she blew the vast majority of that last 20 million on stars. | |
| Now, so far, we've only had one star deny receiving a direct payment. | |
| And that person is Oprah Winfrey. | |
| Uh, the reporting is and we've seen the verification um, via various publications that Harpo Productions, her production company, was paid a million dollars for that farce of a town hall that Oprah put on. | |
| What a joke. | |
| So Oprah's production company got a million dollars to put that thing on. | |
| Now it was on TMZ today. | |
| Either TMZ or one of their you know contractors caught up with Oprah and said, hey heard, you got a million dollars. | |
| She said, no, I didn't get paid anything. | |
| She didn't mention that her company got a million dollars. | |
| You omitted that, Oprah. | |
| It was like threading the needle um, so she didn't take personal payment, she claimed. | |
| Now look at this set that cost a million dollars and the Kamala Harris campaign paid for all of it and it looks like a nice set. | |
| They've got all the video monitors. | |
| I don't get it. | |
| Why wouldn't Oprah have used her production company, her set um? | |
| So maybe that's what it cost, maybe to do a photo shoot or a sit-down town hall with Oprah Winfrey? | |
| It costs a million, damn dollars. | |
| Let me tell you something, people. | |
| This is yet another piece of evidence that Oprah Winfrey is fake news news. | |
| People do not require the campaign to pay us so we can interview them. | |
| I did a town hall of sorts in this election when I sat down with the Tim Walz, Stolen Valor, former. | |
| UH colleagues, do you think I charged them to set up this? | |
| No, I didn't. | |
| Megan Kelly paid for it. | |
| The Megan Kelly show, along with serious XM f these. | |
| Wait, what is happening here? | |
| It's just a way of lining your pocket like wink wink. | |
| Oprah sure, it would be great if you would set up this town hall for us and we'll pay you a million dollars for your beautiful set and then maybe you could endorse us. | |
| There is a report out now that um, oh my god, who was it? | |
| Which performer got five million dollars for the song and dance? | |
| They did Beyonce. | |
| No, I thought it was somebody else anyway. | |
| No, it wasn't Beyonce, it was one of these other performers. | |
| Um, who was the one early on in the blue suit? | |
| She got up there and did all of her dancing. | |
| It wasn't Cardi B. | |
| Yes, Megan The Stallion yeah, there's a report that she got five million dollars for this. | |
| Now let's find out whether she denies it. | |
| Oprah style oh, it was a. | |
| It's five million dollars for my outfit. | |
| Who else got paid by this campaign and why won't Oprah. | |
| Just tell us the truth. | |
| Her production company got a million dollars. | |
| Then there's a report that 100 000 of the money went to build the set for the sex podcast girl. | |
| That that when Kamala Harris went on with a sex podcaster, the Harris team paid a hundred thousand dollars for this. | |
| Would you look, if you are listening to the show on Serious XM, please? | |
| I beg of you, go YouTube Leader, go to 10 past the hour, and you tell me how this cost $100,000. | |
| If I give you $100,000 to redo your home, you could probably redo half of the rooms in it with lovely furnishings for that. | |
| Not this is reportedly a hotel room. | |
| One, can we show it again? | |
| One hotel room? | |
| This is what they did. | |
| They've got little letters that have the name of the podcast. | |
| They've got some lights and some books and some plants. | |
| How did that cost $100,000? | |
| So this is either the case of absolute waste where nobody mined the shop and Democrat donors, you might want to pay attention to that, or there's some sort of fraud going on here where the Harris campaign was paying people off. | |
| I don't know which it was, and we should find out the full accounting because the campaigns are not allowed to keep this secret from the rest of us. | |
| We're supposed to know what they spend the donors money on. | |
| So we will wait to hear how much it really costs to get Oprah to behave in the following way. | |
| SOP5. | |
| Thanks for joining us for this very special event. | |
| Unite for America. | |
| Where are you? | |
| Chris Rock is in the house. | |
| Jennifer Lopez. | |
| Where are you, Jennifer? | |
| Yes. | |
| Julia Roberts, where are you? | |
| And this narrow street is in the house. | |
| Please welcome Kamala Hara. | |
| Totally feckless. | |
| But by the way, did J-Lo get a payment for that? | |
| Did Chris Rock get a payment for that? | |
| Did anybody get paid for these endorsements that we were led to believe were just completely organic? | |
| I mean, do we really care? | |
| Because they're all losers. | |
| They lost badly and have been rendered utterly powerless and feckless in the eyes of the electorate. | |
| Nobody will be asking for their endorsement again. | |
| No one's smart. | |
| I've known who wants to win. | |
| It's funny because there's already a Democratic primary underway for 2028, believe it or not. | |
| Yes, there is. | |
| And it's people like Josh Shapiro. | |
| Gavin Newsom out in California is already organizing his resistance to Trump's agenda. | |
| Good luck, sir. | |
| The California liberal has already been rejected resoundingly by the electorate. | |
| Why would the Democrats be so stupid as to elect another one next go around? | |
| Your little widow's peek does not distinguish you that much. | |
| And it may be hard to believe, he's even more radical than Kamala Harris's. | |
| His crazy ass gender stuff is even more radical than hers was. | |
| It's not going to be Gavin Newsom. | |
| So now you've got all these early, Andy Bashir, red state blue governor is out there already like, I know, I understand the electorate. | |
| I told you about this Chris Murphy in Connecticut yesterday. | |
| Like, I understand. | |
| Doesn't mention the trans thing at all. | |
| I'll be here to remind them. | |
| Don't worry, Senator Murphy. | |
| I'll be here to remind them. | |
| Don't worry about a thing. | |
| You can omit it from all your op-eds. | |
| We have a lot of listeners in Connecticut, a lot. | |
| And many are your voters, but they won't be for long if you don't get on the right side of this thing. | |
| They won't be because you're losing. | |
| We pointed out yesterday, the swing state voters, the number one issue was the trans thing. | |
| Boys and girls sports. | |
| So good luck holding the line on that, sir. | |
| And speaking of that, we've been talking about this guy, Seth Moulton. | |
| He's a Democrat in Massachusetts who has now come out. | |
| I mean, he's basically now Riley Gaines. | |
| I just don't want my daughters to have to deal. | |
| And we've been pointing out his hypocrisy because he has been not only, he wasn't neutral on this issue prior to now. | |
| He was actively pushing legislation that would mandate men in women's sports, mandate it, and actively opposing the bills that would have stopped it. | |
| And now he tells us, oh, he's been worried about his daughters all along. | |
| Well, why didn't you protect them, you feckless fool? | |
| Why didn't you do anything? | |
| Why did you, you were on the wrong side. | |
| You would rather have seen your daughters get hurt than lose your election or risk alienating your voters. | |
| What kind of a man are you? | |
| So he's still out there. | |
| He goes on with Scarborough, who's also pretending like he's just this like non-woke, you know, voice of reason who tried to speak to the Democrats about how to market this campaign. | |
| Just nobody listened to him. | |
| Oh my God. | |
| The revisionist history of these. | |
| Watch Sat one. | |
| But I remember several years ago saying on this show that a male who transitions after puberty should not compete against young women, young girls. | |
| 85% of Americans agree with that. | |
| That doesn't make them hate mongers. | |
| Maybe you will never understand why that issue, why the border issue, why the crime issue, why all of these other issues, the defund the police, as James Carville said, all these things added up. | |
| This is just everything that's wrong with this cancel culture. | |
| They're canceling the views of a vast majority of Americans. | |
| The founders had this crazy concept called freedom of speech. | |
| We can't talk about these tough issues. | |
| We're never going to win on them. | |
| And guess what? | |
| You know who's going to get hurt the most? | |
| It's trans kids. | |
| That's what Harris's problem was. | |
| She didn't have a response to this issue because she was so afraid to even raise it. | |
| Okay. | |
| What side are you? | |
| How are the trans kids going to get hurt? | |
| The girls are going to get hit the most. | |
| The girls like Peyton McNabb in North Carolina with the traumatic brain injury and permanent paralysis. | |
| This guy will say anything. | |
| These politicians are absolutely ruthless in how they will say whatever they need to say, depending on which way the wind is blowing. | |
| Don't believe them. | |
| Don't believe them. | |
| This guy's facing backlash already. | |
| This Seth Moulton. | |
| He's been some staffers have quit. | |
| And he's also seeing some LGBTQ groups push back against him. | |
| Is it Tufts University? | |
| I think it's Tufts came out and attacked him for these comments. | |
| Okay. | |
| Good luck because you can't thread this one. | |
| This is not a needle that can be threaded. | |
| You cannot say that this is for the protection of trans kids. | |
| This is for the protection of girls. | |
|
Ruthless Political Messaging
00:11:28
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| You're going to have to learn how to say it like you did the first time. | |
| Then you got the backlash and now you're changing your messaging. | |
| My point to the audience is they don't get it. | |
| They don't understand how strongly people feel about this. | |
| They don't understand that it's an issue from the heart, that it's moms and dads. | |
| It's blacks. | |
| It's whites. | |
| It's Hispanics. | |
| It cuts across all cultural lines. | |
| It's Muslims. | |
| It's Arabs. | |
| We have a guest coming on second hour who helped get Trump elected, who worked in Arab communities, her group, getting them out to vote because they're sick of this and the porn in schools. | |
| They have more conservative values. | |
| Like these two out there trying to pretend that they got it all along and they're the, you know, they're going to be the moral guides for this party to come back. | |
| All the best to you, people. | |
| You're going to need it. | |
| Okay. | |
| Quick break when we come back. | |
| United States Senator Rick Scott. | |
| Trust in media is at an all-time low and for very good reason. | |
| Stories can be shaped or even buried depending on who is in charge. | |
| This is why ground news exists. | |
| a platform prioritizing transparency, allowing users to see the full picture without filters. | |
| Ground news is an app and a website that aggregates related articles from around the world, highlighting each source's political bias and corporate influence. | |
| It also reveals stories underreported by one side of the political spectrum. | |
| For example, Ben Shapiro recently accused the New York Times of trying to silence conservatives on YouTube, and left-leaning media shockingly barely covered this. | |
| Ground News shows that over 75% of the coverage came from right-leaning sources. | |
| Ground News has an entire blind spot feed with stories like this, revealing how media narratives shape the conversation. | |
| This year, they are offering a 50% discount on their vantage plan, giving unlimited access to their website and app. | |
| Check them out at groundnews.com slash Megan. | |
| That's ground news, G-R-O-U-N-D-News.com slash M-E-G-Y-N to take control of the news that you consume. | |
| Tomorrow morning, Republican senators are expected to select their new leader now that they're in the majority, yay, to replace outgoing leader Mitch McConnell, a role that will be key to helping Trump get his aggressive agenda passed. | |
| Not everybody in the Senate is as conservative as the MAGA wing of the party would like. | |
| Some are a little squishy, and therefore wrangling the votes and making sure that everybody's on board to get Trump's agenda through is important. | |
| Three men are up for the job, two considered more establishment types, Senator John Thune of South Dakota and Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who are not totally beloved, especially the latter by Team MAGA, though they have some endorsements. | |
| Like I mentioned, it looks like Josh Holly might be backing Cornyn, according to the reports. | |
| But a third appears to be the MAGA favorite, and he's my guest now, Senator Rick Scott of Florida. | |
| Senator, great to have you here. | |
| So, all right, how do you like your chances and why do you want the job? | |
| Well, first off, I think we're going to win. | |
| Here's why I want the job. | |
| I want Trump's agenda passed. | |
| I've been up here six years and I watched Republican leadership not get Trump's agenda done. | |
| Now, what's his agenda? | |
| Number one, he's got to get his nominees done. | |
| So we've got to figure out how to do that because what's going to happen is the Democrats, Schumer is going to try to lead the effort to slow down all those nominees. | |
| So Trump's people can't, he can't get, he can't staff his agency. | |
| So it doesn't make any sense to me, but that's exactly what Schumer is going to do. | |
| So number one, we've got to figure out how we get his nominees in place. | |
| Number two is there's legislation he's going to need passed. | |
| We've got to do a tax plan through reconciliation, which takes 51 votes. | |
| So we've got to have a plan to get that done. | |
| And we've got to corral 51 votes together to make sure that happens. | |
| There's going to be other legislation that we're going to need Democrats. | |
| We're going to have to figure out how do we bring Democrats into the fold to get something done. | |
| And we have to get the House. | |
| So I've got a great working relationship with President Trump, with the Speaker in the House, with the fiscal conservatives in the House, with Steve Scalise, Tom Emmer, the leaders in the House. | |
| So, and I'm a business guy. | |
| So in business, here's what you do. | |
| You say, what do I want to get done? | |
| How do you build it? | |
| You build a team. | |
| You write a plan. | |
| You set up timeline, who's responsible, you measure it, and then you get your stuff done. | |
| Oh, you just constantly are doing this. | |
| And I built the biggest hospital company in the world. | |
| I built a bunch of manufacturing companies. | |
| So this is what you do as a business guy. | |
| This is how business guys get their stuff done. | |
| And that's what Donald Trump needs. | |
| He needs a business guy running the Senate so we can get Donald Trump's agenda done. | |
| And that's why I want the job. | |
| Now, En Wokeness, which is a great account on X, quoting the Heritage Foundation statistics, says, Cornyn has a 64% conservative score. | |
| Thun has a 62% conservative score and you have a 95% conservative score. | |
| And this Twitter account pointing out, this isn't a hard decision, folks. | |
| He's apparently on your side. | |
| But the pushback from their backers is, but what you really need is not somebody who is the most conservative or the most pro-Trump. | |
| What you really need is somebody who knows how to work the Senate to get the votes, right? | |
| The important thing is to be well-liked and to be able to maneuver. | |
| And are you the best guy for that piece of the job? | |
| I believe so. | |
| If you think about how you build companies, you work with people. | |
| So think about this. | |
| When I was 40, I had bankers. | |
| So I had to deal with. | |
| I had millions and millions of shareholders. | |
| I had probably something like 37 analysts on Wall Street that followed my stock. | |
| I had a board of directors. | |
| I had 285,000 employees. | |
| I had 150,000 customers a day. | |
| So you have to figure out how to get along with all those groups to get something done. | |
| Same thing in everything I've done. | |
| When I was governor of Florida, we cut taxes and fees 100 times. | |
| We became number one in higher education. | |
| We became number top five in K-12 education, 47-year low in our crime rate. | |
| All those things was the same thing. | |
| What's your plan? | |
| What's your team? | |
| How are you going to get it done? | |
| And how you're going to measure yourself. | |
| And so that's what this job is. | |
| It's how do you create a process to get these things done? | |
| But number one, you've got to be absolutely committed to getting it done. | |
| And I'm absolutely committed to getting Trump nominees through. | |
| And I'm absolutely committed to getting Trump's agenda done. | |
| Some say, okay, there's been a lot of tweeting by your supporters. | |
| Tucker, we read his tweet yesterday. | |
| Elon's backing you and many, many others. | |
| And the pushback from the more establishment type publications is, well, they're not going to like that. | |
| The senators are not going to appreciate that, Senator Scott, that they're going to say, he's pushing us. | |
| You know, his supporters are pushing us. | |
| And we are U.S. senators. | |
| We do not take kindly to a pressure campaign and its secret ballot, which is kind of, I don't know, it's a little messed up that it's secret ballot, I think. | |
| I don't understand why people can't just come out and say who they're voting for because aren't they responsible to their constituents for who they put in leadership? | |
| But in any event, what do you make of that? | |
| Are you concerned about possible pushback to what some may perceive as pressure? | |
| Well, number one, I think it ought to be an open ballot. | |
| We ought to know how we're going to tell everybody how we're going to vote. | |
| Everybody knows when I vote for a judge or vote against a judge. | |
| So that's number one. | |
| Number two is, you know, we're U.S. senators. | |
| We're supposed to represent people. | |
| We're supposed to get feedback. | |
| That's why I have nine offices in Florida. | |
| One, to help them, two, to get feedback. | |
| That's why, you know, I have, I make it easy for people either to email me or text or call the office. | |
| I want feedback from people. | |
| So my experience up here is people, people want to get feedback. | |
| Of course, you know, you like everybody to agree with you, but they're not going to. | |
| So, but my job is, you know, I got elected to represent people and to tell them how I'm doing it and to be consistent with what I told them when I was going to, when I was campaigning, I just went through a campaign. | |
| I told people what I was going to do. | |
| And now my job is to go do everything I can to make sure that happens and take all the feedback that people want to give me. | |
| But I'm very appreciative of all the support I've gotten from Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and Robert Kennedy, Laura Trump. | |
| So I'm blessed with a lot of support and I'm very appreciative of all that support. | |
| Trump himself has not yet said who he's backing. | |
| If anyone, I think he's wisely trying to keep good relationships with everybody because he doesn't know how it's going to come out. | |
| Do you like, what's your thought on Mitch McConnell? | |
| I know that he's not very popular among the MAGA base. | |
| We know this, though he's been hugely instrumental in getting these three Supreme Court justices of Trump confirmed and so many judges on the federal bench, which is something I watch as somebody who's into the courts. | |
| But what's your thought on him? | |
| Because there's been a lot of blowback against him and also a suggestion that this vote is taking place too soon. | |
| Well, number one, I ran against Mitch McConnell two years ago. | |
| I think the way this Senate operates has to change. | |
| There's been two dictatorships in the Senate on the Republican side, Mitch McConnell, on the Democrat side, Chuck Schumer. | |
| I believe we got to treat all senators as equal. | |
| We've got to listen to them. | |
| We've got a lot of bills go through committee. | |
| We need to have a robust amendment process. | |
| And we've got to help you. | |
| Let me stop you there because the average person does know what that means. | |
| So the way he gets legislation through versus what you're saying you would like to do, explain that. | |
| Well, he would, he and Schumer would just sit down and negotiate themselves. | |
| We just did a continuing resolution, which I completely oppose. | |
| We shouldn't be doing those. | |
| And it was done between Mitch McColl and Chuck Schumer without the input of, you know, every year, every senator, they expect us to vote on this. | |
| We ought to have some say in it. | |
| They're going to try to cram an omnibus down our throat. | |
| We're not going to, it's not going to go through a committee. | |
| We're not going to be allowed to have any amendments to try to make it better. | |
| They're just going to say, nope, this is your stuck vote up or vote down. | |
| That's all it is. | |
| Last year, they did this at Christmas, over a trillion dollars, gave it to us at 1.30 in the morning. | |
| Schumer McCollum gave it to us, expected us to vote on it by 9 o'clock in the morning that nobody ever read. | |
| So it ought to go through a committee. | |
| A bill ought to go through a committee where there's plenty of input from outside speakers, from experts, and let other senators say, oh, no, I can make it better with this amendment and this amendment. | |
| And then we ought to bring it to the floor and we ought to have a robust amendment process to say, oh, no, I think we ought to change it this way or that way. | |
| And what's been happening since I've been up here, I've been up here six years, is either McConnell or Schumer, they'll decide on their own a bill. | |
| They'll bring it to the floor. | |
| It won't even go through a committee. | |
| We'll have no amendment votes. | |
| So my only choice is to say, either I like it or I don't like it. | |
| Not dude, I can't improve it. | |
| So it makes it, you know, so it's like we're just little robots here. | |
|
Rushing Presidential Appointments
00:15:47
|
|
| So I think you should respect everybody. | |
| Everybody worked their butt to get off of get here. | |
| We represent our states. | |
| I represent Florida. | |
| I respect everybody's vote. | |
| Vote to represent your state. | |
| You mentioned Florida. | |
| I got to ask you quickly, what do you make of this report that FEMA fired this woman now who is skipping the Trump, the houses with the Trump signs in it? | |
| Now she's coming out and saying, I'm a Patsy. | |
| It goes up much higher than me. | |
| I was ordered to do it by FEMA. | |
| Allegedly, she's claiming in response to some threats they purport to have received from a house or two with the Trump signs. | |
| Well, we'll find out. | |
| I'm on the Homeland Security Committee. | |
| We ought to bring people in. | |
| We ought to bring her in, bring her supervisors in. | |
| Let's get to the bottom of this. | |
| No one should be discriminated against. | |
| This is one, this is your tax dollars. | |
| This is a federal program. | |
| We had a lot of people hurt as a result of the storms we've had over the last two years. | |
| And FEMA needs to do its job and needs to help everybody. | |
| They've got a variety of programs. | |
| Everybody should be helped, whether you're a Harris supporter, you're a Trump supporter. | |
| So, I mean, this doesn't make any sense. | |
| But look, I'm glad that FEMA fired her. | |
| I think that might be my six years. | |
| That's the only federal employee that's been fired. | |
| And nobody wants to fire anybody, but come on. | |
| You don't do your job. | |
| You get fired in the private sector. | |
| You should get fired in the public sector. | |
| How deep do you think the anti-Trump sentiment is in federal agencies like FEMA? | |
| I mean, we've seen some evidence inside FEMA just from this story, but from other stories too. | |
| But there are so many executive agencies that Trump is now going to be in charge of. | |
| He is the chief executive. | |
| And, you know, last time it was such an issue of the so-called deep state, however you want to label it, working against him. | |
| Do you think that's softened at all? | |
| Or is he up against all these same forces second time around? | |
| Oh, it might be worse. | |
| I just finished my campaign for reelection and I asked people, do you feel comfortable that the federal agencies, whether it's Secret Service or Homeland Security or the FBI, are going to tell us the facts of what happened with the shooting of President Trump at Butler? | |
| And not one hand is raised. | |
| So the American public has completely lost support of the federal government because it has been politicized. | |
| I mean, look at all these lawsuits against Trump. | |
| I mean, they've slandered him. | |
| They've gone after him. | |
| They've lied about him. | |
| I mean, everything under the sun. | |
| And so it's going to be a lot of work. | |
| That's why we have got to get his nominees done quickly. | |
| So he has people in there to try to fix these agencies. | |
| When I became governor of Florida back in January 2011, I had to go in and I had to replace agency heads and sometimes more than once to find people that are willing to do the job. | |
| I got elected on an agenda and I said, look, I'm going to appoint people that believe in my agenda and I'm going to do it for the time period I'm elected. | |
| I was elected for four years at that point. | |
| I said, for those four years, I'm going to appoint people that believe in what I explained to the public and they voted for me. | |
| It's the same thing with Trump. | |
| So I think he's going to work hard. | |
| I think he's going to do a great job. | |
| I think he's probably like all of us, you learn a lot of lessons. | |
| You look at his nominees. | |
| I hope Marco Rubio is going to be the Secretary of State. | |
| I mean, he's picking some wonderful people so far that are going to work hard to get his agenda done. | |
| That's why I'm running to be the majority leader. | |
| We've got to get his agenda done. | |
| He won. | |
| Let's help him. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, I do think it's a mandate given the size of the win. | |
| And I realize it's tight in the House and relatively tight in the Senate. | |
| But I mean, the Republicans won four seats. | |
| That's as close to a mandate as you're going to get given this divided electorate. | |
| And with President Trump winning not only the electoral college vote, but the popular vote, it's tough to deny. | |
| You mentioned Rubio. | |
| That's not yet officially confirmed, but we believe he's going to be the one tapped by Trump for Secretary of State. | |
| Any thoughts on who should replace him? | |
| Oh, gosh, I have so many colleagues. | |
| There's wonderful congressmen and women in Florida, whether it's Marie Salazar or Mario Dias Blard or Carlos Jimenez or Vern Buchanan or Laura Lee Kat Kamack. | |
| There's so many. | |
| Gosh, Byron Donald's. | |
| I'm going to forget somebody's name, but we've got so many great members of Congress that one of them, any one of those would be a great pick. | |
| But does it have to be, walk me through how that would go, though, because the House is tight. | |
| The Republicans only have, we think, I mean, the voting goes on, right? | |
| But we think we're going to land with a four-seat majority, same as they had last time, which is tight, tight, tight. | |
| So we can't keep picking off Republican congressmen and women for these administration posts because it eats away at the House majority. | |
| And then there's a process to replace them, but everything gets slowed down. | |
| So do you think that counts against nominating or elevating a congressman? | |
| It could. | |
| It slows it down. | |
| But we've got great Attorney General, Ashley Moody. | |
| We've got CFO Jimmy Petronas. | |
| We've got a great ag commissioner with Wilton Simpson. | |
| There's some wonderful people that have gone through the process, been elected statewide that would be great picks to be U.S. Senator. | |
| And then there'll be another election in two years for, you know. | |
| All right, let me throw something crazy out there, Senator Scott. | |
| Something crazy. | |
| This is crazy. | |
| Ron DeSantis? | |
| Huh? | |
| I said it. | |
| Yeah, I think he can appoint himself if he wants to. | |
| It's my understanding. | |
| I mean, you went from governor to senator. | |
| Is there any chance that happens for him as Rubio potentially gets elevated? | |
| I don't know. | |
| I mean, I don't know if people have ever appointed themselves. | |
| I assume they have. | |
| I mean, I don't think there's any limitation in appointing yourself. | |
| So I know he would work hard if he appointed himself. | |
| So we've got a great group of talent. | |
| You can see, like in, you know, Trump and I each won by 1.4 million votes. | |
| We've made Florida the Republican Party center of the country, I think. | |
| So you can see with Trump's nominees, he's picking great people from Florida to be part of it. | |
| Susie Wiles was my first campaign manager. | |
| She's amazing. | |
| So, yeah, she's amazing. | |
| She's wonderful. | |
| She'll do a great job. | |
| She's a good person. | |
| She's a great sounding board. | |
| She wants to do good things. | |
| So she's a great supporter of Donald Trump. | |
| Can we talk about the recess appointments? | |
| Because in the discussion about Trump needs to get his cabinet secretaries confirmed, he needs to get the judges he wants on the bench and so on. | |
| He is pushing right now. | |
| It doesn't seem an accident now that we're having this leadership debate for like a pledge that the Senate will allow recess appointments by him. | |
| And can you just explain to the audience what that means? | |
| Because most people have no idea what exactly he's asking you for. | |
| So number one, I believe that we should do it. | |
| So what happens is the president will have the authority to make appointments. | |
| And he said non-judicial, which I agree with that, non-judicial appointments, as long as we're out of session for 10 days. | |
| Now, it's been done in the past. | |
| I think Bill Clinton did over 100 appointments that way. | |
| I think even George W. Bush did almost 170 appointments that way. | |
| Barack Obama did some. | |
| The only person that hasn't been allowed to do it is Donald Trump. | |
| So I think we ought to do everything we, everything we can do to get his nominees done. | |
| We know Chuck Schumer's going to try to slow it down and prevent them from starting their jobs. | |
| So doing recess appointments, I think, is something we ought to do. | |
| We ought to figure out as a conference how to get that done. | |
| But can I just ask you, so is it the case that if you wanted to, let's say you win, Senate Majority Leader, if you wanted to, could you say we're not doing any recess appointments and you could stop that? | |
| You could stop him making temporary appointments if you wanted to? | |
| Yeah, they've done it before. | |
| What they do is you just, you never get out of session for more than 10 days. | |
| So you just, even if you're off, you have somebody come in and you have a pro forma session. | |
| That's what they did to Donald Trump the last one, his first four years. | |
| They never allowed him to do any recess appointments by doing that. | |
| I believe we ought to let him do recess appointments. | |
| There's a way to do it. | |
| We should talk to him about who he wants to do, make sure Republican senators don't have a problem with them. | |
| I think we're all going to be very supportive of his nominees. | |
| If you look at the nominees he's done so far, I think they'll easily get all Republican senators to support them. | |
| Lee Zeldon, all these individuals. | |
| Well, at least Stefanik, all of them will get. | |
| I mean, I can't imagine a Republican senator not supporting them. | |
| No, I think all factions of the Republican Party will support all these guys. | |
| So yeah, that's an issue because you're getting pushback from some of my friends at National Review saying, if you want to go ahead and cede your constitutional duty, you're supposed to be an independent branch that, you know, has advice and consent. | |
| You're supposed to confray. | |
| You shouldn't just cede that duty just because you want to make President Trump happy. | |
| What do you say to those folks in the Republican? | |
| I agree with that. | |
| I agree. | |
| But I think the issue is not that we're ceding our authority. | |
| What we're saying is we know that Chuck Schumer is not going to act in a responsible manner to allow Donald Trump to put his cabinet together and get his nominees in place. | |
| So if that's the case and there's a way for the minority to slow the process down, make it very difficult for these nominees to all get confirmed, then we're going to have to figure out how do we on the other side work with Donald Trump to get his nominees done. | |
| So I think there's a way to do it. | |
| I think our Republican caucus will support it. | |
| I clearly support using the recess process to do it. | |
| And we can do it in a manner that we're comfortable with the people that Donald Trump is nominating. | |
| If somebody was not, we can say, you know, we're okay with these, but not these. | |
| So, but I think we ought to, we ought to be do everything we can. | |
| And we, the other thing was we need a transparent process so Donald Trump quickly gets everybody in place. | |
| If somebody has major problems with people, let's make sure that the Trump administration knows it right away and see if we can resolve it. | |
| You know, as a business guy, what I always did was talk to people, find out what the common ground is, find out where the issues are, and then go try to solve them. | |
| And that's what we ought to be doing with nominees. | |
| I feel like Trump is transactional and probably doesn't have his heart set on any one particular person for any one particular role, maybe other than the ones that we're hearing about right now, right? | |
| Like his first appointments are going to be his favorites and the ones he feels really strongly about. | |
| You don't even have to confirm the borders are. | |
| That's a non-confirmed position. | |
| Stephen Miller is he works for Trump. | |
| That's not something that needs to be confirmed. | |
| So a lot of these roles, you're not going to have to get involved in. | |
| And Secretary Statement, everybody in the Senate seems to really like Marco Rubio and so on. | |
| I think you're right about Stefanik. | |
| So we'll see. | |
| I mean, we'll find out how that goes. | |
| I want to ask you two other questions, if you don't mind, from the other side, why they say, well, maybe we have doubts about Senator Rick Scott. | |
| So you can convince people who need convincing. | |
| There are two objections, as far as I can tell. | |
| Britt Hume was on Fox News, espousing one of them. | |
| It has to do with when you ran the group that tries to get more Republicans elected to the Senate back in 2022. | |
| And we didn't have the greatest red wave in 2022. | |
| And so Britt is giving voice to some of the criticisms around you connected to that. | |
| Here it is. | |
| I actually think Senator Scott's kind of a long shot. | |
| The reason being that, for example, he was the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee in the 21-22 election cycle, raised a ton of money. | |
| As you may recall, the Republicans had a very disappointing result in those midterm elections. | |
| And there was a lot of questions about where all that money went, why it was all spent so early in the process and how much of it was spent by Scott to boost himself. | |
| And I don't think he's close to a lot of senators. | |
| And I think this pressure from Trump world to support him is likely to backfire. | |
| All right. | |
| So we spoke to that last point already. | |
| But what do you make of that, the money and the, it wasn't well spent or well planned, he's saying for those elections. | |
| Well, first off, clearly, we all wanted to get a majority and we didn't. | |
| And that, first off, let's all acknowledge we wanted to get a majority in 22 and we didn't. | |
| Fortunately, we got a majority barely in the House. | |
| But I can tell you, everybody worked their butts off to get a majority. | |
| We had candidates that worked their butts off. | |
| We spent the money to get our cans elected. | |
| But you're right. | |
| It was a disappointing year. | |
| But I can tell you that our candidates worked hard. | |
| The people at the NRSC worked hard. | |
| And I'm glad we have a majority this time. | |
| I want to thank everybody that ran this time and what they did. | |
| And I think a lot of it was the Trump ran a great race, which helped a lot of us. | |
| But you're right. | |
| I wish that we would have gotten a majority. | |
| And I can tell you, we all worked our butts off. | |
| And unfortunately, sometimes you win and sometimes you don't. | |
| A few years later, look at you now. | |
| Lastly, my pal Dana Lash, she is not your fan. | |
| You may know her. | |
| She's an amazing person and she's very big on the pro-Second Amendment thing. | |
| And she does not like the fact that you signed a red flag law. | |
| She says that you, hold on, I want to get her objection correctly. | |
| She says you steamrolled over Second, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment rights as governor, that you backed amnesty. | |
| And there is a group called the American Firearms Association that wants to know whether you would support waiting periods on Second Amendment rights, whether you would abolish the ATF. | |
| They've got some concerns about whether we're going to be looking at more red flag laws under your leadership or whether you're pro-2A enough. | |
| Well, first off, I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment. | |
| I believe in the Second Amendment. | |
| I believe it's very important we defend the Second Amendment. | |
| So in Florida, what the legislature passed was a bill after the Parkland shooting that basically said, if you're threatening harm to yourself or threatening harm to somebody else, you can go, somebody that knows you can go to law enforcement and law enforcement can go to the courts and the courts for a short period of time can say you cannot have that weapon, but they have to go to the court system. | |
| It has to be done by law enforcement and it's clearly not permanent. | |
| It was passed through the, you know, by the Florida House and Senate. | |
| I left six years ago. | |
| They've decided not to repeal it because it has worked in Florida. | |
| We, you know, we put a lot of effort in make sure we had a lot of school safety in our state. | |
| We've added law enforcement in all of our public schools. | |
| We've added a lot of barriers. | |
|
School Safety Laws Worked
00:05:43
|
|
| We added mental health counselors. | |
| We did a lot of things to make sure schools were safe. | |
| And this was one as a result of the 17 people died at Marjorie Stillman Douglas. | |
| And if you talk to sheriffs in our state, it's worked. | |
| It's kept people safe and it has not infringed on anybody's Second Amendment rights. | |
| Okay. | |
| That makes sense. | |
| I mean, she's, you should go on her podcast because she'll have some tough questions for you on this that I don't have because this isn't really my issue, to be perfectly honest. | |
| But yeah, that's one of the objections. | |
| The thing that I wonder about, Senator, is will we see any difference? | |
| You know, Thune and Cornyn, they've said some negative things about Trump. | |
| I mean, I've seen that. | |
| They kind of ripped on him when Eugene Carroll came out. | |
| They haven't been like staunch defenders of his, unlike yourself. | |
| But they are Republicans and it's not like you versus a Democrat. | |
| So like, why should people care? | |
| You want to get Trump's agenda through, yes, but won't all three of you get Trump's agendas through? | |
| You would hope so. | |
| Well, both John Thune and John Cornyn are friends and they're colleagues. | |
| I've worked with them for six years since I've been up here. | |
| So I just tell you, my background as a business guy completely, you know, which is, I think the way you get things done in life is you create a process. | |
| You create a team. | |
| You measure the live and daylights out of results. | |
| That's been, I built the largest hospital company in the world. | |
| I built a variety of manufacturing companies. | |
| I was the governor of Florida. | |
| We became number one in higher education, top five in K-12 education. | |
| It's 47-year low in our crime rate. | |
| We did it by we build a team. | |
| We worked every day for in a process and we measured things. | |
| That's what my belief, that's what we need going forward if we're going to get things accomplished. | |
| We've got a lot of problems to get accomplished. | |
| We're spending 40% more than we take in. | |
| We haven't balanced our budget forever. | |
| We haven't passed budgets. | |
| Our military is awoke. | |
| We got an open border. | |
| So we've got a lot of problems. | |
| So it's going to take somebody that wants to create a process and go sell this to get it done. | |
| And I've done this my whole life. | |
| That's how I've gotten all my stuff done. | |
| I mean, think about it. | |
| I'm a kid that grew up in public housing, born to a single mom. | |
| I figured out how to create processes and build teams to get things done. | |
| Okay, lastly, there's some nonsense being spewed by the left about possibly convincing Soda Mayor to step down off of the Supreme Court. | |
| Reports are she's not willing to do that. | |
| And then subbing in Kamala Harris and getting her confirmed before Joe Biden leaves office. | |
| Is this anything that could actually happen with the U.S. Senate's approval between now and his departure? | |
| I don't think there's any chance in the world that that could happen. | |
| I mean, maybe they could try it. | |
| I can't imagine that they could get that through. | |
| So, and I mean, that would be so foolish on their part because one, I don't think Harris is qualified. | |
| Two, it would set unbelievably bad precedent. | |
| She's genuinely not qualified. | |
| I mean, we were never able to really confirm even how many cases she'd ever tried while she was allegedly, you know, this John Wayne type DA and AG as she now claims to be. | |
| Senator Rick Scott, we're going to be watching this closely. | |
| Good luck to you. | |
| All right. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Have a great day. | |
| All right. | |
| You as well. | |
| So it happens tomorrow morning. | |
| I really do think it should be public. | |
| Why should it be secret ballot? | |
| They work for us. | |
| I think he's right, right? | |
| Why can't we know? | |
| Why can't you find out who your senator from your home state backed? | |
| If you want Rick Scott, you want people to vote for Rick Scott, shouldn't you know? | |
| I don't know. | |
| Sometimes these governmental politicians and bodies forget they work for us. | |
| They're our employees. | |
| So I think he's right. | |
| We need transparency. | |
| And we'll see. | |
| I mean, look, worst case scenario, it's still a Republican in charge of the majority. | |
| And that's the way it's going to be. | |
| The Republicans officially now with 53 seats. | |
| And that's the way it's going to end, even though Bob Casey has a challenge to his loss in Pennsylvania to Republican there. | |
| It's going to be 53. | |
| And that, my friends, is a blessing. | |
| Okay, up next. | |
| Let me tell you something. | |
| Eight years ago, when Trump won, came out of nowhere in 16, we interviewed this guy, Brad Parscal, who was the magic behind the win. | |
| And he told us on Fox News on my show, The Kelly File, exactly how he did it. | |
| This year, the woman who did it for Trump this time. | |
| Don't miss this. | |
| Imagine waking up one day to find out your home no longer belongs to you. | |
| That someone somewhere has stolen your property right out from underneath you. | |
| It sounds unthinkable, but it's a sad reality for some American homeowners and a risk for anyone that owns property. | |
| House stealing, that's what the FBI calls it. | |
| And it's a form of real estate fraud where scammers leverage loopholes in the system to fraudulently transfer your home's title into their name and then take out loans against your property or even sell it behind your back. | |
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|
America First Voter Growth
00:14:51
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|
| For years, we have been hearing about the vaunted Democratic ground game. | |
| And it was a real thing, especially under Barack Obama, that the left can get its supporters to vote at a higher rate than the right can. | |
| After Harris raised a billion dollars and the polls were showing a tight race, many Republicans were worried this was going to happen again. | |
| But in 2024, it was Trump who got his people to the polls. | |
| How did it happen? | |
| We're going to talk now to someone who helped make it happen without a billion dollars. | |
| Her name is Ashley Hayek. | |
| She's the executive director of a group called America First Works. | |
| She headed up their Project 19 program, which targeted the most important counties in this election and how. | |
| Ashley, welcome to the show. | |
| Thank you for having me. | |
| All right, tell me everything. | |
| Look, who are you? | |
| How did you deliver this? | |
| Most people don't know your name. | |
| It's not like a name that was out there all the time, like our friend Charlie Kirk or like Elon's group, but we knew was canvassing and trying to get voters out. | |
| Ashley, who's Ashley Hayek? | |
| What is this group? | |
| How did you get pulled into this? | |
| So we are the sister organization to the America First Policy Institute, which is run by Brooke Rollins and Linda McMahon and Larry Kudlow and many of the other former Trump administration officials. | |
| And we were launched in November of 2021 and we really were focused on a lot of state policy. | |
| So working in target states, advancing policy at the state level, advancing Trump America First policies at the state level. | |
| And then in 2023, we had the opportunity to really look at, you know, how do we continue to build upon the movement? | |
| And this was before I think President Trump even announced, but we started talking to different organizations. | |
| We started looking at how we can grow with, you know, Hispanic voters and women voters and Black Americans and parents. | |
| And my background, I worked on the Trump 2020 campaign. | |
| I was the coalition's director. | |
| We had over 45 different coalitions. | |
| We had 650 advisory board members. | |
| And I knew that the inroads that President Trump and his message could make. | |
| So to be able to continue that mission was absolutely critical. | |
| Lee Zeldin is on the board of America First Works. | |
| He was really a key integral part of this, given that he ran for governor and got almost 50% of the vote in a state that had only 23% Republican registration. | |
| So how do we take that model and apply it to the battleground states, really targeting low and no propensity voters? | |
| So we had a meeting in January. | |
| We had a few other organizations 2024. | |
| Yep. | |
| Okay. | |
| And it was to determine. | |
| This is the one down in Washington, D.C. | |
| This was in our office on Pennsylvania Avenue at the time, and there was only seven groups that had met. | |
| It was a pretty small group. | |
| And from that meeting, we realized this has to be so much bigger. | |
| You look at the data, you look at the numbers, this is going to take all hands on deck. | |
| So there was about 50 organizations that met on April 3rd at the Willard Hotel. | |
| And we had a briefing from Kellyanne Conway on polling. | |
| Lee Zeldin made some remarks about his race in New York. | |
| And then we did a data presentation where we looked at the numbers and determined where we needed to be and which audiences we needed to target. | |
| And we talked about who was going to do what where, who's going to do digital, who's doing radio, who's doing text messaging. | |
| And one of the biggest gaps that we saw at American First Works was a ground game. | |
| And that was when we realized this was our opportunity to step up and help with ground game. | |
| And that was Megan right when the FEC opinion came to fruition as well. | |
| And that was a game changer, I think, for the movement. | |
| We were all in my lane, media speculating about how, geez, it's a risky bet because she's got reportedly voters like women who are high propensity voters, who have a track history, a track record of getting out there, even in the midterm, even in the local elections, they vote, they vote. | |
| And Trump's relying on these lower propensity or never before voters. | |
| And so that's a risky bet. | |
| You, as far as I can tell, that's not untrue. | |
| That was true. | |
| But you guys were looking at those low propensity or never before voters saying they're gettable. | |
| We can make them get out. | |
| 100%. | |
| And I think one of the untold stories was the women who shut up for President Trump who did not show up for Kamala Harris. | |
| So at that April 3rd meeting, one of the things we talked about was that there is a massive gender gap across the country, especially in states like Georgia and North Carolina, where you have 10 to 12% more women participating in elections than men. | |
| And we even told some of the moms groups that were there, moms for liberty, moms for America. | |
| You know, in 2016, Hillary Clinton said, you need to, husbands, you know, told their wives how to vote. | |
| Well, now we need to tell moms, you need to tell your husband to go vote. | |
| And that's exactly what happened leading up to the election up to, you know, the weekend before, the media was completely gaslighting conservatives and the public saying that Harris had historic support for women. | |
| There was at that point in the battleground states, 112,000 more Republican women that had already voted and 500,000 Democrat women that had not voted yet. | |
| That's a 600,000 vote swing, not in favor of Harris. | |
| She had a massive disadvantage amongst women. | |
| And we saw that play out on Election Day as well. | |
| So when you saw the Harris campaign send out that messaging and the New York Times reported the same messaging that there had been this huge spike in female voter registration in Pennsylvania and that they were coming, like they were showing up in droves. | |
| That was what the report was, that they were not, not the registration, but they were showing up in droves in the early voting. | |
| Your response was what? | |
| That's a lie. | |
| And we put a tweet out and I did a couple of media hits that this is not true. | |
| She doesn't have that support. | |
| But Megan, like you can't say, what is a woman? | |
| You can't force men into women's bathrooms. | |
| You can't make women feel unsafe and have, you know, illegal aliens kill young girls on a jog at her university and think women are going to show up for you. | |
| So President Trump was delivering the message. | |
| You were delivering the message. | |
| And it made it very easy for us in America First Works to connect that message to the people and make sure America First voters were showing up and not the Democrat voters and the Democrat voters. | |
| They stayed home. | |
| They stayed home because they can't buy into this craziness from the radical left. | |
| Wow. | |
| Was there one particular message for all the groups or did the message change depending on which voters you were targeting? | |
| It wasn't so much that the message changed. | |
| It was who was delivering the message. | |
| So in a lot of ground games, people will hire like a firm and they'll subcontract to a bunch of different firms. | |
| We tried to choose firms because ours was all paid canvassing that were best for that area. | |
| So, you know, we had part of Brian Kemp's team that ran our Georgia program. | |
| We had the Frederick Douglass Foundation that reached out to Black Americans. | |
| We had 20 Arabic door knockers in Dearborn. | |
| And those boys, there's 20 of them, young men, they knocked on tens of thousands of doors in Dearborn. | |
| And I believe they're part of the reason that Dearborn flipped was because they were taking the Trump policies and delivering it to their actual community. | |
| So we tried to get people that, you know, it's, it's, if you, are you like me? | |
| Do I like you? | |
| Are you a member of the community? | |
| Are you just being imported? | |
| And we just saw that that message worked. | |
| We sent text messages from Riley Gaines. | |
| We sent videos with Hunter Nation, another C4 organization of Ted Nugent to hunters and Second Amendment people. | |
| So you had to have the right message, but overall, or the right messenger, but overall, the message was the same. | |
| So my understanding is it took an average of about three text messages to these low propensity voters to convert them into, I guess you got about 40% of them to actually the ones you targeted to the polls. | |
| And so it was two texts on messages and then the third text on, let's go. | |
| Like now it's time. | |
| Get up. | |
| We're going to get out. | |
| We're going to actually vote. | |
| So we did three door knocks, three visits, physical visits, like someone going to their house. | |
| And then in addition to that, we had a text messaging program. | |
| The cool thing about the text messaging program was we had a team of 50 volunteers who would actually reply to the text messages. | |
| So if you got a text message from Riley Gaines, for example, and you replied back, and I'll be honest, sometimes they were just like, F you, we would say, oh, I'm so sorry that we bothered you, but we just wanted to make sure you had your polling place. | |
| And they were blown away that there was someone on the other end that was actually reading the text messages. | |
| And from there, we could have a conversation. | |
| The day after the election, Megan, we started sending text messages out again to every low and no propensity voter who's Republican, Democrat, and independent saying, welcome to the America First Movement. | |
| What do you want to see on day one of a new administration? | |
| Because now we've built these relationships. | |
| We have to expand our base. | |
| We went up with Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, women, youth. | |
| This is our opportunity to make sure that people feel heard and that we connect them with these policies and make this the most successful first hundred days of any administration. | |
| You know what's crazy? | |
| I know this is anecdotal, but I mean, the youth vote did turn out for Trump in a way that it normally never does for a Republican. | |
| She still won it, but it was tight. | |
| It was very tight and it's never tight. | |
| But what's, I'm sure you've seen these videos of all these young, beautiful women, like in bikinis and the red MAGA hat dancing. | |
| The MAGA label, the hat, the message. | |
| Far from being toxic as it was considered by many eight years ago, it's cool now. | |
| Like that didn't just happen. | |
| That was the result of, yes, President Trump, but also these door knocks and the constant messaging from people like you. | |
| Well, and I have four daughters and I have one boy. | |
| And this election to me, I think like a lot of moms was personal. | |
| And when you hear the stories, we did an event in Scottsdale, Arizona, and it was two moms that lost their sons to fentanyl. | |
| One was a senior in high school, super overachiever. | |
| The other one was in college. | |
| And the stories were devastating. | |
| I could hardly get through the conversation with them because I was so moved to tears. | |
| But that happens in every community. | |
| That's happening across the country. | |
| And I think just being able to take those stories and connect them to people is what really changed hearts and minds. | |
| And that's what this was about. | |
| It's how do you convince people? | |
| There's a cool side of it, of course, you know, with the Swifties for Trump and you see such a cultural shift too. | |
| Our athletes have been phenomenal in, you know, carrying the America First Banner. | |
| But I think for so long too, just a little bit of a separate point is we've been shamed to be Americans. | |
| And that's just wrong. | |
| Like we should be proud to be Americans. | |
| We're the greatest country in the world. | |
| And we've had the elite and the woke and the leftists try and force such garbage down our throats that we should feel sorry for that when we're the reason the world can continue in a way that doesn't have three wars break out like we just saw this past administration. | |
| So I know you called it back to your meeting Project 19 because you were prioritizing 19 counties across the swing states and then you added two more. | |
| So it was technically Project 21, but you stuck with the old name. | |
| So it's called Project 19 and then fanned your volunteers out to go work these counties and try to make them as red as possible or turn them red if they weren't already. | |
| What were the most persuasive issues? | |
| Like the boys and girls sports, was that universal or was that only deployed in the reddest counties? | |
| The number one issue we heard was the economy, hands down. | |
| Everywhere we went, it was the cost of living prices. | |
| And it came in different forms. | |
| Sometimes it was in inflation. | |
| Sometimes it was in housing, but it was always just cost of living economy. | |
| The second issue very close was the border. | |
| And the border was prevalent everywhere. | |
| It wasn't just in like Arizona or Georgia. | |
| It was in Wisconsin and Michigan. | |
| And the third issue that we heard predominantly in Michigan, which I think is extremely interesting was education. | |
| And I think education in Michigan is interesting because you have a governor who had forced lockdowns so hard on those families that when school started back up again in September, they were kind of shocked that, you know, their kids weren't performing well and that they were still very far behind. | |
| So I think that's going to lay the groundwork for future governor races. | |
| And it's something that we're thinking about already. | |
| I'll tell you something. | |
| I mean, you're going from your anecdotal experiences with all your folks out on the ground. | |
| We talked about this on the show yesterday, but there's this public opinion research initiative that's trying to, they're trying to help Democrats called Blueprint. | |
| And they just did a post-mortem on what they're hearing caused the Democrats to lose. | |
| And they went and did surveys in all these states, and I'm sure we'll continue to. | |
| And what they found was that for minorities who crossed over to vote for Trump, in particular, like Blacks and Latinos, by far the number one issue was the economy and immigration. | |
| But for swing state voters writ large, it was described as follows. | |
| Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class, that this trans thing really moved votes. | |
| They actually didn't care. | |
| I'm amazed and horrified, but they did not care whether the candidates supported the coronavirus lockdowns, which is just, okay, I completely disagree. | |
| But I wonder if people completely misread, for example, the Muslim issue you mentioned, the Arabs. | |
| Because in communities like that and Latinos too, even though it wasn't their number one issue, we can see that according to this survey, we saw story after story the past two years of them showing up and protesting outside of schools saying, get this disgusting pornography out of the K through 12 libraries. | |
| And then 60 Minutes did a whole piece with Moms for Liberty trying to say it wasn't happening and that they were just making this stuff up. | |
| And you're pointing out like these are much more conservative groups like in Dearborn, Michigan, who they're not going to tolerate this stuff. | |
| That's exactly right. | |
|
Distracting Conservatives Tactic
00:10:20
|
|
| So there's a separate entity. | |
| It's called America First Action Fund. | |
| And we had a mail piece that went into Dearborn. | |
| It was mailed to, you know, Arab American, Black Americans. | |
| And it was, this is your transgender story hour coming to a library near you. | |
| And it was transgender reading a story to these young children. | |
| And it highlighted the policies of the left on how they've tried to push this woke transgender pornography garbage agenda to our kids. | |
| The funny thing is, is one of our door canvassers got it in the mail and he heard his sister yell like, what the hell is this? | |
| And he realized, he goes, that's us. | |
| That's our mailpiece. | |
| That's, I know this group. | |
| And his dad started texting it to all of the, they have, they're all on WhatsApp. | |
| So he started texting it out to all of the Arab American WhatsApp groups that we got so many anecdotes of people who said, you know, I've never voted. | |
| I wasn't planning to vote, but this pushed me over the edge. | |
| This was, this is a bridge too far. | |
| And remember, that was a big issue that took place in Dearborn with the books and the schools. | |
| And it's not something that I think most people who have common sense, who want to protect children will tolerate. | |
| But especially in the Black American, Hispanic, and Arabic communities, it was just absolutely mind-blowing that this is something that, you know, the left wants to perpetuate. | |
| That's amazing. | |
| I mean, it's like we need to keep all of this in mind as we watch the Democrats do their post-mortem and decide we're going to make this change and that change, but we're not going to make the other change. | |
| And they're tearing themselves apart right now over the cultural issues, because while they might be able to settle on some economic faux populism that they think they can sell, this, the cultural stuff is deep in their bloodstream now. | |
| And I just, I don't see a future for them until they manage to excise it. | |
| And I just don't know how they're going to. | |
| They allowed this to fester for too long. | |
| Well, and the other issue that we came across too, especially with, you know, the historically underserved lower socioeconomic communities is the schools are already crowded. | |
| And now you have an influx of illegal aliens coming in. | |
| They are getting free food, free housing, PlayStations. | |
| Their kids' spots are taking my kids' spots in school. | |
| You don't even have a strong education system. | |
| And now you're overcrowding. | |
| People were angry. | |
| They were so angry that this administration, both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and everyone in between, would open our borders, give them whatever they wanted. | |
| And they're sitting there thinking, wait a minute, what about me? | |
| What about my family? | |
| I am American. | |
| What about my rights? | |
| And that was very resounding from especially the lower socioeconomic communities. | |
| Well, that's what's so interesting about Trump's border plan and his deportation plan, because the vast majority of Americans are going to support these people being deported. | |
| Obviously, the criminals, everyone wants them deported. | |
| I mean, every sane person. | |
| But then there will be additional deportations beyond that, just as there were under President Obama and all, I mean, most presidents, most modern day presidents, President Obama deported, I think, 3 million people. | |
| And so I think the Democrats are planning on this being a daily news story where people will be crying and this is going to generate interest amongst their base that will be anti-Trump. | |
| I think they're in for a rude awakening because the people you're talking about, we've covered these news stories, want their community center back. | |
| They want their schools back. | |
| They don't want their children to have to learn every subject in four different languages because you've got translators from all over the world now, at least here in New York, by school mandate to translate everything into whatever the native tongue is. | |
| I mean, it's gotten to the point of true absurdity and it's unmanageable. | |
| Yeah, that's exactly right. | |
| And we're already starting to hear about it from the left. | |
| They're losing their minds over this issue, but this is the things that they're losing their mind over are the policies that President Trump won over with the American people. | |
| So it's like they haven't learned their lesson yet. | |
| And I think we just have to keep capitalizing on it and continue to make these gains. | |
| My goal moving forward is to continue to build on these relationships that we've built since June. | |
| That's when we first started our initial door knocks. | |
| It started in late June and just continue to build upon the relationships, keep the momentum going and go direct to consumer. | |
| We have to run politics like a business. | |
| It shouldn't just be, oh, see you again in 18 months. | |
| If we don't build upon the success, we're going to lose people in the process. | |
| I think people are really excited about what's to come. | |
| And so if we can just view our voters like customers and provide service to them and make sure that they're getting your message, Megan, and the president's message and Elon's message and RFK Jr., Maha was a really big deal with our moms too. | |
| I mean, we have so much opportunity ahead of us. | |
| Let's just, let's just keep, you know, pedal to the metal and keep going. | |
| Yes. | |
| Yes, because there's going to be agenda items he has to get through and he's going to need the squishy members of the House and Senate to get on board. | |
| And that's where your organization will become relevant again, too. | |
| Like get the support. | |
| Call your senator. | |
| Call your house member. | |
| Let's talk about the Kamala Harris ground game because this is very interesting. | |
| Like what happened? | |
| What happened to the vaunted ground game? | |
| My team pulled this great sound bite of Wajahat Ali, leftist commentator on CNN and other channels. | |
| This is the same guy. | |
| The audience knows the clip by now who's in the Don Lemon clip with Rick Wilson, like them Republicans and making fun of the way they talk, like as if the Republicans would be sitting there going, those Democrats with their maps and like their books. | |
| That was them. | |
| So for the audience, that's who you're about to hear, a guy who looks at the right half of the country that way. | |
| And here he was. | |
| What show is he on, Steve? | |
| Was it Piers Morgan? | |
| Yeah, he was on Piers. | |
| Watch. | |
| Before on election day. | |
| The righteous rage of women is going to be felt tomorrow, Piers. | |
| I've been saying on your show for a year. | |
| I believe I'm going to sit in front of the camera. | |
| And if I'm wrong, I'm going to come back into your show. | |
| You give me crow. | |
| Make sure it's halal. | |
| Oh, it's some salt. | |
| There you go. | |
| Kamala Harris is going to win. | |
| The X factor is going to be women, independents, Republicans voting against Trump and people of color. | |
| I can't wait to see the follow-up episode. | |
| So what do you say to him, Ashley? | |
| How did he get it so wrong? | |
| Oh, he was so wrong. | |
| The righteous rage of women came from women who voted against Kamala Harris. | |
| Because like I said in the beginning, you can't ask what is a woman and literally put women in the most unsafe positions over the course of your entire administration and then think they're going to show up and support you. | |
| In fact, women were so upset and many women, I think like you, Megan, and myself, we're voting for our kids. | |
| We're voting for their future. | |
| And just voting against the complete lunacy of the garbage that they're trying to put in our schools, that they're trying to indoctrinate our children with. | |
| It's disgusting. | |
| And so it's just, it's absolutely hilarious that this is how out of touch the elites are versus the real American people. | |
| They have no clue what's going on. | |
| We heard for months throughout the summer into the fall that she had a ground game. | |
| It was going to be this amazing ground game. | |
| I was getting reports. | |
| So our canvassers were paid door knockers. | |
| That was their job was to go knock door to door. | |
| I get reports every day and every week. | |
| And when I read those reports, we weren't seeing them on the ground until after Labor Day in some places. | |
| Like in Michigan, they sent two guys to Dearborn and they were there for maybe a week and left. | |
| We just didn't see them. | |
| Maybe they were there and we were in different routes or different streets, but their ground game did not exist. | |
| So I don't know what their feedback loop was. | |
| The other issue that we read was helpful to you. | |
| I mean, I'm obviously economy and immigration. | |
| And then we talked about the trans thing. | |
| Was the stolen valor allegations against Tim Walz? | |
| Yeah, we saw veterans show up very early, very quickly. | |
| We did canvas and did text messaging to veterans, but usually in these types of races and presidential races, the VP is somewhat irrelevant. | |
| But Tim Walz was the goofiest choice. | |
| I still don't understand how she, I think she got stuck with him because Shapiro and Kelly didn't want to tie their, pitch their wagon to her, to be quite honest. | |
| But Tim Walz was so goofy and he lied. | |
| And the media, CNN especially, gaslit the American people again about his service, made people feel bad for questioning his title, his rank. | |
| He did not earn that rank. | |
| He was supposed to finish his school, yet he continued to use it and used it throughout the campaign. | |
| That's insulting. | |
| He also said he was deployed. | |
| I'm a Marine wife. | |
| That man was never deployed into combat. | |
| And I mean, also the clips of him trying to load a shotgun was hysterical. | |
| He doesn't even know how to unload his gun. | |
| And then you have JD Vance, who actually has served his country, who is, you know, a great Catholic man who's served honorably. | |
| And you have such a strong contrast between the two of them. | |
| That was a slam dunk for us. | |
| It's amazing, especially in a day and age when we're lamenting how woke the military is to have this guy touting his own military service, which he falsified in large part. | |
| I mean, he served, but his title he falsified and whether and where he served became an issue as well. | |
| And super woke, right? | |
| I mean, as woke as they come, transing kids in Minnesota who don't even live there, who seizing custody from parents who actually live out of state, not to mention Tampon Tim in the bathrooms. | |
| Like he, I'm sure those military members who are sick of this woke military understood exactly what they'd be getting if they had four more years of a Democrat administration, including the likes of Tim Walz in it. | |
|
Election Day Math Proven
00:12:38
|
|
| So that's very, that's very interesting too. | |
| Can we spend a minute on the Iowa poll? | |
| We're back on like the lies being put out. | |
| We talked about how women, they're surging in Pennsylvania. | |
| That Iowa poll had a lot of Republicans rattled. | |
| It was concerning. | |
| It was like Red State, Iowa, she's up three. | |
| Holy smokes. | |
| When you saw that, what did you think? | |
| We knew something was wrong. | |
| So we immediately started looking at it. | |
| The early vote, there was like a nine-point advantage for conservatives. | |
| Our voter registration gap was massive. | |
| It was very much, I think, a tactic to maybe distract conservatives or try to distract conservatives from what was actually happening. | |
| And what was happening was she was just getting absolutely creamed in Iowa. | |
| That poll also does not have any transparency. | |
| You couldn't really see any of the cross tabs, but just based on the early vote and the voter registration, President Trump had a massive advantage in Iowa. | |
| There was no question whatsoever. | |
| So, and it was proved. | |
| It was proven true on election day. | |
| When you watched these polls, which all along said it's tight, And of course, look, I mean, President Trump, it'll wind up being maybe a one, two point victory in the popular vote. | |
| So you can make the argument it's tight. | |
| But he won all seven of the swing states, all seven of them. | |
| What were you thinking? | |
| Did you believe the polls that it was tight and you said, let's double down, let's triple down? | |
| Or were you like, it's not going to be tight. | |
| We'll double and triple down anyway, just to be safe. | |
| But what were you thinking beforehand? | |
| Well, no matter what the poll said, we always ran like we were 30 points behind. | |
| And we always tried to maximize every dollar that our investors gave us. | |
| And we wanted to make sure that we had the highest return on our investment. | |
| So working with our PAPI partners was critical, making sure that we had data and we were making every decision using data and metrics. | |
| That was critical for us. | |
| But also when we were looking at the numbers, we knew we had to bank votes. | |
| So going into election day, we knew that we had banked over 604,000 votes for, you know, for President Trump that he didn't, and the left was behind like a million votes compared to 2020. | |
| So we knew going into election day, we had done our job. | |
| We had widened the gap. | |
| We were very confident. | |
| And our team jokes around, we say, it's just math. | |
| It's just math. | |
| It's just a math problem. | |
| So if you can figure out the math problem, then you can win. | |
| Wow. | |
| That must have been very comforting because those of us who are on the outside just relying on these pollsters, very frustrating because you just had like, I think most of us had a feel. | |
| You just look around. | |
| It's like so many more lawn signs for Trump than we'd ever seen before. | |
| So many MAGA hats everywhere. | |
| So many people being open about their support for Trump. | |
| The huge rallies, which the left continued to tell us were not huge. | |
| It's like, we can see that they're huge. | |
| For a presidential candidate, they're huge. | |
| And then they say, oh, look at Kamala Harris. | |
| The only time she got the big crowds is when Beyonce was there or some performer, which is why they got paid millions of dollars. | |
| So she could boost her. | |
| But it was like, but it's all anecdotal. | |
| You know, you can't go by that. | |
| The pollsters across the board were saying it's tight. | |
| So it's just one of those things. | |
| Okay. | |
| Was there anything in the Democrat vaunted ground game of old, like the Barack Obama one, that you took lessons from? | |
| Data technology. | |
| And their mantra was always vote blue no matter who. | |
| So they really focused on policies. | |
| In this particular case, we knew we needed to up our game on data. | |
| So the Democrats are very good about sharing information. | |
| And that is where I think sometimes conservatives aren't as strong. | |
| So for us, we created our AFW data command is what we call it. | |
| And we had data shares with different organizations, including the Trump campaign. | |
| And so because of the FEC opinion, which said that we could legally work with, you know, federal campaigns, so we legally worked with the NRSC, the president's campaign, the RNC, and some of the Senate races. | |
| That was a game changer for us because we were able to build universes based off of our data share agreement. | |
| And then we could also share that with other 501c4 organizations so that they could be successful. | |
| Because the more successful they are, the more successful the whole movement is. | |
| So that was a group, like the Elon group, for example. | |
| Is that what you mean? | |
| Yeah. | |
| And I mean, Hunter Nation, they specifically target Second Amendment, Moms for America, Moms for Liberty, targeting moms, Faith in Freedom Coalition. | |
| I mean, Tea Party Patriot Action. | |
| There are so many, we ended up with almost 100 organizations by the end of it that we were working with to be really intentional. | |
| The other thing that I think was a complete game changer was having Lara Trump and Michael Watley as the head of the RNC on election integrity, we would have an issue pop up and it would be resolved literally in minutes. | |
| It was completely different from what I experienced in 2020. | |
| That was also a game changer. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So if we saw an issue pop up in Wisconsin, or if we saw there was an issue with some of the ballots in Pennsylvania, for example, there was a couple people who said that a deceased spouse had received a ballot. | |
| They were able to take issue on that like right away. | |
| They jumped into action, investigated it. | |
| The Bucks County, so we started working in Bucks County in 2023. | |
| And the chair there is amazing, the Republican Party chairwoman. | |
| But in Bucks County, we had so many people showing up for early votes. | |
| The lines were super long. | |
| And they had like one person working in one of the locations. | |
| The party was able to file a lawsuit to extend the vote deadline to Friday at 5 p.m. | |
| And that was extremely helpful. | |
| I don't think that would have happened in 2020. | |
| And it gave us extra time to, again, those relationships with those text messages, have conversations saying, hey, just, you know, there's a two hour wait, but it's going to be open again tomorrow at 9 a.m. if you want to come back. | |
| And that's really because there was such a quick, rapid response on any sort of election integrity issue. | |
| I have to say, it's like Lara Trump took a lot of crap when she got elevated to that position by people who are like, what are her qualifications to help run the RNC? | |
| And I remember at first saying, I don't totally understand the choice, but I'm open-minded. | |
| And I went and contacted some of the people I know who have been high up in that organization. | |
| And they were like, you know what? | |
| This actually does make sense because the partnership makes sense. | |
| He can be responsible for some of the more of the traditional organizational things. | |
| And she can be somebody who people will really respond to when it comes to fundraising and outreach and messaging, as she already had been for Trump. | |
| And people said, oh, it's going to be too pro-Trump. | |
| It's like, well, we need pro-Trump. | |
| We need somebody who's going to help on the mission of getting this guy elected. | |
| That was, so that was actually a really smart decision. | |
| And I think a lot of people forget that there was so much distrust in the RNC from a lot of the base because of all of the problems that happened in 2020 and 2022. | |
| And people didn't want to work with the RNC. | |
| And one of the things I, in my conversations with James Blair or Brian Swenson, it was they understood that. | |
| And having Laura, who's part of the Trump family, helped bridge that gap. | |
| I had the privilege of working with Laura on the 2020 campaign. | |
| She is the most dynamic, hardworking, high energy person. | |
| When you meet her, you love her. | |
| And I thought she was the perfect person. | |
| Like I said, just to bridge that gap and kind of restore trust in that institution that people were just really doubting. | |
| And so having them, you know, having the smarts of Michael Watley, who North Carolina has run seamlessly for so long, and he knows that operations and mechanical side of it, you know, and also pull in a Trump. | |
| That was really, I think, the secret sauce that made the election integrity world move so much more smooth than in the past. | |
| No, I mean, she was roundly criticized for thinking she could do that job. | |
| And I haven't heard a lot of apologies to her by her detractors now that she's helped deliver total victory. | |
| I mean, it's very impressive. | |
| Let's talk about the numbers because there's something interesting in the numbers. | |
| They're still counting, of course. | |
| I don't know when we're ever going to have the final count, thanks to our friends in California, but it looks like Trump will get just above the 74 million votes that he got in 2020 and that Kamal Harris will be around 10 million votes behind what Joe Biden received. | |
| I mean, think about that. | |
| My God, they just didn't want her. | |
| It was a wholesale rejection. | |
| So is this, is this election more about Republicans getting to the polls or is it more about Democrats saying, I can't do it. | |
| I will not pull the lever for that woman. | |
| I think there's a combination of both, to be honest. | |
| The demographics have changed, you know, in a lot of ways with the increase of young women, youth vote, Hispanic vote, black vote. | |
| There's such a massive shift. | |
| I think there may be some people, and we won't know until we see the final numbers, but I think that there are some people who were undecided that may have been more left-leaning because those independent voters, remember. | |
| And we'll, I think only time will tell on some of those pieces once we get the data back on who stayed home and who actually turned out on election day. | |
| I think it's going to show that maybe more people who were really upset with who were independent but leaning left, they may have just stayed home and didn't want to participate. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So that's going to be, we will, we will know this probably in February, March. | |
| I'd be happy to give you the full report then. | |
| Okay. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I'd love to know. | |
| I mean, it's fascinating just to hear. | |
| I want all the postmortems. | |
| I want to hear every single word about how it happened and what she was doing that didn't work and what Trump was doing that did. | |
| What, can you explain your take on ticket splitting? | |
| Because the Republicans did not, you know, they won 53 houses or seats in the Senate, which is amazing, but they didn't win 56, right? | |
| They lost Nevada. | |
| They lost Michigan. | |
| They lost, was Wisconsin the other one? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, Wisconsin. | |
| So why? | |
| Why would somebody go into the ballot booth and check yes for Trump, but no for the Republican Senate candidates in those states? | |
| So in a couple of those states, what we saw was there was a higher number of people who Democrats who voted for the Senate candidate and didn't vote for president at all. | |
| So think about that, be somebody who would go in like and vote for Jackie Rosen, but not vote for Kamala Harris. | |
| So they just, they were very turned off by that. | |
| Such a middle finger. | |
| Totally, 100%. | |
| And also in Nevada, you can actually choose none of the above, none of the candidates as one of your choices. | |
| So that was another interesting piece. | |
| The other thing I will say, though, is that on those Senate races, they were all outspent two to three to one. | |
| So the Democrat candidates had such a bigger war chest to tell their story as opposed to the Republican candidates. | |
| And that does have a really big impact, especially in the states on those down ballot races. | |
| Well, yeah, because Trump was outspend, outspent three to one, too. | |
| The latest report is he spent about 300,000 in change and she spent a billion, but he had so much earned media. | |
| I mean, everyone in the world is interested in what Donald Trump is saying and doing. | |
| And he can drive the news cycle like that. | |
| Just, I mean, truly, just by snapping his fingers. | |
| But you can't do that if you are, you know, a Nevada senatorial candidate. | |
| It's just not the same. | |
| So the money does make a difference in those smaller races. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And in Michigan, for example, Slotkin had raised like $40 million and Mike Rogers raised $10 million. | |
| Like this, it's just astronomically different when you have that much more money. | |
| And that was a very, very close race. | |
| But again, compound that with the people who showed up and said, I'm not voting for president, but I'll vote for my Senate. | |
| And I think that was also some of the messaging too from, I think the pro-Palestine, pro-Hamas movement really hurt them because they had campaigned for months, the grassroots on, you know, vote no commitment, don't vote for presidential. | |
| And it wasn't until like the week before the election did they say, well, I guess we should support Kamala. | |
|
Senate Races Money Gap
00:11:02
|
|
| It's too late. | |
| You have literally spent the past year convincing your people to sit out and now you're going to tell them to show up was it was the damage was done on that point. | |
| Wow. | |
| Ashley, congratulations to you, your whole team. | |
| The Republicans are very lucky to have you. | |
| Well done. | |
| America is lucky to have this new administration. | |
| I'm so excited. | |
| Ashley Hayek, all the best. | |
| Good luck. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Wow. | |
| Incredible, right? | |
| You can change the world. | |
| Just a little elbow grease, planning, hard, hard work. | |
| Good for her. | |
| I'm Megan Kelly, host of the Megan Kelly Show on SiriusXM. | |
| It's your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations with the most interesting and important political, legal, and cultural figures today. | |
| You can catch the Megan Kelly show on Triumph, a SiriusXM channel featuring lots of hosts you may know and probably love. | |
| Great people like Dr. Laura, Flynn Beck, Nancy Grace, Dave Ramsey, and yours truly, Megan Kelly. | |
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| Go to seriousxm.com slash MK Show to subscribe and get three months free. | |
| That's seriousxm.com slash MK Show and get three months free. | |
| Offer details apply. | |
| You know, I was just thinking about this situation with a FEMA worker in Florida. | |
| And it's like the messaging that was sent, we've seen the internal FEMA emails now. | |
| The messaging sent was avoid Holmes advertising Trump. | |
| It was not avoid 844 and 846 on such and such a lane because somebody made a threatening call. | |
| This is all CYA. | |
| This is such bullshit. | |
| It was avoid Holmes advertising Trump. | |
| Maybe there was one bad apple. | |
| That doesn't justify ignoring Holmes advertising Trump, which they know. | |
| This was punitive. | |
| That's how it feels. | |
| And there does need to be a full investigation into this disgusting development and FEMA. | |
| Okay, let's get to our audience here who's calling in. | |
| Let's see. | |
| Dustin in Florida. | |
| We've had a lot of Florida stuff happening on the show today. | |
| Dustin, how are you feeling about last Tuesday? | |
| You're the best. | |
| It's true. | |
| We're led by the best governor in the country. | |
| I mean, come on. | |
| We couldn't get. | |
| And Trump is home here too. | |
| So, you know, listen, I got to tell you, I told your call screener, I feel absolutely like a million ton weight was just lifted off my shoulders last week. | |
| I had a feeling it was going to go this way. | |
| I kept saying it was going to go this way, but like you and like Sean Hannick, many people on the radio that I listened to today, like, don't count it out. | |
| You know, get out and vote. | |
| Go and vote. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Don't count on it. | |
| Exactly. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No. | |
| And it worked out. | |
| But God, can you imagine if we would have woke up last week and it was the other way? | |
| No, I was preparing myself. | |
| I was saying like privately to my husband and I, we talk about it every day. | |
| And he's like, what do you think is going to happen? | |
| And I would just say, I think Kamala's going to win. | |
| I didn't actually have a thought on whether Kamala was going to win. | |
| I had no idea. | |
| But I would say it just to get myself like ready for it. | |
| You know what I mean? | |
| Just so I could accept it and I wouldn't be one of these blubbering fools. | |
| Right. | |
| Because I didn't want to be one of those idiots who's out there crying like, oh, I need to be able to handle it. | |
| If she won, it's like, might as well just ease myself into it because it's a possibility. | |
| I knew I wouldn't need any easing if Trump won. | |
| And hasn't it just been the most glorious seven, eight days? | |
| Oh, it's been wonderful. | |
| I mean, you know, even watching some of the liberals meltdown between everything from Glenn Beck all the way to Mark Levin every day. | |
| I listen to talk. | |
| I listen to way too much talk radio, but I mean, come on. | |
| And you're one of my favorites now. | |
| And you replaced Rush for me because I grew up since I was 13 years old listening to him. | |
| But you know what? | |
| Listening to the clips you guys play of these people melting down, it's like, you know, at first I want to say, oh, you're just so stupid. | |
| How can you believe this stuff? | |
| But I really think they're just misinformed people. | |
| Some of them are mental, but there's a lot of people in this country that have no clue. | |
| And you illustrate deeply mental. | |
| The ones with the blue bracelets. | |
| Like, okay, sister. | |
| Justin, thank you. | |
| Thanks so much. | |
| I love the Rush compliment. | |
| That is the highest praise. | |
| Thanks for listening to us. | |
| Greatly appreciate it. | |
| All right, let's see. | |
| Let's go. | |
| Let's take a walk down to Rob in Texas has thoughts on Carrie Lake. | |
| What are those thoughts, Rob? | |
| Well, I'm just wondering if she has a position in the Trump administration. | |
| But first, I wanted to say that when we found out that Trump won, I thought back to your book when you had done a case in front of two professors and you didn't know, but you found out later that they did a hi-fi to each other when you left the room. | |
| That's the way I feel our country. | |
| You know, I just love that. | |
| You're so sweet. | |
| Thank you. | |
| That was my moot court audition. | |
| Yeah, that they kept it a secret how they felt about the audition, but it went well. | |
| I know. | |
| I've been high-fiving everybody. | |
| I mean, I've been hugging strangers. | |
| I'm just so thrilled. | |
| I'm thrilled for Trump because it's such an amazing comeback. | |
| I'm thrilled for our country. | |
| And then the team of Avengers he's bringing in there. | |
| I can't wait. | |
| Can't wait for them to get to work. | |
| Rob, thank you for your lovely message. | |
| Mark in Virginia, which, you know, we're trying to make a swing state again. | |
| It was once, and now it's more blue. | |
| Your thoughts, Mark? | |
| We were close. | |
| We were closer than I thought we'd be. | |
| By the way, Megan, when you were speaking with Trump on stage, I thought I missed it. | |
| And I was so upset. | |
| I sat there with my little finger and rewound the whole video to see that I hadn't missed you yet. | |
| So I was so glad that you actually made it on stage and you did a wonderful job. | |
| And I got to tell you, you're the reason that I'm renewing my XM subscription this year. | |
| Oh, that's so nice. | |
| Oh, I really hope the Sirius Brass is listening to this. | |
| Thank you, Mark. | |
| Well, I mean, it's so convenient. | |
| And I got to tell you, I mean, I was a Fox News junkie. | |
| That's where I was, you know, first saw you. | |
| But I flipped between you and Beck on election night. | |
| That was my election coverage, and I never would have done that a year ago. | |
| Awesome. | |
| No, we're the future. | |
| I feel like only the dinosaurs are still watching cable news. | |
| It's like I turn to cable news when there's like a breaking weather event. | |
| And other than that, and I'll tell you something. | |
| This is not a nice fact about me, Mark, but since we're so close and you said all those nice things about me and Sirius, I'm going to tell you. | |
| I have a TV in my studio here as of the election night. | |
| I don't normally have the TV in here, but they put it up so we could see the results coming in and they left it up. | |
| So Steve Krakauer, my EP, was like, we should make your commentary on this into a show. | |
| It's been like 10 years without seeing any of these cable news people. | |
| And it's been hilarious to tune back in. | |
| Nothing's changed. | |
| The people don't look as good. | |
| That's changed. | |
| But they've changed nothing. | |
| They're having the same stilted, guarded, fake conversations that last four minutes long with like the stupid panels. | |
| It's amazing how out of date they are. | |
| Well, I'm so proud of you for taking the leap that you did after everything with Fox and NBC. | |
| And I'm just, I really am proud of you. | |
| I am a radio broadcaster. | |
| So it's just, this is a thrill just to be able to say hi to you. | |
| And I hope you and your hubby have a great Hanukkah and Christmas. | |
| Thank you. | |
| You're a good man, Mark. | |
| Maybe we'll see you down in Virginia. | |
| I've got some family down there. | |
| Big, big fan. | |
| Okay, let's go. | |
| Let's go out west. | |
| Let's go to California and talk to Marlowe. | |
| Hi, Marlowe. | |
| What's on your mind? | |
| Hi, Megan. | |
| Thanks so much for taking my call. | |
| Just wanted to say I am a Californian Republican. | |
| I voted for Donald Trump straight down the party line. | |
| I'm a business owner of 30 years, and I can't tell you how much of a relief has off my shoulders. | |
| I can't wait for all the wonderful things that he's going to do to help our business, to help our country, to help my children buy a home. | |
| My husband and I have just been so excited, and I haven't stopped smiling, and I haven't been this happy in a long time. | |
| And I love your show. | |
| I do. | |
| I love listening to your show. | |
| I love the straightforwardness. | |
| It just makes my day every day. | |
| Oh, gosh. | |
| Thank you for that, Marlowe. | |
| It takes something wonderful from my children to make me feel euphoria generally. | |
| But this week, I have felt totally euphoric about our country and the future. | |
| Feel like we saved it. | |
| I know it's melodramatic. | |
| I mean, we still would have been here if she had won, but it would have been, I don't know how we would have gotten the number of illegals that are crossing the border under her out. | |
| I just like, we're all looking at 10 to 20 million. | |
| There would have been maybe 10 to 20 million more. | |
| That's the country that it's not going to change back. | |
| So, thank you, Marlow, for calling. | |
| I completely agree with you. | |
| And it's very hard to be a conservative in California, so you must be a strong lady. | |
| All right, let's go to Kevin in Tennessee. | |
| Kevin, thoughts on the election. | |
| Yes, Megan. | |
| I was just, I haven't heard many people talking about the fact that, well, other than the left, that misogyny played a role. | |
| And I just have to say, you'd be hard pressed in my world at least to find anyone who would not vote for a woman as president. | |
| Just not this woman. | |
| Kevin, I believe everywhere Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. | |
| Like, why are they still spewing this nonsense on us, right? | |
| And Barack Obama won twice. | |
| And he's black, because that's the other thing they blame it on, right? | |
| Like, she was a woman and she's a person of color. | |
| This is baloney excuse making. | |
| She lost because of inflation, immigration, culture issues, and she stunk. | |
| She stunk up the joint. | |
| She was a terrible candidate. | |
| I got to go. | |
| Kevin, thank you for listening. | |
| Thanks to all of our callers and our listeners. | |
| Hope you're feeling great. | |
| I want to tell you tomorrow, Bill Ackman's on the program. | |
| We've talked about him a lot on this show. | |
| Well, you'll hear from him directly. | |
| Full program. | |
| Don't miss that. | |
| God bless. | |
| By the way, send me an email if you didn't get to call in, Megan at MeganKelly.com. | |
| Thanks for listening to The Megan Kelly Show. | |
| No BS, no agenda, and no | |