Latest / The Alex Marlow Show / Midterm Madness Famed Pollster Matt Towery Says You Should NOT Believe What You're Being Told

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Midterm Madness Famed Pollster Matt Towery Says You Should NOT Believe What You're Being Told · The Alex Marlow Show

0:06
Speaker 1: I'm really pleased to talk to Matt Towery, who I've
0:07
Speaker 1: been on TV with a number of times, but today
0:10
Speaker 1: we are talking about his latest book, The Honoring of Ignorance,
0:15
Speaker 1: which we're going to get to in a moment here.
0:17
Speaker 1: And it's got a super compelling subtitle as well, The
0:19
Speaker 1: Seven Mirages Destroying America. We won't touch on all seven,
0:23
Speaker 1: but we'll touch on a few, and you'll have to
0:24
Speaker 1: get the book for the rest. If you're familiar with Matt,
0:26
Speaker 1: you've probably seen him pop up all over Fox, but
0:28
Speaker 1: also his insider advantage polling firm, is amongst the most
0:32
Speaker 1: accurate in the world. Before we get into the book, Matt,
0:36
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about just the
0:38
Speaker 1: polling business.
0:39
Speaker 2: What's your sense in this election cycle about the polls?
0:42
Speaker 1: Because it feels like the polls, maybe I'm just too
0:46
Speaker 1: off the cuff here, but it feels like they kind
0:47
Speaker 1: of alternate election cycles, accurate, inaccurate, accurate, inaccurate, making it
0:51
Speaker 1: so that it is the hardest to tell. Every time
0:53
Speaker 1: I feel like I don't trust the polls and I'll
0:55
Speaker 1: see one I like, and then every time I feel
0:56
Speaker 1: like I do trust the polls, I'll see one that
0:58
Speaker 1: makes no sense.
0:59
Speaker 2: How do you think they've been this time around thus far?
1:01
Speaker 3: Well, it's hard to say. You know, it's easier for
1:05
Speaker 3: us to poll in presidential years because you know you're
1:07
Speaker 3: going to have a large turnout. And so when you're
1:09
Speaker 3: polling in a midterm, you're really having to guess who's
1:14
Speaker 3: going to show up at the polls. And that's been very,
1:16
Speaker 3: very difficult. For example, we've been hearing all along this
1:20
Speaker 3: mantra that young people were just going to storm the
1:22
Speaker 3: polls this year and have a huge effect. They're not voting.
1:26
Speaker 3: The early voting numbers just show that they're not particularly excited,
1:30
Speaker 3: and we're not seeing that push that we thought we
1:33
Speaker 3: would see. What we are seeing is older voters, first
1:37
Speaker 3: of all, those 65 and over, and I now unfortunately
1:40
Speaker 3: qualify for that, but also 50 to 65, are turning
1:44
Speaker 3: out at some of the highest numbers we've ever seen
1:46
Speaker 3: in midterms.
1:46
Speaker 2: Now, what that means, we don't know. In the polling
1:49
Speaker 2: we've done, we've polled.
1:50
Speaker 3: All the battleground states along with our Our good friends
1:53
Speaker 3: at Trafalgar, that's Robert Cahaley and then rest of us,
1:57
Speaker 3: and we all sort of do different states, different weeks.
2:01
Speaker 3: But one thing that we found in every single poll, well,
2:05
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say every single, but most of the battleground states,
2:08
Speaker 3: are that seniors are the ones who tell us are
2:10
Speaker 3: the most enthusiastic about turning out. They also are the
2:13
Speaker 3: most likely to vote Republican. You know, Alex, we lost
2:15
Speaker 3: Republicans for a while. among seniors after the pandemic, because
2:19
Speaker 3: a lot of seniors felt like Trump didn't handle it right.
2:22
Speaker 3: They were a little upset about the mask issue and
2:24
Speaker 3: thought he didn't take it seriously enough.
2:27
Speaker 2: But they have come roaring back.
2:28
Speaker 3: My theory is my old mentor, first person I ever
2:31
Speaker 3: worked with, Newt Gingrich, came up with the idea that
2:34
Speaker 3: socialism might move votes. And I'm beginning to believe that
2:37
Speaker 3: his socialism concept, and they've sort of been keying on this,
2:41
Speaker 3: may be moving more seniors to the polls. Now, does
2:44
Speaker 3: that mean the Republicans win?
2:46
Speaker 2: We don't know. It's very, very hard to say.
2:48
Speaker 3: Now, I will tell you, most of the polls, the
2:50
Speaker 3: battleground states we're doing, we're seeing the Republicans inch their
2:53
Speaker 3: way back up. In Texas, it's basically tied. I think
2:56
Speaker 3: we had Paxton up by one. Michigan's a two-point race.
3:01
Speaker 3: We now have, I'm trying to think, some of the
3:03
Speaker 3: other battleground states. Ohio just went Republican again in our polling.
3:07
Speaker 3: So a lot of these states that we thought we
3:09
Speaker 3: were way behind for Republicans, they're beginning to inch their
3:12
Speaker 3: way back up. But I got burned in the midterms
3:14
Speaker 3: in 22 because I fell for the concept that there
3:17
Speaker 3: was a red wave. So I'm not falling for any
3:19
Speaker 3: waves or anything at all this time. We'll put the
3:22
Speaker 3: numbers down. We'll weight them based on how we see
3:24
Speaker 3: the turnout. Just see where the chips fall.
3:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't see a wave either direction, partially because
3:30
Speaker 1: of the gerrymandering. It's made so there's so few swing states,
3:33
Speaker 1: so few swing seats in the house. And in the Senate,
3:37
Speaker 1: there's some unique contours to this particular election. I want
3:39
Speaker 1: to get your thoughts on a couple of these before
3:41
Speaker 1: we dig into the book. One of the things that
3:44
Speaker 1: is tough is that energy prices are high, and that's
3:47
Speaker 1: driving up prices throughout the economy. And a lot of
3:51
Speaker 1: this is selling to Trump's voter base, which has largely
3:54
Speaker 1: been anti-war, that the war in Iran is justified.
3:57
Speaker 2: This is a tough sell, but it's doable.
3:58
Speaker 1: It's possible, especially considering that if Democrats were to get power,
4:02
Speaker 1: Trump will still be president this time around. But if
4:04
Speaker 1: the Democrats were to get power, they would like to
4:07
Speaker 1: do more of the Green New Deal stuff, which would
4:08
Speaker 1: only jack up energy prices even more. So they're not
4:11
Speaker 1: really the authority on keeping energy prices down. But do
4:14
Speaker 1: you think it's remotely possible Republicans have messaged decently in
4:18
Speaker 1: this regard when it comes to the prices of stuff?
4:23
Speaker 2: I don't think the Republicans have.
4:25
Speaker 3: I think the president's message when he speaks is stronger
4:28
Speaker 3: than the messaging we're seeing on TV. For example, we
4:31
Speaker 3: all know that when Biden Think of this, Alex, and
4:33
Speaker 3: we had the midterms back in 22.
4:36
Speaker 2: And we had, as you.
4:37
Speaker 3: Remember, a little bit of a surprise. We thought Republicans
4:40
Speaker 3: in some Senate states were going to do a little
4:42
Speaker 3: better and they didn't do as well. And it wasn't
4:44
Speaker 3: quite the red wave that everyone thought. You know, gasoline
4:48
Speaker 3: prices were almost as high as they are right now.
4:50
Speaker 3: Inflation was, I believe, 8.5 or 8.7% was the headline.
4:54
Speaker 2: We're now at, what, 3.7%. We have the lowest unemployment
4:56
Speaker 2: rate since the 1960s. I could go on and on.
5:03
Speaker 3: But none of this has been messaged to the public.
5:05
Speaker 3: And that's what my book is all about. There's this
5:07
Speaker 3: giant mirage machine.
5:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. It covers everything up. And I'll be honest with you.
5:12
Speaker 3: I've never thought the Republican consultants start advertising early enough.
5:16
Speaker 3: And I think their messages are not clear enough. Why
5:19
Speaker 3: in the world are we not telling people this? And
5:21
Speaker 3: if we really believe Iran... is worthy of being involved in,
5:25
Speaker 3: then the explanation should go out to people that they
5:27
Speaker 3: were within months of being able to enrich uranium, that
5:31
Speaker 3: we now know they have ballistic weapons that could reach Europe.
5:35
Speaker 3: Most of the public doesn't know that because they don't
5:37
Speaker 3: watch the evening news and they certainly don't get to
5:39
Speaker 3: see conservative news.
5:41
Speaker 1: Right.
5:41
Speaker 2: That's right.
5:41
Speaker 3: Yeah.
5:42
Speaker 2: It just, it's still by percentage.
5:43
Speaker 1: It's interesting because, you know, I would look at my
5:46
Speaker 1: traffic numbers at Breitbart and we have do huge traffic
5:48
Speaker 1: and we have.
5:48
Speaker 2: Millions and millions and millions of readers.
5:50
Speaker 1: And a lot of them are, you know, refreshing all day,
5:53
Speaker 1: but it's still, you know, it's a fraction of the electorate.
5:55
Speaker 1: It's like, even in our best months ever, we're talking,
5:58
Speaker 1: you know, maybe 15, 20% of the electorate will, will
6:01
Speaker 1: read a single Breitbart story.
6:02
Speaker 2: That's like very scary to think about that.
6:04
Speaker 3: What's so amazing is, is because, so I think I said,
6:07
Speaker 3: I think one night on Laura's show that when I
6:09
Speaker 3: get up in the morning, I go to you guys first.
6:12
Speaker 3: I used to go to the Wall Street Journal all
6:14
Speaker 3: the time. I get a little tired of them, to
6:15
Speaker 3: be honest. Yeah, but their news reporting is very biased.
6:18
Speaker 3: Their opinion columns are generally interesting and mixed, but the
6:22
Speaker 3: news stuff is mixed. They're really biased. I'm very disappointed,
6:26
Speaker 3: and I've always relied on them. But I still go
6:29
Speaker 3: to the Wall Street Journal, and then I, of course,
6:31
Speaker 3: hit Fox News. I go to Drudge to see what everybody,
6:34
Speaker 3: all the other stuff on the other side is being said.
6:36
Speaker 2: I look at a lot of different sources.
6:38
Speaker 3: But I want to point something out that's fresh today,
6:42
Speaker 3: talking about what I call this mirage machine.
6:44
Speaker 2: I do talk about Breitbart in the book.
6:46
Speaker 3: I talk about how NewsGuard and some of these other groups,
6:49
Speaker 3: they're supposed to advise advertisers and folks who are reliable
6:54
Speaker 3: and who are not. Of course, they always take all
6:56
Speaker 3: of us who are conservatives, us as pollsters, you and
6:59
Speaker 3: your business. Somehow, we don't ever rate as well as, say,
7:02
Speaker 3: NBC or ABC. We all know we're left, left, left
7:06
Speaker 3: of center now. I looked today right before we went
7:09
Speaker 3: on air, and we have right now Europe on fire.
7:14
Speaker 3: You have at the very top of your stories explanations
7:17
Speaker 3: of what's really going on there, including all of the
7:19
Speaker 3: Islamic activity that's behind this. You go to ABC, it's
7:23
Speaker 3: buried on the second level. NBC has a story, but
7:26
Speaker 3: it's still all about, well, they're just complaining about the
7:29
Speaker 3: cost of schools and And they're upset. That's not what's
7:32
Speaker 3: going on. And you explained it on Breitbart. So to
7:36
Speaker 3: be educated and know what's really going on, that's why
7:38
Speaker 3: I call it the honoring of ignorance. You know, you
7:41
Speaker 3: don't have to be stupid to not know something. You're
7:43
Speaker 3: ignorant because you don't have the opportunity or you haven't
7:46
Speaker 3: availed yourself of the opportunity. And one of the big
7:49
Speaker 3: pushes I have in this book is that we need
7:51
Speaker 3: to quit honoring ignorance. Conservative sources need to start boosting
7:55
Speaker 3: conservative sources. and the mainstream companies that are willing to
8:00
Speaker 3: be open should start carrying more of our stories and
8:04
Speaker 3: our polling so that people can get both sides of
8:06
Speaker 3: an issue. It doesn't mean they have to agree with
8:09
Speaker 3: our editorial choices or our polling, but right now we
8:12
Speaker 3: have a whole world that's just blocked out from knowing
8:14
Speaker 3: what's going on, and that's really destroying this country.
8:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating because I wrote a book on the
8:21
Speaker 1: media five years ago, and I'm constantly tracking it at Breitbart,
8:25
Speaker 1: and they seem pretty content to let themselves bleed out
8:28
Speaker 1: or maybe wait until some billionaire buys them up and
8:31
Speaker 1: changes directions. I like what we're seeing with some of the, the, uh,
8:35
Speaker 1: paramount properties. Now we could be seeing that take place
8:38
Speaker 1: in real time, but they seem so reluctant to just
8:42
Speaker 1: acknowledge that there's a whole bunch of people, you know,
8:45
Speaker 1: maybe 100 million odd people in this country who just
8:47
Speaker 1: don't like what they're putting out every day.
8:49
Speaker 2: And they seem very content to just keep going.
8:51
Speaker 1: And then they listen to people like NewsGuard, who are
8:53
Speaker 1: trying to pull them back in the direction of leftism
8:55
Speaker 1: and globalism. And we've dealt with them over and over
8:59
Speaker 1: again from their very origins at Breitbart. And all this
9:02
Speaker 1: is to protect the corporatist status quo. And the media
9:07
Speaker 1: just does nothing to share with the public that this
9:09
Speaker 1: stuff is going on.
9:10
Speaker 3: Well, and of course, they don't care the fact that
9:13
Speaker 3: the public has virtually no respect for the media. And unfortunately,
9:16
Speaker 3: we all get lumped into this. You know, pollsters aren't
9:18
Speaker 3: popular either. So we're, and I'm a lawyer, so I've
9:22
Speaker 3: not got everything going against me. But the truth of
9:24
Speaker 3: the matter is, I think that the Republicans would do smart,
9:27
Speaker 3: be smart to do a few things. One, I believe
9:30
Speaker 3: they should, during the regular part of the year, I
9:33
Speaker 3: know it's more expensive because PACs don't get the lowest
9:36
Speaker 3: unit rate and the like. Every week, there should be
9:39
Speaker 3: an in case you missed it, series of ads that run.
9:42
Speaker 3: And you can actually quote some of the Breitbarts as
9:45
Speaker 3: well as some of the left-wing or left-of-center news organizations
9:49
Speaker 3: as well, because they all have news that's very important
9:53
Speaker 3: and positive for what President Trump has done, but they
9:56
Speaker 3: omit it. And so if the Republicans ran that just
9:59
Speaker 3: as a public service, it doesn't have to be a
10:01
Speaker 3: partisan thing. Think of where we would be right now
10:04
Speaker 3: because the public would be so much more understanding of
10:07
Speaker 3: what's going on. But they don't do that. They don't
10:09
Speaker 3: want to spend that money on that. Secondly, I think
10:12
Speaker 3: we should have our own fact checkers. We probably should
10:15
Speaker 3: create fact checking that's really fact checking. to fact check
10:19
Speaker 3: the fact checkers and also to fact check the liberal
10:21
Speaker 3: media when they leave things out or twist words. I mean,
10:26
Speaker 3: that's a lot of the mirages in here are things
10:28
Speaker 3: like that. You know, Trump's a racist because of the
10:31
Speaker 3: way they reported Charlottesville. We all know the way it
10:33
Speaker 3: was reported and the words that were left out and
10:36
Speaker 3: the fact that was implied that Trump thought, you know,
10:38
Speaker 3: that the skinheads were great and also thought the you know,
10:42
Speaker 3: Antifa people might be great. That was not what he
10:44
Speaker 3: was saying. You and I both know it was the
10:46
Speaker 3: people who were there legitimately protesting. But they used that
10:49
Speaker 3: as a cudgel just to beat him over the head
10:52
Speaker 3: as a racist for the next three and a half,
10:54
Speaker 3: four years. And we see it over and over again.
10:57
Speaker 3: So you have to turn to Breitbart and a few
10:59
Speaker 3: other conservative sites. There are other good conservative sites that
11:02
Speaker 3: I go to. You have to turn to you guys
11:04
Speaker 3: to find out what's going on before I go out
11:06
Speaker 3: and read the nonsense and the way they twist it
11:09
Speaker 3: later in the day. And unfortunately, which 75% of America
11:12
Speaker 3: sees through social media or Google News or Apple News,
11:16
Speaker 3: all of which are, of course, strained to keep our
11:19
Speaker 3: voices out.
11:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's another thing that's just beyond belief is how
11:24
Speaker 1: we haven't addressed the elephant in the room, which is Google,
11:25
Speaker 1: which suppresses all conservative content, completely blacklists it. And then
11:30
Speaker 1: these algorithms where, you know, places like Meta do a
11:32
Speaker 1: better job than others, but where conservatives do very well.
11:36
Speaker 1: But then still, you'll see all these independent creators just
11:38
Speaker 1: putting out fake news that gets hundreds of thousands of likes.
11:41
Speaker 1: And you're going, oh my gosh, people are getting their
11:42
Speaker 1: news from these influencers that are spitting all falsehoods. And
11:49
Speaker 1: it's a dark thing. But okay, so let's get into,
11:51
Speaker 1: just to remind people, The Honoring of Ignorance, The Seven
11:53
Speaker 1: Mirages Destroying America by Matt Towery.
11:56
Speaker 2: It is out now. I'm flipping through it. This is
12:00
Speaker 2: going to be a brisk read.
12:01
Speaker 1: It is not a long book, which I always admire
12:03
Speaker 1: people who have the discipline to not write long books, Matt.
12:06
Speaker 1: So everyone should get this now, easy to get and
12:10
Speaker 1: out now. Let's get into some of the mirages. You've
12:13
Speaker 1: touched on some, but it's a, obviously it's a provocative title,
12:18
Speaker 1: the honoring of ignorance. How do we honor ignorance?
12:23
Speaker 3: Well, we honor it by allowing this mirage machine to
12:28
Speaker 3: keep us ignorant.
12:29
Speaker 2: I'll tell you a funny story about this, Alex.
12:31
Speaker 3: I started writing this book 40 years ago.
12:34
Speaker 2: Believe it or not.
12:35
Speaker 3: Wow.
12:36
Speaker 2: I'm getting old.
12:37
Speaker 3: I was a student at Cambridge University, and I had
12:39
Speaker 3: a lot of time on my hands because I didn't
12:41
Speaker 3: go to lectures like I was supposed to.
12:42
Speaker 2: I did graduate.
12:44
Speaker 3: And I wrote this book and sent it over to
12:46
Speaker 3: a literary agent in New York named Ann Elmo, who
12:48
Speaker 3: was very famous at that time. She was getting probably
12:51
Speaker 3: the end of her career. She took me on. She
12:53
Speaker 3: sent it out to various publishers. They all said the
12:55
Speaker 3: same thing. We love the book. But he's too young
12:58
Speaker 3: to be saying what he said. So now the question is,
13:01
Speaker 3: 40 years later, am I too old to be saying
13:03
Speaker 3: what I'm saying?
13:04
Speaker 2: We'll find out down the road.
13:05
Speaker 3: But the whole concept even then and now was, first
13:09
Speaker 3: of all, just basically the amount of knowledge that none
13:13
Speaker 3: of us have about the real foundation of this country.
13:15
Speaker 3: The fact that we were never meant to be a democracy.
13:18
Speaker 3: The fact that the president was elected, obviously, by electors.
13:21
Speaker 3: We never had a direct election. The vice president was
13:24
Speaker 3: not chosen by the president. That was the runner up.
13:28
Speaker 3: The Senate obviously was never supposed to be elected by
13:30
Speaker 3: the public. Congress was supposed to be limited to about
13:35
Speaker 3: 30,000 eligible voters at that time, which is a little
13:38
Speaker 3: different than now. Per district, we'll be stuck with that.
13:41
Speaker 3: We'd have about 15,000 or 20,000 members of Congress. Fortunately,
13:45
Speaker 3: that was changed by law. But so many things that
13:49
Speaker 3: we just don't know. All the way down to, I
13:51
Speaker 3: found it interesting, the Statue of Liberty was actually designed
13:54
Speaker 3: for Egypt, not the United States. So you start looking
13:56
Speaker 3: at all the things that we don't learn, particularly that
14:00
Speaker 3: people don't learn now from these colleges and universities that
14:02
Speaker 3: have really changed what they expose students to.
14:06
Speaker 2: We have that working against us.
14:07
Speaker 3: And then we have a media, like we said before,
14:10
Speaker 3: where conservative media makes up about 25 percent of what,
14:13
Speaker 3: at least based on our polling, 25 percent of what
14:15
Speaker 3: people see.
14:16
Speaker 2: The rest comes from mostly these left of center groups.
14:20
Speaker 3: And it's filtered through, as you said, the Google news
14:22
Speaker 3: is the Apple news is delivered on their iPhone. They
14:26
Speaker 3: see it, as you mentioned, through social media all day.
14:29
Speaker 3: Then it's mixed in with the influencers, some of whom
14:31
Speaker 3: are really great, some of whom just write. I don't
14:34
Speaker 3: know how many times I see a story breaking and
14:36
Speaker 3: the story is something that happened four months ago.
14:40
Speaker 2: My wife will look at me and say, did they
14:41
Speaker 2: really just say this? No, they didn't.
14:43
Speaker 3: That was four months ago and it doesn't say what
14:44
Speaker 3: it's supposed to say. So people have to ferret through
14:47
Speaker 3: all of this. And in the process, you have this
14:50
Speaker 3: mirage machine made up of the media, made up of
14:54
Speaker 3: the fact checkers, made up of the pollsters.
14:56
Speaker 2: And we have polling wars like no tomorrow. I'll be
14:58
Speaker 2: happy to tell you about that. It's unbelievable.
15:01
Speaker 3: And it all comes together to try to put a
15:03
Speaker 3: rubber stamp on they are correct and no one else
15:06
Speaker 3: is and don't think about it. So then you have
15:09
Speaker 3: these mirages developed that Trump is a xenophobe. And I
15:13
Speaker 3: go through the background of that and explain exactly why
15:16
Speaker 3: none of what they claimed is correct. Trump is a racist.
15:20
Speaker 3: Trump was an election denier. Well, you know, there were
15:23
Speaker 3: some serious things to think about in those elections. A
15:25
Speaker 3: lot of folks don't want to talk about it. But
15:27
Speaker 3: when numerous battleground states all quit counting their votes at
15:31
Speaker 3: the exact same time in their time zone, and I've
15:34
Speaker 3: been covering elections. I mean, I've been on network affiliate desks, newsroom,
15:40
Speaker 3: anchor desk for probably 30 years, particularly in Georgia. And
15:45
Speaker 3: I've never seen elections all stop at one time in
15:47
Speaker 3: an evening. And this takes us back to 2020. But
15:50
Speaker 3: I just say that, for example, with the elections, Trump
15:55
Speaker 3: had every right to raise questions and issues. But as
15:58
Speaker 3: soon as you raise issues, you're an election denier. So
16:01
Speaker 3: that's another stamp they put on everyone. You just keep
16:04
Speaker 3: rolling through all the aspects of what he's done as president.
16:07
Speaker 3: And each time the press and the fact checkers and
16:11
Speaker 3: the pollsters have a way of shoving Republicans, conservatives, MAGA supporters,
16:16
Speaker 3: which they can't stand that name, and shove everyone into a, like,
16:21
Speaker 3: for example, I write about how the mirage that all
16:23
Speaker 3: Trump supporters are ignorant, which is just absolutely, or ignorant
16:27
Speaker 3: or stupid, which is just insane. Usually the Trump supporters
16:30
Speaker 3: are the most informed people in the entire country. But
16:33
Speaker 3: I use it with facts. I made sure everything I
16:36
Speaker 3: did was with facts. I use a little AI because
16:38
Speaker 3: I had fun jousting with AI. I would ask it
16:41
Speaker 3: something that I knew the answer to and it would
16:44
Speaker 3: give me a different answer.
16:45
Speaker 2: And I would say, but what about so-and-so? It would
16:47
Speaker 2: come back and say, oh, you have a good point there.
16:49
Speaker 2: I left that out.
16:50
Speaker 3: So now that's the next frontier we have to fight with.
16:53
Speaker 3: is the AI world and what they're going to produce.
16:56
Speaker 3: You know, Charlie Kirk used to debate the AI. It
16:59
Speaker 3: was funny. That was one of his things he would do.
17:01
Speaker 3: He would fight with the AI.
17:02
Speaker 1: I think he thought it was both funny and useful
17:06
Speaker 1: to some degree.
17:07
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely.
17:10
Speaker 1: I want to talk about what you're able to glean
17:13
Speaker 1: as a holster from, do you feel like people are
17:18
Speaker 1: getting more or less informed in the era of hypermedia
17:21
Speaker 1: where media is everywhere?
17:24
Speaker 2: I'll just give you my answer first.
17:25
Speaker 1: I feel like people seem dumber to me and we've
17:28
Speaker 1: never had more access to information and we've never had
17:30
Speaker 1: more time to assess the information. And yet I feel
17:33
Speaker 1: like people are getting dumber by the minute because we're
17:36
Speaker 1: just fed all sorts of slop over and over again.
17:38
Speaker 1: And it makes certain people check out and it makes
17:40
Speaker 1: other people just have fever dreams about the worst case
17:44
Speaker 1: scenarios that they're reading.
17:45
Speaker 3: Yes, I called it a wearing blender. It's just a
17:48
Speaker 3: giant wearing blender of information that no one can ferret through.
17:52
Speaker 3: And of course, you know, It always works to someone's
17:55
Speaker 3: advantage if you control media to overwhelm people with media.
17:59
Speaker 3: And then they come on and they tell you, well,
18:01
Speaker 3: this is what's really right and this is what's not
18:03
Speaker 3: really right. I mean, for example, 60 Minutes. I don't
18:06
Speaker 3: know how many times I've seen 60 Minutes come on
18:09
Speaker 3: with that pompous beginning and they'll take a story and
18:13
Speaker 3: somehow they'll leave portions out and the like. But the
18:16
Speaker 3: person who's just finished watching NFL football watches 60 Minutes
18:20
Speaker 3: and feels like, well, now I have the answer. No,
18:23
Speaker 3: you don't have the answer. You have the answer they
18:24
Speaker 3: want you to have. Now that may be changing now
18:27
Speaker 3: that we have new ownership at CBS. I look forward
18:30
Speaker 3: to seeing it, but this is the sort of stuff,
18:32
Speaker 3: the morning shows, which I always say don't matter that
18:34
Speaker 3: much because most people don't watch the morning political shows,
18:38
Speaker 3: but some of those like on NBC and ABC, I mean,
18:42
Speaker 3: George Stephanopoulos, I knew George years ago. I was heavily
18:46
Speaker 3: involved with Newt those years and dealt with Clinton. And, um,
18:51
Speaker 3: George was a really nice, polite person. I'm not putting
18:53
Speaker 3: him down as an individual, but he's as partisan as
18:56
Speaker 3: you can get. And that comes through, for example, in
18:59
Speaker 3: the discussion he had about whether Trump had, quote unquote,
19:02
Speaker 3: raped E.
19:03
Speaker 2: Jean Carroll. Of course, we know how that ended.
19:06
Speaker 3: They ended up having to enter into agreement and pay
19:08
Speaker 3: money to Trump or towards his library or some foundation
19:12
Speaker 3: in the future to.
19:14
Speaker 2: Settle that case. So, The public is, I wouldn't say
19:18
Speaker 2: they're getting dumber.
19:19
Speaker 3: I would just say that they're being fed more and
19:22
Speaker 3: more information so that they're ignorant as to what the
19:26
Speaker 3: real facts are. And I think the conservatives have a
19:29
Speaker 3: real duty to promote one another. I don't, I've never,
19:33
Speaker 3: I mean, I've been involved in the Republican Party since 1980.
19:37
Speaker 3: And I've never seen a group of people who are
19:40
Speaker 3: more jealous of each other than Republicans.
19:41
Speaker 1: Jealous.
19:43
Speaker 3: Nobody, you know, you have a fantastic product. Nobody wants
19:46
Speaker 3: to say you've got a great product because it's, somehow
19:50
Speaker 3: if they raise you up, they're not the big deal.
19:53
Speaker 3: I don't know why in the holy hell everybody doesn't
19:55
Speaker 3: grow up and say, hey, we've got four or five
19:57
Speaker 3: or 10 great online conservative sites. I used to write
20:00
Speaker 3: a column weekly that ran in newspapers until I finally
20:04
Speaker 3: gave it up because it was so When Trump came in,
20:06
Speaker 3: you couldn't do a weekly newspaper column because things changed
20:09
Speaker 3: every day. But it ran on Town Hall, ran on
20:12
Speaker 3: Human Events, on all these other sites. That was the
20:14
Speaker 3: very beginning of all this stuff. And, of course, then
20:16
Speaker 3: Breitbart came along, which was groundbreaking. And then you had
20:19
Speaker 3: other conservative sites come. But I just would like to
20:22
Speaker 3: see the conservatives all sort of get around each other
20:24
Speaker 3: and quit putting each other down. With the polling, for example,
20:28
Speaker 3: you have Insider Advantage, Trafalgar, Rasmussen. Qantas, Emerson College does
20:35
Speaker 3: a very good job. You have these pollsters that have
20:38
Speaker 3: consistently been right, but half of these conservative sites don't
20:42
Speaker 3: run any of our polls.
20:44
Speaker 2: Well, we don't run.
20:45
Speaker 3: The only reason you hear our polls is because Sean
20:47
Speaker 3: Hannity and Laura Ingram and others, they have the ability
20:52
Speaker 3: in primetime to talk about the polls they want. And
20:54
Speaker 3: Sean talks about our polls. But you'll never hear it
20:58
Speaker 3: on regular news. Now I've noticed, you know, Wall Street
21:01
Speaker 3: Journal just a little bit until we're right. And then
21:04
Speaker 3: when we're right, like in 2024, we knocked it out
21:06
Speaker 3: of the park. What did they write after that? The
21:09
Speaker 3: pollsters were all wrong in 2024.
21:11
Speaker 2: They all got it wrong. No, they didn't.
21:13
Speaker 3: The pollsters I mentioned got it right, but nobody wanted
21:16
Speaker 3: to write a story about that. So I just think
21:19
Speaker 3: that I'm retiring. This is my last year of polling.
21:21
Speaker 3: I don't need to promote myself anymore. I'll probably keep
21:24
Speaker 3: writing books because it's fun to do. I love playing
21:26
Speaker 3: golf here in Florida and I love talking to my
21:28
Speaker 3: political friends, but I I've sold my businesses and I'm
21:31
Speaker 3: ready to enjoy myself. But I would leave this as
21:35
Speaker 3: something to the younger next generation's leadership of the conservative movement,
21:40
Speaker 3: Republican movement. Quit being so damn jealous of each other.
21:43
Speaker 3: And also get aggressive about getting your message out early.
21:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, Matt, you know, you give me a shout out
21:50
Speaker 1: once on TV when we were on Laura's show together.
21:52
Speaker 2: It was so sweet of you. I really remember that.
21:53
Speaker 2: It's very nice of you. And I totally agree with this.
21:55
Speaker 1: Also, it's the it's the it's also sinful to act
22:00
Speaker 1: envious of people. And I just don't know why we
22:02
Speaker 1: even figure this out is that it's not working for us. Also,
22:04
Speaker 1: is the Democrats are all cohesive and they're just they
22:07
Speaker 1: really do take take the big tent seriously as a philosophy.
22:11
Speaker 1: And it does help them as creates huge industries. And
22:14
Speaker 1: we just are so reluctant to promote one another. And
22:17
Speaker 1: it's industry-wide. And I get nervous about it. I wonder
22:20
Speaker 1: if it's happening in the White House, too. I don't know.
22:23
Speaker 1: I don't have a ton of firsthand knowledge. Everyone's really
22:24
Speaker 1: nice to me who I talk to. But I always wonder,
22:28
Speaker 1: is there more stuff going on that maybe we'd hear
22:30
Speaker 1: about if there wasn't some sort of beef that was
22:33
Speaker 1: taking place somewhere? And you just have to be cautious
22:35
Speaker 1: of that stuff because we need to be rowing in
22:39
Speaker 1: the same direction if we're going to have any shot
22:41
Speaker 1: I guess the Democrats, because they always do.
22:44
Speaker 2: And they have so.
22:45
Speaker 1: Much money and so much infrastructure and they have so
22:47
Speaker 1: much get out the vote efforts. And it just, we
22:49
Speaker 1: can't give away a single edge we could have.
22:52
Speaker 2: You know, it's so true.
22:54
Speaker 3: I've had the pleasure, I will say, of meeting or
22:58
Speaker 3: being with eight presidents in my lifetime. And knowing some
23:01
Speaker 3: of them pretty well, I was a young person when
23:05
Speaker 3: Jimmy Carter was governor of Georgia. And I used to
23:08
Speaker 3: be a page down there. I knew Jimmy, I knew...
23:11
Speaker 3: Ham Jordan is chief of staff. I knew Jody Powell.
23:14
Speaker 3: So I've known both Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats, by
23:18
Speaker 3: and large, although I will say Jimmy was an exception,
23:21
Speaker 3: Ham and Jody went to D.C.
23:23
Speaker 2: Thinking they were going to teach D.C. a lesson. And D.C.
23:26
Speaker 3: Just absolutely beat the daylights out of both of them
23:28
Speaker 3: and Jimmy Carter.
23:30
Speaker 2: So it even can happen to Democrats.
23:32
Speaker 3: But for the most part, the Democrats always stick together
23:35
Speaker 3: and the Republicans always seem to have malice in the past.
23:38
Speaker 2: There's always something going on. I'll say one other thing.
23:40
Speaker 2: It may be a little controversial.
23:42
Speaker 3: The Republicans are too worried about the money grab from
23:46
Speaker 3: these elections, the PACs, how much money they're going to get,
23:49
Speaker 3: how much. And then they worry about the commercials and
23:53
Speaker 3: then they worry about the turnout and then they worry about.
23:56
Speaker 3: But they're always doing it at the last minute because
23:59
Speaker 3: the first thing they want to do is to make
24:01
Speaker 3: sure that they and their pals get taken care of
24:04
Speaker 3: and make lots of money. And then they turn around
24:07
Speaker 3: to trying to win. The Democrats are completely different. They
24:10
Speaker 3: want to win first, and they know if they win,
24:13
Speaker 3: to the winner goes the spoils. That's when they make
24:16
Speaker 3: their money. But it doesn't do us any good to
24:18
Speaker 3: have this system we have right now.
24:20
Speaker 1: No, okay, so that's exactly where I want to go next.
24:22
Speaker 1: The Honoring of Regenerance is the book. The Seven Mirages
24:24
Speaker 1: of Destroying America, the author, Matt Towery, is available now.
24:27
Speaker 1: You can pre-order it. Or, I'm sorry, you can get
24:29
Speaker 1: it now. You don't have to pre-order it right now. Yeah, okay,
24:32
Speaker 1: so let's mow through a few things that come up
24:35
Speaker 1: in the book. We won't come up with all the
24:36
Speaker 1: interesting stuff that's in there, but just a few things.
24:39
Speaker 3: Sure.
24:39
Speaker 1: That is important. And you touched on some of this briefly.
24:42
Speaker 1: You gave a little list there from before. So some
24:44
Speaker 1: things that caught my eye, noting that we were never
24:47
Speaker 1: intended to be a direct democracy. And I'll tell you,
24:50
Speaker 1: nothing gets my readers and listeners on my case faster
24:54
Speaker 1: than if I ever dare to say we're a democracy.
24:56
Speaker 2: You've got to say you're a republic. But this was
24:59
Speaker 2: never the intention.
25:00
Speaker 1: And yet, you know, they plaster democracy, dies in darkness
25:02
Speaker 1: on the top of newspaper mastheads.
25:04
Speaker 2: And it just Yeah. What is going on here? What's
25:07
Speaker 2: the truth and why is it the truth?
25:10
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, think about the makeup of the great,
25:15
Speaker 3: and I mean that in terms of their power, communist
25:20
Speaker 3: systems that were developed, the Soviet Union. If you ever
25:26
Speaker 3: saw a meeting of all of their members, I mean,
25:28
Speaker 3: it looked like it was a convention, massive number of people. China,
25:31
Speaker 3: same thing, but but the power is really held in
25:34
Speaker 3: just a few individuals' hands. Here in America, we went
25:37
Speaker 3: completely different. We were designed to be a republic in
25:41
Speaker 3: which those elected to the state legislature or holding positions
25:46
Speaker 3: within from amongst themselves choose the very best to go
25:49
Speaker 3: and choose who would be the very best to lead
25:51
Speaker 3: our country. We were also not meant to be a
25:53
Speaker 3: giant government that got into everything in the world like
25:57
Speaker 3: we do now. And we were supposed to have a
26:00
Speaker 3: Senate that was going to be a deliberative body, a
26:02
Speaker 3: little bit like the Cardinal of Cardinals, although it actually
26:07
Speaker 3: was not modeled after it directly. That's at the Vatican.
26:12
Speaker 3: But individuals who would choose from among themselves, they were
26:15
Speaker 3: not going to be affected by public opinion because they
26:18
Speaker 3: were selected basically by their own state legislature. So they
26:21
Speaker 3: chose among themselves. And then you had the House of Representatives.
26:24
Speaker 3: It was sort of supposed to be the rabble-rousing representative
26:27
Speaker 3: of the public. So the public did have a direct influence.
26:31
Speaker 3: And what happened over time is that the demand, and
26:35
Speaker 3: a lot of this had to do with journalism, even
26:37
Speaker 3: in the 1800s, demand began to grow for the public
26:42
Speaker 3: to be able to elect their senators. And then, of course, obviously,
26:46
Speaker 3: directly elect the president. And by the time we rolled
26:49
Speaker 3: into early 1900s, public opinion was so much more important
26:54
Speaker 3: because it now influenced the presidency. It influenced the Senate.
26:58
Speaker 3: and it influenced the House. So we lost all of
27:01
Speaker 3: the buffers to keep public opinion from moving things left
27:05
Speaker 3: and right. And then you get into the business of
27:08
Speaker 3: public opinion. I will tell you, Alex, as I retire,
27:12
Speaker 3: that there is a public opinion war out there. You
27:15
Speaker 3: have people like Nate Silver, 538, and other groups that
27:19
Speaker 3: set themselves up as being the.
27:21
Speaker 2: Polling, I call them the polling mavens.
27:24
Speaker 3: And then you have real clear politics, which just, they're
27:27
Speaker 3: an aggregator, And they don't play any games with the numbers.
27:31
Speaker 3: But let me tell you how this works as we
27:32
Speaker 3: go into polling season. You know, but I'm going to
27:35
Speaker 3: tell your viewers. So these groups like 538, which, of course,
27:39
Speaker 3: was shuttered, and Nate Silver and several others, when they
27:42
Speaker 3: take a pollster like Insider Advantage, and we were highly accurate,
27:46
Speaker 3: they said, well, that's just not going to work. We
27:48
Speaker 3: can't just say they're the best. So we've got to
27:50
Speaker 3: apply some other strainers here. So first of all, we'll say,
27:53
Speaker 3: are they a member of the National Association that all
27:56
Speaker 3: the pollsters join?
27:57
Speaker 2: No, we don't.
27:58
Speaker 3: Because all of the information has to go to the
28:00
Speaker 3: Roper Institute, which I consider extremely liberal and will be
28:03
Speaker 3: picked to pieces. And I don't care about going and
28:05
Speaker 3: hear these people talk about the same thing all the time.
28:08
Speaker 3: Then they'll say, well, are they transparent? Well, we put
28:11
Speaker 3: every single crosstab to all of our polls up. And
28:15
Speaker 3: they said, well, you didn't at one time. Well, that
28:16
Speaker 3: was because we were the pollsters for every Fox affiliate
28:19
Speaker 3: that was owned by Fox in America. And they put
28:22
Speaker 3: the top lines up. They just didn't bother to go
28:26
Speaker 3: to Fox. Now, this happens to Robert Cahaley over at
28:28
Speaker 3: Trafalgar and Rasmussen, so many pollsters who are good pollsters.
28:32
Speaker 3: And so what happens is they do a scorecard and
28:34
Speaker 3: they come out with it. And you get pollsters who
28:37
Speaker 3: are rated by RealClearPolitics as number one, two, and three
28:40
Speaker 3: because of pure accuracy. And they'll find other reasons. So
28:45
Speaker 3: I think Robert is shoved down as like number 125
28:47
Speaker 3: in the nation. I think Rasmussen and Insider Advantage are
28:50
Speaker 3: like number 78, 79. And guess who's in between us?
28:56
Speaker 3: Places like Mullenberg College out of Pennsylvania. I'm sure it's
29:00
Speaker 3: fine school. Not exactly household name, you know, in polling.
29:04
Speaker 3: They polled one battleground state last time. It was their
29:07
Speaker 3: state of Pennsylvania. They got it wrong. They had Harris win.
29:10
Speaker 3: But Mullenberg's way up there on the list. You'll see
29:14
Speaker 3: all of these polling firms that you've never heard of,
29:16
Speaker 3: that they give A's for their transparency and their membership,
29:20
Speaker 3: but their accuracy sucks. And that includes the New York Times-Siena,
29:26
Speaker 3: And Washington Post, who got most of their polls in 2024,
29:31
Speaker 3: they didn't get the right winner in the state. So
29:34
Speaker 3: this happens in every business. So what happens is there's
29:37
Speaker 3: a bias against Breitbart. and anybody conservative. So the news
29:41
Speaker 3: gets tainted. Then there's a bias by the fact checkers
29:45
Speaker 3: because they'll come in and say, well, or the raters,
29:47
Speaker 3: they'll say, well, Breitbart's just not, they're right of center
29:50
Speaker 3: and they're not trustworthy. Get this, I even had Snopes
29:54
Speaker 3: do a number on us. We had a poll about
29:55
Speaker 3: a year and a half ago that came out. And
29:58
Speaker 3: we had Trump's approval rating fairly high, 54%. I'll consider
30:01
Speaker 3: that overwhelming after he met with Putin. And so some
30:06
Speaker 3: young lady from Seattle, or I think Washington, don't know
30:10
Speaker 3: who she is, a stringer for them or what, decided
30:13
Speaker 3: to write a, who is this firm? Now, we have polled,
30:18
Speaker 3: we polled for Politico, we polled for ABC affiliates, NBC affiliates,
30:22
Speaker 3: and every Fox owned and operated affiliate. She writes up there,
30:27
Speaker 3: we could not find anything about this firm on their website.
30:30
Speaker 3: We had a big about us. She says, we don't
30:33
Speaker 3: know if they're credible and they didn't give all of
30:36
Speaker 3: their methodology. Well, we left out one thing that we used,
30:39
Speaker 3: I think that time text and panel because we were
30:44
Speaker 3: in a hurry to get it out. But anybody who
30:45
Speaker 3: goes to our site knows we do that and continue
30:48
Speaker 3: to go on and on. Like, in fact, she said,
30:50
Speaker 3: even this, she said, We don't even know if this
30:52
Speaker 3: firm really has an office. They have an address in Atlanta, Georgia. Now,
30:57
Speaker 3: I live in Florida. An address in Atlanta, Georgia, but
31:00
Speaker 3: we could not confirm that it's legitimate. We own the
31:03
Speaker 3: largest political magazine in the state of Georgia. Everyone in
31:07
Speaker 3: Georgia knows exactly where our office is. It's right near
31:10
Speaker 3: where the Braves play. So when you see something like this,
31:14
Speaker 3: this intellectually dishonest, in my opinion, it tells you what
31:18
Speaker 3: these people are all about.
31:19
Speaker 2: And they've done it to you. They've done it to us.
31:22
Speaker 3: And it's all designed so that their people look credible
31:26
Speaker 3: and the mirage continues to roll.
31:28
Speaker 2: Okay, it's a couple other items I want to get
31:29
Speaker 2: to in the book.
31:30
Speaker 1: The next one, and you alluded to this earlier, the
31:33
Speaker 1: framers set up one member for a 30,000 people system.
31:37
Speaker 1: And so now we don't have 11,000 members of the
31:40
Speaker 1: Congress now. Why do we cap it at 435 and
31:44
Speaker 1: just never make any adjustments from there? I mean, 11,000
31:47
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like too much, but was there a middle
31:48
Speaker 1: ground that we probably should have found?
31:51
Speaker 2: Probably.
31:52
Speaker 3: But, you know, the problem that we have with Congress
31:54
Speaker 3: and the fact that it's so large, and I got
31:56
Speaker 3: to witness this firsthand with Newt when he was speaker. It's,
32:01
Speaker 3: as you know, it's becoming almost impossible to get anything
32:03
Speaker 3: done in the House of Representatives, in part because the
32:07
Speaker 3: House has now become a top-down machine. The idea that
32:12
Speaker 3: individual members are going to come up with a great
32:14
Speaker 3: idea and introduce a bill. And by the way, this
32:16
Speaker 3: is happening in Republican legislatures all over the country as well,
32:20
Speaker 3: as well as Democrats. The days of an individual coming
32:23
Speaker 3: out with an issue, introducing a bill and it becoming
32:28
Speaker 3: legislation is almost impossible. It always has to be something
32:32
Speaker 3: that's from the top down and we get less and
32:35
Speaker 3: less done. So I'm not sure that the capping of
32:39
Speaker 3: the size was a mistake. I think the biggest mistake
32:42
Speaker 3: we have in this country, and I have believed it
32:46
Speaker 3: all my life, I believe we should have term limits.
32:49
Speaker 2: I just don't think people should go to Washington, D.C.
32:51
Speaker 2: and stay there for 40 years. That'd be nice, right?
32:54
Speaker 3: Yeah.
32:55
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just I've seen it ruin. I've seen
32:57
Speaker 2: it ruin.
32:57
Speaker 3: Now, I will say this. I live in the state
33:00
Speaker 3: of Florida. I went to law school here. So when
33:02
Speaker 3: I could get back out of Atlanta, I came back
33:04
Speaker 3: down to Tampa Bay.
33:05
Speaker 2: I live here in St.
33:06
Speaker 3: Petersburg and enjoy a nice, warm life, but go back
33:11
Speaker 3: to Atlanta a lot. But I saw this even back
33:15
Speaker 3: in earlier years, and that is that people would stay
33:18
Speaker 3: in office forever and ever and ever. And then it's
33:20
Speaker 3: all about making money, raising the money so that they
33:26
Speaker 3: can stay in office and they can move up the
33:28
Speaker 3: food chain. Because as you know, Alex, the way it
33:29
Speaker 3: works now, you've got to raise a lot of money
33:32
Speaker 3: to gain a chairmanship and to hold on to something.
33:35
Speaker 3: And that's all of the state legislatures have become like
33:38
Speaker 3: that as well. Florida is one exception. They do have
33:40
Speaker 3: term limits. And I think it has really helped Florida
33:43
Speaker 3: government because nobody can stay there and be a kingpin forever.
33:47
Speaker 3: You turn at some point, you turn back into a pumpkin.
33:51
Speaker 3: And that's a pretty damn good thing.
33:55
Speaker 2: I agree there.
33:56
Speaker 1: And the next one that I want to get to, Matt,
33:58
Speaker 1: with you is I would like to get a little
34:01
Speaker 1: bit of your perspective over all of your time. You
34:04
Speaker 1: mentioned meeting the eight presidents or working for with eight presidents.
34:08
Speaker 2: Trump just feels like a totally unique animal. We all
34:11
Speaker 2: know that.
34:12
Speaker 1: But what about him do you think separates him from
34:14
Speaker 1: people who have– we tend to think of as more
34:17
Speaker 1: archetypal American presidents because he is truly someone we haven't seen,
34:21
Speaker 1: I think, as long, at least in our lifetimes.
34:26
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the best way I can describe it
34:30
Speaker 3: is that most presidents took on– sort of the mantle
34:35
Speaker 3: of the presidency and treated it as almost being within
34:40
Speaker 3: the confines of a certain demeanor or a certain way
34:43
Speaker 3: you could speak, certain things you could comment on, very
34:46
Speaker 3: traditional view. Some took it too far. Jimmy, for example,
34:51
Speaker 3: Jimmy Carter was sort of a micromanager. By the way,
34:55
Speaker 3: Jimmy was not always the friendliest guy in the world.
34:57
Speaker 3: If he got upset with somebody, he could turn His grandson,
35:01
Speaker 3: I tell you, he could cut your legs out in
35:03
Speaker 3: a heartbeat. So, you know, he seemed like Mr. Love
35:06
Speaker 3: and he was a very fine man. But all these
35:08
Speaker 3: presidents had their behind the scene parts to them. But
35:12
Speaker 3: most of these guys were formal. They could be a
35:14
Speaker 3: little more informal. Bill Clinton was a charmer. I can
35:17
Speaker 3: just tell you that. I mean, I thoroughly enjoy, I
35:19
Speaker 3: would admit, thoroughly enjoy being around Bill Clinton. But that
35:23
Speaker 3: was part of his political persona. Donald Trump, you get
35:28
Speaker 3: what you get with Donald Trump. And he is, as
35:30
Speaker 3: you know, he is no different in the Oval Office
35:33
Speaker 3: than he is if he were out on the street
35:35
Speaker 3: with you. I mean, he may shoot any question at you.
35:39
Speaker 3: He may bring three or four people into a meeting.
35:43
Speaker 3: He can say the funniest things in the world. But
35:45
Speaker 3: you know what? He's always polite and he always wants
35:48
Speaker 3: to know what you think. And I think that is
35:50
Speaker 3: not because it's a put on. I think it's the
35:52
Speaker 3: way he operates. He wants to know. He generally wants
35:56
Speaker 3: to be loved by people and he wants to love people.
35:59
Speaker 3: But he also wants to know what they're thinking, because
36:02
Speaker 3: by osmosis, that's how you become a man of the people, right? Yeah.
36:07
Speaker 1: And I do think that one thing that he is
36:12
Speaker 1: unique in the fact that he had achieved so many
36:14
Speaker 1: things in a much longer resume than most other prior presidents,
36:18
Speaker 1: but also was a populist, too.
36:20
Speaker 2: So it's kind of an.
36:21
Speaker 1: This amazing thing where he's the richest guy, but also
36:24
Speaker 1: the person who seems to know the people the best,
36:26
Speaker 1: which was, we'll never be able to recreate that in
36:28
Speaker 1: a million years. But we can create some of the values,
36:30
Speaker 1: but it does start with whether or not we are
36:32
Speaker 1: going to lose a major demographic battle. And so I
36:35
Speaker 1: want to talk about immigration as sort of the last
36:37
Speaker 1: topic for now. And it's the, we have a combination
36:41
Speaker 1: here of keeping the public ignorant with a biased media
36:45
Speaker 1: and a failing education system, And we are trying to
36:47
Speaker 1: import people to replace Americans as our birth rate declines
36:51
Speaker 1: and more Americans, I think, can kind of get bummed
36:53
Speaker 1: out and disillusioned with.
36:54
Speaker 2: The political process.
36:56
Speaker 1: From your vantage point as a pollster and as someone
36:58
Speaker 1: who spent decades in this space, what's your recommendation longer term?
37:02
Speaker 2: Not just talking, you know, election season.
37:04
Speaker 1: Like, well, what is the longer term process for us
37:07
Speaker 1: to try to make sure that we have, we're optimized
37:12
Speaker 1: as a society when it comes to the electoral system?
37:15
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, I mean, the Democrats use the
37:19
Speaker 3: open border and the free flow of migration, immigration, as
37:24
Speaker 3: a way to build up their census numbers and their electorate.
37:28
Speaker 3: And if they had it their way, every one of
37:30
Speaker 3: these people would be voting. And I think some do.
37:34
Speaker 3: You say that, oh, you're just an ignorant southerner saying that,
37:37
Speaker 3: but we.
37:37
Speaker 2: All know it happens. And we're learning it bit by bit. Now,
37:40
Speaker 2: we don't know the numbers, hard to quantify.
37:43
Speaker 3: I believe that The fact that we have a closed
37:46
Speaker 3: border right now is the way things should.
37:48
Speaker 2: Always have been.
37:48
Speaker 3: I don't believe we should have huge amnesty for all
37:52
Speaker 3: these people who come in because too many of them,
37:54
Speaker 3: we don't know where they came from or what they
37:56
Speaker 3: were doing or what their intent is. And we're beginning
37:59
Speaker 3: to see, for example, with these mosques that are growing
38:03
Speaker 3: all over the country, suddenly we're beginning to see the
38:06
Speaker 3: possibility of states that we never thought would have this
38:09
Speaker 3: sort of problem start to see they have the same
38:12
Speaker 3: problems they have, for example, in Minnesota right now. And
38:16
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to be anti one religion or another,
38:19
Speaker 3: but this goes beyond religion. This is a political ambition.
38:24
Speaker 3: And it's been made very clear in Minnesota and other
38:26
Speaker 3: states that that's the case. So I think we have
38:28
Speaker 3: to be very circumspect. I think that what hurt us
38:31
Speaker 3: in this election is there are a small number, I mean,
38:34
Speaker 3: really small number of people who came to this country
38:37
Speaker 3: probably 40, 30 years ago and who'd been working, you know,
38:41
Speaker 3: in the local restaurant or, you know, for somebody's family forever.
38:46
Speaker 3: I've hopefully been paying taxes. When they were removed by ICE,
38:50
Speaker 3: then that affected the family, the restaurant.
38:53
Speaker 2: The whatever, and it affected some communities.
38:56
Speaker 3: We've lost some votes, for example, in the Hispanic community
38:59
Speaker 3: in Florida because they felt we were overly aggressive with ICE.
39:02
Speaker 2: Well, maybe we were.
39:04
Speaker 3: But I think we have to say this. We cannot
39:07
Speaker 3: become a nation where people just prance into this country
39:13
Speaker 3: and plop themselves down at our universities, which are rife
39:16
Speaker 3: with disaster and what they're teaching, and take advantage of us,
39:20
Speaker 3: and then see us have them turn around and tell
39:24
Speaker 3: us what to do as Americans, and tell us how
39:28
Speaker 3: our country operates. I mean, I think Ilhan Omar is
39:31
Speaker 3: a great example of the whole thing. She came into
39:33
Speaker 3: this country. We don't know how she got in here.
39:35
Speaker 3: We don't know if it's legitimate or not. I'm not
39:37
Speaker 3: making judgment on that, but she sure as hell does
39:40
Speaker 3: not hesitate to tell us what a bad country we are. And,
39:44
Speaker 3: you know, half the time you ask the question, well,
39:45
Speaker 3: we're such a bad country, as Donald Trump would say,
39:48
Speaker 3: why don't you get the hell out of here and
39:50
Speaker 3: go back home. So we're going to have to be
39:53
Speaker 3: very circumspect in the future, or we're going to be
39:55
Speaker 3: like the UK has become, like France has become. We
39:59
Speaker 3: can't allow that to happen. We've got to continue to
40:02
Speaker 3: have American exceptionalism and assimilation into the United States, not
40:07
Speaker 3: taking the US over, but assimilating into our character, our beliefs,
40:12
Speaker 3: and our foundation.
40:13
Speaker 1: Matt Towery, the book is The Honoring of Ignorance. Give
40:17
Speaker 1: us a last word here How do we beat the
40:20
Speaker 1: Mirage machine?
40:23
Speaker 3: We do it by, and this is my first effort
40:27
Speaker 3: at it, first of all, exposing it. Secondly, creating our
40:31
Speaker 3: own machine. That's the thing we don't have. And being cohesive,
40:36
Speaker 3: sticking together, making sure, because we're too busy. As I
40:40
Speaker 3: said from the very beginning, I've never, the Republican Party,
40:43
Speaker 3: the thing conservatives love to do is put down other conservatives.
40:46
Speaker 3: And it's just like, you're never going to get anywhere
40:49
Speaker 3: If you spend all your time talking about how everybody
40:51
Speaker 3: else in the room is an idiot but you, you
40:53
Speaker 3: got to all work together. Doesn't mean you have to
40:56
Speaker 3: be dishonest. We want honest information. What you put on Breitbart,
41:00
Speaker 3: it's not political. They wouldn't have people believe that it's
41:04
Speaker 3: made up stuff for conservatives to read. No, that's not
41:09
Speaker 3: what it is. What you're doing is you're putting out
41:12
Speaker 3: the truth. And because it's the truth and it's not
41:15
Speaker 3: the truth that they put out, They label it as
41:18
Speaker 3: crap and it's right wing.
41:21
Speaker 2: And we got to end that.
41:23
Speaker 3: And that's by everyone coming together. I say with my book,
41:28
Speaker 3: get a copy, Honoring of Ignorance.
41:30
Speaker 2: Go to Thanksgiving.
41:31
Speaker 3: You know you're going to run into family members who
41:33
Speaker 3: can't stand you because you're a conservative. You vote for
41:35
Speaker 3: Trump or whatever. Give them this book. I dare them
41:39
Speaker 3: to read this book and beat you in a debate.
41:41
Speaker 3: I started my whole career after winning the National Debate Championship.
41:44
Speaker 3: That's how I got there. Wow. It was the National
41:47
Speaker 3: Bicentennial Debate Championship, which really sounds scary.
41:49
Speaker 2: It tells you how old I am. And I'm a
41:52
Speaker 2: debater at heart.
41:53
Speaker 3: And I wrote this with the idea that my left-wing friends,
41:57
Speaker 3: and I have a lot of left-wing friends, I told them,
41:59
Speaker 3: I said, read the book and come back and tell
42:00
Speaker 3: me where I'm wrong.
42:02
Speaker 2: I haven't heard a word yet.
42:03
Speaker 3: Amazing.
42:04
Speaker 2: It's only been out for a few days. Very, very interesting. Yeah,
42:09
Speaker 2: it is.
42:09
Speaker 1: It does look like you're providing a lot of rapid
42:11
Speaker 1: fire arguments for people and we are in a debate culture.
42:14
Speaker 2: It does convince a lot of people. So it's important.
42:16
Speaker 2: You're going to convince your friends and family.
42:18
Speaker 1: If you're in your community, the carpool line and the,
42:24
Speaker 1: T-ball games is where a lot of changes are made.
42:26
Speaker 1: Church groups, all this stuff is that we can get
42:28
Speaker 1: through to people one boat at a time. Matt Tower,
42:31
Speaker 1: we appreciate the decades of work and the good stuff
42:33
Speaker 1: on this book. And come back soon.
42:35
Speaker 2: We'll talk some more.
42:36
Speaker 3: Well, thank you for all you do because it's what
42:38
Speaker 3: you guys are doing. You're going to carry this flame
42:40
Speaker 3: a lot longer than I am. So I congratulate you.
42:43
Speaker 2: It's all the same ecosystem. We're all part of it.
42:45
Speaker 2: We're all in the same direction, as I say. Thanks, Matt.
42:47
Speaker 2: See you soon. Thank you, Alex. Thanks to Missy for
42:50
Speaker 2: putting this together. Go in peace to love and serve
42:51
Speaker 2: the Lord.
42:54
Speaker 1: Thank you.