Latest / Common Sense Ohio / Early Voting, Big Opinions: What’s New in Ohio’s Midterms This Time

Transcript

Early Voting, Big Opinions: What’s New in Ohio’s Midterms This Time · Common Sense Ohio

• 0:00
  Steve: It is October 28th, 2026. The midterms
• 0:04
  Steve: are on us. Halloween is right around the corner. Paris is burning.
• 0:08
  Steve: What else can we talk about? Right. Common Sense Ohio. I was just talking to
• 0:12
  Steve: our sponsor, Glenn Harper, on the way up today. He's got some interesting
• 0:15
  Steve: investment opportunities for— you know what he said? He goes, look, hang out. You sort
• 0:19
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• 0:21
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• 0:25
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• 0:29
  Steve: own practices. True, that is. I have found in my career, um, as my dad
• 0:33
  Steve: says, if you hang with dogs, you get fleas. Um, he also said that I
• 0:36
  Steve: trust you implicitly unless you're with your buddies, then I don't trust any of you.
• 0:40
  Steve: Um, good advice. Sound advice for you parents out there. Uh, but anyway,
• 0:43
  Steve: HarperPlus Accounting, our sponsor, our accountant, could be yours.
• 0:48
  Steve: Uh, this day in history, uh, interesting. Grover Cleveland, as it turns out,
• 0:51
  Steve: Norm, on this day in 1886,
• 0:56
  Steve: dedicates the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, accompanied by New
• 0:59
  Steve: York's first ticker tape parade. Oh, how
• 1:03
  Steve: times have changed. Yeah. Um, now we have Mondami,
• 1:07
  Steve: uh, praying facing Mecca and, uh,
• 1:12
  Steve: touting the benefits of communism. And that's back when
• 1:17
  Norm Murdock: wealthy France was giving us gifts. Right. Like the
• 1:20
  Norm Murdock: statue. I mean, really, what, what could be more different? Or what could be— I
• 1:24
  Norm Murdock: mean, it's all upside down now. The contrast. Yeah. A couple
• 1:28
  Steve: little interesting facts about Grover Cleveland, an Ohio man, of course.
• 1:33
  Steve: He had secret oral cancer surgery. I remember hearing about this in high school.
• 1:37
  Steve: They basically cut out part of his upper jaw and did some things. Wow.
• 1:42
  Steve: He was the Baby Ruth candy bar named after his daughter.
• 1:48
  Norm Murdock: Interesting. Yeah. He had a scandalous past during the
• 1:51
  Steve: 1884 campaign. Opponents exposed that Cleveland had fathered an
• 1:55
  Steve: out-of-wedlock child with a Buffalo woman named Maria Halpin. Instead of hiding from
• 1:59
  Steve: it, Cleveland instructed his campaign to tell the truth, which helped neutralize the political
• 2:02
  Steve: damage. So way ahead of his time. Yeah. So he didn't say, I did not
• 2:06
  Steve: have sexual relations with that woman. He said, I did it. Sure. Uh,
• 2:10
  Steve: anyway. Yeah. Uh, Grover Cleveland makes it big this day in history
• 2:13
  Steve: in 1886, whenever I said that. So,
• 2:17
  Steve: uh, lots going on, lots to talk about. Elections. I
• 2:20
  Steve: mean, really. Ohio. You want to start in Ohio? Yeah. So
• 2:24
  Norm Murdock: pretty much, you know, I just want to say this at the beginning
• 2:28
  Norm Murdock: because all of this is going to sound like a
• 2:32
  Norm Murdock: continual criticism of
• 2:35
  Norm Murdock: fat, dumb, and happy.
• 2:40
  Norm Murdock: You know, we have this culture now, this consumer
• 2:43
  Norm Murdock: culture that wants to be coddled and wants everything
• 2:47
  Norm Murdock: to be You know, secure and safe.
• 2:51
  Norm Murdock: And if people are— and people are risk-averse and all of that. So
• 2:55
  Norm Murdock: this will sound like one— this show, for me anyway, will
• 2:59
  Norm Murdock: sound like one continuous complaint. So I want to
• 3:03
  Norm Murdock: say at the beginning that I think it's important for
• 3:06
  Norm Murdock: conservatives, of which I
• 3:11
  Norm Murdock: am at this time, to be of good cheer. And why do I say
• 3:15
  Norm Murdock: that? Because When
• 3:19
  Norm Murdock: your belief system is under duress, when it's being attacked, when
• 3:23
  Norm Murdock: it's possibly gonna fall out of favor in
• 3:27
  Norm Murdock: the, in the General Assembly, in, I should say, in Congress,
• 3:31
  Norm Murdock: and, um, you know, we may lose the Senate, we may lose the House,
• 3:35
  Norm Murdock: um, and the governorship in Ohio.
• 3:40
  Norm Murdock: It's especially important now to really hold on to your faith,
• 3:45
  Norm Murdock: whatever religion or belief system you have. Really
• 3:49
  Norm Murdock: hold on to the tenets of, of your faith. And,
• 3:54
  Norm Murdock: and this is the time to be strong. It's the
• 3:57
  Norm Murdock: time to be, um, positive.
• 4:02
  Norm Murdock: It's the time to be the most patriotic. You know, in times
• 4:06
  Norm Murdock: of peace, it's easy to be patriotic, right? Because there's No, there's
• 4:10
  Norm Murdock: no sacrifice to be made. So
• 4:14
  Norm Murdock: my ethic going forward, regardless of what happens,
• 4:18
  Norm Murdock: uh, next week, is, is to be positive and to be
• 4:23
  Norm Murdock: of, uh, and to be happy in my life, uh,
• 4:27
  Norm Murdock: given what I can control, Steve. Well, look, thankful. And to thank my God. A
• 4:30
  Steve: little gratitude. This is the greatest country on Earth.
• 4:34
  Norm Murdock: And sometimes you have to go through a nadir to reach
• 4:39
  Norm Murdock: a height, an apogee later. So what you're describing is
• 4:43
  Steve: what I tell often my clients. And one of the messages, like I said,
• 4:47
  Steve: my dad told me he trusted me unless I was my friend. My message to
• 4:50
  Steve: my sons has always been, don't use the
• 4:53
  Steve: magic words. The magic words are
• 4:56
  Steve: eff it, screw it. Don't use those magic words
• 5:01
  Steve: because look, if you don't think it can get worse, it can. It can get
• 5:03
  Norm Murdock: a lot worse. And usually what you do when you say, you know what, we
• 5:06
  Steve: lost the midterms, we're gonna lose the House, we're gonna lose the Senate, screw it,
• 5:10
  Steve: I'm not even gonna vote. Yeah, I give up. I give up. Yeah, right. Or
• 5:13
  Steve: screw it, I'm just gonna go hide in my garage or in my basement or
• 5:16
  Steve: in my backwoods and ignore the world. Yeah, yeah. Screw
• 5:19
  Steve: it, I'm not gonna keep, you know, why should I keep doing? Because the fight
• 5:23
  Steve: is worth it. I think God wants us to fight the fight. He does. Provided
• 5:26
  Steve: it's in the right direction that leads to him. That's right. And giving
• 5:30
  Steve: up is least desirable of
• 5:34
  Steve: human traits, I think. Maybe, maybe, maybe a second, maybe
• 5:38
  Steve: second to envy. Yeah. I mean, we're— or pride. We're in,
• 5:42
  Norm Murdock: we're in a jungle and you can do an ostrich number and
• 5:45
  Norm Murdock: stick your head in the sand and, and, and not see the lion that's
• 5:49
  Norm Murdock: coming up to eat your butt. That's right. I mean, you know, you, you have
• 5:53
  Norm Murdock: to be up and aware, your head on a swivel. And that doesn't
• 5:57
  Norm Murdock: mean that you need to be defensive. It doesn't mean that you,
• 6:01
  Norm Murdock: you know, you need to be, uh, uh,
• 6:04
  Norm Murdock: impolite or, or, uh, or,
• 6:08
  Norm Murdock: you know, tear up, uh, who you perceive to be your political
• 6:12
  Norm Murdock: enemies. You know, you can still be ethical. You could still
• 6:16
  Norm Murdock: be the Christian or Judeo, uh,
• 6:21
  Norm Murdock: even Muslim person of good cheer that you are if you're a
• 6:24
  Norm Murdock: conservative. You don't need to be, you
• 6:28
  Norm Murdock: don't have to lower yourself and punch down. No. And
• 6:32
  Steve: if you say screw it and just give up, then you have ceded the
• 6:35
  Steve: field to the enemy. That's right. And I hate to say enemy, but I think
• 6:39
  Steve: in this situation it's getting very close. It's not just the other side. We're not
• 6:43
  Steve: just debating fiscal policy here. We're debating like
• 6:46
  Steve: substantial fundamental changes. Existential even. Yeah. I mean,
• 6:51
  Steve: we're— yes. But, you know, this country has
• 6:54
  Steve: survived lots, and, uh, the mettle of the
• 6:58
  Steve: men and women behind us on, on whose shoulders we
• 7:02
  Steve: stand, uh, they overcame it, and we can too,
• 7:06
  Norm Murdock: right? Um, I don't— I'm not even sure we're gonna lose the midterms.
• 7:10
  Norm Murdock: I'm not either. Um, so I, I've looked
• 7:14
  Norm Murdock: over a lot of statistics going into this, and
• 7:18
  Norm Murdock: The biggest thing that has happened, I would say, in the last
• 7:22
  Norm Murdock: 20 years or so is we no longer have an
• 7:26
  Norm Murdock: Election Day. We have an election season.
• 7:30
  Steve: Mm-hmm. And it is fundamentally changing
• 7:34
  Norm Murdock: the nature of— it's changing the outcome
• 7:39
  Norm Murdock: because even though they're not
• 7:42
  Norm Murdock: able to They're not going to tell us what the tallies are
• 7:47
  Norm Murdock: leading up to until after the election day.
• 7:51
  Norm Murdock: What they do know and what is reported publicly, so the
• 7:55
  Norm Murdock: candidates know it, is they know who has already voted.
• 7:59
  Norm Murdock: In Ohio right now, as of today, I
• 8:03
  Norm Murdock: pulled this off the Secretary of State's
• 8:07
  Norm Murdock: website this morning. As of the close of
• 8:11
  Norm Murdock: business yesterday, 1.2 million Ohioans
• 8:15
  Norm Murdock: have already voted. Okay. And we're a week away from elect— a
• 8:19
  Norm Murdock: little less than a week away from Election Day. That
• 8:23
  Norm Murdock: computes, uh, so there's 8 million registered
• 8:26
  Norm Murdock: Ohio voters. In the last midterm, 4
• 8:30
  Norm Murdock: million of the 8 million cast ballots.
• 8:34
  Norm Murdock: Now they're expecting a little higher turnout. In the general
• 8:38
  Norm Murdock: election, when Trump most recently got elected in 2024,
• 8:43
  Norm Murdock: 5.2 million of the 8 million voted. But this is a
• 8:47
  Norm Murdock: midterm, and they're expecting a little bit more than the 4 million.
• 8:51
  Norm Murdock: So let's, let's guesstimate that the total
• 8:55
  Norm Murdock: turnout early and on Election Day will be
• 8:58
  Norm Murdock: somewhere around 5 million. That's a fair enough— Reasonable guess.
• 9:02
  Norm Murdock: Okay. If 1.2 million have
• 9:06
  Norm Murdock: all already voted early, uh, as of
• 9:10
  Norm Murdock: yesterday, I think it's reasonable to say another, say,
• 9:14
  Norm Murdock: 300 mil— 300,000, maybe
• 9:18
  Norm Murdock: a half a million more will come in in the final week. And the
• 9:22
  Norm Murdock: way they're coming in, Steve, is approximately
• 9:25
  Norm Murdock: two-thirds are showing up in person. to vote early. Mm-hmm.
• 9:30
  Norm Murdock: And about 1/3 are, are doing it by mail.
• 9:35
  Norm Murdock: Um, about 2/3 of those voting early
• 9:39
  Norm Murdock: are above the age of 60. And that kind of
• 9:43
  Norm Murdock: gets into your, um, guarded
• 9:47
  Norm Murdock: optimism about not, not being sure we're going to lose the
• 9:51
  Norm Murdock: midterms as conservatives. So because
• 9:55
  Norm Murdock: the older voters tend to vote a little bit more conservative, In
• 9:58
  Norm Murdock: general. But at any rate, what my
• 10:02
  Norm Murdock: point is, if we have right around
• 10:06
  Norm Murdock: 1.5 to 1.6 million
• 10:10
  Norm Murdock: Ohioans voting early and not on Election Day,
• 10:15
  Norm Murdock: that's about one-third, somewhere between
• 10:18
  Norm Murdock: one-fourth and one-third of all the votes cast will
• 10:22
  Norm Murdock: be early votes. And what's—
• 10:26
  Norm Murdock: you got to think about this, folks. What
• 10:31
  Norm Murdock: status or what is the state of affairs on the day
• 10:35
  Norm Murdock: you vote early will sometimes drive how
• 10:39
  Norm Murdock: you vote, especially if you're an emotional voter, right?
• 10:43
  Norm Murdock: So if when we all voted on Election Day, we all
• 10:47
  Norm Murdock: used the same set of facts, the same state of affairs
• 10:51
  Norm Murdock: as of that day. So you know which candidates got
• 10:55
  Norm Murdock: pulled over for DUI or which candidates'
• 10:58
  Norm Murdock: wives accused them of, you know, wife beating and which
• 11:02
  Norm Murdock: candidates dodged the draft and which candidates,
• 11:06
  Norm Murdock: you know, did— got a big donation from this billionaire,
• 11:10
  Norm Murdock: whatever it is. We all had the same data as
• 11:14
  Norm Murdock: of that day. What the danger is
• 11:18
  Norm Murdock: with early voting, especially when you have something like 1/3 of the
• 11:22
  Norm Murdock: people have already voted, is that they're
• 11:25
  Norm Murdock: voting potentially on a set of facts that are
• 11:29
  Norm Murdock: maybe 2, 3 weeks old, Steve. Yeah. Well, look, I mean— And the
• 11:33
  Norm Murdock: conditions can change. The war could end. The October
• 11:37
  Steve: surprise is going to turn into a September surprise. It's going
• 11:41
  Steve: to turn into an August surprise. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know,
• 11:45
  Norm Murdock: Things that you thought were not going to get fixed, and so you
• 11:49
  Norm Murdock: voted for or against somebody based on that,
• 11:53
  Norm Murdock: might have been fixed a week or two later. And, and, and
• 11:57
  Norm Murdock: then you slap your head and go, oh, I didn't know that about Amy
• 12:00
  Norm Murdock: Acton or Vivek Ramaswamy. Oh, I didn't know that they were in favor
• 12:04
  Norm Murdock: of this or against that. And so you can
• 12:08
  Norm Murdock: go back to your board of election technically And you
• 12:12
  Norm Murdock: can cancel your ballot up to 2— you can vote
• 12:16
  Norm Murdock: up to 3 times before they say no more ballots.
• 12:20
  Norm Murdock: In other words, you can invalidate an early
• 12:23
  Norm Murdock: ballot twice if you want to do that.
• 12:28
  Norm Murdock: And I would venture to say almost nobody does that.
• 12:32
  Steve: Yeah. Because it's a huge undertaking to, you know, like— No, you're not going to
• 12:36
  Steve: do it. You're not going to— you're not going to— people aren't going to know
• 12:38
  Steve: they can. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that's— so there is that thing out
• 12:42
  Norm Murdock: there. And I guess I am, I am really
• 12:45
  Norm Murdock: uncomfortable that the plebiscite, those of us
• 12:49
  Norm Murdock: voting, the pool of people, the 8 million Ohioans that are
• 12:53
  Norm Murdock: registered, I'm very uncomfortable that we're all
• 12:57
  Norm Murdock: voting in phases
• 13:01
  Norm Murdock: rather than on a particular day. Well, I
• 13:05
  Norm Murdock: think that's dangerous. I'm with you. I've never liked this. I liked, you know, when
• 13:08
  Steve: I was a kid, when I first started voting, absentee ballots were like, they were
• 13:11
  Steve: for people living abroad or military. Yeah. That was it. Yeah. And
• 13:16
  Steve: you know, you would vote absentee, otherwise you vote on the day. That's right. And
• 13:19
  Steve: now, you know, and people will justify it in all
• 13:23
  Steve: sorts of ways. They'll justify it in all sorts of ways. But whatever burden there
• 13:26
  Steve: is to vote extends to everybody on both sides.
• 13:31
  Steve: I'm with you. I, I, look, you want to, you want to have early voting
• 13:34
  Steve: maybe for a week. Yeah. So, you know, just
• 13:38
  Steve: because you're like, if I had a doctor's appointment that day or if I got
• 13:41
  Steve: something going on that day, maybe that makes sense. But anyway, we're not going to
• 13:44
  Steve: win that argument. It's going to, it's only going to increase. Uh, it's not going
• 13:48
  Steve: to decrease. I think it's interesting that
• 13:53
  Norm Murdock: 2 years ago and then 4 years ago,
• 13:56
  Norm Murdock: Ohioans were, uh, using the mail-in
• 14:00
  Norm Murdock: ballot to a much higher degree. It's,
• 14:04
  Norm Murdock: it's now, like I said, it's only about a third of the early
• 14:08
  Norm Murdock: voting. More and more Ohioans are
• 14:12
  Norm Murdock: lining up in a line, but they're doing it weeks ahead of time.
• 14:16
  Steve: Yeah. Uh, and, and I find that really interesting that
• 14:20
  Norm Murdock: it— I wonder if that's because Frank LaRose and the
• 14:24
  Norm Murdock: legislature, uh, have tightened up the mail-in
• 14:28
  Norm Murdock: ballot procedures. Well, what I would like to know then— Maybe made it
• 14:32
  Norm Murdock: a little bit more detail-oriented, right? To prove
• 14:36
  Norm Murdock: who you are. Maybe, you know, you have to give your Social
• 14:40
  Norm Murdock: Security number or your Ohio driver's
• 14:43
  Norm Murdock: license number, or you have to attach
• 14:47
  Norm Murdock: proof with a photograph of, of who you are,
• 14:51
  Norm Murdock: because the other 2 demand, you know, some sort of,
• 14:55
  Norm Murdock: you know, either a fingerprint, a birth certificate, or a photograph.
• 15:00
  Steve: Yeah. And I also wonder, maybe, just maybe,
• 15:04
  Steve: the original or the numbers went up during COVID on mail-in voting.
• 15:09
  Norm Murdock: Ah, so I would like to see— Excellent point. Excellent point. I'd like to see
• 15:12
  Steve: like the, the data, the 2 before COVID And then the 2 or 3
• 15:16
  Steve: after COVID and just see if it's a spike. Yeah, I don't— that's a
• 15:20
  Norm Murdock: great— that is an excellent point. Wow. Yeah, so,
• 15:24
  Norm Murdock: um, you know, uh, it, you know, there's that effect.
• 15:28
  Norm Murdock: And so it kind of, it kind of, uh,
• 15:32
  Norm Murdock: upsets me actually to see this huge
• 15:36
  Norm Murdock: amount of spending. Like, Musk has contributed,
• 15:40
  Norm Murdock: I think, largest amount ever to a political party
• 15:44
  Norm Murdock: for its campaign ads. But he did that like
• 15:48
  Norm Murdock: 2 weeks ago, and at that point,
• 15:52
  Norm Murdock: roughly a million Ohioans had already voted. And
• 15:56
  Norm Murdock: it seems to me like we're using political assets
• 16:01
  Norm Murdock: to fight yesterday's war, so to speak. Like,
• 16:05
  Norm Murdock: the ground game now to me, is to
• 16:09
  Norm Murdock: set the narrative early in the summer.
• 16:13
  Norm Murdock: And the Democrats, in my opinion, by painting
• 16:17
  Norm Murdock: Ramaswamy and Jon Husted in a
• 16:21
  Norm Murdock: terrible light, and they hammered away— It worked. I think
• 16:25
  Steve: it worked. Yes. In June and July, those ads were not being
• 16:29
  Norm Murdock: answered. And you had this narrative that Jon
• 16:33
  Norm Murdock: Husted was you know, unilaterally the guy
• 16:36
  Norm Murdock: behind data centers and high property taxes. And
• 16:40
  Norm Murdock: Vivek Ramaswamy was out there selling a cancer medicine
• 16:45
  Norm Murdock: that did not only didn't work, but like it led
• 16:49
  Norm Murdock: to people dying, you know. And all of this stuff that was
• 16:52
  Norm Murdock: irrational, you know, and, and, and made it look as
• 16:56
  Norm Murdock: if to suburban, particularly,
• 17:00
  Norm Murdock: uh, female voters that there was something
• 17:04
  Norm Murdock: evil or malevolent about the Republican candidates.
• 17:08
  Norm Murdock: And this went on all summer of
• 17:11
  Norm Murdock: 2026. And then Musk and other, you know, the,
• 17:15
  Norm Murdock: the, the, the, um, the Senate Republican fund
• 17:20
  Norm Murdock: that Tim Scott oversees and all the— well, they're kicking in a lot of money
• 17:23
  Norm Murdock: now, but it's like they're making up for lost ground, right? Whether
• 17:27
  Norm Murdock: it's Ken Paxton in, in, in down in Texas,
• 17:31
  Norm Murdock: or Mike Rogers up in Michigan. It's like those,
• 17:35
  Norm Murdock: those races, like they should be well in hand by now.
• 17:40
  Steve: And, and they're not. And they're coin flips. They're not. I mean, look, even Ohio.
• 17:43
  Steve: So I'm checking out Ohio's polls here. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the polls. You've
• 17:47
  Steve: got District 15,
• 17:51
  Steve: which I guess looks to be— is that Kerry?
• 17:56
  Steve: It doesn't matter. The incumbent? I don't know. Okay. The
• 18:00
  Steve: information I'm looking at, I should know this, but— No, that's okay, man. So District
• 18:02
  Steve: 15, it looks like it includes all the surrounding, you
• 18:06
  Steve: sort of go east from Columbus and then above Dayton
• 18:10
  Steve: looked like— I think that might be Mike Carey. I think that is Mike Carey.
• 18:13
  Norm Murdock: Yeah, I think it is. Well, we can find out. And of course Jordan, you
• 18:17
  Norm Murdock: know, is here and he's gonna get reelected, so.
• 18:22
  Steve: We'll see. But, you know, you've got District 15 is,
• 18:26
  Steve: uh, Steve Stivers. Oh, okay.
• 18:30
  Steve: Currently represented by Mike Carey, was represented by Stivers. Okay. I thought he resigned to
• 18:34
  Steve: become— so, you know, that's sort of like the eastern side of Columbus up through
• 18:38
  Steve: Dublin, Ohio. Yeah. Heading down south, goes north of Springfield
• 18:41
  Steve: and all the way up to like, uh, you know, the sort of north heading
• 18:45
  Steve: northeast Ohio. Pretty freaking red. You would
• 18:49
  Steve: think. You would think, right? But it pulls Republican 5.5, up
• 18:53
  Steve: 5.5, but still that's almost margin of error. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then
• 18:58
  Steve: District 1, uh, Don Leonard,
• 19:02
  Steve: uh, that leans Democrat, but even that he's up 7 or
• 19:06
  Steve: no, that's 7. Let me see. 1, District 1 is a
• 19:10
  Steve: toss-up, you know, and that's Who knows? Yeah.
• 19:14
  Steve: Um, when I went through the congressional battles,
• 19:19
  Norm Murdock: it looked to me whether it was a Republican or a Democrat,
• 19:23
  Norm Murdock: whoever the incumbent was, it seems like at the
• 19:27
  Norm Murdock: congressional level it's kind of like, oh, my
• 19:31
  Norm Murdock: guy's not a crook, you know. It's like people are a little bit more—
• 19:37
  Norm Murdock: I don't know, I don't think they really understand what the you
• 19:41
  Norm Murdock: know, 425 congressmen really do. You know,
• 19:45
  Norm Murdock: they're, they're kind of like checked out on that. They, they can grasp
• 19:49
  Norm Murdock: what Trump's doing, maybe what their senator and their governor are doing.
• 19:53
  Steve: Mm-hmm. But the congressmen kind of get this, you know,
• 19:57
  Norm Murdock: they get this pass because it's such a huge group
• 20:01
  Norm Murdock: and nobody's really able to
• 20:05
  Norm Murdock: say, oh, I made this happen. because it's a group
• 20:09
  Norm Murdock: effort. So look, the ones that scare me in Ohio— yeah, District
• 20:13
  Steve: 7. Okay, it's, it's leaning Democrat. We have a Republican incumbent, Max
• 20:17
  Steve: Miller, and that includes like Medina, Ashland, I mean
• 20:21
  Steve: Holmes County. These are conservative places. Now he's the guy that
• 20:24
  Norm Murdock: stepped on his weenie with, um, Bernie Moreno's daughter.
• 20:29
  Steve: Oh yeah, that's that race, right? He, he's a— he's in a
• 20:33
  Norm Murdock: very ugly divorce with her. And she's accused him
• 20:37
  Norm Murdock: of domestic violence, which he has denied. Yeah. And who the hell
• 20:41
  Norm Murdock: knows the truth of that? So who knows? And the polling— that's hurting him. The
• 20:44
  Steve: polling may be off. I mean, it's, it's Democrat up 7.9. They've got
• 20:48
  Steve: Ohio District 9. That's sort of the northeast or
• 20:52
  Steve: northwest Ohio. I said east before and I was talking about 15, but I meant
• 20:55
  Steve: west. Um, northwest Ohio, like the very top corner. Again,
• 20:59
  Steve: rural place. It should be Democrat, right? Um, there's a Republican— or there's a— or
• 21:02
  Steve: it should be Republican. There's a Democrat incumbent right now, and it looks like the
• 21:06
  Steve: Republicans are up, or they're calling a toss-up at 4.4. So maybe we pick one
• 21:10
  Steve: up there. Yeah. Uh, and then of course, um, uh,
• 21:15
  Steve: we've got the governor's race with Ramaswamy. And, um—
• 21:19
  Norm Murdock: So I did a little work on, on those polls. So there's been
• 21:23
  Norm Murdock: 41 polls, and if you synthesize the polls,
• 21:27
  Norm Murdock: there's this there's this, um, calculator where
• 21:31
  Norm Murdock: it'll take every poll, you know, even the, the ones that are
• 21:35
  Norm Murdock: biased one way, the ones that are biased the other way, and the different,
• 21:39
  Norm Murdock: you know, news organizations. So 41 different polls
• 21:43
  Norm Murdock: synthesized together on the Brown versus Houston
• 21:47
  Norm Murdock: Senate race. Mm-hmm. Um, the average is saying
• 21:51
  Norm Murdock: 3.5%, uh, advantage for Brown. right now.
• 21:55
  Norm Murdock: Um, the prediction markets say there's a 67%
• 22:00
  Norm Murdock: chance that Brown will win. Um, and of course, you know,
• 22:03
  Norm Murdock: those are gamblers. Like Polly Market, right? Yeah, that, you know, those
• 22:07
  Norm Murdock: aren't scientific other than just, you know, people
• 22:11
  Norm Murdock: laying a bet. And then for governor, uh, it's a little
• 22:15
  Norm Murdock: better, uh, for Vivek. Uh, so 33 polls
• 22:19
  Norm Murdock: in that synthesis. And it's being said that the
• 22:24
  Norm Murdock: average is a 2.9%, uh, advantage for
• 22:27
  Norm Murdock: Acton. And oddly enough, a higher
• 22:31
  Norm Murdock: prediction market for her, 77%. Yeah, I'm looking at the
• 22:35
  Steve: same thing. So, you know, Ramaswamy is at
• 22:38
  Steve: 45.6%, Acton 47.9%.
• 22:42
  Norm Murdock: Pretty tight. Uh, Polly market though is 78%
• 22:46
  Steve: for, uh, act. And so what's your prediction? Well,
• 22:50
  Steve: really, the big ones matter. The big ones that matter— you got Senate and you
• 22:53
  Steve: got governor. Yeah, I think Brown— so he has huge
• 22:57
  Norm Murdock: name recognition. We all have to remember it was just in
• 23:00
  Norm Murdock: 2022 that, um, JD Vance, who was on our show,
• 23:05
  Norm Murdock: defeated Sherrod Brown for that seat. So
• 23:09
  Norm Murdock: Brown is, you know, I think he's going to win. I think
• 23:12
  Norm Murdock: he's going to get his seat. I think Husted has been painted
• 23:16
  Norm Murdock: as the data center guy. Well, not only that, the energy guy. I mean, the
• 23:20
  Norm Murdock: energy guy, the, you know, he's the high taxes guy.
• 23:24
  Norm Murdock: And, and, you know, he was active with JobsOhio,
• 23:28
  Norm Murdock: of which I've been tremendously critical myself. He
• 23:32
  Norm Murdock: was, of course, uh, the, uh, you know,
• 23:35
  Norm Murdock: lieutenant governor under DeWine. And DeWine is, I
• 23:39
  Norm Murdock: think, a very unpopular governor. He, he, he, he
• 23:43
  Norm Murdock: got reelected basically because he has an R behind, but he's,
• 23:48
  Norm Murdock: you know, behind his name. But he's— he is a RINO, and he's been
• 23:51
  Norm Murdock: governing effectively as a Democrat, in my opinion. Yeah, I know, I
• 23:55
  Steve: agree. And I think Acton is going to be worthless as a governor. Yeah, yeah.
• 23:59
  Steve: Um, I mean, she can't even— she can't videotape her own, you know, she
• 24:03
  Steve: won't let— so— And the Vivek ad with her mother is
• 24:06
  Norm Murdock: devastating, I think. I, you know, that, that cuts both ways. I think there was
• 24:10
  Steve: a better way for Vivek to get that message out, and there was a better
• 24:13
  Steve: way, and it didn't. Possibly. Who knows? I
• 24:17
  Norm Murdock: don't know, man. You know, if it was Vivek's mother
• 24:21
  Norm Murdock: saying those kinds of things about him, oh, they would have been all over it,
• 24:24
  Steve: right? People, you know, the other side. This is what the irony— this is, this
• 24:27
  Steve: is the hypocrisy of it. So when the left goes
• 24:31
  Steve: after the character of those on the right, it's perfectly okay because
• 24:35
  Steve: they're right. Yeah, right. Exactly. They're mean people. Yeah, they're mean
• 24:39
  Steve: people and they, they've got righteousness on their side, but when it happens in reverse,
• 24:42
  Steve: they get all outraged. Yes. Um, so my prediction, I
• 24:46
  Steve: think, I think Vivek wins. I do too. Um, I agree.
• 24:50
  Steve: I— in a squeaker. In a squeaker. Maybe even a, maybe even a, we don't
• 24:54
  Steve: even get a result right away. Yeah. Uh, and, uh, I'm gonna go out on
• 24:57
  Steve: a limb and I think Housted wins. Wow, man. I hope you're right because,
• 25:01
  Steve: and maybe I'm just wishful thinking, And I think this because
• 25:06
  Steve: they either both win or they both lose. Okay, you think hand in glove? Because
• 25:10
  Steve: I think those voting, those going out to vote, are going to go
• 25:13
  Steve: out and vote the ticket. Yeah, that's what I think. And the
• 25:17
  Norm Murdock: issues are being melded together such
• 25:21
  Norm Murdock: that if you feel strongly about the
• 25:25
  Norm Murdock: issues that would determine Houston versus Brown
• 25:29
  Norm Murdock: or Acton versus Ramaswamy, I think you're right. I think they
• 25:33
  Norm Murdock: vote the same way. Mm-hmm. Because they
• 25:37
  Norm Murdock: either understand that these guys are not the evil
• 25:40
  Norm Murdock: masterminds that they've made them out to be, or
• 25:45
  Norm Murdock: they understand on the other side that Brown and Acton
• 25:49
  Norm Murdock: are going to be a disaster. It's just going to be—
• 25:53
  Norm Murdock: we're in for— it won't be It won't be like
• 25:57
  Norm Murdock: the old Democrat governors of yore,
• 26:01
  Norm Murdock: like Celeste, uh, you know, who in my opinion
• 26:05
  Norm Murdock: was a pretty decent governor as a Democrat, pretty good governor.
• 26:10
  Norm Murdock: And, you know, his office was open, you could actually lobby him
• 26:14
  Norm Murdock: on an issue, and, and, and, and he would, you know, take it in
• 26:18
  Norm Murdock: and, and decide against you. But, you know, the there was
• 26:23
  Norm Murdock: respect for the idea of diverse opinions.
• 26:27
  Norm Murdock: And I just don't think— I think Acton, based on how she was as
• 26:31
  Norm Murdock: the, as the director of the Department of Health, I— Well,
• 26:35
  Steve: she's a yes woman. She's gonna do whatever the party wants. She is not. So
• 26:38
  Steve: look, if you're— She's doctrinaire. It's an interesting
• 26:42
  Steve: concept. And, you know, maybe it's nothing. Maybe it's something that I didn't come
• 26:46
  Steve: to realize until I was Well into my career.
• 26:52
  Steve: People aren't attracted to those who simply try to please everybody.
• 26:56
  Norm Murdock: No, they're not. They're not. At the end of the day, that fails.
• 27:01
  Norm Murdock: Yeah. It does. And if you're just going with the flow, doing what you're going
• 27:04
  Steve: to do, people are attracted to— by attracted, I mean drawn to
• 27:09
  Steve: decision makers. That's true. Right or wrong. Right. Yeah. People who say, look, I don't
• 27:13
  Steve: care what you think. here's what I think, here's what I'm going to do. Yeah.
• 27:16
  Steve: And at the same time say, I'm curious what you— they're not saying I don't
• 27:18
  Steve: care at all what you think, but it's my decision. I'm going to incorporate that.
• 27:21
  Steve: I'm going to make a call. Right. And Acton does not seem like she has
• 27:25
  Steve: any spine to do that. None. No, none. Except
• 27:30
  Norm Murdock: for her preformed, rigid social
• 27:34
  Norm Murdock: ideas that she's— Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about.
• 27:38
  Steve: It's preformed. Yeah, she's absolutely certain about
• 27:42
  Norm Murdock: trans issues, about, you know,
• 27:46
  Norm Murdock: the whole list about abortion. You, you know, you can go down the
• 27:50
  Norm Murdock: checklist and she's— She's going to do
• 27:54
  Steve: whatever. She is a— she's a party puppet. Gun control. I mean, she's
• 27:58
  Norm Murdock: immovable on all of those kinds of— Unless the party moves. She's a party puppet.
• 28:02
  Norm Murdock: Yeah. And she'll go along with whatever social agenda that the party has. Well, and
• 28:05
  Norm Murdock: the way the party's going, if you listen to Gavin Newsom
• 28:10
  Norm Murdock: and even James Carville, who laments this. Yeah. And Newsom has
• 28:14
  Norm Murdock: endorsed it. The party is
• 28:17
  Norm Murdock: clearly going towards the DSA agenda. Yeah.
• 28:21
  Steve: Social Marxism. That's where it's going. It's where it's going. That's where it's going. And
• 28:25
  Norm Murdock: that's where, you know, like you see
• 28:28
  Norm Murdock: Pelosi and you see, uh, you know, Hakeem Jeffries,
• 28:32
  Norm Murdock: you see the national leaders all caving towards
• 28:36
  Norm Murdock: the Bernie, AOC, El-Sayed
• 28:40
  Norm Murdock: wing. Yeah. And, you know,
• 28:44
  Norm Murdock: you shake your head and you just like, you know, is that going to sell?
• 28:48
  Norm Murdock: And I guess the real test will be places like Texas and,
• 28:52
  Norm Murdock: and, uh, not so much Ohio, but, uh, Michigan and Texas,
• 28:56
  Norm Murdock: where you have very clearly, you've got you know,
• 29:00
  Norm Murdock: Tallarico and you got El-Sayed very
• 29:03
  Norm Murdock: clearly as DSA proponents, and their
• 29:07
  Norm Murdock: opponents, uh, are clearly, you know,
• 29:11
  Norm Murdock: traditional, uh, patriotic American
• 29:15
  Norm Murdock: kind of, you know, Republicans. And,
• 29:18
  Norm Murdock: and, and I wouldn't say they're radical. They're being viewed
• 29:23
  Norm Murdock: in today's lens as far right. But that's
• 29:26
  Norm Murdock: because middle of the road now has become far right. Yeah. Like, you
• 29:30
  Norm Murdock: know, if you want to eat a hot dog with an American flag
• 29:35
  Norm Murdock: in one hand and the hot dog in the other and
• 29:38
  Norm Murdock: have a, I don't know, a John Deere green
• 29:42
  Norm Murdock: tractor hat on, now you're some kind of right-wing extremist.
• 29:46
  Norm Murdock: And, you know, that was just normal 4-Her stuff 20
• 29:50
  Norm Murdock: years ago. And now, you know, like even the FBI
• 29:54
  Norm Murdock: was spying on Catholics, you know, because they
• 29:58
  Norm Murdock: believed, you know, in pro-life, you know. Well,
• 30:01
  Norm Murdock: what's it? Things, we got weaponized. The federal government got
• 30:05
  Norm Murdock: weaponized against regular, normal,
• 30:08
  Norm Murdock: middle-class Americans. And I am super afraid of the
• 30:13
  Norm Murdock: DSA agenda where, Steve, they want the
• 30:16
  Norm Murdock: president to be elected by Congress. They want to eliminate
• 30:20
  Steve: the executive branch. Dude. Yeah. They want to just
• 30:24
  Steve: essentially pack the court and make it a 3rd executive branch or a 2nd executive
• 30:27
  Steve: branch or executive legislative branch. And don't they also want
• 30:31
  Norm Murdock: a unicameral Congress? Yeah, they want to eliminate the Senate.
• 30:35
  Norm Murdock: So, I mean, they're against so much of our traditions.
• 30:39
  Steve: Now, people would say, how can they do this? Well, I don't know that they
• 30:41
  Steve: can, not all of it, but they can pack the court. Once they do
• 30:45
  Steve: that, then that sort of rubber stamps all these other crap. And they— you— I
• 30:49
  Norm Murdock: mean, all this other crap the conservatives, you know, uh, the
• 30:53
  Norm Murdock: conservatives can, can do as well. They can call
• 30:57
  Norm Murdock: a constitutional convention. Well, they're not going to do that because they're not going to
• 31:00
  Steve: have the votes for a constitutional convention. Well, that's what I— you know, but that's
• 31:03
  Norm Murdock: how— The DSA does it. That's how you would do it unless you install a
• 31:06
  Norm Murdock: dictatorship. Well, that's what— so, but like getting rid— like what— nobody ever
• 31:10
  Steve: asks these questions. Like the, the media is not asking these questions. All right, so
• 31:14
  Steve: your agenda, your stated agenda is to get rid of that. How are you going
• 31:16
  Steve: to do that? Yeah. Like, what's the plan? Right. Is it to
• 31:20
  Steve: modify or amend the Constitution through the normal channels, or is it some other plan?
• 31:23
  Steve: Because any other plan is, like you said, a dictatorship. It really is.
• 31:28
  Norm Murdock: And, you know, they're not being called on that. And I'm not sure the
• 31:32
  Norm Murdock: American people are computing any of this, you know, en
• 31:36
  Norm Murdock: masse. I think, you know, there's probably 10% of us that track
• 31:41
  Norm Murdock: public affairs and, you know, what people call politics, but
• 31:45
  Norm Murdock: I call public affairs. Because to me, it's bigger
• 31:49
  Norm Murdock: than— I would defend the Democrats' rights to the
• 31:52
  Norm Murdock: First Amendment, but many of them would not defend mine. No,
• 31:57
  Steve: they wouldn't. And this is what people don't understand.
• 32:01
  Steve: Here's what I hear all the time. Yeah, they say that, but they're never really
• 32:03
  Steve: going to do it. Well, then they're liars,
• 32:07
  Steve: but they're telling you what their agenda is. Right.
• 32:11
  Steve: And sometimes they're telling you what their agenda is in somewhat
• 32:15
  Steve: secret. You know, you get these, these clips that come out of their, of their,
• 32:18
  Steve: uh, of their Zoom meetings where they're actually talking about this stuff, right?
• 32:22
  Steve: And they're saying it. They're saying this is what they want to do, right? And
• 32:25
  Steve: you— and the people vote for them anyway, saying, well, they can never really do
• 32:28
  Steve: that. I just hate Trump. Like, look, love the country.
• 32:32
  Norm Murdock: Yeah, right. You know, love the country. This has worked for
• 32:36
  Steve: a long time, right? And every time, all the complaints, everything that
• 32:40
  Steve: people complain about with this country, usually happens, almost always, and maybe
• 32:44
  Steve: always happens when we try to meddle with it like these people are asking to
• 32:47
  Steve: do. If you just let it do what it's supposed to do, it works. So
• 32:50
  Steve: anyway, like you've said in other shows, the, the
• 32:54
  Norm Murdock: founders never in their wildest imaginations
• 32:58
  Norm Murdock: thought that government would replace self-sufficiency
• 33:02
  Norm Murdock: and living within your means. And the idea that you
• 33:06
  Norm Murdock: get an opportunity And every day is a new opportunity. You
• 33:10
  Norm Murdock: wake up, you don't have to go back to the same
• 33:13
  Norm Murdock: job and punch, you know, punch a clock. You, you don't have to do
• 33:17
  Norm Murdock: that. So rather than being envious of other people's success,
• 33:21
  Norm Murdock: you know, you can go to school, you can get online, you can
• 33:25
  Norm Murdock: go to a, a Rotary Club meeting and talk to successful
• 33:29
  Norm Murdock: business owners about how you yourself can be successful. Yeah.
• 33:33
  Steve: Look, we do not guarantee success in this country. No, no. We, we
• 33:37
  Steve: guarantee that the path will be there, arduous as it may be, right, if you
• 33:41
  Steve: want to be successful, right? And you're going to get knocked down. And some—
• 33:45
  Norm Murdock: somewhere along the line, like 90%,
• 33:49
  Norm Murdock: probably more, of private
• 33:53
  Norm Murdock: enterprises, whether it's a little restaurant or a, you know,
• 33:57
  Norm Murdock: uh, or whether it's a high-tech company, whether
• 34:01
  Norm Murdock: it's Nvidia or, or, you know, a private equity
• 34:05
  Norm Murdock: Before it goes public, again, whether you're a guy
• 34:09
  Norm Murdock: who's, who's just got a little diner and you're flipping burgers,
• 34:13
  Norm Murdock: somewhere around 90% of those go belly up.
• 34:17
  Norm Murdock: And yet the same kinds of enterprising people
• 34:21
  Norm Murdock: will go back to the well. And try again. And try again. And learn what
• 34:25
  Steve: they learned and do it again. You know, I, I've had
• 34:29
  Steve: my own failures in my life. but I went through
• 34:33
  Steve: some hardships at different times. And one person,
• 34:37
  Steve: I'm not going to get into what the hardship, but somebody said to me, well,
• 34:40
  Steve: you'll be fine. It's easy for you.
• 34:45
  Steve: And I never have been— that
• 34:46
  Steve: statement
• 34:50
  Steve: impacted me. I couldn't even say it hurt me at the time, but it impacted
• 34:53
  Steve: me in such a way I couldn't quite get my head around it. Yeah. And
• 34:57
  Steve: later on, after weeks of thought, I was like, The problem with that
• 35:02
  Steve: is that it's a complete— it's
• 35:05
  Steve: such BS. It is not easy for Elon Musk.
• 35:10
  Steve: It is not easy for Vivek. It is not easy for you to run your
• 35:13
  Steve: business. It's not easy for me to make money. I have worked my ass off
• 35:17
  Steve: to do that. Right. And I have failed time and time again. I have
• 35:21
  Steve: lost more money. I was driving up today thinking, yeah, there's an investment opportunity. Boy,
• 35:25
  Steve: if I wouldn't have made that stupid decision and lost that money there, right? Maybe
• 35:29
  Steve: I would have it. But because that stupid decision, I didn't make that decision again.
• 35:33
  Steve: You know, it's like, you know, right? I've lost money.
• 35:37
  Steve: And then those who lose money, you lick your wounds, you feel your
• 35:41
  Steve: pain, and you just say, all right, well, now I got to go forward. Yeah.
• 35:44
  Steve: My business was dead after COVID. All right. What are you going to do now?
• 35:47
  Steve: Wasn't easy for me. No, it was not easy. No. And most times,
• 35:51
  Norm Murdock: Steve, a guy like you or myself, Or, you know, and I would say
• 35:54
  Norm Murdock: most entrepreneurs, we don't, in general,
• 35:59
  Norm Murdock: we, we, we don't look outside of
• 36:02
  Norm Murdock: ourselves for some external person to blame.
• 36:07
  Norm Murdock: We, we look at ourselves and, and we're self-critical. Yeah.
• 36:11
  Norm Murdock: And, and, and we're willing to take on board our mistakes
• 36:16
  Norm Murdock: and, and somehow make lemonade outta lemons and,
• 36:20
  Norm Murdock: and, and learn from them and come out even stronger.
• 36:24
  Norm Murdock: It's like you say, building muscle
• 36:27
  Norm Murdock: tissue in the gym. You tear muscle tissue
• 36:31
  Norm Murdock: in order to make those muscles stronger. Yep. As they heal, they get bigger,
• 36:35
  Norm Murdock: stronger. And learning
• 36:41
  Norm Murdock: in life is much the same way. You're going to have
• 36:45
  Norm Murdock: to tear things In order to find out what works and
• 36:49
  Norm Murdock: what doesn't work. Yeah. You're going— If you don't, you never
• 36:53
  Steve: learn that lesson. What, what Thomas Edison, when he
• 36:57
  Norm Murdock: invented the light bulb, I think he tried something
• 37:01
  Norm Murdock: like— it's, it's enormous. It was well over
• 37:04
  Norm Murdock: 1,000 different materials for the
• 37:08
  Norm Murdock: filament. For the element. Yeah. Or the filament or element. The filament before
• 37:12
  Norm Murdock: he lucked into Well, I guess it's carbon or whatever it is. Whatever it is,
• 37:15
  Steve: right. You know, like he tried everything, a piece of yarn, a wick, this
• 37:19
  Norm Murdock: and that, you know. And so, or Babe Ruth, how many
• 37:23
  Norm Murdock: times he struck out, and yet he was the home run king till Hank
• 37:27
  Norm Murdock: Aaron came along. You know, it's, it's, it's that kind of
• 37:30
  Norm Murdock: American stubbornness to succeed. And I,
• 37:34
  Norm Murdock: I fear that in this comfortable
• 37:38
  Norm Murdock: consumer culture that we've created, that people Are just
• 37:42
  Norm Murdock: expecting largesse from, you know, either it's in the
• 37:45
  Norm Murdock: military or we'll let somebody else's son serve. We have a volunteer
• 37:49
  Norm Murdock: military. Well, let, let somebody else's son. I want my son to be
• 37:53
  Norm Murdock: safe. And let's spend Steve and Norm's
• 37:57
  Norm Murdock: money. Let, let's do a wealth tax. And
• 38:01
  Norm Murdock: Steve didn't go out and buy a bass boat, and he didn't go out and
• 38:04
  Norm Murdock: buy a vacation home. And He, he, uh, he,
• 38:08
  Norm Murdock: he saved and scrimped and put together a retirement
• 38:12
  Norm Murdock: plan for he and his family and for, for,
• 38:16
  Norm Murdock: you know, and, and denied himself many pleasures along the way.
• 38:20
  Norm Murdock: And as did Norm. And yet our reward at the end, if
• 38:24
  Norm Murdock: DSA's running things, will be to take maybe a, a
• 38:27
  Norm Murdock: quarter of our savings and just say, guess what?
• 38:32
  Norm Murdock: We're, we're going to make you re— self-report where all your assets
• 38:35
  Norm Murdock: are, what they're worth, every painting, sculpture, home,
• 38:40
  Norm Murdock: car, tool set, you know, whatever the hell you
• 38:43
  Norm Murdock: own, right? We want it all totaled up, and then we want a fourth of
• 38:47
  Norm Murdock: that. Yeah. And, and there goes my retirement, Steve. I mean, then I'm
• 38:51
  Norm Murdock: done, right? Then you got to— look, I, I was at, uh, but a couple
• 38:55
  Steve: things I'll say. Yeah. In response, the first thing I want to say is,
• 38:59
  Steve: I— people have heard me claim for years now that the
• 39:02
  Steve: worst of human emotions is pride, but maybe a
• 39:06
  Steve: second, or maybe part of that is envy. For sure.
• 39:11
  Steve: And envy is the flip side. Envy is what sort of is what
• 39:15
  Steve: is creating this. Yes. And that said,
• 39:20
  Steve: it's easy for us to generalize what we're seeing out there, but let me tell
• 39:23
  Steve: some anecdotal stories. Okay. went with my wife over the
• 39:26
  Steve: weekend. We bought a car. It was time. A couple hundred thousand miles on the
• 39:30
  Steve: car. We had a— we bought a car. Yeah. And I, and I looked up
• 39:33
  Steve: at the— we're in the, you know, the infamous finance manager's shop.
• 39:37
  Steve: Um, well, first we had a great experience with the salesman, and you can tell,
• 39:41
  Steve: you know, look, he's a car salesman, so he's a car salesman. But you know
• 39:44
  Steve: what he did? He built his, he built his, uh, book of work
• 39:48
  Steve: over 17 years. He doesn't really advertise. It's all of
• 39:52
  Steve: mouth. He goes, I love it here because I can just do my thing. Um,
• 39:55
  Steve: and so he was a— he relied on himself. Okay.
• 39:59
  Steve: We get to the finance managers. On the— a book on the shelf, he had
• 40:03
  Steve: a couple books on the shelf. One of them was Ayn Rand's, uh, Atlas Shrugged,
• 40:07
  Steve: which, you know, it's like you don't put that book up there unless, you know,
• 40:10
  Steve: you're like, there's a few people are going to understand what that means. Yeah. And
• 40:13
  Steve: I got to talking to him and he was ideologically
• 40:17
  Steve: consistent with what we're talking about. And then, you know, and, and those guys were
• 40:21
  Steve: probably mid-40s. Yeah. Early 40s. Amazing. And then I hired
• 40:25
  Steve: some guys to do— help do the dirt work at my house because, as I
• 40:28
  Steve: promised you, I'm not going to do all the work myself anymore. I'm going to
• 40:31
  Steve: hire outside people. Yeah. And, you know, a young man comes up and he's,
• 40:35
  Steve: uh, sort of leveraged himself. He's bought some equipment. He had a skid steer, he's
• 40:38
  Steve: got excavator, he's got access to equipment. And, uh, you
• 40:42
  Steve: know, he hustled, he did it all. He gave me his card and
• 40:45
  Steve: he is out doing it. Like, he's not complaining. He's starting his
• 40:49
  Steve: business. Right. And this is a side hustle for him that he's building up over
• 40:52
  Steve: time. He's got his regular job. He goes, I just, I don't want to give
• 40:54
  Steve: up on my regular job. Like, he's, he's going through all these growing pains. Yeah.
• 40:58
  Steve: So there's people out there doing it. Yeah. There's people. Now we need to tap
• 41:01
  Steve: into those people and say, if you want to preserve this,
• 41:06
  Steve: understand who you're voting for. Big time. Right. Understand who you're voting for because there
• 41:09
  Steve: are people out there that will look at you and say, you don't deserve this
• 41:13
  Steve: even though you worked your ass off for it. Yeah, it's unfair. It's unfair that
• 41:16
  Steve: you can do this because you inherited $100,000 from Grandma who let you buy your
• 41:20
  Steve: first machine. Yeah. Or you got that and you're, you know, all this is
• 41:23
  Steve: unfair and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're privileged. You're privileged. And I can tell
• 41:27
  Steve: you, none of these guys I'm talking to you about came from privilege. Yeah, they
• 41:31
  Norm Murdock: got dirt under their fingernails, don't they? They got dirt under their nails. And he's
• 41:35
  Steve: there after his job at 4:00 PM when he got let off. He goes, I
• 41:38
  Steve: think I can get out early. I'll be there at, 3 today. Yeah. Or at
• 41:41
  Steve: 7. Yeah. An electrician who's helping me is showing up at 3:30 in the
• 41:45
  Steve: morning to work for 4 hours before he goes to— They're putting in
• 41:49
  Norm Murdock: 12-hour days, man. And he's working on the side. Like, these—
• 41:54
  Steve: if you're envious of these people, then I dare you to walk in their shoes.
• 41:57
  Norm Murdock: Yeah. Get up off the sofa and join, join us and
• 42:01
  Norm Murdock: make yourself successful. Yes. How can you be happy with the
• 42:05
  Norm Murdock: pittance that Your welfare check. You know, I,
• 42:09
  Norm Murdock: I— Steve, I heard an amazing thing. You know, since we're,
• 42:13
  Norm Murdock: we're telling a story, but this came across my desk the
• 42:17
  Norm Murdock: other day. In San Francisco right now,
• 42:21
  Norm Murdock: a household making $325,000
• 42:25
  Norm Murdock: in San Francisco is eligible for welfare
• 42:29
  Norm Murdock: assistance, housing assistance.
• 42:32
  Norm Murdock: 325,000. I saw that same stat. It's absolute lunacy. I mean, you got to be
• 42:36
  Norm Murdock: kidding me. You know, like, you, you know, there is something
• 42:40
  Norm Murdock: way out of balance here. Something's really, really wrong
• 42:45
  Norm Murdock: if we're giving people that have an income of
• 42:47
  Norm Murdock: $300,000— you know, like, if the market would just be allowed
• 42:51
  Norm Murdock: to work, those people would say, okay, I can't be a
• 42:55
  Norm Murdock: schoolteacher here or a fireman, or I can't work at the cannery
• 42:59
  Norm Murdock: factory or whatever I'm doing, so I'm going to leave San Francisco.
• 43:03
  Norm Murdock: That would be what they would do. Yep. If they can't pay their
• 43:06
  Norm Murdock: bills in San Francisco. Instead, we're propping up this
• 43:11
  Norm Murdock: hyperinflationary bubble that they're in, and we're
• 43:15
  Norm Murdock: making that work artificially by tapping into
• 43:19
  Norm Murdock: people that live in the Central Valley that are farmers or whatever,
• 43:23
  Norm Murdock: and they're struggling out there. And, and those Californians
• 43:27
  Norm Murdock: are paying for the largesse in the big city with these state
• 43:31
  Norm Murdock: programs. And this is what's going to happen all over the country. This is
• 43:35
  Norm Murdock: the kind of thing that they want to do. This is what they want to
• 43:38
  Steve: do. Like Mondani in New York City. He's doing it. He's doing it. It's nuts.
• 43:42
  Steve: So I— look, I, I hate— how many generations, how
• 43:46
  Steve: many people, how many years, how many adults over the years have said we're on
• 43:49
  Steve: the brink of, of like total collapse. Right. And it never seems to happen,
• 43:53
  Steve: but I really feel like we are. I think we're— yeah, I feel like we
• 43:58
  Norm Murdock: are at a turning point if we somehow,
• 44:02
  Norm Murdock: even if the Democrats get elected, right? And even if
• 44:06
  Norm Murdock: they get rid of the— oh, filibuster. Yeah, the
• 44:10
  Norm Murdock: filibuster in the Senate. I hope and
• 44:13
  Norm Murdock: pray that a Sherrod Brown, were he to get elected,
• 44:19
  Norm Murdock: being old school enough to remember what it was
• 44:23
  Norm Murdock: like to be a traditional Democrat, would say
• 44:27
  Norm Murdock: at some point, we are not going to expand the Supreme
• 44:31
  Norm Murdock: Court. This is a phase where, yeah, Trump got to appoint more
• 44:35
  Norm Murdock: people than Obama, or that's just the way the
• 44:39
  Norm Murdock: cookie crumbles. It's the way it was designed to work. That's the way it was
• 44:42
  Norm Murdock: designed to work. And, you know, I just hope that there's enough,
• 44:47
  Norm Murdock: maybe a Joe Manchin out there on our side, a Susan
• 44:50
  Norm Murdock: Collins, some politicians that come in and
• 44:54
  Norm Murdock: somehow slow down the
• 44:58
  Norm Murdock: excesses that I fear we're going to see happen. Well, my buddy up in Detroit
• 45:02
  Steve: was telling me there's a, um, one of the former
• 45:06
  Steve: heads of the Michigan Democratic Party Okay.
• 45:10
  Steve: I don't know who this is, and I'm sort of talking in generalities, but I
• 45:13
  Steve: think it was a she, and she had sort of created this online social media
• 45:17
  Steve: campaign that says something like, leave it blank. Wow.
• 45:21
  Steve: You don't have to vote for this guy. You don't have to vote for El-Sayed.
• 45:23
  Steve: You can just leave it blank. And it's created so much backlash. So there are
• 45:27
  Steve: still the traditional people out there. There's still the traditional people out there that
• 45:31
  Steve: realize that wing of the party, the
• 45:34
  Steve: socialists, are what they say they are. They are socialists. They're
• 45:38
  Steve: Marxist. And if you read their agenda, they tell you what it is. Yeah.
• 45:42
  Norm Murdock: And it's not a democratic agenda. No, it's not. No. And it'll
• 45:45
  Norm Murdock: eventually collapse. I think
• 45:50
  Norm Murdock: the canary in the coal mine to me in Michigan, really nationally,
• 45:54
  Norm Murdock: is the UAW because they've been rock solid, rib
• 45:58
  Norm Murdock: rock solid Democrat from the get-go.
• 46:02
  Norm Murdock: And back when there was that famous
• 46:07
  Norm Murdock: confrontation at the bridge at the Ford Motor
• 46:10
  Norm Murdock: Company where you had the company goon squad
• 46:14
  Norm Murdock: against the— what was it, Eugene Debs? I'm
• 46:18
  Norm Murdock: forgetting the leader for the UAW, but they had this violent
• 46:21
  Norm Murdock: clash on the bridge and people got beat up and knifed and, you
• 46:25
  Norm Murdock: know, a lot of blood was spilled. And then Henry Ford said, you know
• 46:29
  Norm Murdock: what, screw it, I'm going to recognize the union. And I'm going to give them
• 46:33
  Norm Murdock: a pay raise. I'm going to give them enough where they can afford the
• 46:37
  Norm Murdock: product that we're building in the factory. So he rationalized
• 46:42
  Norm Murdock: how possibly to work with the union. And what has Trump done?
• 46:46
  Norm Murdock: The UAW was so against Trump in his, in his first
• 46:50
  Norm Murdock: term, but many of the membership broke ranks and voted for
• 46:54
  Norm Murdock: him. Well, the UAW as an entity was against Trump, but you're right that the
• 46:57
  Steve: individuals were not. That's right. And with these tariffs
• 47:02
  Norm Murdock: that he has put on things like 100% tariff on Chinese cars,
• 47:06
  Norm Murdock: that has kept China out of our market. Now, if China— China is
• 47:10
  Norm Murdock: destroying the market in Europe. I just got back from Europe and you see
• 47:13
  Norm Murdock: Chinese cars all over Italy, France, England. They're
• 47:17
  Norm Murdock: everywhere. And, you know, the German automakers like
• 47:21
  Norm Murdock: Volkswagen and BMW, I mean, they're, they're very alarmed because
• 47:25
  Norm Murdock: they're looking at cars that are half the price of
• 47:29
  Norm Murdock: their cars and the quality is not that far off. No,
• 47:33
  Steve: it's probably better. I mean, look— Because they're copying. I mean,
• 47:37
  Norm Murdock: they're deriving all of the technology that
• 47:41
  Norm Murdock: has been pioneered. For example, in China, to
• 47:45
  Norm Murdock: be— to build in China, BMW, Boeing,
• 47:50
  Norm Murdock: General Motors, they all have to have a Chinese partner with
• 47:54
  Norm Murdock: a controlling interest in their company. And that includes
• 47:58
  Norm Murdock: the IT— the, the, the, excuse me, IP. That
• 48:02
  Norm Murdock: includes the intellectual property. So the Chinese
• 48:05
  Norm Murdock: industry writ large, they understand how to build
• 48:09
  Norm Murdock: airplanes and cars now. Yeah. It's not a mystery. Or, and Apple
• 48:13
  Norm Murdock: phones. And they, they know that because Apple has had to
• 48:17
  Norm Murdock: accept 51% ownership of its factory by
• 48:21
  Norm Murdock: the Chinese. Yeah. And look, that's what— they're not dumb. They're, they're,
• 48:25
  Steve: they're, they're not dumb. And the UAW members, they got
• 48:29
  Norm Murdock: to know. I, I don't know that they do that their jobs— but for
• 48:33
  Norm Murdock: Trump, we'd have Chinese cars right now. Uh, we probably would.
• 48:37
  Norm Murdock: We, we probably, we probably would. Well, it's going to put the Democrat— it's going
• 48:40
  Steve: to put whoever's in the White House, whoever's in Congress,
• 48:42
  Steve: uh, in a spot.
• 48:45
  Norm Murdock: Yes, it will. It— either side. They're going to have to grapple with that. They're
• 48:49
  Norm Murdock: going to have to grapple with losing more of their
• 48:52
  Norm Murdock: blue-collar male voters. Or accepting Chinese and
• 48:56
  Steve: accepting Chinese cars or the like, whatever product that is. And
• 49:00
  Norm Murdock: returning to Biden's unfettered illegal mass
• 49:04
  Norm Murdock: immigration. Yeah. You know, let's take down the Trump fences
• 49:08
  Norm Murdock: and walls. Only because it was Trump's. And, you know, and let's disband ICE,
• 49:12
  Norm Murdock: which is, you know, like Who needs border controls, right?
• 49:16
  Norm Murdock: We— gosh, that's not very— It's a fait accompli if it— you know, it—
• 49:20
  Steve: because they're not just letting in like-minded people, they're letting in those who are on
• 49:24
  Steve: the DSA side, right? The Marxists. Yeah. So, well, look, you want to do some
• 49:27
  Steve: good and bad? Yeah. Um, one last production.
• 49:31
  Norm Murdock: We're 2 years out. Who do you think the candidates—
• 49:35
  Norm Murdock: because they say the day after election, next, next week. The
• 49:39
  Norm Murdock: very next day. We're into the 2028 elections.
• 49:44
  Norm Murdock: So I think the Republican— I think for sure it's J.D. Vance.
• 49:49
  Steve: I'm not so sure. Okay. You think Rubio possibly? Yeah. Okay. What
• 49:53
  Norm Murdock: about the Democrat? I can't figure that out. Newsom. Okay. Newsom
• 49:57
  Steve: will be a candidate. AOC will try to run. So Newsom said he won't run
• 50:00
  Norm Murdock: if Kamala does, and you think Kamala just won't do it? I think Newsom will
• 50:04
  Steve: run even if Kamala does. So that was just— he told Jake Tapper that.
• 50:08
  Norm Murdock: while they were fishing. Newsom says whatever. Newsom says whatever. I, I think my
• 50:12
  Steve: impression of Newsom is he says whatever he thinks that whoever he's talking to needs
• 50:16
  Steve: to hear at the time. Okay, so he'll back out of that? I, I think
• 50:20
  Steve: so. So you think it's Newsom? I think Newsom, Kamala Harris will be on the
• 50:23
  Steve: stage. Uh, I think AOC will be on the stage.
• 50:27
  Steve: Um, though— What about this Ossoff guy? They keep talking about Jon Ossoff.
• 50:31
  Steve: Yeah, I don't know much about him. And isn't he from South
• 50:35
  Norm Murdock: Carolina? Is it there? I'm a little—
• 50:39
  Norm Murdock: forget what state he's from. He is a senator.
• 50:43
  Norm Murdock: They keep talking about him. Georgia since 2001. Okay. So
• 50:47
  Norm Murdock: he's the other senator from Georgia then
• 50:52
  Norm Murdock: besides the minister, Ralph, whatever it was that—
• 50:57
  Steve: Yeah. Yeah. So look, They keep
• 51:01
  Norm Murdock: talking about he's a pretty boy and he's a little
• 51:04
  Norm Murdock: gasp, you know, Gavin Newsom, uh, like,
• 51:08
  Norm Murdock: yeah, they keep talking about him as the, you know,
• 51:12
  Norm Murdock: the stalking horse. Kind of. Maybe, maybe. Okay. He looks
• 51:16
  Steve: normal anyway. You're not up on this guy yet. I'm not up on this guy
• 51:19
  Steve: yet. So, but on the Republican side, I think it's going to be Rubio. I
• 51:23
  Steve: think— no kidding. I just do. I
• 51:26
  Steve: just do. And I don't know. I mean, I think everybody would love to see
• 51:30
  Steve: a Rubio-Vance ticket, but I don't think that's going to work. Not if you're
• 51:34
  Steve: Vance. What's Vance going to stay as VP? I can't see that.
• 51:38
  Steve: I can't either. I can see him. He's pretty young. He could just back
• 51:42
  Norm Murdock: out for a term or two, right? And come back. Which is what Rubio did.
• 51:46
  Steve: Yeah. Well, I mean, he was on stage, but, you know, like Rubio— It
• 51:49
  Norm Murdock: was what Nixon did. I mean, you know, there's a lot of precedence
• 51:53
  Steve: for that. Yeah, so I think there's,
• 51:57
  Steve: um, I, I, I think Vance's ties to the Tucker Carlsons and some of the—
• 52:01
  Steve: it's like, I, I don't know. I don't know what the party's going to eventually
• 52:03
  Steve: do, but I don't think it's Vance. Okay. I saw where Vance has broken
• 52:07
  Norm Murdock: with Trump on a few things. Like, Trump has endorsed Netanyahu,
• 52:12
  Norm Murdock: which I guess we'll find out how the Israeli election went today
• 52:16
  Norm Murdock: because it was yesterday, and I guess we'll find out Netanyahu
• 52:19
  Norm Murdock: stays or gets kicked out. But Trump on
• 52:23
  Norm Murdock: 2 occasions vocally endorsed a foreign
• 52:27
  Norm Murdock: leader, you know, for, for which he's done elsewhere. Yeah, that's true.
• 52:31
  Norm Murdock: And, and I saw where, uh, Vance declined to do that. He said, I
• 52:35
  Norm Murdock: don't want to get involved in a foreign election. Yeah, and I,
• 52:39
  Steve: I, I respect Vance. I do too. I, I think that was— he's not just
• 52:42
  Steve: a yes man to Trump. Because what, what if Netanyahu's
• 52:45
  Norm Murdock: opponent wins. And Trump had endorsed— you know, it's like— But
• 52:49
  Steve: that's Trump's shtick. Trump can— Trump can do— Trump, like a master, can do
• 52:53
  Steve: that. He can say, look, I endorsed the wrong guy, but now it's you. Come
• 52:57
  Steve: on in, I'm going to buy you dinner. It's like, that's how he operates. Well,
• 53:01
  Norm Murdock: you, you asked about winners and losers. I, I want to roll this out because
• 53:05
  Norm Murdock: this statistic just blows my mind. People talk about
• 53:09
  Norm Murdock: how awful the economy is right now,
• 53:13
  Norm Murdock: Right. And yet Americans— so, so this is my
• 53:17
  Norm Murdock: loser thing, and, and, and I know I'm critiquing my fellow citizens
• 53:21
  Norm Murdock: and all those moms out there. I love you moms. Okay, I'm going to be
• 53:25
  Norm Murdock: a little critical. Think of me as a grumpy husband here. But
• 53:30
  Norm Murdock: Americans are spending $1 billion
• 53:34
  Norm Murdock: during Halloween to buy costumes.
• 53:38
  Norm Murdock: Okay. And I could see the collective shrug right now. Well,
• 53:42
  Norm Murdock: that's, you know, think of that, Norm. Come on. You know, 300 and
• 53:46
  Norm Murdock: some, maybe 350 million Americans and, you
• 53:49
  Norm Murdock: know, $1 billion on costumes. Okay. I didn't
• 53:53
  Norm Murdock: finish the sentence. For their pets. Hmm.
• 53:58
  Norm Murdock: $1 billion in Halloween costume
• 54:02
  Norm Murdock: spending for pets. in America.
• 54:05
  Norm Murdock: Don't tell me that we don't have
• 54:09
  Norm Murdock: discretionary— people are spending money out the
• 54:13
  Norm Murdock: yin-yang, and it ain't all for gasoline. So
• 54:17
  Norm Murdock: that's my loser. My, my winner is— this is a
• 54:21
  Norm Murdock: curveball, but as Steve and I talked about this, uh, a month ago,
• 54:25
  Norm Murdock: just, you know, on the phone, um, Justice
• 54:28
  Norm Murdock: Alito has written a new book about
• 54:31
  Norm Murdock: originalism and what that means. And I cannot encourage
• 54:35
  Norm Murdock: people enough to get that book. I've read several
• 54:39
  Norm Murdock: tracts that have been published from that book. And, you
• 54:43
  Norm Murdock: know, it's more than a law school nerd kind of thing. He's written it for,
• 54:48
  Norm Murdock: uh, you know, the general public to understand and read
• 54:52
  Norm Murdock: about why it is so important to refer
• 54:56
  Norm Murdock: back to the plain language If
• 54:59
  Norm Murdock: you take, if you take some of the curious, you know,
• 55:03
  Norm Murdock: turns of phrases out of the, um,
• 55:07
  Norm Murdock: period of time and understand what that meant in general
• 55:11
  Norm Murdock: parlance back then, the Constitution was easily
• 55:15
  Norm Murdock: read by literate farmers and shopkeepers and
• 55:18
  Norm Murdock: merchants and the general public. If you could read,
• 55:23
  Norm Murdock: it was not written for lawyers. It wasn't written for
• 55:27
  Norm Murdock: scholars. It wasn't written for, you know, high
• 55:30
  Norm Murdock: society. It is a very readable document. And
• 55:34
  Norm Murdock: what Alito says is it is very accessible
• 55:39
  Norm Murdock: if, if you accept the premise that this
• 55:43
  Norm Murdock: is to be read in the plain sense in which it was
• 55:47
  Norm Murdock: originally written. Okay, we have a rule
• 55:51
  Norm Murdock: book on how you change the Constitution. Yeah. And it isn't by
• 55:54
  Norm Murdock: bastardizing the plain meaning of That's right. Or adding
• 55:58
  Norm Murdock: things to it. I've been working upstairs. I have a law clerk.
• 56:02
  Steve: She's somewhere between her first and second year because she goes at night, so
• 56:06
  Steve: it's not easily calculable. And she's taking constitutional law. I love constitutional law.
• 56:10
  Norm Murdock: It's the best. It was one of the hardest courses at first because
• 56:14
  Steve: it's sort of like you can't learn it until you're through it. Yeah. Then it
• 56:17
  Steve: starts to click. It starts to click. And I spend the 20 minutes
• 56:21
  Steve: or 30 minutes a day up there talking to her when I should be having
• 56:24
  Steve: her work for me instead. We're talking about her constitutional law. She's lucky. Because she's
• 56:26
  Steve: struggling with it. Yeah. And I told her, I said,
• 56:30
  Steve: look, it's all about how
• 56:34
  Steve: our government is structured, who has power to do what,
• 56:38
  Steve: and what the checks and balances are on the power. What's the lever of power
• 56:41
  Steve: being employed and by whom? And does that violate your
• 56:45
  Steve: rights? Is it against the rule book of the Constitution?
• 56:50
  Steve: And most important, does it violate your individual rights? And once you start to
• 56:53
  Steve: get that big picture, it falls in place. And I think
• 56:57
  Steve: I told her yesterday, it's funny you're talking the way you're talking because I told
• 57:00
  Steve: her yesterday, if everybody in society
• 57:04
  Steve: had to take constitutional law, there would be far more
• 57:08
  Steve: conservatives. Oh man, that's a great point. Because not
• 57:12
  Steve: because you disagree, because so many people jump on the
• 57:16
  Steve: bandwagon of the issue as opposed to the Constitution. Yeah. So when
• 57:20
  Steve: you hear uh, El-Sayed, which is my bad. Yeah, acting
• 57:24
  Steve: like I'm in favor of the Constitution. No, you're not, you
• 57:27
  Steve: motherfucker, because what you're saying is you want to disband the Senate, you want to
• 57:31
  Steve: get rid of all this crap. That's not in the Constitution. You can't do that.
• 57:34
  Steve: You don't have the power to do it without a convention. Yeah, or without passing
• 57:38
  Steve: an amendment. Yeah, you can't do it. He is a real— that's a real
• 57:41
  Norm Murdock: black and white distinction between being constitutionally
• 57:45
  Norm Murdock: based and then throwing the baby out with the bathwater. That's right. What's,
• 57:49
  Norm Murdock: what's more insidious, I think, is the
• 57:53
  Norm Murdock: inductive reasoning that some people bring to con law
• 57:57
  Norm Murdock: versus deductive. The, the, the, the, the
• 58:01
  Norm Murdock: inductive would be to say, I don't like data centers,
• 58:05
  Norm Murdock: and then to build a construct for, you know, then
• 58:09
  Norm Murdock: every little thing that you could extrapolate
• 58:13
  Norm Murdock: from the Constitution to make it somehow illegal
• 58:17
  Norm Murdock: would be to like, oh, well, you know, the federal government has a right
• 58:21
  Norm Murdock: for the general welfare and whatever clause of the
• 58:25
  Norm Murdock: Constitution. And you would look for all this stuff to
• 58:28
  Norm Murdock: support something to ban a data center
• 58:32
  Norm Murdock: constitutionally. And what a deductive person would do
• 58:36
  Norm Murdock: is quite the opposite, that they would look at the issue
• 58:41
  Norm Murdock: And then they would go to the legislature, which is provided for in the
• 58:44
  Norm Murdock: Constitution, to address things like
• 58:48
  Norm Murdock: pollution or noise or whatever, right?
• 58:52
  Norm Murdock: Instead of trying to make things
• 58:56
  Norm Murdock: unconstitutional upfront and then support it
• 59:00
  Norm Murdock: by bastardizing. Well, it's how we got Roe v. Wade. It's how we got
• 59:04
  Norm Murdock: Roe v. Wade, man. Right, and look, I always said this about Roe v. Wade.
• 59:07
  Steve: I'm like, listen, you're eventually— it's going to get overturned. And it did.
• 59:11
  Steve: And I said, but be careful, it's not going to eliminate abortions. Steve, I
• 59:15
  Norm Murdock: had the most pink of all commie con
• 59:19
  Norm Murdock: law professors at the University of Cincinnati. The guy who taught it,
• 59:23
  Norm Murdock: he just admitted, he says, you know, listen,
• 59:27
  Norm Murdock: Roe v. Wade is a terrible decision. There's nothing in the
• 59:31
  Norm Murdock: Constitution to support this decision. Now, I'm in favor of
• 59:35
  Norm Murdock: abortion, is what he said, but this was
• 59:39
  Norm Murdock: an awful— he said even a laughable—
• 59:43
  Norm Murdock: it's, it's, it's so absurd, this decision. And,
• 59:47
  Norm Murdock: and, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the same thing. Yeah, it's a terrible decision,
• 59:51
  Steve: and— but it didn't eliminate— getting rid of it did not eliminate
• 59:55
  Steve: abortions. No. Right? So it was a straw man the entire time. The entire time.
• 59:59
  Steve: Yeah. Um, all right, so my bad. El-Sayed saying he
• 1:00:03
  Steve: supports the Constitution when his, when his movement, the DSA, does
• 1:00:07
  Steve: not. No, right. Of course, like, he doesn't— he hasn't even read the damn document.
• 1:00:10
  Steve: Yeah, right. Such nonsense. Yeah, such a— go to con law, go take the damn
• 1:00:14
  Steve: class. And how about those letters they've dug up now, you know? Yeah, all right.
• 1:00:17
  Norm Murdock: Yeah, I mean, he's, you know, he's, he supported the, the
• 1:00:21
  Norm Murdock: Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood. And he's, he's like, every, you
• 1:00:25
  Steve: know, when every— whenever he's asked— now, the, the one exchange I saw,
• 1:00:29
  Steve: He's— With Brett Baier? It might have been. I don't think it was Brett Baier.
• 1:00:31
  Norm Murdock: That was a killer interview. Maybe it was Brett Baier. Um, it was— I thought
• 1:00:34
  Steve: it was a town hall type of thing where somebody said, well, you denounced the
• 1:00:37
  Steve: Muslim Brotherhood. He goes, why are you asking me that question? And what he was
• 1:00:40
  Steve: trying to do, he's trying to like— You're a racist. You're a racist. You're only
• 1:00:44
  Steve: asking because I'm Muslim. And the guy asking a question didn't just
• 1:00:47
  Steve: say, because you've supported it, because your family has supported
• 1:00:51
  Steve: it, because it's a terrorist organization. Because even
• 1:00:55
  Steve: the Middle Eastern countries don't support it. So I'm asking
• 1:00:59
  Steve: you because it's an important question. Right. Yeah. That's why I'm asking. And you're
• 1:01:02
  Steve: Muslim. Yeah. Because I can tell you what, Christians don't.
• 1:01:06
  Norm Murdock: Yeah. And he's got buddies inside of
• 1:01:10
  Norm Murdock: Iran that are part of the power structure. Of course, right? So
• 1:01:13
  Steve: it's a fair question. So he
• 1:01:17
  Steve: should read the— ask him if he's read the damn Constitution. I would love a
• 1:01:21
  Steve: constitutional law, conservative constitutional law scholar to start talking about how you're going to implement
• 1:01:24
  Steve: these changes. Can you imagine him as a senator
• 1:01:27
  Norm Murdock: on, say, the Intelligence Committee or something, getting all of
• 1:01:31
  Norm Murdock: this data from the NSA, the CIA, the FBI? Good
• 1:01:35
  Steve: grief. It just seems like— My God, it would be a pipeline right to Iran.
• 1:01:38
  Steve: Yeah. Yep. No, exactly. So, but, you know, he said, we're going to put him
• 1:01:42
  Steve: in the Senate. It's like, yay, great. My good. I was
• 1:01:46
  Steve: at the Circleville Pumpkin Show over the weekend. Nice. This past week. Nice. I don't
• 1:01:50
  Steve: really care for the Circleville Pumpkin Show in the sense that it's just a bunch
• 1:01:53
  Steve: of junk food and it's just a bunch of stuff I don't really get into.
• 1:01:55
  Steve: Yeah. Except for this. I love going to see the community.
• 1:01:59
  Norm Murdock: Absolutely. I love it. It's Americana. I love it. Yeah. I love that things
• 1:02:03
  Steve: like the pumpkin show exist big time. I love that there's a guy, a farmer
• 1:02:06
  Steve: standing next to the biggest pumpkin, and I don't care if he cheated with hormones.
• 1:02:09
  Steve: It doesn't make any difference to me. I love that that's a thing. And, and
• 1:02:12
  Norm Murdock: people, Steve knows his stuff. He called it a show.
• 1:02:16
  Norm Murdock: It's not a circle. Yeah. The worst thing, the worst sin you can commit in
• 1:02:20
  Norm Murdock: Circleville is to call that a pumpkin And now I'm a resident. I'm a resident.
• 1:02:24
  Steve: It's a show. Um, and, you know, a lot of locals steer clear of the
• 1:02:28
  Steve: pumpkin show, and a lot of locals don't. But you know what? It's Americana. There's
• 1:02:31
  Steve: artisans. Yes. There's food. It's family. There's carnies. There's
• 1:02:34
  Steve: rides. There's whatever. But there are kids. And I can't walk down that
• 1:02:38
  Steve: Main Street— Court and Main, it's bigger than that— but I can't walk down those
• 1:02:42
  Steve: streets. Yeah. With my wife and her family without stopping
• 1:02:46
  Steve: every 20 feet. Yeah. To say hello to somebody. People are so friendly. Yeah.
• 1:02:50
  Norm Murdock: And, and, and really, that's why Trump today is going to be in
• 1:02:53
  Norm Murdock: Chillicothe, a very similar kind of city, you know, to meet
• 1:02:57
  Norm Murdock: regular, normal, if you will, like
• 1:03:01
  Norm Murdock: balanced— Just people. People. Just people. You know,
• 1:03:04
  Norm Murdock: that love their country and, and don't, you know,
• 1:03:08
  Norm Murdock: surprisingly, Steve, back to one statistic, half of the
• 1:03:12
  Norm Murdock: ballots that have been cast in early voting in Ohio are
• 1:03:16
  Norm Murdock: unaffiliated with any party. Interesting. And I think
• 1:03:21
  Norm Murdock: that out there in places like Chillicothe, Circleville,
• 1:03:25
  Norm Murdock: those are where people just— they
• 1:03:29
  Norm Murdock: love their country. Their sons and daughters serve in the military. They're
• 1:03:33
  Norm Murdock: farming, they're raising hogs. They're, they're,
• 1:03:37
  Norm Murdock: you know, they, they just want to be
• 1:03:40
  Norm Murdock: happy and they're willing to sacrifice to some extent.
• 1:03:45
  Norm Murdock: And we're going through a period of time where diesel for those
• 1:03:48
  Norm Murdock: farmers is high. And I guess it's up to Trump to try
• 1:03:52
  Norm Murdock: to explain why we're building data centers, why diesel
• 1:03:56
  Norm Murdock: is high during the war, but also to take a little
• 1:04:00
  Norm Murdock: credit. Employment is at a pretty
• 1:04:04
  Norm Murdock: high, all-time high. The stock market's pretty high.
• 1:04:09
  Norm Murdock: Inflation, Hey, when he took office, I think bacon was
• 1:04:13
  Norm Murdock: like $15 a pound. At Kroger yesterday, it was
• 1:04:17
  Norm Murdock: $3.99. So things have— eggs are now down
• 1:04:21
  Norm Murdock: to $1.89 a dozen. They were $8.
• 1:04:25
  Norm Murdock: You know, it's not all bad news. There's a lot of good markers out there.
• 1:04:28
  Steve: So look, if nothing else, go out and vote. Vote the right way.
• 1:04:32
  Steve: Yep. Next week we'll find out. We'll find out what the state of
• 1:04:36
  Steve: our— do our lives really hang in the balance? Does our Constitution hang in the
• 1:04:40
  Steve: balance? Do our freedoms? Does the Supreme Court? Does the executive branch? Does the Senate?
• 1:04:44
  Steve: Is this another step in the paver path to hell, or are we going to
• 1:04:47
  Steve: turn things around? We'll find out next week here on Common Sense Iowa.