Why Republicans Lost Control - The 2026 Midterm Panel Discussion

0:00 Welcome back to another World Ablaze. Today's episode will feature many guests you've seen before. People who host shows that I've actually been on. They've been on my show and we all have something to say about these midterm election results. So without further ado, and because of time constraints, we're going to keep this thing going. I am going to go ahead and start bringing people in and we will introduce everybody. So first on the list, as you can see, we have Chad Law here, host of Common Sense with Chad Law. We also have Havoc, who is the host of Space Tomatoes or co-host. He's also a resident anarchist in the classical sense. We have Sam here. She's an amazing podcaster.

1:01 And of course, Shades of Jade podcast. And we have Keith Barton, our resident politician who's in our pocket. Not really, but he is running for Texas District 23. Didn't work out in 26, but he's already running for 28. So he's got some insight for us when it comes to Texas. Joe Ruse of the Joe Ruse podcast. Great guy to know. Great podcast. And of course, we have Mr. Unfiltered himself. Aaron from I Had To Say It podcast. All right, everybody. So basically, as we discussed before recording, I got a few things to present. We're going to go ahead and discuss it. We're going to get your opinions on it. We're going to try to keep this flowing. And we do have a few states that we'll focus on just because of their vicinity or relationship to everybody here in the room at the moment. So with that, let's discuss what happened with the House. So House control, as we can see, after the midterm elections, it looks like 56% pretty much went to the Democrat control, 1.84% to DSA. And I did that intentionally in breaking them out from the Democrats because I believe they're going to be a fly in the ointment. And then 37.24% of the Republican control in the House. And as we move on, the Senate control doesn't look too much better.

2:23 Democrats have 52 seats now. DSA did not gain any. And for the most part, as we can see in the Senate, it looks like the Democrats control that as well. As we move on to the balance of power, it pretty much tells us that the Democrats run everything. So they basically run 56% of the House. They have 52% of the Senate, and there's still quite a bit. That's a little bit uncalled, but for the most part, we can just say that Democrats run everything. And then I also wanted to bring focus here to the eight DSA candidates who won a seat in the House. That is eight of the 20 that were on the ballot. And there's still a few uncalled, so hopefully we don't gain any more.

3:08 So with that, first, I wanted to see what everybody thought of how this went in terms of House and Senate before we get deeper. Was anyone really surprised that this was going to happen? For one. And two, what do you guys think the outcome may be moving forward in relationship to working with President Donald Trump? And anybody can start off. In fact, let's do this. Chad, we'll start with you. Yeah, you know, I would say there was a lot of surprise on my behalf. I mean, first of all, this is the first time the data has been 100% right. I mean, the prediction markets were right. The polls were right. The newspapers were right. Everything was right. I usually take about 10 to 12 data points. I look for the hole. I couldn't find one.

3:49 But I was still a little uncomfortable to come out and say, this is going to be a huge tsunami because I'm used to data upsets. I don't know if that's because of AI or some of the technological advances or if we're counting different. I don't exactly know why. But I was surprised that the data was so right on going into this. I knew they were going to take control. I just didn't know the margins were so high. As a Republican, and I'm probably in this group, I might be the most mainstream Republican conservative. This has been awesome for me. I've been saying for the last two years that Donald Trump made conservative politics look easy. And all these fake people came on the set, got retired NFL players, retired basketball players, retired celebrities, all thinking they can do what Donald Trump did.

4:39 And you've got these consultants that surround them and charge them a million dollars. And they didn't deliver anything for two years. It's been the most disgusting GOP power in Congress that I've ever seen. So I love that this happened. It's an independent voter push. It's not an embrace of socialism or any ideology, regardless of what's on cable news. And this is the voters saying, we gave you a shot for the first time, Latin men, Gen Z women, and you guys suck. You failed. So we're voting the other direction. Is the democratic process working? Was it shocking the margins? Yes. But I do want to say one thing. Real conservatives still won this tsunami. Ron DeSantis was able to run on a record and maintained his Florida red.

5:24 Sarah Huckabee Sanders won because she raised teacher pay and cut the income tax four times. Bill Scott in Vermont kept his seat. He's on his sixth term. People who had records and results to run on won. People like Greg Abbott that played the Biden war and the cable news war got clobbered because they had nothing to run on. Texans couldn't feel any difference in their wallet. In Florida, they could. Their taxes got lowered. Their insurance got lowered. Same in Arkansas. But people who ran on conservative values and delivered survived the tsunami. All the phony people lost. I call it a shaking out of the rug. All right. It's a logical response. Havoc, what is your take on this?

6:06 You know, at the end of the day, if you couldn't see this coming, I think you were blindsided, right? I think you were looking at the wrong thing. People were suffering. There's no question about that. And I think this was a referendum. And I think, you know, Chad hit on a very important part, right? I don't believe that people voted in Democrats. They voted out the party that had two years and was so tone deaf that they said things like, let them eat ramen. Yeah, you're suffering, but you know, these oil companies are crushing it. You know, that's just tone deaf, right? So it's a referendum. Now, where does it go from here?

6:48 Hopefully it doesn't go into party punishment politics, which seems to be the last decade of politics so far. Your party gets in power and you've got to punish the other and pendulum swings and it comes right back at you even harder. So hopefully, because the people lose when that happens. That's 100% what happens. It's a feel-good thing. You just watched it for almost two years. It didn't accomplish anything for the average American. Sam? Yeah, I agree a lot with what Chad and Havoc both said.

7:29 2025 started out strong. Seems like near the end of 2025, the administration forgot about the people. They ran on affordability and no new wars, and that's not what happened. And then Trump's comments about basically deal with it. Nobody cares that much. It shows that he somehow disconnected from his voter base. Now, I thought that Democrats would take the House. I thought maybe Republicans could hold the Senate. I'm not surprised by the outcomes aside from the victory of the margin.

8:10 I didn't think that it was going to be so big of a blue wave. And then Iowa and Texas, some of the results did surprise me. The rest of it, I'm not too surprised about. Okay. All right, let's keep moving down the line. Keith. Yeah, I agree. We know why Texas really, in addition to Trump, Trump was a different man this term. And that's been a problem for sure. But here in Texas, what we've been seeing is instead of voting in the best person in the primary, we've been going with the most popular. And I think the Paxton race is a perfect example of that. Wesley Hunt was my guy, by far the most moral guy in those three in that race.

8:54 And he would have killed it if he would have made it. But we brought in this epically terrible person. And so now we got this race of two evils going on between Tallarico and him. and we just kind of got screwed. And it kind of sucks because in my area from San Antonio to El Paso, there were some phenomenal candidates, both at the state and national level that lost because of this, that were true conservatives, that were really hitting it hard. Mark LaHood is a local rep here in San Antonio. Carlos De La Cruz should have made it. He's a 20-year Air Force vet and should have taken that seat. Instead, it goes to this frigging deputy, this guy that was deputy for 20 years and never got promoted and lost his gun even to a criminal. It's suspended a couple of times. So it was literally a punishment across my state of craziness. I mean, personally, it makes my run easier in the next one because I'm going to smoke check stout. But yeah, I completely agree. It came from the top down and we all suffered for Yeah, we'll discuss Texas and North Carolina a bit more because those were interesting states in terms of how they flipped.

10:06 Joe, what's your opinion on everything and how did that affect everything on the East Coast? Because it kind of seemed like everything was basically as normal, especially in New York. But what's your take on everything, Joe? Well, I'm not totally surprised. I kind of got the sense that it was going to be a big loss for the Republican Party. And primarily, like everyone has said so far, the administration lost its way. It lost the sense and the feel of the electorate. I don't know who has been whispering in the president's ear, telling him that things are great. Keep going the track you're going. Keep insulting people. Keep putting people down. Keep beating people down.

10:47 Again, the ramen statement. I think he said something at one point like, people will pay whatever it is for gas because they like me. Well, no, I'm sorry. It doesn't really work that way. Right. You know, and much to what Sam said as well, the administration ran on affordability, no new wars, Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, and none of it came about. None of it came about. Now, the joke to me is thinking that Democrats are going to release anything on Epstein. That's not going to happen, you know. And for all of the shouting, because honestly, if there was something in there to pin on Donald Trump specifically, they would have done that when Joe Biden was in office.

11:30 So to believe that's going to happen is nothing. Do you really think the Democrats are going to stop this thing going on in Iran? No. It's going to keep on. It's a business as usual. So I'm really not too surprised. Now, when I woke up the next morning and realized that Texas turned blue, man, my first reaction was, well, I start looking for properties in Florida because I left New York to get away from this. and now it seemed to have followed me here. And when I came to Texas, I did not bring New York politics. You know, I brought my Republican politics, my conservative politics, but- Except for all the Californians that went to Texas. Yeah, they're California, Texas, they're New York, Texas.

12:11 They did all that stuff that you see all these billboards all over, don't do it. They did. So I'm not totally surprised. It's disappointing. Yes, absolutely. I live in a border town, you know, And one of the things that the incoming governor has already made clear is that they are going to instruct Texas law enforcement to not cooperate with federal enforcement of the border. And we're going to fall right back into that same pattern all over again. Right. That's my main concern right now. Yeah, we're going to get into that a little bit too. And I'm sure that you and Keith will be able to have a lot to say on that. Aaron, Mr. Illinois, how are we doing?

12:52 Yeah. Well it not like I expected any changes around here at all I have a worthless bloated pasty jelly fuck of a governor that I knew was going to retain his third run because they ran the exact same idiot that he beat last time. And one of the things nobody ever talked about is the Republican candidate, Darren Bailey, who they ran here against JB, when they ran him last time, he had a much stronger. We had a much stronger Republican candidate four years ago. Yeah, four years ago. And it was Bailey's campaign got a massive dump of campaign funds from a Democrat pack during the primaries because they knew they could beat him. And the fact that the GOP in Illinois decided to run him again after the trouncing he got last year just reaffirmed everything I've always said, that the only Republicans in these kind of areas are controlled opposition at best and puppets at worst. So I wasn't surprised about local stuff. Some of the national stuff I was a little bit more surprised on. Chad has facts and figures. Everybody else has their logical reasons behind it. I'm a little more not, I don't want to, because of the term based has become misapplied, but I am more basic in my look at things. And I said, these assholes haven't done anything for the American people in two solid years of control, and nobody's going to support that.

14:24 So I'm a little more black pill than everybody. I think I'm a little more doom and gloom because I've been saying it for the months leading up to this thing that they were going to get slaughtered. They were going to get crushed. I didn't see Texas flipping. I'm going to be honest. That one totally caught me off guard. And I mean, I have my own reasons partly because the gal who won in Keith's district there, I spent the last four months trying to get blocked by her on social media. It was an active goal of mine. And for some odd reason, I have this gift where it doesn't matter how hateful and how ignorant I am to people, they think I'm kidding, or they think they're friends. Or for whatever reason, I can't get the social media manager to block me. I spent three and a half years trying to get blocked by the White House just because I called out the intern every day, at least three times a day while Biden was sitting in office because I was saying things like, hey, how many pudding pops do they give you a day to keep typing this retarded shit? So like I said, I'm a little more doom and gloom and I expected things to go bad. So I wasn't surprised. I was just very disappointed at how full of idiots this country is. But I do agree with the things like some guy I was listening to, Chuck Lee or something like Earlier this week, I was listening to who said this is a trial run for the Democrat Party.

15:44 It's not that we hired the Democrats. It's they're on their probationary period. It was you, Chad. I'm just kidding. I was like, that sounds way from there. Hey, Aaron, come try to get- That was you like three days ago. Come try to get blocked on my social media. That way, I'll get more traction, okay? That's funny. Just roll on it. Anyway, I wanted to touch on something, Joe, that you said about, I believe it was you, about the messaging who's in Trump's ear, because that is exactly what Chad had talked about on, I think it was, how many episodes ago, Chad? You literally talked about the marketing and the messaging and all of that. And that was a really good episode. I just think the biggest mistake we can make is just focusing on Donald Trump and doing the firing squad with, hey, Seth Rubio, Vance.

16:29 It's like, no, we need to see the people who survived through this, the people who actually won. The future of the Republican Party is Ron DeSantis and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, period. And if we blame Trump, we're going to just make the same mistake over again. Trump has delivered a lot. I would say I'm with him about eight out of 10 things that he does and says. Was he a little bit more out of touch? Yes. But you have to understand everything that he pushed for this Congress rejected or watered down. No tax on tips. We got no tax on some tips. No tax on overtime. We got an overtime coupon, a Social Security coupon. The court screwed us. And we lost a lot when we didn't pass big enough tax cut packages to offset the cost of tariffs, which again, I was a big proponent for.

17:14 So I think this is what happens when you have performative politics and people who can't operate and Trump trying his best. But unfortunately, to his messaging, when you run as the be all end all, I can get it done no matter what. And you can't turn around and say the Congress and the judicial branch screwed me, even though that's what happened. You know, and he's got some responsibility. But again, if this was all Trump and all the war in Iran and all gas prices, Byron Donald's wouldn't have won. Sarah wouldn't have won. Marsha Blackburn wouldn't have won. You know, again, the real people won. This is an indictment of fake conservatives that ran on Trump's coattails for the last 16 years. I think you make some good points, but I think there's more nuance there, especially when we're talking about Florida.

18:03 I think Texas was something that we probably didn't see in our bingo card at all. But I'm sure Keith can speak to that later when we get to that segment because he told me before that it's been turning blue for a while, especially when you look at what's been happening in Austin and some of the surrounding cities, Houston, etc. And so Florida is one of the holdouts for sure. But you've always made great points. You come with facts and data chat, so we appreciate that for sure, man. It's like you're not wrong whatsoever. I mean, they dropped the ball and we focused on the wrong. I can be wrong. Well, not on this, though. I think you're right on this one. Again, I just don't want to make the mistake of dismissing candidate quality because Greg Abbott, for all intents and purposes, ran one of the worst governor campaigns I've ever seen.

18:47 Agreed. Paxton ran. And again, all the writings on the wall. Texas has been turning blue for the last five years. The whole Sunbelt has been turning blue. Democrats destroyed blue holdouts to push these people into red holdouts to change the electorate. This was all done on purpose. It's destruction. And then remaining people that are left in these blue states are dependent on public money. So they create a supermajority and they diversify the electorate in the Sun Belt. That's what they did. But again, the good candidates did survive. And if we don't focus on candidate quality and make sure that we don't keep electing these jersey wearers like Ken Paxton, to Keith's point, we are going to say the same thing over again, and Democrats will remain in power for 40 years. Where's your empathy?

19:34 Jeez, Chad. All like it is. But you're right. We were dealing with a lot of rhinos, a lot of fake conservatives for sure. Definitely. I don't even know if it's that. I think it's really bad consultants too. I mean, these people, whoever told Vivek Ramaswamy to call Amy Acton's mother and do that ad, they need to go get buried alive. Okay? I mean, they have no business being in politics. So I don't want to dominate the conversation. But obviously, as you guys can see, I have a really hard time. We were running campaigns. Ken Paxton ran a 2008 Texas campaign when now it's half Californians and Hispanic migrants. You can't do that. You can't. You have to know your audience. And my point is, if you can't get through the campaign, how can I trust you to govern?

20:14 The campaign is the easy part. Yeah. We'll talk more about that because I've definitely had my opinions on the campaign of itself, especially how it came to how Republicans handled themselves nationally. So anyway, this is what I want to do before we move on, because I don't want to get stuck here. The one thing that we didn't discuss is control of House and Senate, and everybody thinks that Democrats are going to run everything. But I think that they have the numbers to do so, but we still don't know where the independent is going to sit. There's still some seats that aren't called. And we don't understand yet where the DSA candidates are going to sit because a lot of people assume they're going to be gung-ho and backing the Democrats.

20:56 The problem with that is most of these DSA candidates, as I've said before, are also Muslim. And Muslims, by and large, are very conservative in ideology. So I'm not sure they're going to exactly side with all the Democrats. So it's going to be very interesting to see that. And with that, though, I want to go ahead and bring up this clip here because this is Al Syed basically saying he's not going to be backing Chuck Schumer and looking for new leadership. So here we go with that. How would you not support Schumer now? Well, to me, it's about action, right? It's not about who or who not. It's about action. But it has to come from a who. Right. I agree. And this is what I'm saying. I don't know who's stepping up and saying I want to be Senate Majority Leader. if we have another option, I'm going to look at that and say, who is best placed to get us action, to get money out of politics, put money in pockets, pass Medicare for all.

21:44 I was very clear early on that I'm not going to say who I'm not for. I'm going to say who I am for. I am for Chris Van Hollen. If he decides he wants to be Senate Majority Leader, I think he'd be amazing at the job. So there's just an inkling already that there is some dissent within the Democrat party. That's just one clip. I mean, there's many more. I just didn't want to make El Syed the focus. And with that, it also leads us into what we're discussing earlier in terms of like states and whatnot that flipped. It's like, well, what happened here? And I want to focus on a little bit of that. So these are the surprising flips that we were talking about. Obviously, Texas was the big one. But we also can't ignore there was Kansas here that also flipped in the Senate. Okay, we have South Carolina.

22:25 We have Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio. and that in and of itself was quite a bit. And then we're also looking at the highlighted states that kind of align more with you guys here on the panel. So Illinois, they held. Iowa, though, flipping mostly from red to Democrat statewide. Texas, again, another one that was interesting that mostly went blue, but they still held in the House, it seems. Oregon held in Democrat, New York, of course, California. We already knew that was going to happen, but North Carolina was another very interesting one there. And then this is where it's going to lead us to talk about Iowa and North Carolina.

23:09 And what I want to do is get into North Carolina first, just because there were 21 counties that flipped. 21 in North Carolina that flipped Democrat. That is a huge, huge, huge flip. Okay, where Texas, I believe, was just nine. I might be off on that, Keith. you can correct me, but I believe it's just nine. Yeah, but North Carolina 21, I'm going to look at you, Haver, and see what you think about that. Yeah. Well, to quote a line from a great movie, this is Jack's complete lack of surprise. North Carolina actually enacted some interesting policies.

23:50 As I already mentioned in the beginning of this, I'm an anarchist, so I have no dog in this game, right? But I do pay attention. So here's two things that are pretty interesting. North Carolina went and passed a bunch of acts that made it so you had to register Republican if you wanted to vote for a Republican, Democrat for Democrat, right? So number two, North Carolina has a very, very large portion of independent voters. They don't want to be pigeonholed into one side or the other. and there are, you know, ballots that have been on our, you know, state legislature for years that aren't passing, that are wildly popular. So they've been getting blocked in the house by the good old boys. And so, you know, it just, again, not surprising, right? You've got a lot of independents that were pissed off. You know, and I think one thing a lot of people don't give enough credence to, right, is, and we talked about this when I was on your show, right, is the, there was a huge upswelling of support from independents, and we can lump libertarians in with that, we can lump a lot of people, and then the one guy that every one of them, every single one of them, and in fact is rated top, top scores out of every single other person, literally the

25:21 top of the pile on constitutional, you know, voting was Massey and you took that away from him. So you had, you know, you know, now you can also add on the fact, and this is a lesser known fact, North Carolina is second only to New York in the banking sector. New York is solidly what color? Yeah. So you've got a lot of population moving in as well. But again, I do think that one thing that was underestimated was the independent side of the house going, you know what? You promised us all this stuff and you did not deliver Again I will say kudos to the Ross Ulbricht thing right I think that was the right thing to do and good call right That was one thing but everything else flopped The DNC chair there is also very effective.

26:12 She's 25 years old and she's running the Ron Paul playbook. She's got over 50 chapters at different universities and city colleges across North Carolina. They've done amazing groundwork. I just, you know, she's a freak, a DSA freak. But her ground game, she just picked it up right out of Ron Paul's playbook, and it worked in North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah, and then, you know, looking at it objectively, like, the only reason the person that got, you know, elected here, Cooper, I think, is one that is just a constant, right? You can sit there, and I'm sorry, you know, maybe there are some fans of him, but I never have been.

26:54 But you can look at the dearly departed Lindsey Graham and you can say, how in the fuck is this guy continuously getting elected? I mean, honestly, what? And we've got this issue where people have a psychological tendency to vote for a name they know over a better candidate because they just don't do the research. They don't understand who the people are. So do I think Cooper's a good? No, no. But, you know, I mean, again, this was a referendum. And I think the real takeaway here is I don't think people in mass voted for Democrats.

27:37 They voted against Republicans. I get the rent boy vote, too. That was a big block that he lost after he died. All of his male companions left the state. Yeah, we're still we're still talking about 21 counties, though. I mean, so we can say the Republicans dropped the ball because they did on messaging, but it seems like the entire state was disappointed. We're a farming state. We are an ag state like you would not believe. And the cost of diesel doubled. Do you know how tight the margins are on these guys doing crops of soybean and corn and winter wheat? It's insane. And you've just doubled their operating costs just from diesel alone.

28:21 And don't mistake that, right? The fertilizer cost. And that's one of those commodities that does largely come from that one area that has been problematic, right? Right. So is this attributed to the Iran war then, you're saying? Or is it mostly just the Republicans not coming through and doing what they're supposed to do? And when it came to farming, I saw that there was policies passed that just didn't work in farmers' favor at all. No, and they never do. They never do, really, honestly. All of the farm subsidies, you could look at them and ask any farmer, and I know quite a few, they will tell you.

29:02 They've all been nothing short of a shackle with a big lead ball attached to it, right? And it's hamstrung them, and it's screwed their lives over. So, yes, in part, yeah, Iran war. The fertilizers, urea comes from that region. I mean, that stuff is huge. And you cannot grow these crops the way they grow them as densely as they grow them. And they have to, to make any sort of profit, right? I mean, people, you don't understand. These guys make, you know, 100 to 250 an acre. That's it per year, per year. Okay. So you think they're making all this money. They're not. Okay.

29:42 Literally one of my farmer buddies said, you know, we're hoping, we're hoping that we can pay enough of our bills so that we can get a loan so that we can operate next year. That's a farmland. Now, I can understand because honestly, where I live, it's all farmland. I mean, it is all almonds. It's like, you name it, there's nothing but almonds, wine grapes. It's just tons of farmland out here in the Central Valley. Just a real big note on that, right? That stuff is not the same intensity as what we're talking about here, right? almond groves, they go through and they have to cut down, take the trees out and everything else. And of course, there's fertilizer needs and bees and other things. But here you're talking about barren land. The soil has been sucked dry. The only thing that grows that food is the fertilizer, right? And so you've increased, you've doubled the cost of fertilizer. You've doubled the cost of fuel to drive the tractors, to get the trucks to come up behind the combines, to get them out to the grain silos and then to get them to market once conditions are favorable. And so you've got a big ag state and you look at that map and you can pinpoint Charlotte and Raleigh pretty easily because it makes sense. But the majority of those are ag land, right? And these farmers are going, I literally have to figure out, can I pay enough off to get a loan to be able to operate next year?

31:12 And if you think that's a sustainable business model, it's not. Fair enough. So it all tracks back down to the mishandling of basically policy. And the Iran war was very ill-timed. And we can all say the tariffs probably attributed to a lot of that as well. I don't think the tariffs actually were that bad on that piece of it. Not good. I'm not going to say they were good. Not specifically to farmers, but to other goods and services though. Yes, for sure. But I think the killer here is if you go to a rural county and you've just doubled the cost of producing and people are thinking, I've got to go out of business.

31:53 This farm that's been in my family for the last seven, eight, 10, 20 generations. Remember, we were the first state with the constitution, right? So literally, you look at that and you go, these people have been here for potentially hundreds of years, family farming, and now I might have to go out of business because some dork decided that I don't matter. Yeah, I get your frustration. And this didn't affect California ag or farming, but I'm just going to say this. I've seen how Democratic-led states have caused business and also agriculture to suffer.

32:36 California, they drove out the avocado industry. They drove out the corn industry that they used to have here. The beef industry is severely reduced. I mean, there was a lot out here. Even citrus has been reduced. I mean, there's so much in California just through Democrat governance that just, they killed it. They killed it. They killed small businesses, you name it. So what I'm getting at is, I understand that everybody was frustrated and they voted how they felt it was going to work out for them and their businesses. But I wonder what the long-term effect is going to be because we've already seen cases where as soon as these Democrat candidates knew they won, they're already talking about imposing more taxes, more restrictions, more policies that may not benefit people. It looks good in the beginning. So we'll see how everybody feels here after they actually get going.

33:18 But I mean, I'm not arguing against you because you know this better than I do, but at the same time, it's like, I think we're screwed either way at this point unless they realize that they really got to start looking out for the American people before we just oust them all, start over. It's like that statement that everyone loves to make, right? The lesser evil. Yeah, exactly. Here's a newsflash for you. Evil is evil. Period. Of course. I mean, it's just evil, right? Oh, it's just a minor evil. It's evil. It's like a lie. A lie doesn't become not a lie because it's a smaller lie. It's a lie. Try that with your wife and see how that works out for you. Right.

33:59 So a new government. Well, you know, I mean, at the end of the day. Let's just burn it all down. Start over. It was lose-lose. Isn't that my platform, George? Isn't that my platform already? Yeah, it is. Not a bad idea, man. Honestly. And maybe get rid of the parties and start asking the people who they actually want to be. At this point, I believe you're... Honestly, at this point, I kind of side with you. And I also think like, Keith has said before as well, we need more parties. We can't just rely on these two major parties to be the only options we have. It's just ridiculous. these two parties are done barely hanging on to 25% everyone's gone to the middle or to the extreme so that just tells you how unhappy the customer is the founding fathers warned everyone against party politics parties are the problem we don't need more parties we need no parties the party should be the American people period no other party like you're either there to support the American people and what they want you to legislate for.

35:04 Or in the case of what we've got, you're there to support your party, to get past the legislation the party wants, which unfortunately for quite some time has not aligned with the American people. So let's put a pin in that, because that conversation can go a lot of different ways. So I want to make sure Sam gets a word in before she has to go, because she has a bit of a time constraint. Let's talk about Iowa. Not as bad of a situation in terms of how it flipped, but there was definitely movement. What was your take on what happened in Iowa? Well, we didn't have the advantage of having incumbents for the gubernatorial race or the Senate race. I think that would have helped quite a lot.

35:51 Hinson was a representative running for Senate. Also, their opponents, I've heard them compared to Barack Obama and that they seem to be more in the middle than far left. And so the fear is that now that they've been elected, that they're going to shift left. I will say I didn't mind Hinson's competition, Turek, he seemed all right. And for the gubernatorial debates, one big issue here in Iowa is the water quality. We have really high cancer rates. and high nitrates because of the ag business. And both candidates addressed that so that they would address that. So as far as the debates go, there wasn't really a shining star for the gubernatorial debate. One thing to touch on what Havoc was saying was we're also an ag community.

36:55 I have a cornfield literally across the street from my house. And Zach Lane, the Republican candidate for governor, he talked about that, about people losing their family farms and how we need to be able to keep those and how so many people are leaving the state for better opportunities. So I'm surprised that he didn't pull it off because I felt like he really spoke about Iowa values. However, if you're voting based on the concern of the nitrates in the water, I feel like that's gonna pull more Democrats because generally, the Democrat Party kind of is more about the environment.

37:44 I think there's a mistrust there. There's also the data center debates that are huge. They're trying to put them in all over the place. And even if both candidates says, hey, we're anti-data center, I don't think people trust Republicans are going to make the right decision for the environment. I think they're going to make the more financially beneficial decision versus for the people. I'm not saying I agree with that. I just think that that might be how people were basing their decisions. And then also, Havoc kind of made me think about this. So no one around me admitted it would admit if they were gonna vote for a Democrat. None of the farmers admitted that. However, if they're being hit hard, just like Havoc was saying, they might have secretly voted Democrat because they were pissed and over it. And people are tired of the party politics. I'm gonna keep voting red, but I'm really tired of the bullshit. I'm so tired that the day after the election, it fighting pointing fingers who did this who did what wrong who did what wrong Maybe look at what you did wrong yourself instead of blaming everybody else Let take accountability And I think it pushing people into the middle What do we do about it

39:14 So there are some rumors about election interference and stuff like that. And I mean, it does sound suspicious in certain things that so many places leaned blue. But I just listed a bunch of reasons on why somebody might flip from right to blue. I think that's why we were talking about earlier with more parties would be great because, you know, as everybody here has said, we should be electing people on merit and what they're actually going to do. But the problem is, is once they get elected, that party gets their hooks in them and they never come through. And Iowa didn't elect a no-name guy. This guy's been the state auditor for years and years. He's a no-nonsense math arithmetic. He was the less of the two drama.

39:55 Zach Lane ran a perfect campaign until the national consultants came in and he got on that debate stage and started calling him a toxic liberal. If he would have just stayed on cancer rates, water and family farms, he would have been measuring the drapes. The national consultants destroyed Zach Lane, who's a real conservative. But the guy they hired isn't some flaming Democrat by any means. He's a state auditor. Fair enough. Before we move on to Texas, because I want to get Joe and Keith involved on what happened there. I want to make a point about something, though, because we've seen... We didn't get an option in California and Illinois, Chicago, all that.

40:35 It's just blue regardless. And it's almost like no matter the campaign, no matter what happens, we're done. And so I was going to let Aaron speak a little bit on how you feel about that because it seems like other states, they either shift or they have more of an option. But here, you can have the best fucking candidate ever, ever. But if they run and they have a Republican tag on them, they lose astronomically. It's just ridiculous. And I can talk about how Hilton actually ran a great campaign. He was one of the few that actually went to every damn community in California, even mine. He ran a smaller town. No, he didn't. He was everywhere. He went in town halls all over the place. They could have ran.

41:16 He did town halls everywhere. Well, we can disagree on that because I did see what he was doing. He was addressing issues in California, and all Becerra did was make it about how much he was being endorsed by Trump. And he was supposedly an immigrant child, and that was about it. But Aaron, what do you think about that situation where we don't really get a choice? It's just like you already know it's going to be blue no matter what. Yeah, and there's a lot of factors of that because there's no shortage of retarded sons of bitches in these particular areas, which compounds that problem. Exactly. But also, California has their own issues, but Illinois' Democratic voter base grows every year consistently because people keep dropping dead inconsiderately.

42:05 So there are a lot of things people will point to and say, oh, well, this is a conspiracy theory. It's unproven. But when people have been making jokes about material since the 80s, like with Illinois' corrupt election policies, I mean, there was a joke about it on Married with Children, for Christ's sakes. That should give you a timeframe for how long Illinois' elections have been known to be crap. So then you have the actual political power holders actively fighting to do everything they can to keep that questionability solid by, oh, yeah, you can be a safe and secure voter. I'm going to give you a prime example for why I don't believe that in the slightest.

42:48 And this is a real life example. During the presidential election, I got mail-in ballots for people delivered to my home, unrequested, for people that have never lived in this house. I know they never lived in this house because my in-laws built this house. It did not exist. There were no prior residents in this household. So it is literally impossible that these people ever had that address. Now, you compound that by saying, well, and like I saw some random car pull up, like our mailboxes are across the street and there's like five of them right next to each other. I saw some random car pull up to the mailboxes three days in a row and stop at the mailboxes and then pull off. The first day, I didn't give it any thought. I thought maybe it was an Amazon driver throwing a package in somebody's mailbox.

43:29 They came back the next day. I got a little suspicious. Just the third time I didn't see him, but my wife didn't. And she's like, was that car you saw like a maroon hoopty? And I'm like, yes, it was. And so, yeah, she's like, they came back again. So I have a feeling they might have been looking for those random ass mail-in ballots that were sent to people that no longer lived at the center. However, it's not purely essential to have that mail-in ballot to vote falsely in the state of Illinois. because literally all you have to do is show up at the appropriate polling place, give them your name and the address that you are supposed to be registered at, and then pinky promise that that's really you and you're not somebody else doing something illicit or illegal. So I hate to say it's a conspiracy theory to call the integrity of our elections into question because I have literal concrete evidence from my own life that there is a extremely high probability that there being election fraud committed using my home address.

44:25 And so that kind of chafes my willy a little bit. And the fact that it's just further enhanced by the power structure, the B, and meanwhile, in the deeply, I mean, there's a huge, people say, there's always the whole, well, land doesn't vote. And that's why Illinois, even though all the Southern areas are deeply, deeply conservative, that's why Illinois is blue because land doesn't vote. People do. Yeah, well, land also isn't fucking retarded. And you don't get things like, I got into it a couple of days ago with somebody on X because that's how I vent my spleen during the week. And some guy from Chicago, because I made a comment on one of my governor's posts. And I was like, yeah, well, maybe actually deliver instead of crying about Trump for the next couple of years and we'll see what we think.

45:12 And somebody was like, yeah, well, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all you rural hicks. I was like, I live 40 miles outside of Chicago. I'm not some rural hick. I have a full-time job. I'm not, because first he tried implying the farmers are welfare queens. Then he tried saying that we're all uneducated and hicks if we don't go along with the blue narrative. And I was like, so tell me exactly what part of, you know, eight years of consecutive tax increases is beneficial to your way of life. And he goes, well, I can afford it. And I live somewhere where things keep happening. And I was like, That doesn't justify having more money come out of everybody's pockets because it's not a pain for you.

45:53 Yeah, well, all you farmers are parasites. And I was like, you do realize if Chicago got nuked tomorrow, life would go on. But if all the farmers got raptured, everybody would fucking starve to death. You do understand how that world works, right? Well, you're all just welfare queens and you want to be subsidized. And I'm like, and you want to be praised for being an idiot that votes against your own best interests. So, well, I do believe that there are certain systematic things in place that will stop us from getting any kind of real swing in Illinois or California or New York or any of the really deep, deep, deep blue strongholds. Like the Republican gal who ran a campaign in my district, which goes up into Chicago, and the incumbent, who's Jesse Jackson's worthless burden of a kid, who has never done anything of any import or significance in his entire political career, other than be Jesse Jackson's fucking kid.

46:50 He, I didn't see a single mailer or campaign ad or anything from this idiot. Christina Maxwell, the Republican candidate, wonderful woman, very smart, very articulate, actually out there doing the legwork, pounding the pavement every day. She was getting harassed by the city of Chicago. They booted her car a couple of times over bullshit. Just all kinds of dumb, little, petty, the Chicago way. No, you corrupt bastards. It's not. But like I said, she ran a great campaign, but she's out there campaigning to a bunch of people who are like, well, you know, I'm smarter than you and I'm better than you.

47:31 And the fact that you say all these facts doesn't change anything. And they're just like densely populated areas of idiots that it doesn't. Facts, figures, truth, reality doesn't matter to these people. What matters to them is like, I'm going to vote for my guys because you guys are all a bunch of uneducated hicks. I went to college and my collegiate professor told me I'm smarter and prettier and I'm the best girl at the dance, even though I'm a six-foot-two guy. But it's a ridiculous situation where these self-important smug bastards will vote against their own best interests with a smile on their face and be smug about it and be condescending about it because they're shitheads.

48:12 And that's just the state of affairs and the places in which we are trapped. And then you get, it's kind of as we've, a few people have brought up over the course of this, you get this migration of, you know, fiscally stable retards who take their poor policies like a cat with a can tied to its tail and drag them to wherever they're going to go. And they Florida, Texas, or I mean, I'm sorry, that came out wrong. They fucking California, Texas. I'm thinking about where I want to go to. Unfortunately, I'm trapped here for the duration because like my wife won't leave her family and I won't leave my wife. So I'm stuck here for the foreseeable future. So all I'm doing is like stockpiling ammunition and Tannerite because lawn gnomes are expensive.

48:53 None of this should be a surprise to anyone at the top. Okay. I mean, you look at Illinois, every independent poll I've ever read is like well into the 60 and 70% of people believe the state's headed in the wrong direction. And then they keep putting the same people back in power. You look at that same in California, same in Washington, Oregon, New York. A lot of that is this out migration that pushed the people that could have maybe pushed a Republican out into these other states. And then the people that are voting there don't even care who's at the top of the ticket because all they're voting for is their own paycheck because they're tied to public money. I mean, I was just back in California. It looks like Dubai. You're either a migrant or a multimillionaire there now.

49:33 There is no middle class at all. The teachers are there teaching the wealthiest kids. The police are there protecting the wealthiest families. the middle class is completely gone. But on the flip side, why wasn't the GOP have the wherewithal to look and see how miserable people are in these places and give us a decent bench, not a loser bench? I'm sorry. Steve Hilton is the biggest loser ever. Christine Drazen in Oregon, big, big fat loser. They've abandoned these blue places and it's an investment decision. They're going to put their money where they can think they can move it. But if they already know they're going into these headwinds. Not only did they miss the opportunity to put up good conservative candidates in red states, but then when they had actual chance, this is the first time they had an actual chance with like in the LA mayor race or in California or in Oregon, we end up with the bench of people that we get. And it's because the GOP has abandoned these areas.

50:32 And if someone like Steve Hilton can get as close as he got, I mean, 25 points is pretty close in a California election for a Republican. Same with Christine Drazen here in Oregon. That just shows you how miserable the Democrats are here that want something new. And we can't even give them a decent candidate that knows how to build a coalition. Yeah. And when it comes to California, I'm just going to say this, that a lot of it is education because Becerra was corrupt as hell. He hit a bunch of money. He circumvented the ability to audit anything that was going on with bonds. He also passed a back policy that resulted in, I forgot how many children ending up being actually trafficked. The guy was no gem whatsoever, but yet everybody ignored all of those facts and they still backed them. There was even counties- Because they're voting for their paycheck.

51:16 The people that are voting for them are attached to, I mean, they've expanded public funding so much. They don't care as long as the paycheck keeps coming. Yeah. And there was counties, there's counties that were literally red, literally red counties that somehow, somehow voted entirely for Becerra. That didn't make any sense. And that kind of might touch on some of the corruption things, some of the people already brought up, but it was just questionable in California for sure, but it always is. But hey, you know, those are my frustrations, I guess. All right, let's go ahead and move on to what was going on in Texas because that was one of the big ones, right? So here we go, Tellurico, Paxton. There's your numbers right there. We got the governor's race, which that one is what it is.

52:00 And then we also got the U.S. House legislature here. And, yeah, I mean, look, all that being said about Texas, we're all surprised. I want to give Keith, I want to give Joe, I want to give you guys some more time to really discuss that. Just air it all out and let us know where the failures were and what should happen. Because as was stated, you got a new governor that was an adamant open border policy person who's already stated that she's going to start pulling some resources away from the border in terms of state employees. and she's already pushed back on Trump saying, hey, you're not gonna tell me how to run anything, but I'm sorry, when it comes to federal law, she doesn't really have a say necessarily.

52:42 So how do you guys feel about Texas at this moment and what happened? All right, so Abbott screwed up on two things, the biggest two things. First off, he shouldn't have ran. He was one term too long, okay? And he should have backed Doc Peters and we would have been, or Dr. Chamberlain, whatever his name was. we would have had a much better chance. The other thing he messed up on is he should have frigging debated her. Because he is actually a really good debater. And he would have exposed in front of everybody her extreme leftist, right? But if he was really, because the word on the street was he was actually considering about a presidential race.

53:24 Well, then, dude, you shouldn't have ran. You should have backed a new guy, groomed somebody to come up. I kind of already talked about Paxton. That's the fault of Republican voters not voting for the right person in the primary. And we're kind of screwed. The House, yeah, the House is kind of weird. Obviously, I know more about my district. And actually, now that I realize that Joe is in my district, I don't know if he voted for me or not. I did. You did? Yeah. All right. Sweet. So, yeah, so I think what's really just going to happen nationally, first off, is that Trump's just going to veto frigging everything.

54:05 And nothing's going to happen for the next damn two years. We ain't going to get shit done. Well, that's not true. That's not true. The only thing that's going to happen over the next two years is going to have impeachment hearings after impeachment hearings, after impeachment hearings, wasting more taxpayer money on investigations and impeachment hearings. That's all that's going to happen for the next two years. And a lot of name calling and a lot of insulting. Right, because they're all saying lawyer up, right? They're all saying that now, including this Katie Stout woman. And I'll let you say the bad things about her. Call it Cookie Monster. That's an insult to the Henson Company. I'm just saying Cookie Monster is underselling it.

54:46 I really, I'm sorry, I don't mean to hijack this conversation. I'm just going to say one brief thing. I would really like to meet the structural engineers who designed her shoes because I noticed she does have like a quarter inch heel on those. And I'm impressed as fuck that they held up. I think they used to be stilettos, but that's a whole nother conversation. I think there's also, you know, and I said this earlier, right? But this whole party punishment politics, right? It's a lose-lose. And the people lose on that. And, you know, if there were, you know, any self-reflection from the GOP on this, it might be, hey, next time we get in, get to work.

55:27 Don't worry about it. Stop. Just stop. So if the people want it, they will let you know. They will. A referendum will happen. But unless that's the, you know, the driving thing for the American people, stop. Go work for the people. Well, Katie is not going to. So let's just talk about my district because one of the reasons why it's kind of important because first off, it's 834 miles of damn border. And because it's so big, it makes so much more of the whole state look blue when you do those damn color maps. So really what happened there, if we want a specific, is we had two front running terrible candidates. Okay. You had Tony Gonzalez that was just, well, we all know how epically terrible human being that is.

56:12 And then Brandon Herrera can keep his mouth shut on his own YouTube channel. And that's the only thing Katie could do is come after him. And so we're supposed to be the party of morals. And this dude is saying, because he's a quote unquote comedian, he's saying all this crap online. Could Brandon have actually gotten some things done? Absolutely. And he was still calling me every once in a while to get some advice on some things or knowledge on things. I mean, I talk to him about family court, I talk to him about drones, all sorts of things. So, but yeah, so it was just more of those in my district specifically of, we don't want any of these two. Tony put a bad taste in the mouth for Republicans in the area and we're going to vote them out.

56:53 So what's going to happen is Katie's going to come in. She ain't going to be able to do shit because she doesn't know how to get anything done without money because that's all she runs on. and my district is needing anybody who doesn't need money, who knows how to actually use the powers of Congress to not use money and actually fix some things. So, I mean, it cleared it up for me. I'm going, but that's really what is going on in Texas. And I think two years from now, we're going to see at least a minor shift back. And we also say that this is a big blue shift, but it's actually only the eighth worst is what I read, shift after in a midterm. So, yeah, actually, the top four spots are held by Republicans or Democrats, including Clinton and Obama.

57:42 Well, in the area where I live in the district, I live in Eagle Pass. So I'm right on the border down here. So I live on a 10-minute walk from my house. Not one Greg Abbott sign anywhere in town. And this town has been a blue town since before I even got here. And the only difference is that it may be a Democrat stronghold, but they're more like the old blue dog Democrats. They're much more conservative in the way they handle the local politics. But not one Greg Abbotson. I have a good friend of mine who's a podcaster also.

58:24 He actually ran for county judge on the Republican ticket. He received no support whatsoever from the county Republican Party. Nothing. Didn't share any of his posts. Didn't help him fundraise. Didn't do a thing for him. And that left a bad taste in his mouth. And when he got out, he flipped around and he endorsed Hinojosa and he endorsed Tallarico. And he took the photo ops with them and he went to all their events and he interviewed them on his show and all that stuff. And that's what's happening. The Republican Party turned its back on its own people. And there's a price to pay for that.

59:05 There's a theme here, right? The Republican Party just dropped the ball and didn't come through for anybody. Let me address something from both you, Keith and Joe. And then I want Havoc's input just because he has usually a different take on some of this. But what I want to know is this. How much of the issue was border security in Texas? because I don't have it pulled up, but when I was looking earlier, it looked like that was one of the major points of conversation or concern as in continuing to basically secure the border. But then we have Hinoosa who's saying she's very wishy-washy in which way she's going to go.

59:47 She's like, well, I support an open border, but I don't. She's not really saying directly what she wants to do about it. So what do you guys think about that? Because it seems like the people want a secure border, but then the people got elected and are not necessarily resonating or basically agreeing with that necessarily outright. Yeah, so Brandon and I both had the same thought process on the border. Obviously, my background, I was able to be a lot more specific with it, but basically customize each mile. Katie Stout was completely 100% open border until she got through the primary and then she realized that was a losing effort. And she then magically was all about no wall in the bin, big band, but we need soft security.

1:00:29 So she totally flipped, which means we don't know what the hell she's going to be doing anyway. So it was an absolute port. But what really became the biggest point was no wall in the big band area. And we all agreed just technology is what is needed there. So that was that portion. Joe, you probably see the same thing, man. Yeah, yeah. To be honest, I didn't really hear too much about border security. But what concerns me, though, is with the incoming governor, not only is she soft on the border, and she's already indicated that she wants to pull back resources. She wants more of an open, free border. She's also talking about imposing state property taxes.

1:01:14 She's also talking about wanting to end the no income tax in the state of Texas. I don't understand. I mean, look, my county taxes, my city local taxes are ridiculous. Absolutely. I just got another letter. I got an increase from the school district. Now they're increasing their take on the property taxes. But now you want to bring in a state-imposed income tax and a state-imposed property tax. I don't understand why. And people here are complaining about the taxes already. Why would you do that? Why would you vote for someone that's talking about increasing those things and changing those things?

1:01:57 Now, I heard Brian Harrison on, what was he on? He was on one of the, I think it's Bannon show or something like that. And he's talking about trying to petition Greg Abbott to call a session in so that they can repeal the Emergency Powers Act that the Texas governor has access to. Is it going to happen? No. It's not going to happen. Not enough time. Well, not enough time, but it's also a fundraising thing because you click on the link to sign this online petition. And the first thing that pops up before you can do anything else is how much are you giving? You know, I mean, if you really want to do something, why are you asking for just do it?

1:02:38 Just get a petition out there, get people to sign it and present it. And that's it. Petitions mean nothing. They mean nothing. It's just it's a paper tiger. That's all it is. How come Paxton or Abbott, no one ran against all these new taxes? I mean, this was an economic race. You're talking about border security. Yet no one stood up and said, guys, you're worried about your paycheck. The second we reopen the border again, all the wages, the blue collar wages that have gone up under Trump and Scott Bessent dissipate. Because then again, the sum of our wages is only the medium of the lowest and the highest. You flood the labor market in with a bunch more cheap labor, everyone's paycheck comes down.

1:03:18 No one's connecting the two. They just ran and called people Tofu Tallarico and played their stupid name calling match. And then everyone's scratching going, why would you vote for someone who would let in all these illegals? Because no one made the connection for the voter. Chad, you got to do me a favor, Chad. Chad, you got to do me a favor. You got to button up that top button because you're letting all the common sense out. Thank you so much for having me. I'm off to my Carhartts and high-vis. Bye, guys. Like Keith said, Abbott did not even think about challenging her in debates. no one knew i i was thinking the same thing i don't remember because before you even said it keith i was like i don't remember there was ever even a governor's like i always say overconfidence is the synonymous with out of touch yes it's the same thing he didn't want to give her name recognition and it's like she's already served in the house she already had name recognition you have to go out there and actually beat her at her own game on and embarrass her ass on camera And if you don't do that, there's going to be a threat.

1:04:23 And I didn't even see any political ads for Greg Abbott's campaign up until maybe two, three weeks before the actual election. No, they were running Ken Paxton's ugly wife on TV all over the world. I thought, God, you really want to bring Republicans? We're already bleeding men voters, and you put this ugly mug on TV? At least run someone that has a nice pair of fake tits and some blonde hair and embrace the GOP. We are all about Fox News. We want Dana Perino, not Martha Paxton or whatever her name was. Okay, so I'm going to go back. First off Chad I love your take because I had the same take that you mentioned about not addressing the economic issues and not really going after that And instead just slinging insults like a bunch of children That was the stupidest thing ever And then I wanted to circle back the border insecurity thing because I want to get Havoc's take on that. And I wanted to see what he thinks about how that... Because what I find interesting is everybody agreed we should have secure borders, but then the way ICE was doing things, all of a sudden it became a non-issue.

1:05:29 And where do we really draw the line between securing borders and also enforcing the law to deport people? It seems like some people, even here in California, Becerra, I have a clip. I don't know if I'll play it, but he literally said, we are the undeportable. It seems like that was a huge talking point in this campaign for many people as well. So with that, I just want to get Havoc's take on what you think about the whole border issue and how that may have affected the outcome in some of these races. your audio is uh is down here we go there you go sorry all right well uh while we're doing this i i had one thing i i just wanted to throw in there look uh you know you know i'll do respect but i remember the days i started out as conservative i lived as a conservative you know my father was captain in the navy so i was raised probably more conservative than most of the people in this podcast.

1:06:25 That being said, what happened? Like, at what point did the GOP go, hey, you know, this guy has been indicted for fraud and been, you know, circled around pedophilia and everything else. That's the guy we should run with, right? Morals, ethics, where, right? And I'm talking directly about Paxton for anyone that didn't catch that one. So, you know, it's, you know, look, pick better people. Honestly, right? Sorry, but I wrote his ad. And it's like, you know, again, none of this was surprising. You came in, all the information on the said said people think this guy's corrupt. If I was running his campaign, I would have made him Pope Paxton.

1:07:07 He would have been serving soup kitchen, wheeling around limbless veterans, doing all kinds of stuff to make himself. Instead, he does the tofu thing. I just, again, I'll go on and on about it. It drives me crazy. Let's all be honest, right? This has worked for the administration. It worked for the administration. But it only worked for the administration. That's the problem. If you can't copy Trump. No, but again, I'm with him. I'm the guy, right? So, you know, he works for him. So I'm going to do the same thing, right? Yeah. You know, play to your strengths. Just stop, right?

1:07:48 And honestly, from the GOP perspective, Let's get back to morals and ethics if you want a shot, right? Stop putting candidates up that are indicted for fraud. Stop putting people out there that are doing nasty things and you know it and it's exposed and everyone knows it, right? It's just a losing ticket. Now, that being said, I don't care. Keep doing it. Whatever. Doesn't matter to me. That being said, on the border piece, right? Look, where I stand, the only border I have the right to control is my property line, period. Outside of that, I don't give a flying fuck who walks through, who does what they want to do.

1:08:30 I think the bigger issue here is funding, right? Most people, when they look at it, they go, well, they're taking our jobs. Look, if some migrant guy is walking 300 miles across the border and he has no skills, doesn't speak English, and he's taking your fucking job. The problem's you, not the dude. Sorry. I'm just going to throw that one out there. The second piece is if you want to control the borders, control the freaking borders. But putting armed, masked, non-identifying officers into cities deep inside of America, well outside the 100-mile exclusion zone, which honestly, that's fucking bullshit too. It's anti-constitutional. Border stops at the border, not 100 miles from the border.

1:09:15 But if you're going to do that kind of thing, you're going to get backlash. Even if the ideas are good, even if they're solid, even if your heart's in the right place, you are literally, American citizens died, right? Now, you can argue that it was okay or it was justified or whatever, but at the end of the day, the person shouldn't have been there. They have no jurisdiction to stop an American citizen, period. That is fact. They just don't. So you come in hard, you do this. And of course, people are going to come back and go, man, yeah, no, we can't do that, right?

1:09:57 And it's all unfortunately been made synonymous, right? Border control and deportation were made synonymous. And they were made synonymous by the administration who, again, like, I'm sorry, but, you know, an armed, masked, and refusing to identify fed, as far as I know, you're a terrorist. Literally, I don't know, and you won't tell me. So, hey, look, if you want to fix the border problem, here's my suggestion to this. Stop the funding, period. You don't get welfare. You don't get this. You don't get that. You don't get housing. You don't get a check. You don't get nothing. You come in, I hope you got a nice tent and you find some public land somewhere that nobody will find you because otherwise you're going to get taken out. That's the big problem. Honestly, we had open borders in this country until we developed minimum living standards.

1:10:58 Everything was open. If you could buy the boat ticket, you could get here and you could get your two by two land or whatever. And all the way up until the early 1900s when we started developing minimum social living standards. Before that, you couldn't come here because you weren't taking from someone else to do what you were doing. Well, you had to go work that land though too. You had to have that process. And that was the American dream still. You were still coming here to be part of the culture and actually contribute. That's the difference. My bigger problem is that there was two ways to handle immigration. The deportation, the optics were just so bad with the media environment that we're in.

1:11:38 the number one way you should handle it is go after these employers that have backdoor exploitative labor. We're not going after the ag people. We're not going after the construction people. We're not going after the food people who hire these, bring in truckloads of this labor. I watched it my whole life growing up in California. I grew up right near Oxnard, which is a huge agriculture area. We're not going after the people that have this backdoor exploitative labor market. So it doesn't matter. You can secure the border all you want. You can deport all the people that you want. But until the industries who rely on that cheap labor get actually punished, nothing's going to change. And on the flip side of that, too, I really do push back on the notion where people say, well, Americans aren't going to do these jobs. No, for $5 an hour, they're not. But if you give them $25 an hour and benefits what they deserve, they will clean toilets.

1:12:31 They're just repeating the slavery argument. That's all they're doing. You've got to go back to the farming, right? Again, migrant workers are a huge piece of that. And look, this happened. Last Trump presidency, I don't know if you remember, but they tried to get Americans hired on. And remember what I was saying about the margins. $100 to $250 per acre. That's it. Per year. per year. So raising the wage by five times, I'm out of business. Done. Bye. See ya. On the flip side of that, you have four monopolies that control all the seed, four monopolies that control all the fertilizer. Break up those monopolies, get the margins better for the farmers. This is an economic problem. The reason why their margins are so thin is because we give them a subsidy check to pay the four monopolies that pay for their seed and their fertilizer and then the buyers that buy, the four monopolies that buy from them. So there's a really easy way to fix the farmer margins.

1:13:33 But their biggest cost isn't that. Their biggest cost is diesel. And it's not. And we talked about that. That's the other problem. You want to go to war in Iran? Then make sure that pink diesel stays cheap. Just subsidize the hell out of diesel to make sure it's not unpopular. There's so many easy ways to do it. But that has nothing to do with Iran. So diesel, all right, then this is exactly why Trump did go after Venezuela because it's heavy crude. The other one is Alaska. That's where you go after it. And I've talked to both George and Havoc about this. All you have to do to fix this problem from the diesel side is pass a two page bill on the Jones Act. That's it. And it fixes it. And boom.

1:14:16 And so that's, again, we got to come back to these solutions. And my party totally screwed this up because they don't actually know how to actually fix the damn thing. Well, neither do the Democrats. So, you know, that's the issue here. That right there. Okay, but let's back this whole thing up because it's got a little slightly, I don't know. We didn't get heated, but these arguments against border, not against, but how we approach border security can definitely get heated. I have my opinions. Okay. And those opinions may never change, but I'm going to ask this then. We can agree that the way ICE handled things was definitely questionable because I am all for enforcing the law.

1:15:00 But as to Havoc's point, not identifying who the hell you are and expecting someone to comply. Again, who is that person? So I completely agree with you there, but I don't agree. We've never had doxing and the stuff we have now. These guys have to be able to protect themselves. I'm sorry. You went into law enforcement. You chose your career. It doesn't matter. The FBI doesn't mask up. The state police don't mask up. The FBI isn't hated. The FBI isn't hated. They don't have advertisers with their heads on sticks. Nobody masks up and refuses to identify, which last I checked is usually a condition of actually any engagement. You must identify.

1:15:42 I never read that in the Constitution. I don't know about that, but let's just say this. But ICE isn't constitutional. So there is that. I don't care about the masking. That's not what I meant by identification. What I meant is they weren't even saying who they were as a federal officer. They weren't flashing their badges. They had unmarked vehicles. And I get when you're doing a certain operation. But I mean, even when you're putting SWAT in, those guys, you know they're SWAT. The vehicle, everything's labeled. You know who they are. I don't care about the mask situation because to Chad's point, is true. They were intentionally doxing people. You would want your identity to be hidden, especially if you're a DEA agent, for example. You don't want to know who that agent is when they're trying to do drug enforcement or whatever they're doing. That's ridiculous.

1:16:28 But the fact that, to your point, Havoc, that they weren't identifying who they are when they're going after these people. They just show up with guns or whatever and say, hey, get on the ground, whatever. And it's like, who are you? You're coming in hot. It's like, how do you expect people to react. So that I agree with, but let's answer the question then, because I think this was a big proponent that really helped in the elections in certain states, for example. And it's always been a big thing in California, as you guys know, Texas, of course. But how then do we supposedly enforce the law if we're supposedly not allowed to go after these people? If we're just supposed to stop at the border, if we're just supposed to stop at the border and they get in, then how do we pursue them? Just let them be. You go after the companies that are taking advantage of the situation, number one, and that is the company. You go after the head of the company. You don't go in- And you expand legal immigration.

1:17:22 Right. You expand legal. You make it easier. I have a buddy that married his wife in Argentina and spent five years, five years working with the State Department to get her in here. That's ridiculous. They've been here now four years and they're still happily married and they're a real couple. I mean, he went there and met her. But the bigger piece to this is honestly the funding, right? Stop funding this. Don't give out the checks. Don't give out the housing coupons. Don't do any of that. And it stops being attractive. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it and I agree as far as the enforcing the law when it comes to employers because I have spoken about that I don know how many times even you know in previous episodes because that is a real thing It it in agriculture construction, you name it.

1:18:13 And they willingly, willingly do these things. And it's like, that's one part of it, but I'm going to push back, man. It's like, I'm not going to let a murderer, let's say a machete serial killer run around and say, well, the only way to go out from is to restrict the laws on how you can buy a machete. I'm not going to let them keep walking around because go ahead and restrict the machete, it's not going to stop them from still being a serial killer. And I know that's an extreme example, but I'm saying we should be able to find these people and get rid of them if they only have circumvented and broke the law, that being crossing the border. I'm not saying that the person may be a bad person because they're pursuing a better life, and there are people that do, but to Chad's point, we should go to those people, and even you, Havoc, you've said this, give them the opportunity to turn it around. And if at that point they don't want to, then I'm sorry, we still have to enforce the law.

1:19:01 We also have to understand that today's immigrants are not our grandma and grandpa's immigrants. These aren't the people, George, and you and I grew up in California seeing working the strawberry fields that came up, have a couple of kids that Reagan granted amnesty to. This is not the same. We're seeing huge populations of Asian military men, Middle Eastern military men, single men. The demographics are very, very alarming of the people who are crossing. And you have to understand that now that the borders are closed, now we're just dealing with visa overstayers, right? They fly in, they get through on a visa, and they stay. So there's always going to be that. And I agree. You've got to minimize the opportunity, maximize the availability of legal immigration.

1:19:47 But we also have to be very, very honest with ourselves that understand that deportation efforts are just painful. The optics are terrible, but it is something that has to be done. Yeah, I mean, they can definitely do it much better than they have been. Absolutely much better than they have been. I love the self-deportation program. I thought that was such a smart idea. Give them a check. Give them five grand to self-deport and get out. Because my whole thing is economics. I want the labor market to be restored. I want blue collar wages going up. The only way we do that is to move this cheap labor out. So for me, it's an economic thing. But yeah, give them all five grand to get on a plane and get out.

1:20:28 I mean, I'd rather see that any day than see the horrible, you know, and of course, they run the one story of the mother who's been here for 40 years paying her taxes, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. All the other rapists and everything get taken out. But all right. So you can do the marketing and play to people's sympathies based on the story. But hold on. The self-deportation thing, you're not wrong on, but my brother and I, we did a show where we covered a couple that was here for 35 damn years and was given plenty of time to self-deport where it's actually contacted more than once and refused to and extend or say another 20. And they were here for 35 years. These things happen. Now, what sucks is these could be good people that raise families. And again, I don't want you guys to think I'm heartless, but I'm trying to just cut through the bullshit.

1:21:11 I'm calling it black and white and say, at what point is the law enforcement? When do we decide not to enforce it? And that's what I'm getting at. You guys all have great solutions, have it? Chad, I mean, I don't disagree with what you're saying in terms of, you know, take away the incentives that keep them coming because that is number one. I mean, we do need to do that. If we don't do that, they're going to keep trying. Right. But I don't I don't also think we should just ignore the fact that people got away with it either because we go and try to do that in another country. I guarantee we're gone. You're not going to do that in Thailand or China or anywhere else. They're going to they're going to deport you. Even had Trump come in and fixed some of the economic issues he ran on and done some of the things domestically first, he would have built up enough credit in the bank to have these poor optics.

1:21:53 Yeah, agreed. You can't do this. Handle Maduro, talk about Cuba, talk about Greenland, talk about Iran, do everything international while you ran on 100% domestic agenda and then have these terrible optics in the media environment, the deportation. Again, nobody would have cared about Iran. Nobody would have cared about the deportations if we would have just asked some aggressive economic value for Americans in the first couple of years, he could have done whatever he wanted later. It's a sequencing problem. Yeah, well, that's part of the messaging problem the Republicans had in this whole thing was not addressing the economics, period. I mean, because that's what people really cared about. And sticking to the whole concept of jurisdiction, right?

1:22:34 ICE has no jurisdiction over a United States citizen or someone that is here legally. They don't. They have zero jurisdiction. and they gled over that in a very big way. And the optics of that were terrible. And of course, people focused on it. It's like the old adage, right? I'd rather see a thousand guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned. It's the same thing. Yeah, no, I can agree with that. And again, like I know I can be kind of a dick when it comes to so many things, but I don't know. I just believe in the sovereignty and security, but of our nation, regardless- I think that's why you got me here, George. makes you look more mild. Right?

1:23:14 But Havoc makes, I mean, you guys make great points and there's no disagreement. I think we just got ourselves in a situation that it's almost like putting the chicken before the egg. Like, where do we begin with this? It's like, do we enforce the law based on everyone who broke the law already? Or do we do exactly what you guys are suggesting and say, well, let's just start with enforcing the actual laws when it comes to people taking advantage of migrant labor, like illegal migrant labor anyway, because we do have programs. Do we take away the incentives? And maybe that is the smarter approach because then going back to Chad's point, it definitely helps with the optics. Absolutely. So I don't know. Maybe you guys are right on that. Maybe I just need to cool the hell down. No, I think you're right too.

1:23:55 I think you need both. This stuff is very complex and very nuanced. There is no one size fits all. And again, to Havoc's point, something that worked 10 years ago might not work now. So again, it's about taking what you know and meeting the moment and meeting the data where it actually is and stop writing policies the same way you've been doing it for 40 years. That's my point. You can close the border. You can deport a million people. But we've yet to really focus on the industries that keep this backdoor thing going. So I just look at things that haven't been tried yet. I'm not saying those are the solutions. I'm just saying I'd rather have you try something new than do something that, again, is going to have a damaging effect on the party, the message, and everything moving forward.

1:24:40 Do you think they haven't been tried or they're just dismissed and ignored because they thought it would hurt the vote? Well, I mean, look at the federal laws on the books against people that hire. I mean, they get a slap on the wrist. They get little fines, $1,500 fine. I mean, there was a marijuana farm in California that had 10, 14, 15-year-olds working, right? I mean, it's like they should have been shut down. I think they got fined $3,500. right they make that on a single cell yeah yeah i mean i smoke more weed than that at night i i don't you know it's like it doesn't even matter it's like screw the coke right i mean that's that's like yeah i i'd like to see that i want to see you smoke 3500 worth of weed yeah i just i will i will fly to oregon i believe i'll join in with you i always say If you only do one thing good in this state, and it's weed.

1:25:29 That's it. In Oregon. It's true. All right. Look, we kind of went. You guys got ahead. We've got ahead of the conversation, which is great. So I'm going to skip ahead quite a bit. And I appreciate everybody's input, by the way. So this is what we're supposed to have is open discussion discourse without trying to kill each other. And Havoc, I love your perspective because you were just like, hey, I got no dog in the fight. This is just how I see it. And that's what we need. We need more of those perspectives. So I appreciate what you said. I want to go fast track because we're already talking about the issues. So let's go over here, guys. So let's talk about what polling or the data in terms of the issues of why the votes were what they were.

1:26:13 And to everybody's point so far, especially Chad keeps ringing the bell. It has been economy. 39% say it was because of the economy. 33%, I was a little foggy on that, but they're talking about how it was democracy itself. 14% was immigration. So while it seemed like a big thing in some states, nationally, it really wasn't a thing. And only 8% was healthcare, which I thought was interesting since that was like the talking point of most Democrat candidates. And then here's the other issues that are bigger. So, and you guys go ahead and educate me on this because 90% allegedly felt it was due to government corruption. And most people point that towards Trump. So we'll talk about that in a bit.

1:26:53 of course, 89% cost a living. And then 74% that were polled said Iran was the major issue for them. In regards to all of these issues, it doesn't matter who they polled or how they rated these things because people are completely blind to when their side is doing it because we have a bunch of partisan retards that the people who answer polls in my experience are generally mouth breathing sacks of fuck. So they're going to say, oh, well, the corruption is the biggest problem and they're thinking of one specific person or one specific group. They're not acknowledging that both sides are equally corrupt and equally worthless. And it's one of those funny things. I mean, in a lot of ways, I feel like, how can I share a lot of opinions and beliefs with maybe perhaps a couple of mild exceptions where I may, again, I'm probably a little more extreme on a lot of things when it comes to things like, I totally agree. My authority and my borders should end where my property line ends.

1:27:51 Hum so ever, I also view that, this is why I say I'm a minarchist, not an anarchist, because I believe we do need federal borders because the rest of the world does not feel the same way about those sort of rights as we do. And without some sort of national defense of that territory, there's a whole lot of people out there that are more than happy to come over here, overwhelm you, take your goat, knock up your goat, murder you, murder your wife, murder your kids, screw your livestock, burn your property. Who are you hanging out with, Aaron? Who are you hanging out with? I was just like, damn. Well, I didn't say I'm going to do it. I said they're going to come and, you know, I'm going to cook your goat and feed it to my friends. I'm not going to look at it and go, yep.

1:28:33 You know what? A couple more beers and I'm ready. I'm not that flavor of country. It don't work that way for me. But I'm just saying there are enough people globally that without some sort of national line in the sand, And we saw it with the open border situations as the reference was made. Military-aged men of Asian nationality, African nationality, even European nationalities, single males of military age. There's a saying, and it holds a degree of truth. Men fleeing problems bring their families with them. Men going to stir shit up, go alone.

1:29:16 So that's where, like I said, my stance on things like the border are a little more extreme. I personally view deportation as the more calm option versus sticking people in a trebuchet and launching them over a fucking wall. So, yeah, I'm using a very specific piece of equipment for comedy value. Because if you ever seen how one of those things work, if you put somebody in one of those things, they're going to cartwheel and it's going to be hilarious. And I would actually like some Looney Tunes sound effects when they land. But at the end of the day, realistically, you can't hold an ideal like, I only want to be accountable for...

1:30:01 I mean, I've said it repeatedly. I've said it on your show. I've said it on anyone I've ever talked to at some point has heard it come out of my mouth. I don't believe that anybody has a right to tell another person how to live their life as long as you're not hurting anybody. That is my hard and fast stance. Howsoever to maintain that status, we have to make sure people who view that as an assault on their way of life or whatever other nonsense they do to justify the horrific treatment they impose upon their fellow man. There has to be some sort of organization and policy in place to allow people to maintain that sort of things. you can't just say willy-nilly and hope you get by on good vibes and rainbows and unicorn farts that everybody else is just going to let you live your life because you're not bothering them.

1:30:43 And I think that's one of the big problems we have in our society. So a lot of people are like, oh yeah, no, we're going to let everybody in the world come in because it's going to be like a community college, only a country. Anybody can get in as long as you can make the travel. And it's not that I'm shitting on community college, but I'm just saying like Chris Rock was right when he said it's a disco with books. It a case of the standards aren real high The bar not real solid And if you say anybody can come in you going to get a whole lot of people that look at you and go you know what You deserve all the bad shit I going to do to you because you let it happen. And some of it's culture, some of it's community, some of it's just genuine belief that certain people shouldn't exist, which I'm not okay with, with the exception of applying the idea. If you think your ideals and your shit is more important and people who don't agree with you shouldn't exist, I don't think you should exist because you're a dick. My whole ideology is don't be a dick. It's not that complicated. And I'm saying that as someone who is very often told what a massive dick I actually am. I've been told I'm a big blue vein throbbing cock of a human being. That's so surprising. It's so surprising just meeting you. Yeah. I mean, I am what I am and I used to apologize for things, but just for a little background, I've been working in the culinary industry forever. So you get the back of the house, guys, there's something wrong with all of us. And that's just an established fact.

1:32:04 And as somebody who works in an industry that is a very, very big supporter of undocumented individuals being able to have gainful employment, I had a guy, I used to have a cook that worked for me and he was here legally. His brother was not. So every time he wanted to go back to Mexico for vacation, go see his family, whatever he would do, he would stick his driver's license in his sock and then call ICE on himself and get a free ride back to Mexico to go do whatever he was going to do. And then he would show up at the border with his legal paperwork and come back in. So I personally understand people saying, oh, well, I completely agree with the idea of penalize the employers, penalize the businesses and the industries working off of the backs of these people, paying them subsistence wages that you can't do anything with except for take money out of the economy, send it back home because, yeah, you're only making $5 a day here, but you've only been making 32 cents a day in your home country.

1:32:58 I understand that. And I sympathize with those people. And it sucks that the world's the kind of place where that sort of thing's worked. But if we don't penalize the employers, if we turn a blind eye to all the motherfuckers that are making their money off of the backs of people and shitting on them, it's an unavoidable circumstance. And like I said, the system is rigged. It's gamed and it's pathetic. And I don't like it. So that's, I'm sorry. That's my very incoherent rambling statement on the matter. All right. I don't know what to say. Ladies and gentlemen, goats, ballot boxes, and more. He had to say it. I thought we were going to get into another Kash Patel hearing for a second there in the beginning. I was like, what the hell are we doing, dude? So anyway, I wanted to address Aaron for as long as you're on here, chime in whenever you want.

1:33:41 But let's address the three big ones that were the reasons. We already touched on some of it. But if any of you want to go in more in depth, please do. And of course, let's start with government corruption because I don't think we did talk about that too much. So does anyone have anything to say on that as to why some people felt that they voted the way they did? Do we have 15 more hours? Yeah. That's probably a lot of that's propaganda, man. It's crazy. No, it's not. Okay, come on, man. All right, let's keep it focused to... If you look at the crosstabs of those results, if you look at the crosstabs of those results and you look at what they mean by corruption, and I study these stats in my sleep, they're actually really referring to more marketplace corruption.

1:34:23 If you look at what is corruption, they're talking about corporate monopolies. They're talking about price fixing. They're talking about things like the farm subsidies. It's not, I think a lot of people read that and they think Epstein and Trump pay to play. And there's some of that going on. I'm not going to say otherwise. I think that's a big part of the reason why Susie Wiles has gotten fired. But again, when you look at the crosstabs of what people are talking about when they say government corruption, it's largely economic and it ties back into cost of living. Same with health care. Health care looks like a small percentage, but health care is actually built into that cost of living number as well when you peel back the crosstabs.

1:35:08 So that's how I see it. I think it's people misinterpreting what that government corruption definition means. means, but there is definitely a perception that needs to be addressed when it comes to some of this pay to play crap. Okay. So that makes more sense. I wasn't, I was thinking the other way around too, because. Yeah, no, I, well, I was thinking more long. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Go ahead. All right. Congress has a slush fund. It's a multimillion dollar slush just to pay off for sexual assault. Okay. That's corruption. Number two, there isn't a single, single Congress person, and I'm talking about both houses, that isn't a multimillionaire after a term.

1:35:51 This is $178,000 salary. I'm sorry, you don't get to be a multimillionaire in a matter of years on $178,000 salary. It does not happen. Go find it. Tell me that this is systemic in the world because I make more than that and I'm not. They're day traders. Yeah. It's real easy when you're making the policy to make the trades that are going to benefit you. So there is systemic corruption. And let's not forget that there have been statements that said if this thing ever comes out, it will burn the entire government to the ground. And so, you know, like, like, you know, the whole Epstein thing, I'm sorry, but, you know, we've got other countries, Ireland, UK, France, Dubai, or was it Dubai or UAE?

1:36:45 I can't remember. They're literally taking action against at least a minor part of these things. And we're like, yeah, don't worry about that. That's fake news. Nothing to see here. You know, so I'm sorry, but corruption actually is a thing. And then you look at the congressional approval ratings. 14% is about the average that you've got for the last several decades. Okay. They shouldn't exist, but they still do. Right. So corruption, I think, is a big one. I call it Jurassic Park. They should all be extinct. I think you have a point when it comes to definitely the congressional seats we've seen.

1:37:26 Flip, for example. but I also am on Chad's side as to how they view corruption because like the way I see it from what we've seen in California, for example, it's more like how our taxes were handled and how certain things were handled such as like the high-speed rail, the billions of dollars that are missing, the $24 billion we'll never see from the homeless program. Like the misappropriation of funds is really- $23 trillion the Pentagon can't account for. National though, we're talking about the midterms. So in the midterms, if we bring it back into focus on that, I think when it came to the elections, as it affected people's communities locally, maybe they were looking more at like what Chad was talking about, like how they're mishandling funds and programs. But you make a great point because when it comes to Congress, they're looking at the overall government corruptions you just explained, Havoc. So I think there's two things at play here for sure. It just depends on what your focus is and who you were voting on for what purpose, right? Yeah. No, and to Havoc's point, 86% of Americans want a stock trading ban.

1:38:26 I mean, this is something that's so stupid. They should be able to. And that's why I'm a big convention of states guy. I don't think we're ever going until we do an Article 5 convention of states where Congress is never going to cut themselves off. Give me a break. Yeah, but when's the last time we actually did one of those? It's coming. We've got 28 states signed up already. I mean, it's coming. It'll happen in the next 10 years. I promise. We'll see. But yeah, you're right. I mean, the people agreed on the SAVE Act. They agreed on, you know, no more, you know, stock market vote. And the problem is like, Keith, you and I talked about that. It's like Congress isn't going to kneecap themselves. They're not going to shoot themselves in the foot. They're not going to renegotiate their own salaries. They're not going to reduce their own benefits and their lifetime medicals.

1:39:07 Like, that's not just going to happen. But we also talked about how to fix it. And there's one word that fixes it all, and that's transparency. Term limits. But Congress isn't going to vote themselves term limits. No, that's why we have to have an Article 5. That's why the founders put that in the constitution in the first place. So the states could bring back power when they saw that things like judicial supremacy, legislative supremacy would happen. I mean, Madison called all of this before it even, we've gotten here. I'm sorry to interrupt. I'm sorry, Havoc. I got to run. So I just want to say thank you for inviting me to this. This was fantastic. I really appreciate meeting every single one of you guys. And I look forward to seeing you guys. You're awesome, Joe.

1:39:47 Thanks, brother. Appreciate it. And keep. See you in a month, Joe. You got it. All right, folks, have a great one. All right, Joe, thank you. Bye. So all things you guys are saying are very valid and correct. It's just two sides of the same coin, really. It's just what I saw in the midterms is the candidate, the vote was determined based on the type of corruption, how it applied to them. But what Chad said, I've literally looked into that and thought about that as well. The convention states is like, why are we not going that way? and the question is, I think it's probably down to education. I don't think the people even know enough about that to even rally to push their representatives to be like, hey, this is what we want to do.

1:40:28 But you know it's huge right now, right? They have 28 states already. They need 34 states. It's huge. They only need six more states. I mean, Mark Meckler has done an amazing job with Convention of States Action. Even just for the reading, if you guys, again, these are Hillsdale constitutional people. It's right up my alley, But I've been on board since I was a volunteer for the Tea Party days. Right. I'm a huge fan of convention states. We need to see it come to fruition and we need to see it used more often. So it's actually never happened, right? And then the Constitutional Convention is the one I was thinking about was 1787. Oh, that was the original ratification. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, and you're right.

1:41:09 So 28 states so far. So who is he going after next to get these additional six? I'm not sure, but it's really nonpartisan. It does have a conservative backing, but they're only running for three things. Term limits, debt ceiling, term limits on every single federal office, debt controls, a debt ceiling for Congress, and then the stock and private ban. That's the private equity, and you can't write the rules that determine the returns. So those are the only three things that they care about. That's it. And it's just a ground game at the state houses.

1:41:49 I'm a volunteer writer and broadcaster for them. And I do believe that that is going to be the ultimate solution to fixing Washington. I want to see it happen, though. I really do. I'm on board. I'm on board. I think we'll see it happen. Texas has already signed up. Arizona has already signed up. And several blue states have signed up as well. Including Texas. Including Nevada. Yeah. So there's still common sense out there amongst all the theater, right? Sorry. It's been over an hour, so I'm starting to fade. Yeah, right. My admiral is wearing out. Let's just move on. So corruption, we got it. Cost of living, we already know that that was an issue. Iran war, of course, another contributing factor.

1:42:31 But let's just go ahead and put a bow on this whole thing. What is the biggest reason you all think, and I already know your answer, Chad, but go ahead and say it anyway. What is the biggest reason you all think that we saw the shift we did? Yeah. Again, if you're starting with me, I think that I've said it before. It's a complete abandonment of conservative values. It was terrible candidates. I think that the primary system, the party primary system has failed us miserably, developing, bringing out candidates that have to be Jersey purists and then try to build a coalition for a general in the middle. The two are antithesis of each other. You know, it doesn't work. We need to go back to caucuses and invite independents into the tent as well, like Glenn Youngkin did in Virginia. And we need to stay the course and be very, very optimistic that, again, these results are not an embrace of a new ideology. It's not an embrace of the Democrats. It's we gave you guys two years. We had tons of first-time customers. They're giving these guys two years. I believe what's best for America is best for everyone. I don't care. I am more of a lean Republican or right or whatever you want to call me, conservative. But if the Democrats come in and fix affordability and do stuff.

1:43:44 I'll say it on my show every single day. I will kiss the ground they walk on. I do not care. But I, you know, again, hope for the best, prepare for the worst. But this was a perfect indictment of a party that's been hijacked by people who thought they could do what Trump did. And boy, did they learn the hard way. And then just, you know, one little thing that I did want to say that I didn't get to mention. Perfect example of a conservative who sailed was Brandon Gill. He sailed through his race because again, he focuses on his district. He delivers for his district. He's brought jobs to his district. He's blocked data centers in his district. This notion that these congresspeople can run as national politicians is ridiculous. Deliver for your district and you will be rewarded. Deliver for your state, you will be rewarded. This was just an indictment of podium politicians and I'm excited about it because now we get to rebuild the GOP from conservative principles with people like Ron DeSantis. Yeah, I mean that point is all valid. I mean, people were just ignoring the community and what people actually wanted and acting like a bunch of fucking rock stars is what it was.

1:44:53 Absolutely. Quite literally. Real reality television stars. Absolutely have it. I would just go back to pretty much everything I've said before. Number one, if you want people to vote for you. Keep your campaign promises. If you say no new wars, don't start a war. If you say you're going to fix the economy, fix the fucking economy And don sit there and be a douchebag and tell people well you need to live leaner Right It just That bullshit I mean honestly I think that was one of the biggest stinging things was just like laughing in your face. Ha ha, stupid pores. Yeah. And to go back to what Chad said before, not here, but you've said it on your show, was like, you know, if what you do doesn't match the resume, man, we should be able to recall your ass and hold you accountable. And that's the other thing that we don't really see either. Keith?

1:45:50 I think the last thing that hasn't been looked at enough too is lack of organization within the GOP. And because I was in the middle of it, I saw it directly. And the lack of them actually supporting candidates, it was just going after the popular. So even in my district, over half the votes come from Bexar County here in San Antonio, even though the district goes all the way out to El Paso. And yet the Bexar County GOP didn't give us a form or a debate. Right. And it's like, you got to be, you got to be kidding me. And we all screaming at it from the well Tony Gonzalez isn going to be part of it So we not going to do it Who cares Well then that his fault for not wanting to be part of it So that the lack of organization and the centralized message that was actually towards it And Chad you are 100% right, man. That's exactly what they're all screaming for is somebody who knows how to actually work the issues of your actual district. So I'm kind of excited for Katie Stout because she doesn't know shit about energy, transportation, any of this stuff, stuff that is like perfect for me so i'll be able to smoke her but um yeah that's exactly what's gonna happen though so he farting for 2028 texas district 23 i got it it's it's my it's my seat baby it's in the bag well if you need someone to write your campaign ads for you that'll actually win give me a call i'm absolutely gonna call you are uh you're an author and opponent man i tried and the hair.

1:47:21 And the hair. I'm the operator, man. I'm not the communicator. I'll come with the solutions and you guys help me package it. That's what we need. The future of the GOP should be builders, not bureaucrats. Chad will be your entire PR department I don know about that You want to hire Kristen Davis my publicist Trust me She cool All right I going to start wrapping this up guys If you're good with that, we've been on here for a bit. Unless you have anything else to add, but I think we covered most of everything. Now, remind me to do this again soon with you guys. This has been wonderful. Oh, yeah, man. I appreciate everybody taking the time to do this too.

1:48:02 I mean, this was a lot of people. So trying to get everybody to get their time, basically. And everybody was very respectful, even though we don't all agree on everything. But we are all open-minded and looking for solutions, which is what I think we all have. That brings us together, for sure. So I appreciate all of you. I'm going to start bringing it home, guys, and ending this. If everybody enjoyed this conversation, please like, share, subscribe to World of Blaze. And I will leave links for everybody else that you saw here on the show. And please support them as well. And with that being said... Outro Music