Speaker 1: What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to
this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon
to three on WBT Radio and Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
my daily show prep with all of the links, become
a patron, go to dpetclendarshow dot com, make sure you
hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right
to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so
much for your support. All Right, so the two topics
covered in the last hour're going to kind of keep
them sort of in the pan here cooking for a
little bit because it ties into a larger issue, which
is this loss of trust, social trust, loss of trust
in institutions. And I really do, I do believe that
social media has really done more to help the faux
lead as I call them because they're not really elites,
they're fox leads. Has really helped them to just light
their own credibility on fire. They go on to Twitter,
they go on to Instagram or TikTok and they say things,
they behave in certain ways. People who have phones now
have cameras and they catch you. Gavin Newsom at the
French laundry during the COVID lockdowns, and Roy Cooper walking
around the Governor's mansion with his mask dangling from his
ear while he celebrates Black Lives Matter during a lockdown
where he said, no more than twelve people could gather outside,
except if you're marching for social justice, and then you
could have one hundred people gather together outside. And then
maybe if you get a little fiery but mostly peaceful,
and the cops have to use some pepper spray on
you or something, you'll be hacking and coughing out your lungs.
But don't worry. As I went over in great detail,
COVID knows. COVID knows if your cause is righteous. See
if you're going to just attend church service on a Sunday,
for example, No, no COVID shall smite ye down. But
if you are marching for Saint George Floyd and to
defund the police and make our cities more dangerous, COVID
knows that, and it shall. It shall not affect you.
It shall not smite ye. Worth thee I guess it
would be. It was the smartest virus ever developed in
a lab. Oh okay, fine, that's racist. Batsup fine, whatever.
People saw these things happening, and because of the democratization
of media, there are no longer these gatekeepers, right, and
so people see this stuff and the gatekeepers are like,
you know, the kid trying to put the fingers in
the dam, and yeah, they're too many holes. You do
not have enough fingers. Without the gatekeepers to protect these
faux leads, people have lost confidence in them and their
expertise as well they should, right, remember trust the science
two weeks to flatten the curve. Same thing as going
on with the crime stories the light rail system, Like
we expected that the people who are running the mass
transit system when they get hired in and they're celebrated
for all their expertise, and this person comes from Pittsburgh
or Cleveland and they have all this experience and whatnot,
and then you find out that they built all of
the light rail train stations without any kind of turnstiles. Oh,
and they're also not really checking your fare when you're
on the train, and that means anybody can get on
it and just write it around as a rolling shelter. Well,
who's the Einstein who came up with that plan? How
much money have we been missing out? On because people
don't pay. I'm not just talking about you know, homeless
people that don't have any money. I'm talking about people
who do have money and would otherwise be paying, but
they know they don't have to, so they don't. That's
what happens in a lower trust society when you start
eroding that social trust and people start behaving because well,
everybody else is doing this thing, and everyone else is
skating by, and nobody's taking holding them accountable and taking
their tickets, so I might as well do the same. Right,
you create a permission structure that becomes the norm, that
becomes the acceptable behavior. So the legacy media is no
longer acting as the gatekeeper. They can't. You're also seeing this.
I got story. I got a story on this too,
several stories on this. What's been going on in the
UK that is social media driven? What's going on in
the UK with the with the protests against migration and
I my fear is this, this is going to boil
over because the Folites in charge of the UK, they
just keep getting stupider, They just keep saying dumber and
dumber things and racing towards this fabian socialist paradise that
the people do not want and they are turning out
in droves because they fear it's just about too late.
And by the way, it might already be too late.
But the reaction is going to be could be violent,
but it could all it's going to be radical, like
this may propel that guy Nigel Farage from the Reform Party.
This could propel him all the way in. He's now
out there talking like Donald Trump. He's going to be
doing mass deportations. So we'll get to that, right, But
this is it's all under this category of trust, the
social compact. I keep talking about this because you're supposed
to be doing certain things when you're in charge of
the government. You're supposed to be you know, managing it,
but you're also supposed to be acting in the interests
of the citizens of your state. And when Roy Cooper
as governor cannot figure out how to do the recovery
efforts for it, not one, not two, but three different
hurricanes under his tenure, and now he wants to go
to the US Senate and he's like, oh, I didn't
want to have to go. He's been he's really leaning
into this stupid slogan like I didn't want to go
to Washington, but doosh, garnet, Gosh darn it, I have to.
I got to go. You know, they're dragging me up there.
You don't have to go, They're really you don't have
to go. Stop trying to make this like I'm just
being called to serve. You are a career politician. You
have like literally been in office for almost my entire life.
So don't tell me that, oh, I just didn't want
to serve anywhere. That's all you know. That's your whole
career is public service. And by the way, when he
gets up there and he's like, oh, where's the response,
the federal government's doing a terrible job on Hurricane Helene.
Let me read to you a quote. This is from
Tim Wigginton, who publisher at the Blue Ridge Times. Here's
the quote. North Carolina is the first state affected by
Hurricane Helene to start its home renovation and reconstruction program.
In fact, North Carolina is the fastest state in more
than a decade since Hurricane Sandy to begin rebuilding homes
after a major hurricane using hud cdbg d R funding sources.
That's a quote from the Democrat Governor Josh Stein see,
so when Roy Cooper is out there saying, where's Wadley,
Michael Wadley, where's Trump? They're not doing enough R two
D two over here, the governor Josh Stein, he uh
like he's touting, he's touting the rapid success. But that's
the thing you always got to keep in mind about
Roy Cooper. He will sacrifice any and everybody for his
personal political ambition. He did it with HB two, right,
He did it on the the because then he flipped
on the HB two right, he told all the Democrats,
don't you do any kind of fix I need this issue.
And then of course he sold out the trans people
and he changed HB two, signed on to that deal
that they didn't want. So he threw them under the bus,
through women under the bus for the access to the
women's sports and that sort of thing. He threw all
the teachers under the bus when he kept betowing all
of the budgets, holding them hostage for Medicaid expansion. Right,
this is just another example of it. By the way,
the state auditor dashboard shows that North Carolina has already
been making progress and recovering from the storm. So again,
if it was anybody other than Roy Cooper, that they
may be able to make this case about slow hurricane response,
but not Roy Cooper. It took him a decade, a
decade and still didn't get everybody back into their homes
from Hurricanes Matthew and Florence. So when I was a kid,
my grandpa died with Alzheimer's, and before he died, my
mom and my dad took care of him as he
got worse. Forty years ago, there were no treatments and
not much support for caregivers and family. But things are
different today because of the work of so many people,
including the Alzheimer's Association of Western Carolina. It's a great
organization with awesome people with huge hearts. I've been a
supporter for twenty five years. This cause means a lot
to me. I participate in the annual Walk to end
Alzheimer's and I'm leading a Charlotte team again this year,
and it's called once again Pete's Pack. You can sign
up and you can join the team and walk with us.
It's on October eighteenth that truest field sign up at
alz dot org slash walk and then you can search
for my team name Pete's pack. There's also a link
at thepetepod dot com. There's also a link in the
description of this podcast. Also, I'll be am seeing the
Gastonia Walk on October eleventh, and so you can make
a team and join that one too, or make a
donation and help me hit my goal of five thousand dollars.
If you do, I really appreciate it. There are a
bunch of other walks all over the Carolinas. You can
go to alz dot org slash walk for all the
dates and locations. We're closer than ever to stopping Alzheimer's.
Can you help us get there? Will you walk with me?
For a different future, for families, for more time for treatments.
This is why we walk. Crime, COVID lockdowns, Hurricane Helene response,
All of these things, just in the last five years
have undermined trust in the institutions and the supposed experts,
the foe elites, the faux leads that claim to know
what they're doing. Trust them with the power, and then
they will be able to govern effectively. One of the well,
let me do this. Let me go to the text
line here driven by liberty Buick GMC and let me
get to some of these text messages, um I don't
have a name here, nine to a zero number says
I worked sanitizing the light rail during COVID. The homeless
have used the trains as a mobile shelter for at
least that long. Keep in mind, you're not supposed to eat, drink, smoke,
or slip on the trains, and you're supposed to have
a ticket. The homeless do all of those things, including
smoking and doing drugs, as well as urinating, defecating, vomiting,
and fighting on the trains. They've done it for years.
They get on the trains first thing in the morning
and wait to get kicked off at three am. It's
the safest and most comfortable most of them will be
all day. There was even a drunk lady that would
call an ambulance at three am and then tell them
to stop and let her get out when she got
where she was going. All I can say is I
didn't know the homeless had a political lobby, but it
must be really powerful. Well, this is the cottage industry
of activists and advocates. Think of them as NGOs, right,
These nonprofits that are all about, you know, homeless activism,
and they get government grants, they mobilize votes, and so
the Democrats utilize their services in exchange for taxpayer funds
going to the NGOs going to the nonprofits. And it
almost seems like okay, it actually is, as Michael Schellenberger
documents in the book San Francico. He writes about how
there isn't any incentive for these nonprofits to actually reduce
homelessness because then they're out of a job. Right, So
why would you put yourself out of a job if
you're making a good salary with the government grants. Right.
Regarding the lockdowns, Yes, the impact on mental health, people's loneliness,
deaths of despair, right. Roy Cooper has never been held
accountable for you know the other side of the ledger.
He always gets up there. If he's ever even asked
about COVID and his response anymore. I would love for
somebody to ask him. I should have told Don Brown this.
Somebody needs to ask him. Did he make any mistakes?
Was every decision you made during COVID the correct decision?
Did you bat a thousand on that one, Roy, Or
were there some things that you did that in hindsight
you look back and say, yeah, we probably shouldn't have
done that, just one? Can you name one? Or you're
going to claim that you were perfect in all of
your decisions, which would be remarkable, right, absolutely remarkable if
you got every single decision perfectly correct. Shouldn't we expect, Oh,
shouldn't we expect the family of the woman that was
murdered on the light rail line to sue the city
if the murderer did not pay for a pass or
ticket and no security or anybody else checks the passes.
I think there may be liability there. There very well
could be there very well could be some liability there.
Maybe that that's why the City of Charlotte has been
less than great in its pr response to this. People
haven't really been racing to the cameras to express sympathies
and thoughts and prayers and promises of increased security and whatever.
Maybe they're afraid of a lawsuit, and if it's the
City of Charlotte, all you gotta do is just threaten
a lawsuit, and they're just they're going to throw a
bunch of money at you. So I would yeah, I'd
say it's probably better than fifty to fifty chances that
they're going to get suited. The city taxpayers are going
to have to pay for the failures of the people
who said, put me in charge. I know what I'm doing.
A mass transit system does not work if people don't
ride it because they are afraid for their lives. If
they are going to be encountered by psychopaths and mentally
derain people, criminals, they're not going to ride your transit system.
And that's a very big problem for people who now
would very much like to triple our sales tax in
order to pay for expansion of the system. So until
Veto says, until this decade, there were armed G four
special police on the trains and they were asking to
see tickets and passes. If someone was riding without one,
they were arrested and usually spent the night in jail.
The next day, at first appearance in court, the ADA
would usually dismiss the charges and then release them. Same
for panhandling and similar crimes. They haven't done this though
since Saint George Floyd. Yeah, the amount of destruction that
has been wrought with that whole campaign, and I don't
by the way, I don't think that you would have
seen we would have seen the level of violence and
the overreaction had we not been locked down. You know,
you lock people up, and then George Floyd was sort
of the spark that that lit the fuse. You know,
I don't think you get there. And by the way,
I don't think you have the J six Riots without
George Floyd and the lockdowns either. It was it was
all that same year, same situation in rock Hill with
the free buses. This is Jody uh started out great
winter used it had stopped on campus. But now, as
Edwin says, it's a rolling homeless shelter game on Week
one starts now and every touchdown brings you closer to
a payout. With Draft King sports book and official sports
betting partner of the NFL, this isn't just football, it's
first touchdown fireworks anytime TD rushes live bets that ride
every momentum shift. At DraftKings, every play is your next
shot to win. Will the Panthers win? Will we even
get a touchdown? New customers bet just five dollars and
get three hundred dollars in bonus bets instantly, plus get
over two hundred dollars off NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube
and YouTube TV. So your season starts now. Download the
Draft Kings Sportsbook app and use code pete to get
three hundred dollars in bonus bets instantly when you place
your first bet of five dollars or more plus over
two hundred dollars off NFL Sunday ticket from YouTube and
YouTube TV. But you got to use promo code pete.
In partnership with Draft Kings, The Crown is yours. Gambling
problem call one eight hundred gambler. In New York call
eight seven seven eight hope and why, or text hope
and why four six seven three six nine. In Connecticut,
help is available for a problem gambling call eight eight
eight seven eight nine seven seven seven seven or visit
CCPG dot org. Play responsibly on behalf of Boothill, casino
and Resort Kansas. Fees may apply in Illinois twenty one plus.
Age and eligibility varies by jurisdiction void in Ontario. Bonus
bets expire seven days after issue. WinCE C Sportsbook dot
DraftKings dot Com slash promos NFL Sunday Ticket offer for
new subscribers only and auto renews until canceled. Digital games
and commercial use excluded restrictions apply additional NFL Sunday ticket
terms or at YouTube dot com slash go slash NFL
Sunday Tickets slash terms limited time offer. RJ says, I
have not rode the train for years. I will never
go to Charlotte because I do not feel safe there.
That's from the text line. No one on the city
council is without responsibility for the security of the city
transportation system. Is this the first security problem? But there
is a real issue in Charlotte Meck in voting and
how ignorant the voters are. Well, I'm gonna get to
that in a second. The crime issue as an issue
for politicians. There was another text here, but I'm sorry here,
Mike in Gastonia says, how often do members of the
city council actually ride the light rail? Edwin Peacock, councilman,
pointed out something that's been a problem for a while.
There is a complete disconnect with the leadership in Charlotte,
both political and different law sorry, both political and different
law enforcement, to do what needs to be done. It's
like they put on their blinders and hold out their
hand for people more money only. Okay, So yeah, so
this gets to a thing I've referred to as suicidal empathy.
It's also called toxic empathy. There was a post by
Matt van Swoll on Twitter. He kind of rose to
Twitter prominence and fame during the aftermath of Hurricane Helene.
And he has been red pilled, which is a reference
to the matrix where you know, you take the red
pill and then you see how far the rabbit hole goes,
you learn what the real truth is, or you take
the blue pill and you go back to sleep. And
so people say red pilled. It's a reference to that matrix.
So he has a post about this, but he doesn't
he doesn't use the term suicidal empathy that was coined
by Gad Sad or toxic empathy, which that was said
Ali Beth Stucky. Stucky. Yeah, Ali Beeth Stucky. She wrote
a book called Toxic Empathy. So let me first focus
on this comment about the crime and the voters. Okay,
So there is a poll that ABC News reports on.
It's associated press. NRC Center for Public Affairs Research finds
that while most disapprove of how Trump is handling the issue,
a large majority see crime as a quote major problem
in large cities. Sixty eight percent say it's a major
problem in large cities. The findings underscore the challenge facing
Democratic leaders. They must thread the needle between criticizing Trump's policies,
which are deeply unpopular among their base, while at the
same time not dismissing widespread concerns about safety, which are
amplified in many news sources and in online forums like
Facebook and the popular next door app. That could create
a vulnerability for the party heading into next year's midterm elections. Yes,
the defund the police movement was awful for Democrats. It
was terrible. Turns out people did not want to actually
defund the police like the radical leftists were demanding. While
Trump remains unpopular overall, the new poll finds as a
coach to crime has earned him high marks compared to
other issues like the economy and immigration. Half of US
adults fifty three percent say they approve of his handling
of crime, and the margin of error on this poll
is like three and a half to four percent, So
it's it's it's a it's a draw, I would say.
But the vast majority of Americans eighty one percent also
see crime as a major problem in large cities that
includes nearly all Republicans roughly three quarters of independence and
nearly seven in ten Democrats. About eight in ten Democrats
say it's quote completely or somewhat unacceptable for the president
to seize control of local police departments as he is
done in Washington. Okay, it's he didn't seize control, it's
a support role whatever. And it's also it's a federal district,
so it's not like he's seizing control of a city
that he has no jurisdiction to do it in. It's
the district of Columbia. There's a woman here, quoted Democrat
Starr K fifty nine lives in Downey, California, near La.
She said, if the president really wanted to tackle the issue,
he would be investing in local police departments instead of
diverting resources to immigration enforcement. No, that would be for
your local government to be doing. Oh, but they defunded
their police departments. They caved to the woke mob. She
sees the crackdown as part of a broader effort to
bolster Republicans' chances in next year's midterm elections. Okay, fair enough,
and so like, sometimes the right thing to do is
the right political thing to do. As well. She said,
I think he's going to want to have troops in
the street to intimidate people not to vote again. The
leftist paranoia and catastrophism. This is deranging. Here's the key
part of the challenge for Democrats is that historically crime
has not been a top issue for their base. And
you know me, I'm a why guy. I like to
ask why why is crime not a top issue for
the Democrat party base? Why they don't answer that in
the ABC News story. They just throw it in there, like, well,
you know, Democrats don't really care about crime. H Is
there a reason for that? What makes the Democrat base
different than say, Independents and Republicans and their views of
crime as being very important? Man, that's a brainbuster. I'm
sure it'll come to me sometime. All Right. You hear
me talk a lot about incentives, right, Well, let's talk
about incentive trips, the kind that companies offer employees to
fire them up and reward their teams. If you own
a business or you work somewhere that offers these incentive trips,
first off, good for you, but also there is a
custom app that's a game changer for these trips. It's
called Incentive Tripkit. Private group messaging, shared photos, your itinerary,
travel details, all built into a single, easy to use app.
There's even a traveler locator, so Carl from Accounting doesn't
get left behind. The best part about Incentive trip Kit
it's totally private, no email captures, no sign ups, no
cringe ads. It's simple, clean and secure. And when the
trip is over, Incentive trip Kit turns those highlights into
a professional storytelling video. So think about it. When you
launch next year's incentive trip campaign, that video becomes your
greatest motivator. Talk about a return on investment. Right, You
got to check out incentive trip Kit for your business.
Visit incentive tripkit dot com because great trips deserve even
better returns. All right? So I asked the question of
why historically crime has not been a top issue for
the Democrat base. Why ABC News does not offer an explanation,
But I would submit that the answer can be found
in this tale told by Matt van Swoll. He says,
I've been wanting to write this for a long time.
I think now is the time. Empathy is a virtue
and it is being weaponized against those of us who
truly and honestly care. It's insidious by design. Here's how
it works on so many, including me for so long
because he was a self described you know, liberal or progressive,
and he Hurricane Helene just redpilled him. And anyway, So
he says, the pattern is always the same. Present an
emotional story, frame any opposition as cruel and harmful, rebrand
neutrality as complicity, and then make the policy solution an
empathy test. So this was after the school shooting in Minneapolis.
He says, a trans person just shot up a school,
and notice how fast the narrative shifted. It's not about
the victims. It's not about the parents who will never
see their kids again. It's about protecting the trans community
from backlash. It's empathy pointed in the wrong direction. It's
not just the trans issue either. Immigration. They say, it's
just families seeking a better life. Okay, but then you
learn about the fentanyl, the gangs, and the human trafficking.
That's not good. But if you bring that up, suddenly
you're heartless and racist. See the game. You see a
homeless person on the street with your kids, and the
kid says or they'll say, they'll say that these are
vulnerable people with nowhere else to go. So cities allow
open drug use, tents and crime, and if you disagree,
you're accused of lacking compassion while the entire community suffers
because of it. It becomes even more a parent when
talking about crying they just made a mistake. Suddenly you
discover there is vastly more empathy for criminals than empathy
for victims. That doesn't sound right. Where's the accountability, Well,
then you must be ignoring the systemic oppression. And by
the way, this was this was what our mayor wrote
vy Lyles in her statement, with the one sentence thoughts
and prayers for the victim, and then five paragraphs about how,
somehow or another we all failed the suspect, the attacker,
the alleged murderer. What about foreign refugees, Well, they're fleeing
war zones, have a heart, and of course many truly are.
Nobody denies that. But when you rightly raise concerns about vetting, crime,
cultural integration, empathy is then used as a shield to
shut you down. Okay, sure, but what about all the
students in debt? And they'll say people are drowning in debt.
They just want a chance at life, and that part
tugs at my heart. Nobody likes seeing people struggle to
barely make it. But the second you bring up fairness,
like the plumber who never went to college and would
be having to pay for all of the degrees, suddenly
all that's selfish of the plumber. And after a mass shooting,
instead of focusing empathy on the kids who were killed,
we're told the real victims are the group that the
shooter belonged to. And that's weaponized empathy at its ugliest
possible form, he said. Real empathy does not erase reality.
It cares about all people impacted by a policy or
a tragedy. So when empathy becomes selective, politicized, and manipulative,
it no longer is compassion. It is no longer empathy.
It's control. And this is the same pattern that you're
seeing play out over in the UK with all of
the migrants, and the people have had enough, the citizens
or should I say subjects of the UK, they have
had enough and they are making their voices heard, but
the elites keep ignoring them. And that is a recipe
for violence, for the overthrow of governments. I mean, I'm
not trying to be hyperbolic here, But this is how
these things happen. You've got hang up before I do that,
because I'm gonna probably re rack and start from the
beginning with the UK stuff at the top of the
next hour. But let me do this. This is a
logical fallacy. Okay, the appeal to emotion, Okay, that's the
play here. Manipulation of emotions, fear, pity, anger, and you
you to persuade rather than using reasoning or evidence. And
the point here is to bypass rational thinking by evoking
strong emotional responses that cloud your judgment. And that makes
it more likely that you'll accept an argument without scrutinizing
its logic or it's evidence, or it's lack thereof. And
this is bad. Decisions based on emotion can be biased
or irrational and override critical thinking, and it causes you
to accept conclusions that lack logical support or fail to
address the actual issue. This is the do something right
after any mass shooting like this. We always hear from
the Democrats in the media, but I repeat myself, we
need to do something. No more thoughts and prayers, do something,
do something right. And then you say, well, we have
all these ideas that we would like to see done
like it. Oh, not that we want you to do
what we want you to do. So it's the use
of emotion in order to get you to surrender and
do what they want. That's manipulation. So you should take
a step back, assess the information objectively, evaluate it based
on logic and evidence. Separate your feelings from your reasoning.
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
without your support and the support of the businesses that
advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support
them too and tell them you heard it here. You
can also become a patron at my Patreon page or
go to dpetecleanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much
for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.