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 in Charlotte. And if you
want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream,
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subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your
smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. Want to welcome to the program. To kick
us off on this Monday, This dreary, gray, rainy Monday,
AP Dylan. She is a reporter for the North State
Journal NSJ online dot com, also the publisher of a
substack newsletter. More to the story, AP, how are you.
Speaker 2: Good Monday morning?
Speaker 3: Not?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was kind of yeah, there was a
beautiful weekend and so dreariness this morning not not conducive
to getting out of bed. But yeah, so we usually
talk with you at two o'clock, but scheduling conflicts make
it so we're going to do it now, and so
let's kind of jump into it first. Tell us what
the heck is smurfing? What is smurfing?
Speaker 2: Smurfing is referring to lots of little donations given over
time a period of time by an individual that total,
you know, hundreds, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Act
Blue has been under investigation for this. That is the
Democrat fundraising arm that they use for their fundraising purposes,
and they have been accused of smurfing. So there's been
investigations by muckrackor James O'Keefe as well as some local
investigations here in North Carolina where they went out and
I found an individual who had given something like two
hundred different donations of small amounts over the period of
maybe four or five days or you know, four to
six months, totally tens of thousands of dollars. And these
individuals have absolutely no idea they didn't make the donations.
These were done in their name without their knowledge, right.
Speaker 1: So Act Blue and we've talked about this before on
the program, the scandals regarding Act Blue, it's been going
on for a long time. You mentioned James O'Keeffe also
Stephen Horn with this Week in the Triangle. He went
and knocked on some people's doors and found people that
had not they said, oh yeah, I made one donation
or something, and then when shown the FEC filings, they
were like, I did not donate twenty something thousand dollars.
I don't have that kind of money. So it bears
all of the hallmarks of some kind of and you
refer to it also as zombie donors, where essentially they
they're trying to like, if they got your name and
then they can create a profile, they can attach donations
to you, so you don't bust through the caps that
may exist for individual donor levels. And so what's happening
then is obviously money is coming from somewhere else that
is not allowed to be donated or it's not allowed
to be donated in that amount attached to a single donor,
and so they're spreading it out and it also boosts
their numbers when they say, oh, we've had you know,
a billion small dollar donations, but they're not actually from
different people. They've just spread it out over different people's profiles.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it's also a little bit disturbing in the
fact that for a long time at Blue didn't have
its verification settings on for credit card donations, which meant
that you could go buy one of those disposable you know,
visa cards, float it up and make donations using that,
and they wouldn't be verifying it with the security number
on it, so those things could be donated from anyone anywhere.
Speaker 1: And for people who are not aware, Act Blue is
essentially the fundraising platform for all Democrats and many, many,
many of the Democrat aligned nonprofits and activist groups. And
you don't like this is at the local level, at
the state level, national level, Democrats used this Act Blue.
Republicans have one called Win Red, But as far as
I understand, they don't have these kinds of accusations against
them over on the Republican side, mainly because they switched
on those controls as.
Speaker 2: You mentioned, Yes exactly.
Speaker 1: There was one guy we've mentioned in before, Matt Vin Swall,
who has been doing a lot of work out in
western North Carolina. I was not aware he got swatted
the other day, but I was not aware that he
apparently had a bunch of these donations made in his
name too.
Speaker 2: Yes, he was smurfed.
Speaker 1: He was smurfed.
Speaker 2: Yes, in addition to be swatted, he was smurfed. He's
had some trouble in the last few weeks. Yeah, over
the last weekend he found you know, a law enforcement
officer showing up to his house at like one in
the morning. They had received an anonymous phone call that
he had murdered his wife and was hiding in his house.
So the situation, luckily, was diffused quite quickly. The officer
noticed that there wasn't a disturbance at the house, that
the call seemed to be off from what he was
seeing visually, and the fact that his wife answered the door,
Yeah kind of helped, right, Ye, not dead, he had
some problems there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this has been happening with increasing frequency. It's
led to calls for greater penalties for this kind of swatting.
It's in my view, it's attempted homicide is what it is,
and they need to investigate it as such and then
hold people accountable for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it could have gone sideways in so many different ways.
And I know the Attorney General Pam Bondi, she's looking
at it. The FBI director Cash Betel says he's investigating it.
So hopefully we'll see some activity on that end of things.
It's it's a very dangerous scenario. I mean, if if
anyone but her had answered the door, they might have
you know, busted it open and their you know, his
children were a sleep upstairs.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaking of Pam Bondi, she has also announced the
arrest of three individuals responsible for bombing fire, bombing Tesla
cars and charging stations. And in case so, two of
the three transgender. I don't know if that matters. It
kind of feels like it's an important detail, just because
there seems to be an emerging pattern occurring, particularly with
this sort of intersectionality, if you will, with with Antifa
people and the fundraising platforms. So do we have do
we have any evidence of a connection with the Antifa
violent protesters.
Speaker 2: Well, they don't mention that. In the press release that
the Justice Department put out. The three individuals were that
were identified was one was Adam Lansky and Oregon Lucy
Grace Nelson and Colorado Daniel Clark Ponder in South Carolina.
They're all dudes. Yeah, they're all dudes. The first two
identify as transgender, according to a local station in Colorado. However,
a second person was arrested, a twenty four year old
named Cooper Frederick. So we haven't seen anything going on
with that, but there have been hints that Act Blue
has been involved in processing money or funds for these
protests that are going on at the Tesla dealerships and
other places. In fact, Elon Musk himself tweeted out on
x not so long ago. I believe earlier this month
that an investigation found that there were five groups responsible
for the Tesla protests that we're having money funded through
them through at blue, and two of them, at least
to my I are Antifa related or adjacent. They list
the Troublemakers, the Disruption Project, Rise and Resist, the Individual,
Indivisible Project, and the Democratic Socialists of America.
Speaker 1: So the Indivisible group, they've got a whole bunch of
chapters all over the place, and they're they're turning up
in a lot of these anti Doge protests and stuff.
Speaker 2: They are, they are, And that was a group that
rose when Trump first came into office in twenty sixteen.
The Individual Project was put together by some former Democratic staffers,
I believe, and that it had links to the Hillary
Clinton campaign. There were certain staffers that were involved with that.
I'm not sure if they've changed leadership since then. But
the whole point was to give a blueprint for activists
to go out into disrupt town halls to do protests
on the street, how to garner media attention, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Et cetera. It kind of reminds me of the Momo
Mo the Moral Monday.
Speaker 2: Movement, you know, it does, and in fact, that has
been a component of some of the protests here in
North Carolina over anti doge items and Raleigh they had
an anti Doge protest to the same day there was
a TESLA protest in on Glenwyn Avenue that those protests.
Our friends the Raging Granny showed up, Oh God once,
who are always singing during the warm Monday, so they
were there. But they also had a band called the Muskrat.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, it's all it's all so theater kid, It's gross.
Speaker 2: It is, it is. It's very theatrical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so much of just just just like junior
high level performative garbage. And it's always been the way. Yeah. Well,
I mean, look, Francis Collins, he did that. He did
another song at his at some rally against the NHS
cuts too. Yeah. I don't I don't understand the allure.
I don't. I don't even find it persuasive. I don't
even think I even think it's it's particularly motivating for
their own side.
Speaker 2: Uh, pull after Paul in the last couple of months
has shown that folks are happy to see those making
the cuts. Yeah, the majority of people are happy to
see those making the cuts. And meanwhile, the internal polling
for the Democratic Party is just it's dropped to a
historical low. I think NBC News at twenty seven percent.
And their internal polling has been coupled with these memos
that have gone out from you know, their their advisor groups.
One in particular basically told them that in essence, told
them be more normal, stop with the theatric start with
the protesting, to stop with calling people racist, bigots and homophobes,
and quote, be more normal. So apparently many of them
haven't gotten that much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's a bold strategy. We'll see if it
pays off for.
Speaker 2: Them, Is that right, Cotton?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ap Dylan. You could read her work at the
North State Journal NSJ online dot com and also at
her newsletter called More to the Story. It's a substack newsletter. Ap,
thanks so much for your time. As always, We'll see
you next week.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Thanks Pete.
Speaker 1: All right, take care. Here's a great idea how about
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that'll last a lifetime. The US Department of Education's Office
for Civil Rights has issued warning letters to sixty higher
education institutions about Title six. They is right, Yeah yeah,
Title six violations related to anti Semitic harassment and discrimination.
AP Dyllon's piece at the North State Journal headlined Education
Department issues reminder on protecting Jewish students. Just a reminder, colleges,
you have to protect the Jews on your campus. They're
people too, and you're not allowed to turn a blind
eye while people are harassing and threatening to kill them.
So just a reminder, just a helpful note for all
of you college adminers. The letters caution the universities about
potential enforcement actions if they failed to fulfill their legal
obligations to protect Jewish students on campus, including ensuring uninterrupted
access to facilities and educational opportunities. Secretary of Education Linda
McMahon is quoted university leaders must do better. Among the
sixty schools named in the In the letter, UNC give
it up. Everybody UNC some good work there. It does
not actually specify a particular campus, so let's just assume
it's all of them. Additionally, the Department's Office of Civil
Rights directed its enforcement staff to prioritize resolving the backlog
of complaints alleging anti Semitic violence and harassment. The Press
Relief notes that many complaints quote were allowed to languish
unresolved under the previous administration. No UNC Chapel Hill, where
pro Palestinian protests erupted last year, already has a Title
six complaint against it involving anti semitism and discrimination against
Jewish students. David Wiseberg, a Jewish American attorney, filed the
complaint against Chapel Hill. He also alleged the school breached
a prior resolution that it had reached in twenty nineteen
with the Office of Civil Rights. The complaint was filed
last year and involves a string of incidents in and
out of the classroom following the October seventh Hamas terrorist
attack on Israel. Along those lines, this story from Campus
Reform dot org. Columbia University agrees to Trump administration's pro
safety demands as it faces four hundred million dollars in
funding loss. Colombia is a private university, why is it
getting four hundred million plus in taxpayer funds. The school
will ban masks, it will boost security presence on campus,
and adopt a formal definition of anti Semitism, among other measures,
which look that is needed because remember Columbia had a
very difficult time even defining what it was. So at
least now they'll get a definition and now you know,
then now they'll know when they see it. Columbia University
in New York has agreed to many of Trump's demands
regarding school efforts against anti Semitism. After the Trump administration
cut off four hundred million dollars in federal funds for
the Ivy League school, Columbia University's leadership agreed to many
of the demands from the White House. Goes on to
say they're going to ban face masks during protests, which
has always been an obvious thing to do. The North
Carolina General Assembly did this as well because this was
one of the things that COVID protocols allowed, was that
it normalized the covering of faces, and then that allowed
people to engage in illegal activity without being identified. We
saw this occur in the fiery but mostly peaceful Summer
of Love after the death of Saint George Floyd. So yes,
obviously ban masks during protests. Also, Columbia says it's going
to hire thirty six special officers with powers to arrest
and remove disruptive protesters, so special officers. This is in
addition to the campus security. Other measures include the adoption
of the definition of anti Semitism recommended by the task
Force from last summer, also expanding intellectual diversity among faculty,
and making a commitment to greater institutional neutrality. See so
now that the hamas Holays got to harass and intimidate
and take over the campus and stuff, now we're going no, no, no,
Now we got to be neutral, everybody. Neutrality is the
word of the day. That's what we're going to be
doing now. So don't you try to stand up for
yourselves anymore. Jews, Sorry, you can't do your things. Now.
It's neutral. After we made it very clear where we
stood last year. Now we're neutral, all right. If you're
listening to this show, you know I try to keep
up with all sorts of current events, and I know
you do too, And You've probably heard me say get
your news from multiple sources. Why, Well, because it's how
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make the media landscape more transparent. All right, So I
got an email also from John at the beginning of
the program. Actually it was from this morning, but I
saw it just before the program began, And there is
a related situation brewing over at UNC Charlotte. So maybe
UNC Charlotte is part of this Title six warning letter
that the United States Department of Education's Office for Civil
Rights flagged. They wrote this warning letter to sixty higher
education institutions. It went to UNC, but we don't know
if it was directed at a particular campus or not,
because UNC Charlotte has had some Tentifa to action and
they've got an event scheduled for a believe tomorrow. Yeah,
there is an event scheduled for tomorrow, March twenty fifth,
and it's called Triggered the Tour. It is a nationwide
campus tour featuring a panel of Israeli Defense Force soldiers
so IDF soldiers who saw action after October seventh. The
speakers are, according to the release here from the Students
Supporting Israel Organization or SSI. The speakers are set to
talk about the importance of Israel defending itself from terror
threats and misguided propaganda, and the way that the Israeli
Society stepped up to volunteer following October seventh. According to
the organization, the name of the tour is intentionally you know,
Triggered to point out ironically the fact that students on
campuses are mostly not triggered by world events unless it
has anything to do with Israel. The tour, indeed, has
triggered outrage among anti Israel groups who are aggressively demanding
that SSI and U university administrators cave to their pressures
and cancel the events. So the one scheduled for tomorrow
at UNC Charlotte, they're not demanding, the school is not
demanding that they cancel the event. They're just going to
price gouge the event so much so that it cannot
be held. That's the accusation from SSI. Despite the student's
efforts to share the story of israel self defense against
terrorism and our overwhelming adherents to campus policies and protocols,
UNC Charlotte administrators are succumbing to pressure from these radical
anti Israel groups in a move that punishes pro Israel
students instead of those who attempt to silence our voices.
The university is coercing SSI by imposing a roughly five
thousand dollars campus security fee. If SSI were to go
ahead with its event. They're requiring twenty two security personnel,
sixteen police officers and six staff security, which would create
not only financial barriers and stifle our freedom of expression,
as most student groups would be deterred by such a
significant cost. So what is UNCC doing. They are aiding
in the Heckler's veto. You have one group of students
that wants to hold an event, a peaceful event, a
panel discussion, right exchange of ideas one would think might
be at place on a campus of quote higher learning,
and another group wants them to shut up. That they
would be the hecklers. They would that would be the
Heckler's veto. In other words, I want to, you know,
say my piece. I want to have an event, I
want to have a discussion, a dialogue, whatever, And you
don't want to hear what I have to say. You
don't want anybody else to hear what I have to say,
So you are going to shout me down so nobody
can hear me speaking. And rather than UNCC stepping in
and saying this is protected speech, they are a legitimate organization,
this is a legitimate event, and they should be allowed
to have their event on the campus as any other
student organization can. Rather than saying that UNCC is bowing
and aiding in a betting the Hecklers. They're bowing to
that pressure. They're caving, and so they're going to tell
now the students, you have to pay for your own security.
You have to pay for your own security for the event.
This excessive charge, the SSI press release reads, requiring twenty
two additional security personnel, makes the Jewish students pay to
be kept safe on their own campus following threats against them.
Think about how grotesque that is. Right, A bunch of
kids want to get together and host an event, and
the hamas holays say, shut up, jew you can't talk.
You can't have that event. We hate you. I'm sorry.
It's about peace, and so you can't have your event.
And we will intimidate you and pressure you and harass you.
We will do all of these things that we have
all read about in the media all over the country
for the last year and a half. And the administration
comes in and says, let us adjudicate this impartially, Yes, Jews,
you need to pay for your own security. Rather than saying, hey,
Heckler's hamas holays, you guys can't do what you are
intending to do. You cannot disrupt their event, rather than
doing that, rather than trying to enforce right the not
only the spirit, but the basic fundamental idea that you're
supposed to be at an institution of higher learning, where
the free flow of ideas and the exchange of arguments
is supposed to be welcomed. But no, no, not when
you're talking about Palestinians, Hamas and Israel. When this is
the subject, only one side, only one side, gets to
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create a video dot com. Let's jump over to the
phones and we'll talk with Trisha. Welcome to the program.
Hey Tricia, Hey Pete, Hey, how are you? I'm good?
What's going on?
Speaker 3: I am a retiree from you and C. Charlotte. I
worked there for over thirty years. Oh wow, I could
tell you instances of this more numerous than you could imagine,
but I'm going to you know, I still have friends
working there. And of course, if you work thirty years
in a government university, you make very good friends with
people who are completely politically opposed to you.
Speaker 1: Sure, and when I first unless you're a lefty.
Speaker 3: When I first got there and I began working there
in nineteen eighty six, the attitude was, oh, you're one
of those, how quaint And by the time I retired,
and I retired I left officially during COVID. By the
time I retired, it was very much a case of
we don't like your kind. But one of my jobs
over the course of working there was every year I
had to help a Holocaust survivor professor put up a
display for Holocaust Remembrance Week. And she was not the
most friendly person on the planet, and nobody wanted this
job because she was kind of gruff and demanding. And
the video that accompanied the week long display was old
VHS tape that was on a loop and it would
be played and the students would occasionally complain about it
because it was on with audio for an entire week,
and it was video of the Holocaust, right, And I
saw where it needed to be updated. I saw where
things needed to be played with. But over time I
watched them take her from a main location to a
more secluded location, to a location where no one would
ever see it. And in the last year that I
was helping her put it up, she said to me,
when I retire, Holocaust Remembrance Week will never be acknowledged again.
And this was a while ago, and she was virtually right.
Speaker 1: So was she still there when you retired?
Speaker 3: No, she was not, although she passed away after I retired. No,
she had retired. She was virtually right that it just disappeared.
When she disappeared, I was I went from some of
the major people, some of the people that the university
crowded and that Charlotte was proud of and named as
important people. And I'm not just talking donors, I'm talking history.
We're Jewish Jewish community. Charlotte was extremely influential in the
civil rights movement. So when I first got there, that
was the thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Josh Stein's own father was a big civil rights
lawyer for African Americans in the sixties, right.
Speaker 3: And by the time I left, it was not mentioned.
Let's take that down. What does that name need to
be there for? I was shocked. I mean I was.
I'm old enough that my parents were alive and my
dad served in World War Two, So to ever see
this kind of attitude shift is so incredibly chilling to me.
And it's it's an anti Semitism. It's not simply anti Zionism.
Speaker 1: Well, and that's what I was going to ask, is it.
I mean, obviously, with the eruption of the war after
the October seventh attack, there are a lot of people
that now are making the you know, oh, it's just
anti Israel and we're against the war and that sort
of stuff, and so they've got a very good sort
of cover story for it. But you say, this has
been happening long before, you know, October seventh, and so
it's you think it's about fifth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a it's a whole way of thinking, and
on the university campus, and that includes the way the
campus thinks about free speech in general. Those of us
who are old enough to remember the dark tower in
the middle of campus on which was you know, it
was an ugly thing, but the university got rid of
it by benign neglect. They didn't want that to be
the centerpiece of the university anymore, so they let it
decay until they could tear it down. But on the
grounds of the Belk Tower, let's say, the whole twenty
five of the thirty years I worked there, there was
a plaque stating that it was a free speech So
in the area surrounding the Belk Tower, anything goes or
anything did, and there were preachers that were allowed. There
was from the time I got there, there was all
kinds of the kind of thing you expected to me
in my mind on the college campus, the kind of
debate and posters and protests and things happened surrounding the
Belk Tower. When the Belk Tower was torn down, that
plaque disappeared. It was part of my job because I
you know, I said, I did display such things to
try to figure out where it went. So I did
some inquiries, but where the plaque go And the kind
of responses I got was well, we're going to put
up something else, which never materialized what I'm aware of.
And then it was like, well, it's for the safety
of the students. Statements like that were being made. Yeah,
And I don't know, is that there's any true place
where you could really say your piece on that campus anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, I think if you're pro Palestinian, I think you can.
I think it's pretty much all over the place. Jews
not so much, not so much.
Speaker 3: And there are other movements that were like that. I
don't know if you remember the occupy movement, Oh yeah, okay,
well I recall them putting up tents on the grounds.
And I walked by at o dark thirty because that's
when I started working, and nobody was sleeping in the tents,
and all the tents were were from what's the name
of it, the same company, and they were all from
the identical company, and nobody was sleeping in them. And
I commented to someone about how it's really odd that
the tents hadn't popped up on our campus. Well, they
popped up overnight like mushrooms. Pictures were taken, they were cuted,
but to my knowledge, they were not the students who
did it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tricia, I got to leave it there. I'm up
against a break. I appreciate the call. Thanks for the insight. Yeah, no,
thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it. By the way,
they are asking for the SSI kid, the student organization
is asking people to send an email to the UNCC
administration urging them to confirm the continuation of the event,
to absolve the group from the unfair burden of the
security fees, and to stand up against anti Semitic bullying
and intimidation. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
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