Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: 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, my daily
show prep with all the links, become a patron, go
to thepeakclendershow 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. Pete
Calendar here, but you probably already knew that. If you didn't,
I'm Pete and this is Andrew Dunn. Andrew Dunn is
the publisher of long Leaf Politics. You can read his
work at longleafpol dot com. He's also a contributing columnist
at The Charlotte Observer. Andrew, how are you you survive
the great but temporary cloud flare outage of twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3: I see, well barely. I wasn't able to see your
tweets as quickly as I'd.
Speaker 2: Like here, Yeah, I know, there was a sense of panic,
and then I realized, wow, I really do rely on
this app for a lot and that's probably not so good.
Speaker 1: But yes, a cloud flare just like was it.
Speaker 2: Amazon Web Services went down a couple months ago. Cloud
Flair went down this morning and broke a bunch of websites.
Speaker 1: But it's back. We are all. We have survived so.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So last week we chatted about the results of the
of the local election here in Charlotte. You did another
write up on this, and I was particularly interested to
read this. I was invited to speak last week to
the Queen City Republicans and you know, they're asking and
I understand why, but they were, you know, people when
we were doing the Q and A, and they were
asking me, you know, what do we do?
Speaker 1: Where do we go from here? And like I don't.
Speaker 2: I did not have any real good answers for them
because I don't see a path forward for them. And
you wrote about this sort of saying the same sort
of dynamic, and you say at the very end, you
could view this as surrender, but I don't see it
that way. It's simply practical politics. Okay, So what is
not surrender? What is the way forward? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's easy to overreact to a single election,
but I do actually feel like we're at a tipping
point here in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. I don't see
the road getting any easier for Republicans to actually win
any of these local offices. But it doesn't mean that
Republicans have no role to play or that their votes
don't matter here. It's just that the focus has to shift.
The focus has to shift to statewide races. I don't
see it worth our time and money to run for
city council and the foreseeable future. But if you look
at the numbers, Mecklenburg County actually has the second most
Republicans in terms of sheer volume of voters out of
any county in the state, second behind only Wait County.
And in some of our state wide races when come
down to extremely narrow margins, that means that Republicans here
in Charlotte have to turn out, have to donate money
to our statewide candidates. And I think you know, Mecklinberg
County is going to continue to punch above its way.
I mean, it's one of the most important counties for
any Republican candidate if they want to win statewide.
Speaker 2: I said the same thing to the Queen City Republicans
as well, that they have to still have a turnout
operation particularly in the even year elections.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: But also it's like, you know, I'm not going to
sugarcoat it. And I was like, you guys don't really
have the same turnout infrastructure that the Democrats enjoy. And
they built that over a long time. And you know,
Charlotte Republicans are based in the spot they are in
now because of decisions I feel like we're made twenty
five thirty years ago, which prompted a lot of Conservatives
to not want to be in Charlotte any longer. After
their Republican elected leaders did things that they disagreed with
and taxes got too high. You know, they built all
of these projects and stuff. And I'm not going to
litigate every single one of those projects, but people because
I would talk to them for twenty five years here
in Charlotte at WBT and we would talk and I
kept hearing the same sort of refrain from people, and
they were like, we're moving out, you know, we don't,
we don't want to participate in this kind of city
and with these priorities. And so now this is the
result right where you've got a lot of GOP voters
that moved to the surrounding counties.
Speaker 1: They got read.
Speaker 2: They flipped from Democrat to Republican in every county around
US basically, but Charlotte got Bluer and Bluer, Mechler got
Bluer and Bluer. And I mean that's a long term trend.
So do I give them bad advice?
Speaker 3: No, I think that's good advice. And I see that
trend continuing at least over the next ten years or so.
You know, there there will be another major Republican political
figure post Trump, and you know who knows. I mean,
there's still a chance for the suburbs to go back
red like they were for so many years before, but
I don't see it happening anytime soon. But I think
you're right in that, you know, the mech GOP has
to absolutely invest in the turnout game. You know, I
was actually pretty shocked looking at some of the statewide
results for twenty twenty four. I mean, even Steve Troxler
is only getting thirty five percent of the vote in
Mecklenburg County, the most the most popular Republican in the state,
and I feel like a lot of that has to
come down to just a poor turnout operation. I know
that there's more than three percent who would be willing
to vote for a Republican in Mecklenburg County. We just
have to do a better job of turning him out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I also told him I and I quoted you
from our discussion previously. I said, you got to get
to early voting. You guys got to drop the early
voting opposition and the absentee ballots and stuff. It's you're
killing yourself by not banking all of those votes.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: My one criticism is that you use the word vote getters,
not voteinger.
Speaker 3: I know, I know vote Did you catching on? I saw?
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 3: Chris Cooper? I think was he.
Speaker 1: Was one of my first converts.
Speaker 3: Chris Cooper, that's big.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's why I was kind of disappointed. Well,
did you at least like consider throwing the word in
there while you were writing it up?
Speaker 3: It was a really tough to city.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, that's all right. It'll catch on though,
it will.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's it's like that, it's the preference cascade
slowly at first and then very quickly. You know, that's
what where we're still on the slope.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, Chris Cooper, I mean, he's a true
influencer in North Carolina political circles.
Speaker 2: Right, so that I mean, he was my biggest get.
I think it helped that I went to college with
him and we were fraternity brothers, so I think that
may have given me the inside track there. Plus, it's
a nice word. It's a good word, all right. So
let's talk about Charlotte's web. And you've got a piece
that's at the Charlotte Observer. This was on the thirteenth,
so about so last week, and the headline is North
Carolina shouldn't have to choose between open borders and unmarked vans.
And you say, somehow, let's deport criminals has has somehow
now become the moderate position. And you say, the result
is that the sane middle, enforced the law in a steady,
transparent way, has been neglected so long it almost feels
radical when someone rediscovers it, which is yeah, like, and.
Speaker 1: I understand what Democrats are trying to do.
Speaker 2: They got to walk this line of like, we're fighting,
but let's not have violence. We stand with you our base,
and that's calling for you know, customs and Border patrol
to leave right meanwhile calling them all racist, but also
don't get violent against the racist fascists that are, you know,
sweeping up people off of the streets. So I understand
that the game, they're the line they have to walk
the game that they are playing. But I also yeah,
but I also think that we are seeing this. I
do agree with Destin Hall, the Speaker of the House,
and you quote them in your piece. But we are
where we are because there has been this complete abdication
of enforcing immigration law from you know, the sheriff, not
my fault macfadden, you know, not not honoring the detainer request,
and just this general acceptance which I think is at
the heart of what I'm hearing from the Democrats, which
is they want amnesty. That's I think that's what's motivating this.
They don't want to say it, but I think that's
what they believe, is that everybody that is here illegally
but hasn't committed any other crime besides being here illegally,
then they should be allowed to stay and they should
be given citizenship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're exactly right. I actually I just
finished up another column on this issue that's going to
be publishing any time now on the Charlotte Observer. Site.
You know, I think that Operation Charlotte's Web was probably
messier than it needed to be. And I definitely still
don't love the masks and the unmarked vans and all that,
but I will say that the operation did get some
folks off the streets who were accused of really serious crimes.
I'm sure you've been following the Board of Patrol head
on X who's been, you know, sending out some of
those mugshots. And it's very important to note that a
lot of these folks have been arrested numerous times here
in Meckenburg County and then just released back out into
the public by the Sheriff's office. You know, if we
had a shaff who had worked with I and did
what Josh Stein said that we all want to do,
and you know, get dangerous folks off the streets, then
I don't think we'd be having this conversation at all.
Speaker 2: Right, this is the result of the again, just like
with the Republicans losing elections, now, this is the result
of year's worth of decisions that were made leading up
to this moment. And yeah, I don't My understanding is
that these operations, they work off of lists of targeted individuals,
but if they come across somebody else who's here illegally
and can't provide any kind of documentation or whatever, then
they get picked up too.
Speaker 1: That's been my understanding.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't seem like any elected official understands that.
Speaker 1: How is it that I know this but they don't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure, And that would be my understanding
as well. And I tend to give law enforcement the
benefit of the doubt in most cases. I think one
of the issues we're running in here is that, you know,
the Trump administration seems to enjoy the spectacle of it. Yeah,
and I think they kind of go out of their
way to play it up. You know, there's some very
dramatic videos that get published on social media and whatnot,
and I think that turns people off in areas like Charlotte.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I would agree with that.
Speaker 2: I also would note that the groups that are protesting
and are you know, created and they're swarming the CBP
operators and stuff. Indivisible Charlotte has been named as one
of those groups, and they were behind the no Kings
protest marches. Like that's not a coincidence. And I think
that you've got Democrat officials that are that are worried
about that particular element of their voting base, and so
they're going to their incentive is to do what the
indivisible crowd wants, much like we just saw last night
where the city council is now going to throw a
bunch of taxpayer money at these you know, services or
nonprofits or whatever that are going to help people who
are impacted by these raids.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's our tax money.
Speaker 2: Now that's gonna go to pay for illegal immigrants services
or something like.
Speaker 1: I'm just I see like, I just I look for
the incentives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean as far as incentives go. I mean,
it certainly seemed to me that some folks in the
media actively wanted a riot or something terrible to happen
in Charlotte, and thankfully that doesn't seem to have happened,
though there were some nasty things that happened. I mean,
somebody tried to run over a border patrol agent with
their car.
Speaker 1: I saw two.
Speaker 2: There have been two. They just got another one somebody
who rammed. I don't know if it's a woman or
a man, like I saw the interview, but I don't
know it looked like a woman, but it sounded like
a man. And they claim they were with some group,
but they wouldn't identify what group they were with. And yeah,
they they tried to rammed an ice vehicle at a
parking lot.
Speaker 1: So like that's what's yeah, So all right.
Speaker 2: Well we'll leave it there, having not solved any of
the world's problems. Andrew Dunn. Next week, Yeah, maybe next week.
There's always next week. Andrew Dunn, thanks for your time, sir.
I appreciate you.
Speaker 1: Thank you, all right, take care.
Speaker 2: That's Andrew Dunn. He is a contributing columnist at The
Charlotte Observer. Also go check out his website, his newsletter
and subscribe over there. It's long leafpol dot com Longleafpolitics.
Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to
a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina.
Just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of
Asheville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon,
maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get
family and friends together for a big old reunion, Cabins
of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you
can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that
truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres
of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene
escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally
located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky
Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and
proximity to all the local attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces,
air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi grills, outdoor tables and
your own private covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins, six cottages,
two villas, and a great lodge with eleven king sized bedrooms.
Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for
any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call or
text eight two eight, three six seven seventy sixty eight
or check out all there is to offer at Cabins
Offashville dot com and make memories that'll last a lifetime.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: So, one of the things there that Andrew Dunn mentioned
in our chat but also in his peace set The
Charlotte Observer was the comments made by Governor Josh Stein
and here's what Andrew wrote, and I actually have Josh
Stein's video statement that he put out in the middle
of the debate. He says, since the modest idea that
people here illegally who commit violent crimes should be deported,
and that the officers doing it ought to look and
act like American law enforcement, not a secret police. That's
essentially the middle ground Governor Josh Stein tried to stake
out in his comments this week. Asked about reports of
potential border patrol operations in Charlotte, he said, of agents
come here to find violent, dangerous drug traffickers and criminals,
then the city would quote welcome them with open arms.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, They have not. The city has not done that.
Speaker 2: If they show up masked and on an unidentified wreaking
havoc and causing chaos and fear, North Carolina will be
very concerned, very concerned. So the mask thing drives a
lot of the people on the left nuts over this,
and no matter how many times you explain it, they
don't care. They were perfectly fine with the rioters wearing
masks while burning and looting cities, but when law enforcement
agents are getting their names put out onto the internet,
and hit lists circulated among cartel members with their addresses
and families, names and such. For some reason, this is
Oh my gosh. I can't understand why these agents now
would would want to protect some anonymity. Now that being said,
I have seen, you know, all the videos I've seen,
they're all they've all got Border Patrol marking. Some of
them have their names on their chests and stuff. So
but that's what they're hanging their hat on this.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. They're anonymous. We don't even know.
Speaker 2: If they're Border Patrol, but they identify themselves as Border Patrol.
Speaker 1: But anybody could do that.
Speaker 2: See all right, if you're listening to this show, oh
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 you detect media bias, which
is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's
an app and it's a website and it combines news
from around the world in one place, so you can
compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out
at check dot ground dot news slash pete. I put
the link in the podcast description too. I started using
ground News a few months ago and more recently chose
to work with them as an affiliate because it lets
me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom.
The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored
by the left and the right.
Speaker 1: See for yourself.
Speaker 2: Check Dot Ground, dot News slash Pete. Subscribe through that
link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I
use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News, as they make the media landscape
more transparent. All right, So Governor Josh Stein posted a
video onto the social media.
Speaker 1: He did this Sunday night.
Speaker 2: So this was two days into the Customs and Border
Patrol operation Immigration Enforcement Operation Charlotte's Web as they dubbed it,
and so he posted this video.
Speaker 1: It's very short. He criticizes Border patrols actions in Charlotte.
Obviously it's Josh Stein.
Speaker 4: Yes, I wanted to provide an update as Customs and
Border Patrol agents have been in Charlotte over the weekend.
My team and I have been in regular contact with
state and local law enforcement to ensure that they have
the resources that they need to keep you safe. Public
safety is our top priority, and our well trained local
officers know their communities and are here for the long haul.
On Friday, before Customs and Border Protection came to Charlotte,
I encourage North Kilinnianes to follow the law, remain peaceful,
and bear witness to what you're seeing. Thank you Charlotte
for answering that call to the CBP. If you know
that we have violent criminals in Charlotte who are undocumented,
we want them out too. Everyone wants to be safe
in their communities.
Speaker 1: See. Here's the thing.
Speaker 2: CBP may not believe you because of the position that
your party has taken on immigration enforcement. Right, we don't
believe you. I don't believe you. I would CBP believe you.
I do not believe that Democrats actually want to get
these criminal illegal aliens out of the state, out of America.
I don't and I say that because of who I
have seen Democrats hold up as the poster children for
the enforcement actions and due process and rule of law.
Are arguments like the Maryland man. Right, the guy with
the gang tattoos had a restraining order taken against him
by his wife and it was human trafficking from Texas.
That guy. Yeah, they held him up and they were like, yo,
bring him back, bring him back. Yeah, Like this is
the issue is never the issue. The issue is always
the revolution. That's why you've got people that are at
these protests in Charlotte wearing cafeas. Cafia's got nothing to
do with this enforcement action. The Palestinian issue has nothing
to do with this. But it's meant to virtue signal.
This is performative, it's theater. It's why you had all
of those assuming. Yeah, like I got to believe that
the Dilworth Methodist Church over there that held the training
session for you know, how to disrupt federal law enforcement operations.
I gotta believe that that Methodist church, because they're still
United Methodist. I gotta believe that they did not vote
to disaffiliate when the institutional church took the hard left
turn last year, right, or maybe that was this year. Yeah,
it's not a surprise. It's like everything else. And it
goes to the same topic with Andrew Dunn. We were
talking about, you know, Republicans leaving unable to win races
in Charlotte. Now a solidly blue town. Unguarded stores of
value will be beset upon by parasites, whether it's a
warehouse full of you know food, Right, if you don't
protect it, it'll get looted, It'll get eaten by bugs
and critters, It'll get eaten or stolen by criminals.
Speaker 1: Right if you do not protect the store of value.
Speaker 2: And you know, cities have value and institutions, but that
his church had value, still does right. They got land
and assets and all sorts of stuff that they want
to protect, but didn't. It didn't guard them. They didn't
guard the store of value well enough, and now it's
getting you know, it got infiltrated and is being rotted
from the inside. Sorry, I but I mean that's my
assessment of the situation. And that's why I don't believe
Democrats when they say that, oh yeah, we would totally
work with you. No, you wouldn't you had opportunities to
do so. Where was the pressure campaign on Gary McFadden
from Democrats? What elected Democrats leaned on sheriff. Not my
fault McFadden, who leaned on him to say, whoa, whoa, whoa,
You need to stay with the two eighty seven G program.
You need to keep doing this, because that's a great
way to identify these criminal illegal aliens when they get
into the jail, and then you work with ice to
get them out.
Speaker 1: See, that's how you address the problem.
Speaker 2: But when you run on a platform of scrapping it
and then scrap it and every Democrat in Mecklenberg County
is silent, well then I know what you are actually
all about. And again, just to tie this back to
the puffing up of the numbers, right, because that's also
part of this deal, which is to make sure that
when the census is done, the census counts total population
that includes US citizens and non citizens, it includes illegal aliens.
And so if you have higher population counts, you get
more congressional seats, you get more power in the House
of Representatives, and those congressional districts are used in the
calculation for the electoral college votes. We have fourteen seats
in North Carolina. Each one of those seats represents one
elector one electoral college vote. Everybody gets two for their
US senators And so that's at play here too. If
you end up deporting or people self deport in large
numbers out of blue areas, well, now that's going to
hamper your ability to win back the House of Representatives
and maybe even the presidency. This is existential for Democrats.
So that's why they want the amnesty, because that's underlying
all of this. They want to path the citizenship. They
want amnesty. You know, stories are powerful. They help us
make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us
to the people of our past while transcending generations. They
help us process the meaning of life, and our stories
are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with
Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Minhill, North Carolina.
It was the first company to provide this valuable service,
converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows,
videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at
Creative Video will go over all of the details with
you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them
off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in
a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones,
videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays,
or just your family stories all told through images. That's
what your photos and videos are. They are your life
told through the eyes of everyone around you and all
who came before you, and they will tell others to
come who you are. Visit creative video dot com. All right,
let me finish off the governor's social media post his
video address again. This was from Sunday evening. There's only
about a minute a half of it left here.
Speaker 4: But the actions of too many federal agents are doing
the exact opposite. In Charlotte. We've seen masked heavily armed
agents and paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens
based on their skin color, racially profiling and picking up
random people and parking lots and off of our sidewalks.
Speaker 2: All right, So I would love to hear a reporter
ask what is the evidence for these claims?
Speaker 1: What is the evidence?
Speaker 2: I keep hearing democrats in all their statements that they're
racially profiling and they're racists and all this. What is
the evidence for these claims? You guys were complaining two
days ago that you didn't have any idea how the
operations were being run. So how would you know this?
Speaker 1: How do you know? Let me let me tell you
a story real quick. This was a story that was
told to me by.
Speaker 2: By the guy who gave the class instruction for concealed carry,
and he told the story of a guy who had
gone to Walmart to pick up his wife. She was
inside the store and he pulls up front. He's waiting
in his truck, and as he's waiting in his truck,
he sees two men fighting each other come tumbling out
the front or rolling around on the ground, and at
one point then one of the men pulls out a
gun and points it at the other guy. Well, the
guy sitting in the truck who sees this fight tumble
out of the building, he's a concealed carry holder too,
so he gets his gun. He gets out and he
shoots the guy who had pulled the gun.
Speaker 1: In the fight.
Speaker 2: And killed him. And that guy that was killed was
a cop. He was trying to arrest somebody. He was
in plain clothes. He was trying to arrest somebody. And
the lesson of that story is, you don't know what
occurred before you're seeing what you're seeing, right, All you
are is the person in the truck who sees these
two guys fighting. You have no idea what that fight
was about. You have no idea who these people are.
That's what social media has been promoting. Yesterday, I gave
you the news report about the fifteen year old boy
who was arrested at the Super GM mart. He was
just pushing in shopping carts. Right, DHS says, actually, he's
not fifteen years old. Actually he was one of the
targets on their list. He's either eighteen or even in
his twenties. Which then the owner of the Super G
Mart he had to come out and correct himself because
he was the one that told the media that the
kid was only fifteen or sixteen, and that was not true.
But that's the lie that spreads around the world, right,
that's the narrative that gets told immediately, Oh my gosh,
they're picking up children and zip tying him. No, they
actually were walking him to the car and when he
tried to run, that's when they had to zip tie it.
So what is your evidence for the claims? What I
would like to know from the governor.
Speaker 4: Going after landscaper simply decorating a Christmas tree in someone's
front yard and entering churches and stores to grab people.
Speaker 2: See again, he makes it sound like they're just running
around looking for brown people and snatching them. Off the streets.
What is your evidence for this claim? Because you're the
guy in the truck watching the fight come out of
the front door.
Speaker 4: This is not making us safer, It's stoking fear and
dividing our community. I want to say a word about immigration.
We are a nation of immigrants and our state in
this country is stronger because of our immigrant communities. Unfortunately,
our immigration system is broken, but rather than fix it,
the federal government continues to play politics with it.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 2: You are seeing this operation and others like it all
over the country because of the quote broken immigration system.
And the only reason it's broken is because you guys
don't want to enforce the laws on the books.
Speaker 1: That's it. This is a this is These are the
ramifications of your positions, of your inaction, your nullification, your
attempts at nullification of federal law.
Speaker 4: It is long past time for Congress to act. We
need strong borders we have. We must hold accountable and
deport anyone who has committed a serious crime, and we
must create a path to legal status for those who've
been here a long time, ah paid their taxes and
followed the law, especially our dreamers who came to this
country as very young children.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 2: Gives away the game, right, yes, Enforcement, sure, but also
amnesty and Republicans. Republican and conservative voters. They are not
taking another swing at that football being held by Lucy.
Not going to do it Enforcement first, then maybe we'll
talk about amnesty.
Speaker 1: All right. That'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening.
Speaker 2: 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 thepetecleanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.