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your support. All righty, so this week actually Wednesday? Waite
Today's Thursday? So yesterday? Is that right? It doesn't matter
the uh, I guess this would have been Tuesday. It
doesn't matter. September twenty third, yees. So two days ago Tuesday,
the North Carolina House of Representatives passed the Political Terrorism
Prevention Act Cenebill thirteen. And I'm happy to say that
only six Democrats oppose this. I thought it would be more,
but one hundred and five representatives in the North Carolina
House voted to approve the bill. The legislation was introduced
in response to the shooting death of conservative activist and
founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk. Bill sponsored by
the way, this is a piece at The Carolina Journal
by Katie Zender. Bill sponsors point to a nationwide rise
in acts of political violence and emphasize North Carolina's commitment
to protecting open debate and peaceful political engagement. Senate Bill
thirteen defines politically motivated violence as any criminal offense committed
against an individual because of their political beliefs, affiliations, candidacy, voting, history, advocacy,
or lawful political expression. The bill also includes a Charlie
Kirk clause, which stay that politically motivated murder can serve
as an aggravating factor in death penalty proceedings. And in
case you're not clear on what that means, so in
North Carolina, back when we used to actually do death
penalty cases and impose the death penalty, they've been on
hold for like twenty years. You go to first you
do your guilt innocence phase right where the jury decides
whether or not you're guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and
if convicted, then you move into a sentencing phase and
the prosecution then presents what they call aggravating factors or
aggravating circumstances. This is something like, did you murder somebody
while committing another crime. Right, if you're in the process
of doing a robbery and you kill the person, that
is an aggravating factor. Right. Mitigating factors are what the
defense would then present things to mitigate the sentence, to
try to make it lower, to say it wasn't that bad.
It was a crime of passion, or he was on
drugs or whatever. Right, bad childhood, stuff like that, mitigating factors.
So this would attach to an aggravating factor if North
Carolina actually ever did death penalties again, which the legislature
is trying to revive with the peace of legislation that
they did the other day. Also on the criminal justice reform. Now,
whether that gets vetoed, I'm going to go out on
a limb and say that Governor Josh Stein will veto it.
But Republicans seem to think they've got enough votes to
override the veto. They definitely do in the Senate. Not
sure if they'll be able to peel anyway in the House,
but we'll see. And I watched the debate, I don't
have the audio here, I'm on location. So why at Gable?
He is a Republican state representative from Onslow, and he's
a young guy. He was actually the youngest or is
the youngest member of the General Assembly, and he's only
when he won his primary in twenty twenty four, he
was twenty one years old. So young guy. And he
said this issue was personal for him because, like a
lot of young conservatives, he was inspired to get involved
in public service because of Charlie Kirk. He said, I'm
sitting here now because I feel because of Charlie Kirk
and what he created. He created an organization that I
was able to be a part of. I was able
to learn, I was able to grow, I was able
to network, and I feel it's why I'm here today.
Charlie's assassination was not just an attack on a man.
It was an attack on free speech that every member
of this General Assembly holds deer. This is why this
bill matters. He went on to say that if you
commit a felony and are motivated by political terrorism, then
you're sentence will be raised one full class higher. So,
in case you aren't aware of this, North Carolina, in
many states do this also, right, You've got varying classes
of offenses, and so if you you know you commit
a murder or sorry, commit a felony and it's due
to some political motivation or ideology political terrorism, then that's
an aggravating factor and it will bump you up to
a higher class. So if you were, you know, committing
like a class C felony, now it's a class B felony,
and that means harsher punishment. If you commit a crime
based on politics, there will be no parole, no early release,
no sentence reduction. Simply you will serve every single day
of your punishment, which, like, honestly, I kind of feel
like this should be the case for all serious crimes.
I don't think like, if you get a sentence of
you know, twenty years for murder, I don't think you
should get let out until your twenty year sentences up.
Like this is the whole truth in sentencing movement, people
would get sentenced to lengthy prison terms and then rack
up all sorts of like credits and be able to
get out in a quarter of the time. So if
you engage in political terrorism, you will not be allowed
to get early release, You will not get your sentence reduced,
You will serve every day of your sentence. Offenders would
become ineligible for parole, early release, or sentence reduction and
politically motivated felonies right would be elevated. Also class A felonies,
which is the highest class. If there's political motivation in
the commission of that class A felony, even if it's
not a capital offense, it would now become death penalty eligible.
So again, if we were actually doing the death penal,
this might matter somewhere. But if they get the death
penalty back then maybe then maybe this becomes more operable.
So that's what the North Carolina House did. And again
glad to see that it was one hundred and five
to six, Which brings me to this poll that the
Carolina Journal published, and I spent way too much time
actually last night I get yeah, looking at the cross tabs.
Cross tabs are the data sets that are at the
back of the polling. And by the way, good rule
of thumb is, if you come across a poll on
a website or something and they don't give you the
cross tabs, be suspicious, okay, because you want to be
able to see what all of the breakdowns are, where
all of the different responses crossover with each other, and
so you can go pull these cross tabs at the
Carolina Journal's website and the headline, and they pulled a
lot of different questions here, and the headline is that
majority of North Carolina voters believe America is on the
quote wrong track. But they asked questions about political harassment
of public figures but also political violence, and the numbers
here are disturbing. And I saw a poll today. Somebody
put out a national poll that was like, oh, look,
after Charlie Kirk's murder, everybody agrees that political violence isn't good.
That's not what this poll found. And I want to
be optimistic, but that's not what this poll found. Game
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terms limited time offer. The Carolina Journal poll the latest
poll they've got out. It was run in September, so
this month, well, um, yeah, and it was taken right
after the murder of Charlie Kirk. It was conducted by
Harperpoling and as I mentioned earlier, a lot of questions,
a lot of different questions asked. So some of the
top line takeaways for me, after reading through the crosstabs
and all of the responses, about ninety five percent of
North Carolinians who said that political violence is a concern
will probably slash definitely vote all right, So these are
likely voters, which is the group that you want if
you're looking at you know what kind of impact it
will have at the ballot box. So these are likely voters.
And ninety five percent of these likely voters say political
violence is a concern. Okay, So that's going to become
important to understand as I go over some of the
other data points. Now, there is concern across all ideological
the entire ideological spectrum, it's among all races, it's among
all genders. Okay, So everybody seems like they are an
agreement that political violence is a concern. However, ten percent
of the quote very liberal respondent said violence is acceptable.
Political violence is acceptable. Ten percent of very liberal voters
people accept violence. Who accept the violence this ten percent
are way more likely to support harassing public figures as well.
So when you look at the different cohorts as they're
broken down, this is the importance of the cross tabs
to try to get an understanding of what do these
people actually believe. So when you cross the tab if
you will, with the very liberal cohort that ten percent
of whom say violence is acceptable, and then you look
at their views on whether or not it's okay to
harass people public public figures. Rather, you find they are
the largest group. It's like a third of them say
it's okay. That's larger than any of the other groups.
Like the question that was asked, is it ever acceptable
to harass public figures? And ninety four percent of the
Republican respondents said no, it's never acceptable. Ninety four percent
say no. Democrats thirty percent say yes it is. You
can yes, it's acceptable to harass public figures thirty percent,
which this is what their own party leadership tells them
is acceptable. So it makes sense that they would have
a permission structure to do so, to harass people, right,
get in their faces, stop them at the restaurants, stop
them at the gasoline stations, right to quote Anti Maxine.
So thirty percent of just Democrat respondents said that. But
when you dig deeper into the cross tabs and you
see the people who identify as very liberal versus somewhat
liberal and that sort of stuff, you realize that the
very liberals are driving this train. Also, four year undergrad
degree or bachelor's degree more likely to say harassing public
figures is acceptable. Once again, you see the picture, right,
these are the awfuls essentially, although it actually didn't break
down by females, so I guess it would just be
the A l's affluent liberals. So there is a nexus
point between the harassment and the violence. So it's a
poll of six hundred likely North Carolina voters. Ninety five
percent of North Carolinian shared concern about the rise in
political violence. Nearly all said they believe that violence or
assassination attempts against political leaders or public figures are never acceptable.
A small minority said it could be acceptable, three point
eight percent, so almost four percent said it could be acceptable.
But registered Democrats were more likely to respond that political
violence can be acceptable than Republicans. The Republican total on
this is less than one percent. And this is this
question was a little bit looser. It says can it
ever be acceptable? And even then under one percent of
Republicans said yes. Democrats was eight percent. So if I
go down into these cross tabs of the violence question, right,
eight percent say yes. Among Democrats eighty nine percent no,
it's never acceptable. If I then look at the education levels,
graduate degree or further, that's when political violence is blamed
on politicians in that cohort. So people who have the
PhDs and the master's degrees and people who have that
those terminal degrees, they are blaming politicians. They are also
more likely to harass. They're more likely to say political
violence is okay. Like this is the polarization, and this
number drags the Democrat numbers, right, because again like nine
out of ten Democrats say no, it's not acceptable, but
ten percent say yes it is. And that is your
radical base. That's part of your radical base right there,
and it's dragging your Democrat Party and these numbers to
a more radical position. So who's to blame for the radicalization?
Oh this was a great question too. Who do the
different groups blame for the for the political violence? So
when I was a kid, my grandpa died with Alzheimer's,
and before he died, my mom and my day 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, all Righty? So this Carolina Journal poll asking
about all sorts of questions on politics but also political violence.
And I was just running some of the math. And
just to be clear here, when I took the job,
I was told that there would be no math, So
you may want to double check my numbers here. But
if ten percent of Democrats say that political violence is
acceptable in North Carolina, and there are, if memory serves,
roughly two million registered Democrat voters. I think it's somewhere
around there. But even if it's say one million, we'll
call it one million. I mean, that's still one hundred
thousand people that think political violence is acceptable. That's a lot.
And if those people are in positions like media, for example,
or politics right and they are or in the schools
and they are perfectly happy to condone political violence against
their opponents, that creates the permission structure that I keep
talking about. And by the way, we now have more
details of this very thing that occurred with the anti
ICE gunman from yesterday. This is according to the New
York Post, the gunman carefully plotted his assault on immigration
officers before taking up a sniper position on a Dallas rooftop,
and expressed a desire to instill terror in agents. The
FBI revealed a handwritten note recovered by investigators said quote,
hopefully this will get ICE agents real terror to think.
Is there a sniper with AP rounds on that roof?
So that's what the gunman said, That's what he wrote.
Of course, if you are over on Blue Sky, where
all of the leftists fled to when Elon bought Twitter
and said he wasn't going to be censoring conservatives anymore.
They think all of this is just these are just
lies that cash Bettel is lying that the picture of
the AMMO on the rooftop that had anti ice messaging
on it, that these are all lies and he's just
lying about all of this. The gunman also apparently searched
for apps. Here's your permission structure. Searched for apps that
tracked the presence of ice agents. You remember this story
a couple of I don't know, maybe a month or
so ago. This was all in the news and CNN
was doing interviews with the creator of the app that
would track all of the ice movements and such. This
is what the guy used in order to find ice agents.
He went looking for well, he went looking for them.
I know. One of those apps did get taken down.
He also downloaded a document titled Dallas County Office of
Homeland Security and Emergency Management, which the FBI said contains
a list of DHS facilities. The FBI said the trove
of evidence recovered in the investigation so far indicates a
high degree of pre attack planning. So again, when you
are in the media and you promote these types of
quote products, an app that allows people to target law
enforcement for intimidation and or violence. You are helping to
create the permission structure. You're sending a signal that this
is okay, this is legitimate, this is just free speech.
There's no problem here. Look at this entrepreneur. He found
a market niche and oh my gosh, what a great
idea permission structure. When asked in the Carolina Journal polling,
when asked who deserves the most blame for political violence
in America, and then they were offered several potential responses politicians,
slash elected officials, media, activist groups, and protest movements. Social
media companies are unsure. So the four main categories politicians, media, activists,
social media okay, And overall North Carolina voters they're number
one target for the blame. Who they blamed overall at
about thirty five percent politicians, twenty seven percent said the media,
sixteen percent said activist groups and protest movements, and fourteen
percent said social media companies. But wait till you hear
the breakdown. The breakdown is instructive. When you look at
the cross tabs, you see there is a wide disparity
between Democrats and Republicans and how they answer this question.
For Republicans, they primarily blame number one the media, Number
two activists, and number three politicians. What about Democrats? Democrats,
they primarily blame politicians. In other words, Donald Trump, that's
how I read that. Sixty one percent of Democrats blame
politicians for the political violence. It's just you know, Johnson,
that is to be Johnson in this war. You know,
that's the reason why I have to beat you up, Jenny. No,
sixty one percent politicians blamed by Democrats, but only thirteen
percent of Republicans blame politicians. That is a difference of
forty eight percent. That is a very wide disparity in
any kind of polling. That is massive. Next up, number two,
who did the Democrats blame? Now, these are all very
low numbers. These are all single digit numbers. Number two,
they blame the media. Oh sorry, I take that back.
Number two, they blame social media companies. Social media, that's
the Elon effect fifteen percent. Republicans put that number at
eleven percent. So Republicans, they rank them the lowest. Social
media is ranked the lowest among Republicans, but second highest
among the Democrats, followed by the media nine percent and
activist groups and protest movements at just six percent, because
that's their people, right, that's them. They're going to blame
themselves for this stuff. But the number one response was yeah, politicians,
there is a difference between Republicans and Democrats of thirty
three percentage points when they blame the media. Republicans blame
the media at forty two percent, And there's a smaller
difference between the activist crowd Republicans pegged down at twenty
six percent versus just six percent for Democrats. That right there,
I think is the perfect illustration of where we are
and why we think so differently. We are blaming different
groups of people for inspiring the violence. You know, stories
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by Liberty Buick gmc pete in. Waxhaw says, that's stat
ten percent of the liberal crazies. That's where all the
bleeps are that thanks for pointing this out acceptable, no way.
These leaders will need to be prosecuted as criminals inciting
this violence. Susie says. Your show is my favorite part
of the day. Thank you, Susie. You make me laugh
and think, well, that's what I'm trying to do. That's awesome.
Thank you. Anyway. A few weeks ago, you spoke about
a similar study regarding those on the left being more
in favor of violence than those on the right. I
read your weekly emails with links to the articles and
studies you discuss on air, and I never saw that one.
Oh did I not post it? So I post my
prep over on my Patreon page. It's free, anybody can
look at it. And I don't remember when that was.
I don't And every week I blow out all of
the links, but I post all the links to everything.
Well apparently not Pete. I don't know. Will you link
this one in your email? This week? I was telling
my daughter about it. She did not believe me, so
I would love to have the link to send her. Susie,
if you know, if you remember the day I talked
about it like that would be very helpful because then
I could go and get the or you could just
send the podcast over to your daughter. But I can
go back and listen, because I usually try to make
a point to every time, you know, cite the polling site,
the data where it's coming from. But it would have
been well, yeah, I don't remember the I don't remember
the polling but yeah, we talked about it a while ago,
and I guess I didn't put that link up. My
apologies and sometimes that happens if I find something during
the show and I just get I get behind and
putting the sho show prep links in there. But this
one is already in the prep sheets, so this will
be posted after the program over on the Patreon page.
This Carolina Journal poll, which by the way, has some
other interesting little nuggets or nuggets if you're west of
the Rockies. The poll also asked about the stabbing of
Arena Zarutzka and people's confidence in the safety on public transport.
Thirty nine percent say they are confident in the safety
of their local transit system. Thirty eight percent said they're
not confident, so that's basically a tie. And this might
surprise you. Charlotteans were the least confident thirty two percent,
so a third. Only a third say they're confident in
their security on cats. Ashville has the highest confidence, that's
a fifty two percent. Also, forty eight and a half
percent say they are confident that North Carolina effectively prevents
violent criminals from harming the public, but forty five percent
not so confident, so that's a split as well. When
asked about the cause of crime number one answer, twenty
six percent said the sources was judges giving light sentences
and releasing repeat criminal offenders sixteen percent, so ten percentage
point difference there said economic hardship or poverty, sixteen percent
in mental illness, and eleven percent at poor parenting and
family breakdown. All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
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