Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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your support. So Tennessee, the congressional district that includes Nashville
held themselves a special election yesterday and it stayed Republican.
This was a Republican seat. This is a seat that
Marsha Blackburn used to hold easily. I want to say,
like plus twenty or plus thirty percentage point wins every time.
Solid red district, even though Nashville is located inside the
district and Nashville tends to vote more blue. But Nashville
has also seen an influx of people fleeing from California
and New York. A lot of Californians I've noticed have
moved to Nashville, Tennessee. So it appears to be growing
more and more blue, just like all of these other
places like Charlotte. Did we ever determine what we were
going to call this the Blue Bonnic?
Speaker 2: Is that what we're calling it? The Blue Bonnic?
Speaker 1: Play?
Speaker 2: Anyway?
Speaker 1: I had never heard of this woman who was running,
this Democrat who was running before this race. And her
name is Afton Ben. I think is how that's pronounced.
It's a very odd name, a f t y n aften,
last name b e h n. Maybe it's Baine. I
think it's Ben, or maybe it's Bachen. I don't know
Afton Ben. Jeff bl Layer at National Review describes her
charitably as having a perpetually sneering visage, as if the
world was forever batching her Starbucks latte order. That's and
if you've seen her.
Speaker 2: It's true.
Speaker 1: It is true. She just has this sort of scowl
on her face most of the time. And then last
night during her concession speech, she wore I don't even
know how to describe this jacket. It was sort of
looked it looked plasticky, like a leather plastic y kind
of a cowgirled coat kind of deal. And it was
like aqua blue or like a light blue, and it
had a bunch of like rhinestones on it, but it
looked about two sizes too big, so it almost looked
like she was dressed in full pads for a football game.
And then she had one of those you know, one
of those ponchos that they put over the football players
while they're on the sideline.
Speaker 2: That's what it kind of looked like she was wearing.
It was just weird.
Speaker 1: It was just a weird jacket to wear for your
concession speech. Now, maybe she was trying to convey the
image that she really does love Nashville. And you may
be thinking, well, of course she would love Nashville. She's
running for the congressional district to represent.
Speaker 2: Nashville, right.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, she she had previously talked about how much
she hated Nashville and everything really about Nashville, hated the
bachelorette parties, which I've actually I do know something about this,
not that I know, not that I've been to a
bachelorette party, but I did a story, well I covered
the story years ago go that a lot of businesses
in Nashville, or Nashvillians, nashvillelites, what do they called Nashville owens,
they were not fond of all of the bachelorette parties.
Apparently Nashville has become sort of the number one destination
for bachelorette parties. So and I expect that has something
to do with the you know, the prevalence of the bars,
the live music, and a sense of security to be
able to walk around while you're drunk out on the streets,
you know, and not have to worry about being accosted, assaulted,
dragged off behind a building and you know, and raped
or something like.
Speaker 2: I'm assuming that that's what it has to do with.
Speaker 1: And that's probably more about the culture of Nashville, which
is like, you know, more law and order than say
making I don't know San Francisco your destination bachelorette party,
you know, But I digress. So this woman often ben
running against a fellow by the name of Matt Van Epps,
and he is a former Army helicopter pilot veteran. And
this is the seventh Congressional District of Tennessee. And he
did win it. He won it by like nine points,
like fifty four to forty five percent, So almost a landslide.
A landslide is double digits at least, But this is
being read as not really a win. I mean it's
a win, sure, I mean it's a nine point win,
to be sure, but it's not a bigger win. And
it should have been a bigger win because it's a
solid Republican district.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And the reason why they held this election, by the way,
is because the Republican representative, Mark Green retired. According to
md Kitt writing at the Federalist dot Com, even in defeat,
Democrats hailed the closer than expected election as a victory.
So even when they lose, Democrats win, which is the
standard we have all become accustomed to. Obviously, this woman
aften Ben has been dubbed I don't know by whom,
the AOC of Tennessee, the AOC of Tennessee. Okay, so
a real moderate type of candidate. Oh did you hear
there's a Democrat socialist now running for mayor of Washington,
DC because Mayor Bowser is not going to run for reelection.
So that's basically going to get decided in the Democrat primary.
And so you got a Democrat socialist going to pull
a Mam Danny, we shall see or okay, fine, mom
COMI either way, here is Scott Jennings on CNN.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, there's lessons that you learned from everything.
When you win, there's lessons. When you lose, there's lessons,
and so I'm sure they'll look and see who turned
out and what messages were effective and which ones weren't,
and that'll be something the party can move going forward.
It's an off your special election. The turnout matrix is
far different than a presidential then it'll be different than
what comes out in November. Say, you can take nothing
for granted, of course, and Republicans do have historical headwinds.
I still think they are in position to make an
argument that their economic theories are better than the democratics theories.
And Democrats, after all, took prices to the moon, and
now they want to forget the last four years and
pretend like this just started ten months ago. I think
most voters know that's patley ridiculous. I do have a
slight disagreement with David. I do think we'll hear from
her again. I think she'll run again, and I think
she and her brand of politics are the median Democrat.
This is the basic Democrat you're going to get in
most races around the country. This person running on defund
the police, radical progressive positions. Whether you're in Nashville or Manhattan,
or Florida or account wherever you happen to be, this
is what the Democratic base wants the most cuckoo for
Coco puffs, and they can find and they're gonna They're
gonna look at you, say, hey, this is how we
got so close. So let's replicate it around the country.
I think we'll hear from her in her kind for
the next year. I don't think it'll be good for Democrats.
Speaker 4: We can ask you on that because you said that
she she ran on defund the police. There were her
past comments on that, but she said that that was
basically when she was a private citizen, before she was
representing the state legislature. I mean, that wasn't like a
core tenant of her campaign. She talked about affordability. So
I think my question is is do you really think
every that's what every Democrat looks like. I mean, I
don't think that was the main That was something that
a criticism of verse obviously past comments, but that wasn't
the you know, tenant of her campaign or anything.
Speaker 3: She got asked about it. Repeatedly and refused to back
away from it. And look, I'm just telling you, this
is what Democrats believe, and this is what their base wants.
It's why she wouldn't go back on it. I was
just a private citizen. Oh my gosh, we've never held
what you said as a private citizen against you in
a political campaign, for goodness sakes, What a ridiculous way
to just maintain a position that nobody likes.
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to remember there was a guy who
ran for North Carolina governor I think it was governor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was governor.
Speaker 1: And remember like a whole bunch of stuff had come out,
stuff that he had said when he was a private citizen.
And then like Democrats were like, this guy is so radical,
you can't elect him. And oh he also visited a
bunch of like these uh, these porn websites and stuff.
Speaker 2: Remember what was that guy's name?
Speaker 1: I know it was a while ago, Mark Robertson Robinson,
Mark Robinson, that was his name. Yeah, so now democrats
want the space. See, Okay, when I said defund the
police or globalize the into father, when I said this stuff,
I was just a private citizen. I didn't make it
a tenant of my campaign. It's just it's so it's
so expected and annoying.
Speaker 5: You know.
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dot Com a message from us who says I hadn't
really heard of Ben aften Ben until a week or
two ago when it came out that she hates her district.
Every position of hers I have seen makes me think
that she would have been rejected by the squad when
she got to Washington for being too much of a
wacky leftist. That's too far, that's too far.
Speaker 2: Aften Ben.
Speaker 1: Dubbed the AOC of Tennessee. She actually tried to keep
the focus on pocketbook issues, audaciously claiming that she would
quote stand up to both parties to make life more affordable.
That's how that works, you see, you stand up to
the parties and then everybody has more money. This is
what I told the Queen City Republicans when I spoke
to them. Hammer away at affordability. Just because Zoron Mamdanni
used that word as like the totality of his campaign
doesn't mean you can't use it either, right, you can
use it.
Speaker 2: Everybody can use it.
Speaker 1: Talk about affordability, talk about bringing prices down, talk about
letting people keep more of their own money, and then
tying it back to the policies of Democrats that have
raised the price on everything. Why does it cost so
much money to live in Democrat areas? Why they're policies.
It's a very simple argument. To make right, you got
to hammer away. So this is what she thought she
would do, is just affordability, affordability, affordability. I hate Nashville, affordability, affordability,
I hate country music. Affordability, affordability.
Speaker 2: It did not work.
Speaker 1: She has supported taxpayer funded Medicaid for illegal aliens. She
has supported government run healthcare as well. She labeled Tennessee
racist and god forsaken, which is I guess that is
one way to try to win an election in Tennessee.
Talked about how she loathed entry music, her anti police passed,
and her harassment of ice agents most likely did not
sit too well either. Neither did her systemic racism stick
and her science confounding position that men can give birth.
But but Democrats and media, but I repeat myself, they
think this is actually a very good sign for Democrats
losing by nine points in this district. Here's Harry Inten
at CNN.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about the numbers. Republicans should be running for
the hells this morning, because the blue wave is building.
My dear friend mister Berman, what are we talking about here? Well,
Matt Vanipps the Republican candidate, he won it by nine.
But this is a district that Donald Trump won by
twenty two points, fifteen points, seventeen points. This is a
thirteen point gain for the Democrats in terms.
Speaker 2: Of the margin.
Speaker 5: And excuse time for Republicans is ova because I hear
all about these special elections, all the turnout so low,
it's not representative of what happened in the midterm election.
The turnout last night in Tennessee seventh District was equal
so the turnout in the twenty twenty two midterm election.
So the blue wave it seems to be building right
out of center of Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Interesting, So in turn of the numbers, the turnout looked
like a regular midterm election, not a special election.
Speaker 5: Exactly right, exactly right, And of course we have a
midterm what about eleven months?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: What have we seen in terms of trends in all
the special elections the last year?
Speaker 5: Okay, you know, I wouldn't necessarily give a hooona hollering
about one special election in Tennessee. I love the people
in Central Tennessee, but central Tennessee is nothing special compared
to the rest of the country.
Speaker 2: But what we see happening.
Speaker 5: You make a look here, okay, twenty twenty five US
House special elections. DEM's out running Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: A lot of blue here, a lot of blue, which
is all right, I'm gonna start. He's now got a
graphic up on the screen. Also, his accent is pretty annoying.
I think he's going his accent is becoming more pronounced anyway,
So what he's what he's gotten now is a chart
of the various US House special elections Arizona, Florida two
and Florida actually won in Tennessee from yesterday, Texas and Virginia.
And these were seats that all five, one, two, three, four,
five or six of these races, Democrats outran Kamala Harris.
They outperformed the Democrat candidate for these seats outperformed Kamala
Harris by double digits, which it's not really surprising. Have
you seen Kamala Harris and did you see that campaign?
She wasn't Look I say this all the time, candidates
matter often. Ben is not a good candidate. She wasn't
a good candidate for this seat. I agree with Scott
Jennings though she'll be back. She's not going anywhere. She's
going to run again for something, maybe governor or US
Senate or something. She's going to run for something else.
This is who Democrats want. And if the economic situation,
I feel like, if the economic situation in America does
not improve for the average voter, then this very well
could be very, very bad for Republicans. You know, even
Scott Jennings pointed out Republicans have historical headwinds against them.
Every party that controls the White House loses seats in
the midterm elections. And Trump voters are going to have
to turn out for their congressional races like they turn
out for him, and so far, I'm not so sure
that we've seen evidence that they do that. They vote
for Trump and then they sit home during the midterms.
So if you know, if you want to see Trump impeached,
then go ahead and you keep doing that. If you
would like to see Trump not be a complete lame
duck president for the remainder of his term, then you're
gonna have to You're gonna.
Speaker 2: Have to mobilize.
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This from Queen CityNews QC news dot com, piece by
Andy Weber, a Democratic state Senate candidate. So, this is
North Carolina state senate who made international news after running
for an office that she knew she had no chance
to win, is now throwing her hat back in the ring.
Speaker 2: This time.
Speaker 1: The Democrat is running in the GOP primary. Her name
is Kate Bass. She's running against Tim Moore in the
fourteenth congressional district, and she is framing it as another
protest of the state's jerry mandard map, which is that's
just reported as if it's true that it's a jerryman
that the fourteenth is jerrymandered.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: The fourteenth district is not jerrymandered. So yeah, you should
not be using the term jerrymandered with the with the
political implications that the word carries with it. You could
just say as a protest of the state's map, or
you could say in protest of what she calls a
jerrymandered map. Either way, she is attempting to unseat Tim Moore,
who was first elected to this seat in twenty twenty four.
She argued that the way that the map is currently drawn,
she has a better chance running as a progressive Republican
than any type of Democrat. A progressive Republican. Okay, what
does that mean? What does that mean? I sure do
hope that if there is ever a debate in the
primary between these two, or if she does interviews, I
sure hope that some people ask her. And here's an
easy question, easy question for a reporter or somebody a
voter at a town hall to ask, are there any
planks in the Republican platform that.
Speaker 2: You do agree with?
Speaker 1: Right, You've registered as a Republican to try to beat
Tim Moore, But is there anything in the Republican platform
that you agree with? Or are you literally a rhino?
A Republican in name only? She's lying, right, She's lying.
Her first act in her run is to lie, is
to say I'm not really a Republican, but I will
register as one so I can get a primary, and
then I'll try to beat him that way. North Carolina's
GOP weighed in they put out a statement, Kate barrs
Farce is insulting voters' intelligence. Across North Carolina, we have
seen former Democrats realize the socialist leadership infecting the party
no longer represents them, whether it's Representative Tricia Cotham and
Mecklenberg County, she flipped Democrat to Republican. Numerous county commissioners
in Robinson County right there, I think three of them
that flipped, or a sheriff in New Hanover County. She
isn't putting together a campaign about ideas and solutions in
her own party because today's Democrats cannot relate to the
middle class and working families. So she's not running on
a platform of like the Democrat Party left me. She's
running on a platform of I'm a progressive running in
the Republican primary because I can't win as a Democrat.
Like that's so you're lying, you're trying to deceive voters.
By the way, the primary is in March, March third,
twenty twenty six. And then there's this US Attorney Russ
Ferguson announced a series of actions to enhance election integrity.
This was prompted, I think by story at WBTV about
North Carolina DMV that has been registering non citizens to vote,
which I'm told doesn't happen. But I guess we are
at the stage where we get told first it's not happening,
and then second stage is okay, it is happening.
Speaker 2: But it's not a lot.
Speaker 1: I think that's I think that's where we are now,
and in the final stage is okay, it is happening
quite a bit, but it's good. That's usually the way
these stories progress, right, happens with voter I d We
noticed this pattern with voter I d so. WBTV investigates
reported last month that Russ Ferguson, US attorney for the
Western District of North Carolina, accused the state's DMV of
illegally registering six non citizens to vote see it's only six,
it's only six people. In interviews with WBTV, two of
the people that were incorrectly registered to vote said they
actually had no idea that they had been registered. Documents
obtained by WBTV indicated that most of the people did
not appear to be aware of the registration. None of
the people the six voted actually that none of them
ever voted. See so it's so it's there's only six
people and they didn't even vote.
Speaker 2: It's not a big deal.
Speaker 1: The implications of an incorrect voter registration, though, can be
enormous for people in the process of obtaining their US citizenship.
Why well, if you've registered to vote, you are claiming
essentially that you are a citizen, right because only citizens
can vote in North Carolina. In some jurisdictions they let
non citizens vote in their local races because they have
suicidal empathy in those jurisdictions. So in North Carolina, if
you're registered to vote, that's sort of a de facto
admission that you are a citizen, which lying about being
an American citizen when you are not is actually a felony,
and that may jeopardize your ability to become a US citizen.
And by the way, there's no distinction made as to
whether or not these people are legal or illegal aliens.
So if assuming that all six of these people are
in the country legally and maybe they're trying to become citizens,
this could actually really screw up their chances. See, this
is why this stuff matters as well. It's not you're
not being empathetic, you're not being helpful. You do not
occupy the morally superior position by saying this stuff isn't
worthy of our time, because for those six people that
now could potentially lose their path to citizenship because of
some mistake that DMV made, if it was a mistake,
that's not an ethical position to take lefties. All right,
If you're listening to this show, you know I try
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Speaker 2: Stan says, the.
Speaker 1: Six people who were registered to vote and not aware
of it, that's the goal. The individuals responsible for it
wanted to vote in your place, as they know how
you'll vote doing it that way, right. So there's no
indication though by the voter records that anybody voted in
their names. Okay, so they got registered to vote, but
there's no record of them voting. That would be in
the Board of Elections database, which WBTV went and looked
at and said that there's no evidence that anybody ever
voted under their names. But this is a problem obviously,
because these are just the six that they caught that
were identified under federal laws. DMVs across the country are
able to help fill out voter registration forms for people
getting identification documents. In North Carolina, a person can fill
out a voter registration form at the DMV and the
agency will then forward that form to the appropriate county
board to complete registration. So this is the problem, is
that you've got DMVs across the country. So they found
six in North Carolina that they were looking for, and
that means also that this is probably occurring in other states,
either by accident, by technical glitching, or intentionally. Right. But
the other thing, though, is that this was supposed to
have been caught. One would think at the Board of Elections.
And then also remember that your jury pool is pulled
from the Board of Elections registrations. Right, So if you're
registered to vote in Mecklenburg County and you are not
a citizen and you get called in for jury duty,
you can say I'm not a citizen and then you
get out of jury duty, which, like, that's a problem,
that should be a flag. But it's not being caught
there either.
Speaker 2: See. I see these stories.
Speaker 1: And I think, wow, well, there are a lot of
opportunities to clean up the voter rolls that are ignored
or missed for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: And so it's hard to know.
Speaker 1: It's hard to have confidence when you get examples like
this of how a system is supposed to function but
is not functioning. It's not catching these people, it's not
catching the errors, and any attempt to catch the errors
or to prevent them in the first place, get you
branded as a racist or something that you're trying to,
you know, thwart the democracy or something now from the
press release here from the US Attorney's Office.
Speaker 2: In July, the US.
Speaker 1: Attorney initiated an inquiry to the commissioner of the DMV
following a report by Homeland Security Investigations that the DMV
permitted ineligible individuals like illegal aliens, to register to vote
at the DMV, sometimes without that individual's knowledge. The investigation
found individuals were erroneously given citizen ID cards for years,
and some were registered to vote even after informing the
DMV they were not citizens. The involved DMV examiners initially
blamed the error on a system glitch, but the DMV
later admitted quote the online system doesn't verify citizenship status.
The US Attorney asked the DMV commissioner to review these
the registration processes to ensure non eligible voters were not
being registered to vote. The DMV agreed to investigate and
found that individuals had been registered to vote due to
errors by DMV examiners. So what is the press really
saying that the examiners blamed a system glitch, but it
was in fact their mistake. That's another problem. No, why
are they lying or were they just mistaken? Did they
make a mistake?
Speaker 2: DMV found aos.
Speaker 1: Let me back up a sentence. These errors included mistakenly
marking individuals as US citizens, which then bypassed the necessary
legal presence questions and allowed voter registration. So it was
the examiner who said they were a citizen, and then
that jumped ahead in the questionnaire, and so those controls
didn't work. The DMV also found a system error that
lasted for three months and permitted ineligible individuals to register
to vote. Now the DMV has agreed to make some changes.
They're going to issue a statewide reminder to all of
their examiners on the protocols and the safeguards to ensure
proper registration. They're going to do some new training for examiners.
They're going to modernize DMV technology to streamline processes and
reduce examiner errors, hiring additional personnel to increase accurate input
of sensitive data, actively pursuing a technical solution to effectively
integrate citizenship checks into dmb's online and Kiosk voter registration
application systems.
Speaker 2: So all of that is good.
Speaker 1: So if we're going to get some new controls and
checks on this stuff, good job. US attorney Rus Ferguson.
Speaker 2: All right, that'll do it for this episode.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. I could not do
the show without your support and the support of the
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