Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you
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your support. And it's Monday at two. That means we
chat with Ap Dylon. She is a reporter over at
the North State Journal and you can read her substacked newsletter.
Get it delivered right to your inbox. It's called More
to the Story. Hello, Ap, how you doing. I'm doing
all right? You're doing all right? Doing?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 1: All right? Good? So did you go to any of
the any of the no Kings protests or anything? Did
you spend your saturday out there in the heat looking
at very elderly liberals complaining that they lost an election.
Speaker 2: No, I did that. I actually spent most of the
weekends doing chores with my kids in advanced graduation coming up.
Speaker 1: Oh, congratulations.
Speaker 2: Watching the parade on Sunday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, but you did manage to do some work
over the weekend, apparently work that I now. I just
got a messaged from Teresa Opeka from Carolina Journal about
the w r L and the News and Observer now
finally have covered the story that you covered yesterday about
Representative Julie van Haefen. Is that how she pronounces is
it hafen? Is it heyphen? It's very German sounding? Yeah,
for no reason I point that out. So, yeah, so
I detailed a little bit of this what happened at
this protest in Wait. She took some pictures at the protest,
she edited them together in to a reels video and
then put it up onto Instagram. And there was one
particular photo, and I'm trying to describe this for people
who may not have seen it. It's a picture of
a woman in a ball cap and she's got like
it looks like a fabric banner kind of a sign.
So it's got like a long pole and then it's
got the banner hanging down in the middle of it.
The banner has a like a sketch of a guillotine.
Now I can't make out, what do you know, what's
at the bottom of the base of the guillotine. Are
those dead bodies under or heads that are down there?
I can't really make it out.
Speaker 2: Yes, she's holding that flag in the middle, and on
either side of the pole are hanging heads, heads wearing
they look like wigs, you know, like someone in Parliament
might wear. Right, But what is definitely President Trump? And
the other one could be possibly Stephen Miller, or it
could be Elon Musk, but it looks more like Stephen Miller.
And that one has a swastika.
Speaker 1: Right, But that's why I thought maybe that's Elon Musk
because he did the the Corey Booker salute that everybody
said was Hyle Hitler, right, So it could be yeah, but.
Speaker 2: It looks more like Stephen Miller, but it could be
Elon Musk. It's hard to tell. Not there was no
caption with it. But yeah, this woman's holding this poll
with these these two heads hanging from either side. Obviously
you know, meant to look be beheaded. Considering there's a
guillotine in the middle of the picture, right, and it
is in these difficult times there we must make cuts.
And you can't really read the bottom of the banner
but the idea is that our president should be beheaded.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think it's pretty clear. I mean it's like
it's a pretty linear logical conclusion. Right, you have the guillotine.
It says, in these difficult times, more cuts may be necessary.
And then you have two heads. And I'm trying to
like what like mannequin heads or like are these like
paper mache? Which really Now, like I started like going
down this rabbit hole just thinking through like how does
one procure these heads? Like what like did she make them?
In which case, like the one of Trump is pretty
I mean it's pretty identifiable. Yeah, and that means if
she made it, she must have spent hours, right, hours,
just staring at a photo of Donald Trump while working
on Trump's face, and like that level of obsession is
just bizarre to me.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean there could be masks that are have
been you know, stuffed so puppy looking. That's that was
my initial reaction was, you know, maybe she hit party
city or something. I don't know, but you know, the reaction,
you know, was was pretty swift from Republican Republicans who spotted.
Speaker 1: It, and.
Speaker 2: We tried to reach van Han through various outlets mediums
that she has, and none of them were accepting messages
it appeared, But around three pm yesterday afternoon, she did
put a statement on her official Facebook page which addressed
the deletion of the image out. She went back and
edited her little Real video and took that image out.
She said that the deletion of the image was because
it was inappropriate, but you know, the thing stayed up
for a whole day, so I mean clearly she thought
it was a good idea to put it in there
in the first place, and so she wrote, yesterday I
posted a video on social media containing crowd photos from
the Note King's protests in Raleigh. One of the images
of the protester holding a sign was inappropriate, and I
let her edited the video to remove the photo. And
then she goes on to say, let me be clear,
I could them all political violence and all forms, but
yet she had that in her video right, and her
focus is on bringing people together, YadA, YadA, YadA. Like
so many, I was horrified by the violence of Minnesota.
So she brings up the Minnesota assassinations of or at
least one assassination, one attempted assassination, which is just horrifying.
So she brings that into play, and then later that
yesterday evening, the House Speaker weighed in on it and
issued a statement on acts as well as a press release,
and that statement says that on the same weekend that
a gunman in Minnesota targeted day lotmakers and an act
of political violence, and after two attempted assassinations of President
Trump within the past year, Representative von Hagen d Wake
shared an image of a protest sign that glorifies violence
against her political opponents, including President Donald Trump. Her disgraceful
behavior fails to meet the standard standards expected from House
members and sets a dangerous president in an already volatile
political climate. And then he goes on to say, I'm
examining next steps with our legislative attorneys to ensure this
behavior does not continue. She's already in hot water for
actually using the press room to allow of a quasi
religious group to come in and to scream and rail
about Craig, Crisis pregnancy centers, and abortion. And she she
allowed them to basically use the room and didn't participate
in the event, and that's a violation of the House
press room rules. So that there she was already being
you know, looked at for that, and I know that
Speaker Hall's office was involved in that and they were
talking to Minority Leader Reeves about it.
Speaker 1: So I've not seen anything from the Democrat Party. I've
not seen Hasanders and Clayton breezed into UH to offer
any statements.
Speaker 2: Nope, I've I've reached out to them and asked for
a comment from Chair Clayton. I'm waiting for that to
come back in and we'll update our story when that
does happen. But I did get a comment from the
North Carolina Democratic Party caucus. They basically responded to my
requests for comment by providing von Haysten's written statement, which
I already had. So I prompted them back and as
specifically from one from them, and the reply that I
received was, we have no further comment on the matter.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, yeah, because why would they. It's it was
just a temporary mistake, lapse in judgment, move on, there's
nothing to see here. She already took it down, she
deleted her entire Twitter profile. I'm sure she's probably over
on Blue Sky. But this is the thing. When she
says I condemned political violence in all forms, but she doesn't.
And the fact that you didn't, she didn't even recognize
this photo for what that is, indicates that she has
a blind spot for what is and is not political violence.
It was only after and look, I mean it got
a lot of attention from you know, North Carolina lawmakers
and Republicans and Twitter users, you know, on the ncpol hashtag.
But what really blew her up was libs of TikTok
found it and that I am sure did not that
did not do any favors to her inbooy.
Speaker 2: Just the faster dude Senator Mike Lee of Utah Ada
and them that and't called it disgusting and important. Yeah, well,
you know, because they had a shooting at the Salt
Lake City Milk Kings a person was killed.
Speaker 1: Right, And June fourteenth, I just covered this in the
last hour, But June fourteenth, twenty seventeen, that was the
day that the Bernie bro tried to assassinate a whole
bunch of Republican Congress members Like this is we've been
talking about this and I don't know if you also
read some of Thomas Mills with Politics NC and he's
of course, you know, saying it's only one side is
responsible for the political violence, and it's the Republican's fault,
and then he goes on to excuse away you know,
all of these other examples. Oh, there were reasons for
the riots in twenty twenty, there were you know, Democrats
weren't celebrating Luigi MANGIONI like the hell they weren't. I mean,
I just go onto any social media platform in the
wake of that murder and people were like celebrating it.
Taylor Lawrens was like, Oh, I ended stand why he
did it. He's so sexy like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, but that's girls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, So, Like, I don't know where this goes.
I don't know if he can actually destined Hall the
Speaker can actually do anything. I mean because what like
censure remover her from some committees or something. But yeah,
I don't. I don't know if there's any I don't
really know if there's any pathway to punishment and what that.
Speaker 2: End of the Council, the General Council for the Legislature
about it. So we'll see what they have to say.
You know, I don't I haven't dug into the state
statutes and regarding whether or not a member can be
expelled for behavior like that or not. But yeah, you know,
I would say that pretty much everything is on the
table at this point, especially since she's already been sort
of flying a little bit fast and loose with general
Assembly rules when it came to the press room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I know you'll follow it, and I don't
think I think there's yeah, I think there's this story
has got legs. Let's say that this story has some legs,
so we shall see. AP always appreciate the time, AP Dylan.
You could read this article. It's at North State Journal
nsjonline dot com. Thanks again, Ape, appreciate it absolutely.
Speaker 2: Thanks Pete.
Speaker 1: All right, take care. 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.
Speaker 3: Why.
Speaker 1: 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. See for yourself. 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. Yeah,
so Representative Julie von Haythen she now has a story
about her up at the News and Observer. I don't
know what time this thing posted. I'm looking, oh, one
thirty seven pm today, So during my show they post.
I'm not saying I made them do this. I'm just
saying they coincidentally finally got around to covering this story
from two days ago today during my show after I
mentioned it. WRAL has their story now too. Oh look
at that. They put their story up at one thirty two.
Wait a minute, one thirty two and one thirty seven.
What are the odds of that happening? That's pretty amazing.
Within five minutes of each other, they have they finally
got around to doing the story that's like forty eight
hours old. I do appreciate the headline at the News
and Observer more so than the WRAL one News and
Observer's headline is NC House Democrat deletes x account after
post with inappropriate protest image. That's a fair headline, I
would say. Wil NCGP calls on democrat to resign for
social media post depicting severed Trump head. So this is
one of the rules in journalisming. When the scandal is
about a Democrat, the story is about the reaction the
Republican's reaction to the scandal, and so that's that's journalism
ing rule number two. When a scandal is about a Republican,
then it's that's the story. The story is the scandal.
So let's see what wi This is by Paul spect
and Carly Haynes. So two people it took to write
this story that's forty eight hours old. The North Carolina
Republican Party calling for von Hafen to resign over this photo.
That she posted. Jason Simmons, the chairman of the State GOP,
issued a statement Monday, calling on state Representative Julie von
Hafen to resign. Here it is the posts Representative von
Hayfen shared do not show the judgment or temperament of
someone to hold public office for the good of her
constituents to have effective representation, she should resign. Okay, she's
not going to resign. I talked about this last week. Also, right,
the incentiveives are there for Democrats to continue behaving the
way they are behaving, whether it's getting themselves arrested, like
Alex Padilla, which like, gotta feel bad for that guy,
Senator Padilla or Padilla from California. You gotta feel bad
for him. I mean, first off, nobody recognized him when
he walked into that room, right, nobody recognized him. He's
the Senator from California. Nobody recognized him. Number one. Number two.
That stunt was supposed to drive the weekend news cycle.
But within like an hour or two of when it happened,
Israel started bombing Iran and it just completely took his
story off the front page. So you gotta feel bad.
You go through all of the planning, you know, go
to all that trouble, get yourself manhandled by law enforcement.
But their incentive is to keep doing this because the
polling that we also covered here like two weeks ago,
the polling among Democrat voters that seventy percent of them
have an unfavorable view of their own party. And why
it's not that they've gone too far left, No, it's
they're not fighting Trump hard enough. They want more rather
than right, like, rather than try to figure out a
way to get some stuff done, that's you know, maybe
make some bills better or whatever. Because Trump's only got
three years, He's gonna be lame duck soon, right, So
I mean, I don't know what a lame duck Trump
is going to look like, actually, because like I don't
see him stopping or slowing down anytime soon. So I
don't know. But like this idea that that you have
to fight him harder, you got to fight him harder,
and so you're constantly pushing your electeds to to ramp
up the belligerents. And then you get Thomas Mills over
there like, oh, we don't go after power like the
right does, and that's just a lie. And what It
is even more offensive and degregious by the fact that
the guy that you want to fight harder survive two
assassination attempts within the last year. This isn't even ancient history,
like the Bernie bro who attempted to assassinate a dozen
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Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut took to the Twitter machine
and posted what we used to call back in the
day a tweet storm. I don't know what they call
it now. I think it's just a post storm. But
that makes it sound like the storm is passed, and
so now it's poststorm. A thread but that's that's Facebook's thing. Threads.
Whatever happened to threads? Is that still around anyway? This
is what he says. The Minnesota assassin appears to be
a hate filled right winger. So can we stop walking
on eggshells about maga's legitimization of political violence? So okay,
first off, who has done that? Who is legitimizing violence
in the MAGA movement? When has that happened? Like seriously,
I'm wondering because I'm not aware of anybody in the
MAGA world saying we need to go and commit acts
of violence against democrats. Not aware of that. He says, yes,
Republicans have also been the target of inexcusable violence. But
you knew there was a butt coming, right. You could
smell that butt coming a mile away. That did not
sound right. Okay, but this isn't a both sides issue, right,
So there you go. This is the same argument that
Thomas Mills wrote about on his blog. This isn't both sides.
You're worse. We don't do it at all. You're worse.
So he then proceeds to say, for the last five years,
MAGA has been bathed in political violence. Why five years? Oh,
j sex, He's gonna this is all about January sixth, Right,
you don't go back to the beginning of the mega movement, Right,
that would be eight years ago. No, wouldn't it be
from when he came down the most famous escalator, Right,
most importantly, maga's celebration of j six I know a
lot of MAGA people. I don't think I've ever heard
any of them celebrate January sixth. Not aware of any
celebration of January sixth, and Trump's decision to pardon all
the January sixth rioters, including the most violent. Yeah, actually
a lot of people said he shouldn't have done that.
There are a lot of people Republicans, maga people me.
We said he should not have pardoned the ones that
committed the violence. But the people that just like had
the doors held open for them by Capitol police and
they walked through like they were on a tour and
then left the building. Yeah, they shouldn't have been sentenced
to prison. They shouldn't have been locked in solitary confinement
for a year before trial like stuff like that. Right,
the J six people are the only incarcerated human beings
that Democrats think should be incarcerated like that. This is
the only group of people, he says. This became a
clear endorsement of violence. It in his name. It wasn't.
But it didn't start with January sixth. Trump regularly threatened
protesters at his rallies with violence. So wait a minute.
That is from eight years ago. That was when Trump
was like, oh, they're gonna rough you up on the
way out or whatever, like when the cops were dragging
out the protesters that would you know, infiltrate his rallies.
He cozied up to brutal dictators abroad who used violence
to maintain political control. Okay, now you're grasping like this
is ridiculous. He's cozied up to dictators. Wait, do you
hear what Barack Obama did with Iran? He gave them
a bunch of money. It's crazy. Who's their money, Pete,
there was no comparison in democratic messaging. Really, okay? He says,
we cannot discount the impact of maga's fetishization of guns.
MAGA celebrates the tools of mass shooters and assassins, assault rifle,
machine guns, silencers, and high capacity magazines. MAGA doesn't treat
firearms with respect. It celebrates their killing power. This guy
does not know anything like this is. You do not
know anything about MAGA voters. You really don't like this is.
You might as well just say basket of deplorables and
save yourself some time, because that's all you're doing here.
Trump sends other clear signals supporting political violence. He said
he might pardon those that plotted the kidnapping of Governor Whitmer. Right,
do you know why? Because it was an FBI trap.
They're like, there was like what four or five guys,
and like three of them were FBI. I think, I mean,
like there are problems with that investigation. I've not done
the deep dive on that, but I am aware that
there is that there were problems that were that were
brought out at trial with those prosecutions. He threatened peaceful
protesters of his military parade with assault. Again, Democrats don't
say these things, not both sides. Democrats do say these things.
Punch a Nazi. He has a punchable face with the
kid uh Nicholas Sandmon, Like just the blind spot this
guy has for his own side that engages in this
kind of rhetoric, and we've just seen non stop examples
of it for years. Again, J six did not happen
in a vacuum, right. It happened after a year of
violent rioting and lockdowns. Tell me more about the No
Kings people who advocated all businesses to be closed, people
in nursing homes to die alone, can't have a funeral,
can't attend religious services. Tell me more, No Kings. The
deployment of the National Guard of Marines to Los Angeles
was the next escalator. No, the escalation occurred by the
violent protesters, the people that are being funded by your
left wing donors, he says, Trump sent the military into
La to inflame and create the conditions for more violence.
There's an assumption of motive. Trump sent them there to
provide security and protection for the ICE operations because your
leftist pals were obstructing those operations with violence. The assault
of Senator Padia was the natural result of these purposefully
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that'll last a lifetime. Reading this tweet storm from US
Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut, he's just blaming Trump for
all of the violence when MAGA uses violence against its
political opponents and endorses private acts of violence that again,
this hasn't happened when committed in service of MAGA. Unhinged
people listen, mostly on the right, but also on the left.
Once violence gets mainstreamed, it's hard to put it back
in the bottle. Yes, that's what I have been saying.
People on the right have been saying about you, guys,
for a decade now. It's true the violence is sometimes
trained on Republicans, including Trump. Yesterday, in fact, was the
anniversary of the Congressional baseball shooting. Well at least he
mentioned that. And yes, there have been some on the
left who have been too cavalier about violence, and they
should be condemned too, But there's no comparison anywhere on
the left with maga's regular legitimization of violence in our politics.
There is a straight line from January sixth to the
parts to the assault on Senator Padilla to Minnesota. It's
actually not even a straight line. I mean, maybe if
you're like Charlie Day up against the bulletin board charting
out all of the conspiracy or whatever, that's not a
straight line. Is there a straight line to Luigi Mangioni,
the murderer of the two Israeli embassy employees, The attack
on elderly Jews in Colorado? The congressional ballfield assassination attempt,
to Trump's assassination attempt, to Trump's second assassination attempt, all
of them? Are those straight lines?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, no, those can't be straight lines yet when and
one last point on this before I play this clip
Orrin McIntyre, host and columnist at The Blaze. He says
leftists will shoot the president in the face, riot endlessly,
and jail their political enemies while projecting a demented notion
of victimhood. That's DARVO, reverse victim and offender RVO. All Right,
So here was Senator Murphy sounded a little bit different
after the Luigi Mangioni assassin I shouldn't say his name. Yeah,
after the Healthcare CEO was murdered. Here's what he said.
Speaker 4: Then, listen, I think that political leaders in this country
need to be part of this conversation that's happening all
over the country in the wake of the shooting of
the United Healthcare CEO. I know that it's fraud. I
know that it's uncomfortable, but this is really important, listener.
I'm never going to condone violence. I don't hear. I
spent my entire life fighting gun violence because I know
it's a devastation.
Speaker 1: It's smell abo.
Speaker 4: Enormous that it leaves behind what I see have gotten
out in this country, though, is a real visceral anger
that the outrage at Brian Thompson's death, or the outrage
is the death of any powerful person isn't matched by
the anger over the thousands of people who die, often
anonymous deaths, every single day in this country, at the
hands of a health care industry that mostly doesn't give
a shit about people and only cares about profits. Ordinary
people in this country are not indifferent to the loss
of life, but these companies are.
Speaker 3: Why do I know this? Why do millions of Americans
know this?
Speaker 4: Because the business model of the healthcare industry is to
deny care, necessary medical care to people who need it
and force them into bankruptcy or worse, let them die
in order to grow profit. There are a ton of
good people in healthcare industry, n doctors, but that's in
a moral system.
Speaker 3: Watching people die, ruining families financially.
Speaker 4: That god profit and make money for the people who
run the biggest companies.
Speaker 3: Murder is never justified. It isn't.
Speaker 4: But but this country's leaders don't pay attention to the
conversation that's happening right now this weekend. That is a mistake.
People in America today feel ignored, They feel scared, They
feel alone in a system that intentionally grinds them down,
a system where profit matters more than life. My colleagues
need to listen and you need to do something about it.
Speaker 1: Hmm. See, when it's a healthcare ceo getting assassinated on
the sidewalk, Senator Murphy would like to have a conversation
about the underlying animosity and how did that grow and
where did we fail the shooter? You know, it's really
our fault. He was just responding to this terrible thing,
and so he just had to murder a ceo of
a health insurance provider that his family doesn't actually use.
But in this case, no, no, no, In this case,
no national conversation except maga did it? Why are you
not interested in finding out maybe what this guy up
in Minnesota? Maybe don't you want to know what motivated
him and address maybe those underlying animosities and where did
they come from and maybe you did something to inspire this. No, no,
we don't have that conversation because it's different. All right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
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and don't break anything while I'm gone.