Speaker 1: What's going on?
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smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. Here's a tweet from Gunther Eagleman. I don't
think that's his real name, but it could be. Gunther says, nothing,
and I mean nothing makes me happier than seeing a
president intently listening to the American people who have lost everything.
And this is the This is a really good example
of what the media and Democrats, But I repeat myself
what they miss about Trump. Right, They have this idea
in their head that he's only about himself. And don't
get me wrong, the guy's got a massive ego. Absolutely
nobody that becomes president doesn't have an ego. Okay, you
have to to think, right, who looks at that job
and says I could totally do that?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: You have to have a level of self confidence in
yourself right that probably is informed somewhat by the ego.
So it takes a certain kind of personality to even
go for these.
Speaker 1: Types of jobs.
Speaker 2: So, yes, he does talk about himself, and he does inflate,
and he markets and brands and all of that absolutely fine.
But what they miss is that he is perfectly comfortable
talking with quote unquote regular people.
Speaker 1: And even I mean, I could recognize this.
Speaker 2: When he first started running and isn't in support of
Donald Trump back in twenty fifteen, but you read the
stories and the people that work for him right in
his hotels and stuff.
Speaker 1: He you know, he walks through the halls and he's
a rock star. People love him.
Speaker 2: He talks to them like they're regular people because they are,
and he is like, they're just people like he doesn't like.
This is why he resonates with the quote working people
is because he treats them as his equal.
Speaker 1: At a personal level.
Speaker 2: And that's one of those things that I think everybody
that gets into these positions, they have this thing about them,
you know, this charisma they walk into the room and
everybody knows that they have, you know. And so when
he's sitting there and he's giving he's turning over the
microphone to all of these people to tell their stories.
And he's not judging them, he's not mocking them, he's
not minimizing it.
Speaker 1: He's asking them, like, did you think you were going
to die?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Do you think that was it?
Speaker 2: Like that's a perfectly natural question to ask if anybody
is telling you the story of how they had to
climb out a window on a makeshift ladder to get
to their roof during a flood as they watch bodies
floating down the mountain side around them. He connects with
people like that, and so he does this tour. He
goes to western North Carolina. He's on his way out
to Los Angeles. Afterwards, he's he gets up there to
do this press availability. He speaks for you know, he
reads his he's got prepared comments there. He's got a binder,
so he wasn't using a teleprompter. But he's got a binder.
Not full of women. He's not met Romney here people.
So he's got a binder and he's got like his
comments there. And it's cold, and so you can see that,
you know, he's trying to turn the pages and stuff
like that. But he spoke for maybe ten minutes, if
that Franklin Graham spoke, and then Trump gets up, he speaks,
and then he stands off to the side and he
just lets all of these people come up and tell
their stories, and he's asking them questions like, oh, what
was the name? Like what's your insurance company's name? And
let's the guy call out the North Carolina Farm Bureau
by name at a national press conference with the President.
Do you think that what do you think the pucker
factor is over there at the farm Bureau today?
Speaker 1: Do you think they may.
Speaker 2: Be feeling a little uneasy at this point when the
guy tells a story about how the first adjuster came
in and said, oh, yeah, you know, you should get
all of the this monetary damage, or you should get
a check that's like this big two hundred thousand dollars,
whatever it may be, you should get this big of
a check, and then they fire him and bring in
somebody else to lowball the homeowner. Do you think that's
a positive story for the farm zero?
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Trump doesn't care call him out, literally asks the guy
to name the insurance company that's jerking them around, and
then you and then he starts asking everybody around, like,
same thing with you guys, same insurance, different insurance company, oh,
different companies. He's paying attention, he's listening. He's not checking
his watch, if you know what I mean. So here's
another lady that he calls up, lets her speak to
the mic. And I would also point this out. It's
a little thing. It's a little thing, but I think
it is indicative of something larger, which is every person
that came to the podium and they go to to speak,
he adjusts the microphone for them. It's on this big
Gooseneck microphone stand, so it's you know, it's pretty tall,
but you can move it and form it to you know,
the shape that you needed and the height that you needed.
And every single time he's the one that reaches over
and sets the microphone for them. He is media savvy.
He knows they need to be on the mic. These
people are not media savvy. They're just regular folks. It's intimidating.
You're standing next to the president right here. You got
probably forty media people in front of you snapping pictures
and rolling tape and writing down your words. It's intimidating.
And so they walk up and they're just like okay, yea,
and they just start talking and they don't go for
the microphone first, so he adjusts their microphone. He does
it for them, and I just think that that is
It's a little thing, but I think it illustrates a
larger point.
Speaker 4: I'm a pastor Is Again church right down the road.
We had only purchased in May, and it's a big church.
We're a small congregation, and I had people say, what
are you going to do with this big building? And
I said, only God knows, and we had our dedication
in the storm came the next week and the outpouring
of people. Sun brought the first load of supplies and
from there I stayed there for about three months. I
slept on the floor for about three weeks because the
need was so great. The people were so devastated, and
I said, I want to be here for them. And
they were coming in just day and night, so there's
really no need for me to go home. But we
had people from Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, Indiana, Oklahoma, people from
all over. We have not received any help, like from
the government anything, but I said, Lord, if you want
us to do that, people all over the states did nothing.
Speaker 3: It was the female locals wasted time and.
Speaker 4: Home, the locals and the people that knew us. And
before the week was over, our church was so packed
with supplies we couldn't even we couldn't even walk even
in our sanctuary was up to the platform of things,
and in our halls and in our rooms. And we're
just now beginning to get a little straightened out. But
somebody said, how long are you going to be here?
I said, I'm going to be here through the winter
and even on if possible, because when you meet people
that's been through the struggle. I had a little lady
come up and I said, can we do anything special
for you? And she said, I don't want to be selfish,
but said could I have a cup of coffee? And
I handed her that coffee and she stood there in tears,
just poured. She said, you don't realize how important but
the little things sought the big things in life that
we have, but it's the little things and knowing that
God is our source. I don't look to man. I
don't have to have a lot of things. I had trees,
about twenty trees down in my yard, but that didn't
really matter. Doesn't matter, because of the needs of the
people is what I want to be there for. And God,
he's good. He's very good. And my daughter, now her
house is really in bad shape. Now I let her
tell you about that. But thank you President, this is
our president.
Speaker 3: We appreciate you so much.
Speaker 5: I live out in the Fairview area of North Carolina
and near the Backcave Lake Lower area, and our area
was hit. It was hit really hard. I was home
loan and my husband had stayed in town because we
take care of a little lady that's ninety eight years
old and she lives out in woods by herself. And
I said, just stay with her and make sure that
she's okay. And I got up the next morning and
my first thought was, I want to go see what
our roading bridge looks like. So as I was making
it down to the road and the bridge, there was
no roading bridge. And so, you know, here we are.
We're like a little island. You know, we can't access
the main road or anything. And then the fire department
came by the next day and said that they were
evacuating me and my neighbor because a landslide was going
to come. And they told me to get my stuff
and get ready. And so while I was getting my
stuff and getting ready, there was a knock at the door,
so I thought it was the fireman, and I went
to the door and there stood my twenty one year
old son. His name's Nathan, and he had drove as
far as he could to get to me, but he
hiked five miles and it took him a really long time.
And he got there and he said, he said, Mom,
grab a bag, we gotta go. And I said, son,
there's no way I can. I can hike out of here,
and he's like no, he said.
Speaker 3: We got to go.
Speaker 5: So we started hiking out and I seen one of
my neighbors who she had no clothes on, her hurt.
She was her skin was was like chunked up.
Speaker 2: It was just she was blue.
Speaker 5: She had been she had been in the waters, and
where she had went or I don't know, but it
horrific is just all I can say. But then as
me and my son hoiked going out, we went through
where this place we call it Craigtown. But there were
like a lot of family members there that passed away,
like eleven of them, and there were people out everywhere
looking for their loved ones, and there were dead bodies.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: My son's like, Mom, you're gonna see things you don't
want to see. And so anyway, we got through all that,
but I stayed at our church in our sound booth.
My husband and I we just slept up in the
sound booth for a couple of months because we didn't
have power anything for about two months out there, and
then we have went back. I've been fighting with FEMA
since day one. Our community there's like thirty two homes.
We don't have a oad in a bridge. We're driving
through our neighbors property. You know. I went to EMS
and I said, look, my concern is if we have
a fire or we have an emergency out here, you'ren't
going to get to us. You can't get those big
trucks up here. And I've called and called and called FEMA,
and you know, I said, it's this happened on September
twenty seventh. That's four months ago. Well for us, today
is still September twenty seventh. You know, we haven't had help.
And so when I talked to Feena, I'm explaining the
road and the bridge, and they send me a letter
that tells me to basically fix it and send in
my receipts and they'll refund me some money. I'm only
going to have a road and bridge that honestly, the
bridge itself is probably going to be three hundred thousand
dollars in the road could be close to that also,
because we have to have the community has to have
big boulders brought in. We're not a rich community. We
can't fix it ourselves, you know. It's just. And as
far as like hal repairs, I'm still pending. I can't
get money from FEMA until I fix the road and
bridge and fin and send in my my my proof
that it's fixing everything. It's just it's been a nightmare
and I totally feel like that we've been forgotten. If
it had not been for our fellow American citizens who
stepped up to help us, I don't know what we
would have done. I have. I have five neighbors around
me who completely lost everything. You know, I have damage
to my house, and I feel I don't feel entitled.
I'm embarrassed to even say I need help because you know,
and sometimes there's even that that that survivors guilt us.
What they're calling it, but you feel guilty and be
alive sometimes. You know, when you look around, you see
your neighbors that are gone, and it's just you know,
we need help. I wrote a letter that to send
to Congress. You know, I don't understand what's going on.
If we can get FEMA help, then will you guys
help us. Will you step up and be our fellow citizen.
Will you step up and be our neighbor and send
us something, help us, help us get our community back.
I could go on, it's just a I don't know.
It's just heartbreaking. God appreciate you.
Speaker 3: Good daughter, you have all right?
Speaker 1: So Trump gives her a hug, says to their mom,
good daughter you have.
Speaker 3: There.
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President Trump visited western North Carolina and we've been listening
to his remarks and if this you know, I would
not do this. If these were out in any other
part of the country, I wouldn't. But this is what
live and local means here on WBT, it means that
we cover the stuff that is of importance to Charlotte,
the region, and the state of North Carolina. And yes,
South Carolina haven't forgotten about y'all either. This is of
local importance and so that's why we're doing it. And so,
like I got a tweet here, thank you Pete for
bringing us the comments from the president and those who
told their stories. Also thank you for pointing out the
dumbassary of those who obviously do not comprehend what he
was saying. No need to thank me for doing what
I enjoy doing both, you know, bringing this to you,
but also pointing out the dumbassary of people, because like,
there's now this this narrative that the President is suggesting
we abandon our friends and neighbors.
Speaker 1: In western North Carolina. This is now.
Speaker 2: This is what the left got out of this press availability,
this appearance, is that somehow the President is advocating that
we forget even though he literally said you are not
forgotten any longer. He literally said that. But to the
left when they hear him talk about dismantling FEMA, saying that,
he said off mic, he turned to one of the families,
and he's like, they're a waste of time and money.
And so a leftist hears that and they think, oh
my gosh, he wants to get rid of a government
program that's helping. So that means he wants to hurt
people and he wants to ignore the problems. I don't
even understand the mental disconnect that must occur in your
brain to hear somebody literally say you are no longer
forgotten and think that that means we should forget you.
Speaker 1: It's literally the opposite.
Speaker 2: And so I pointed that out, and so that's what
I was being thanked for. Melissa says Trump has never
announced a listening tour, and I think that's true. I
don't think I've ever heard him say he's going to
do a listening tour, And Melissa says it's because he's
always listening. No need to make a dog and pony show,
right well, and then app Patriot Girl says Trump letting
the people of western North Carolina tell their stories of
loss is just heart wrenching, but the best possible thing
that he could do. He's listening to these people. He
wants to help them. Please share any video of this
you see. I guarantee you see it and will not
play any of this footage. Thank you Pete for playing
the audio. So we've been As I mentioned earlier, when
this news conference was occurring live, c SPAN was carrying it.
That's where I'm playing it from. Fox News carried it live.
I don't expect them to preempt like the price is
right on the networks and stuff, so I don't really
expect them to cover every news conference, you know, for
the local affiliates and such. But CNN. CNN did not
cover it live. CNN covered live going behind the scenes
at the DC Zoo with the Giant pandas, so they
apparently got an exclusive look at the Giant pandas at
the DC Zoo and that was what they ran instead,
followed up by a story about the mass deportations and
oh my gosh, we're deporting illegal aliens that are criminals.
And then I think they showed a clip of the
JD vans at the March for Life, which kudos to CNN.
I think it's the first time they've actually covered the
March for Life. I used to document this every year.
I would go through and do a and you know,
run through see who covered the March for Life, And
I want to say I started doing it in like
twenty twelve, I think, And it wasn't until the very
end of I want to say, yeah, Trump's presidency, that
you started to see some coverage at the national level.
Speaker 1: They just ignored it for years.
Speaker 2: So they covered jdv a clip of Jdvans or just
a shot of him speaking. And if I had to guess,
because I couldn't hear the audio, but if I had
to guess, I would say it was probably somewhere along
the lines of they're coming for your abortion acts. Sorry,
they're coming for your reproductive freedom. So I'm assuming that's
what that was.
Speaker 1: But no, they did not cover the Western North Carolina
press conference.
Speaker 2: All right, I hope you had a happy holiday season.
But tell me if something like this happened at your house.
Your family and friends are gathered around, maybe y'all are
in the living room and you're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing,
and then somebody says, hey, Dad, remember those old VHS tapes?
Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room
gets all quiet. All eyes are on Dad, who says, oh,
you know, well, I've been meaning too, but I just
having gotten around to it. Look, don't let those priceless
memories sit in a box for another year, all right.
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Hill right off I four eighty five and online at
create avideo dot com. CNN is reporting that Trump has
arrived in the fire damaged areas of Los Angeles. I'll
keep you posted here was earlier. That's pretty quick though,
because it was only like an hour ago. They made
it in an hour. It's pretty impressive. From western North
Carolina to La Trump was in Swanna know at North Carolina,
did a press conference, and you know, he opened it up.
Franklin Graham actually opened it up. He made some comments.
Trump came on, he made some comments for about ten minutes,
and then basically for the last like thirty minutes, twenty yeah,
twenty minutes or so, he's been letting these local families
tell their stories of not just you know what happened
on that day September twenty seventh.
Speaker 1: One of the women, I think.
Speaker 2: Said it very well when she said the storm hit
on September twenty seventh, But for us, it's still September
twenty seventh. Nothing has changed for them four months later,
and they're still dealing with this. So we've heard from
these families, and I believe at this point now Trump
is going to go back to the PODi.
Speaker 5: My son is great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, he sounds like a really leader.
Speaker 5: He really is that to hoel you a bit.
Speaker 3: If he didn't come and get you.
Speaker 5: I don't know. I'd just been would have been there
until because the only thing we could do there was
no way to get out there. The only thing we
could do is just pack up to the church, the
first church that was up there, about three miles to
get you know, maybe what we need. There's a lot
he is thank you.
Speaker 3: Again, thank you very much. Everybody. So we're going to
be here.
Speaker 6: We're going to be working with our congressmen and women,
and they're going to do a job. And Michael Wattley's
going to be here very much in charge, and you'll
get it done.
Speaker 3: And FEMA is ready to rock.
Speaker 6: They haven't done the job because they weren't really told
to do the job by Biden.
Speaker 3: I guess I was thinking about other things, wasn't he.
Speaker 6: But they weren't told what they did, what the past
administration did to North Carolina is a disgrace. So I
just want to wish you all well. I was here
right after the event and I couldn't believe it. I
have never seen anything like it. I've seen a lot
of bad things, but I've never seen anything like it.
Speaker 3: And it's an.
Speaker 6: Honor to meet the people behind me, and it's an
honor to be with our congressional delegation and some of
the other politicians in the area.
Speaker 3: And it's an honor.
Speaker 6: To have Michael Wattley at my side, because maybe we
wouldn't be standing here as president if he was. And
him and Laura Laura Trump were unbelievable as the head
of the Republican Party, so he happens to come from
a place called North Carolina. So I said, Michael, fix it.
So good luck, good luck, and we'll supply what you need.
Speaker 3: You know that. Okay, thank you, thank you all very much,
thank you very much.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's going to take questions.
Speaker 3: For stories and help.
Speaker 1: There's been so many local groups.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that's one of the things.
Speaker 2: You hear any talk on having money instead of going
to FEMA and go through ROXY.
Speaker 3: To go get that's what I want to do.
Speaker 6: We want to bring it locally so that a state
takes care of its problem and then they can bring
it down to a local level like Samaritan's person Franklin,
because that's one of the better examples. But you had
numbers of people that did a great job. You have
groups that did a great job and organizations. The one
that didn't do a good job was the government.
Speaker 3: They did a bad job. They did in many ways,
they did no job. They weren't even available. So good question.
The answer is we go local that I think it'll
work much better.
Speaker 6: FEMA is a very expensive organization that really doesn't work
out very well.
Speaker 3: It hasn't. This is not the only example. So it
was up to me right now.
Speaker 6: It ended right now, and I just let the state
take care of the problem.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can always have problems. Let the state.
Speaker 6: If it's Florida, it's a hurricane, let Florida take care
of it. They don't need FEMA to come in.
Speaker 2: That's the comment that's got the left and the media.
But I repeat myself all in a tizzy. Is that
let the states take care of the problem. But what
what did he say just before that? This is the
same thing with the good people on both sides all
over again. You listen to the context. The guy is
asking a question about, you know, the ineffectiveness of FEMA
and the federal government. Why not just push the money
to the local groups? And he says, I agree. What
does he talk What are they talking about to get
all policy wonkish on you block grants, that's what they're
talking about. Just send the money in the form of
grants down to the states and let the states handle this.
Because the government that's closest to the people is the
government that is the most responsive to the needs of
those people, because it's closer like this is the fundamental
building block upon which the country is made, and to
people who look to d C to do all of
these things for them. Like, there's so much waste in
sending money up the you know, through you know, taking
the money from people in the paychecks, administering this right
the taxation, and putting it into the federal call fers,
having all.
Speaker 1: Of that debated where does it go? Where do we
spend it?
Speaker 2: And then filtering it out and having to decide like
where does the money go for this work and for
that work and whatever. Rather than creating this entire agency
and all this bureaucracy, you already have the state administrative units. Essentially,
why not just send it down to them, send it
to the locals in the form of block grants. Here's
a chunk of money for disaster relief. Administer the block grant,
give us the receipts. Right, It's cleaner, less inefficiencies, less waste,
less administration, so more of the dollar goes to for example,
you donate money to charity. One of the first things
anybody ever asks me for money, I always ask them
how much of every dollar that I donate goes to
administrative overhead? Because that cover it's not just your you know,
your staff, And I understand you got to have staff, but.
Speaker 1: Fundraisers and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: The mailers printing up all the calendars that you're sending
me that I don't ask for, like all of that stuff,
all the note pads and pens and stuff. The worst
is when somebody sends me money, like here's a nickel,
but send it back to me, like, okay, if you're
sending me money, then I'm not Like at first I
felt guilty, like, oh, I should give this nickel back.
And I guess that's why they do it.
Speaker 1: They're trying.
Speaker 2: It's like some sort of psychological operation on me or something.
How much of every dollar that I give you is
going to go to more stuff like that? And you
should they should know that number. And if the number
is anything more than about fifteen cents on the dollar,
probably not a great organization because they got too much
administrative bloat.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 1: You want as much money that you donate to go
directly to the cause.
Speaker 2: So that's the quote that apparently people are running with
and saying he wants states to be left on their own.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want us to help our fellow Americans. And
that is just dumbassery, all right. If you're listening to
this show.
Speaker 2: 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
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Just a couple more minutes here, I have no idea
how much longer this presidential news conference lasts, but I
think it's wrapping up. Trump has made his comments. He's
getting ready to leave. But as he always does, people
ask him questions. He's going to answer the questions.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I envision a very important role for him.
It's any role he wants. He's a very capable guy.
Speaker 6: Michael Wattley a very capable guy, and he's friends and
works with these guys, keeps them elected. Right, they have
to do a good job otherwise, no matter how good,
Michael is not going to work.
Speaker 3: But they've done an amazing job. They've been great. You're lucky.
Speaker 6: You have great congressman here and ed woman by the way,
a great woman, very powerful woman.
Speaker 3: And they're gonna do a great job. They'll do it together.
Speaker 6: They'll work together, and we'll supply what they need as
they need it. We'll coordinate that and we will immediately
get the Army Corps, Michael, because you need Rhodes built.
Speaker 3: You know, we're talking about the bridge. We're talking about Rhodes.
They so we got to get him built. All right, Okay,
thank you all very much, thank you for all right.
Speaker 1: So that's it. So he's done. So he did take
two questions.
Speaker 2: By the way, I just just thought of this as
I was. You know, Trump obviously likes Michael Wattley. He
talks about him all the time. Anytime he's at North
Carolina doing something, he's like always name dropping Michael Wattley.
Gave him a whole bunch of credit there, and he's like, gonna,
You're gonna be in charge of all this. But Michael
Wattley is the RNC chair ahead of the Republican Committee
so or the party. So what's the problem Ronald McDaniel
all that time? Is that what happened? Because you notice
as soon as she got ousted, like Republicans won a
bunch of these races. I'm just.
Speaker 1: I just thought of it. I'm just kind of curious.
Is that maybe there was some connection there. I don't know.
Let's see here, what else we got.
Speaker 2: Oh, the North Carolina Legislature, the Joint Legislative Commission on
Governmental Operations Subcommittee on Hurricane Response and Recovery is going
to be meeting next Thursday, nine am. They're going to
hear from the Stein administration about its Hurricane Helene recovery efforts,
including how Governor Stein's newly elected or newly created rather
Governor's Recovery Office for Western North Carolina or GROWNC or
as I like to call it grow NC. Well they
call it that too. How that's going to operate? The
subcommittee also anticipates hearing updates from ENCORE, which is the
North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency. And apparently the
only resiliency is this agency's ability to survive even though
it doesn't actually do much.
Speaker 1: And like, what's the deal with its.
Speaker 2: Current financial situation following the revelation late last year that
it would run out of money before finishing its work
in eastern North Carolina. And you may be thinking eastern
North Carolina. What happened in eastern North Carolina? Well, nothing recently,
but about eight years ago Hurricane Matthew hit and then
a couple of years, like a year or two after that,
Hurricane Florence hit. And they're still trying to rebuild that
eight years later because that was run through then Governor
Roy Cooper's office with this ENCORE or as they call it,
Rebuild NC. Spoiler, No, they didn't, and we knew there
were problems very early on when South Carolina had actually
managed to get all of its people back into their
homes within like two or three years, and we hadn't
put a single person back in any of their homes
in North Carolina by the same time. So that was
the first indication, at least to me, that something was wrong,
that we were not doing something correctly. So that'll be
next week on Thursday, and I believe they're going to
do back to back meetings hearings on both of those
separate issues, so again I will take the lab Oh. Also,
Trump put out a memo saying that the Lumbee tribe
should get federal recognition, so had that happen too, all right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
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