Speaker 1: What's going on.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It
is heard live every day from noon to three on
WBT Radio in Charlotte.
Speaker 1: And if you want exclusive.
Speaker 2: Content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my
daily show prep with all the links, become a patron,
go to vpetclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the
subscribe button. Get every episode for free, write to your
smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. More than one billion dollars requested now by
Governor Josh Stein to immediately send to western North Carolina
to continue the post Helene rebuilding efforts. This came from
the governor himself in a press conference yesterday. He urged
state legislative leaders to approve the funds. His predecessor, former
Governor Roy Cooper, my good friend Ray, had asked, by
the way, I always have to I have to tell
people like I call him that, because that's what Hillary
Clinton and Kamala Harris called him on two different occasions.
So they both referred to him as Ray, my good friend,
Ray Cooper, and so they must know him better, and
that's what he goes by among his good friends. So anyway,
Cooper had asked the legislature for four billion dollars, so
Stein is only asking for one billion dollars. So obviously
Josh Stein hates western North Carolina, right, I mean, well,
I mean that's that would be the conclusion I would
be led to draw if a Republican came in. Isn't
he cutting? Isn't that how gov CO does its accounting.
You ask for four but then you get a billion,
you get one, and then you say you had a
three billion dollar cut.
Speaker 1: Isn't that how that messaging is supposed to work? Guys?
I just need an update on the rules here.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the legislature, this is by the way, from
Will Duran at WRAL and see if you can detect
a little bit of bias in the framing of the story.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: The legislature never appeared to pay much heed to Cooper's request,
instead passing a law in late twenty twenty four that
diverted billions of dollars more into private school tuition vouchers
over the next several years. This is yeah, this is
the Democrat party talking point. This is what Democrats accused
the Republicans of doing, of not caring and not funding
and all this just ignore the fact that the Republican
legislature did in fact earmark like a billion dollars before
this additional funding was passed, and they said we'll be
coming back in the next legislative session and doing more funding.
Speaker 1: Cooper and Stein are Democrats. The legislatures led by Republicans.
Speaker 2: So far, the legislature has set aside roughly a billion
dollars on Helene relief, not all of which has been
spent yet. Why why is that? Will we get an
answer in this wilpiece. I don't know, let's keep reading.
Helene did an estimated sixty billion dollars in damage to
Western North Carolina, although I see another report saying it's
eighty billion, double the state government's entire annual budget. The
state's annual budget is like thirty four billion, and they're
saying the damage from Helene was sixty billion. So if
you took all the money that the state collects and
gave it all to Western North Carolina, it still would
take two years to fund all the recovery, and everything
else in the state would not be funded. No employee
salaries right, no teacher salaries, no law enforcement jails, like
everything everything would would be defunded colleges, all of it Medicaid.
No Democrats really love the Medicaid. So North Carolina leaders
are hoping for twenty billion or more from FEMA. By
the way, there's no mention in the article about Donald
Trump's promise that western North Carolina will get what it needs.
And he put Michael Wattley along with a bunch of
other leaders, congressional leaders like Chuck Edwards and Virginia Fox.
He put them all in charge or on a committee
that would be you know, identifying costs and making proposals
on you know, getting the money out the door and
all of that to lead the recovery effort at the
federal level to help shepherd some of this stuff through
that He doesn't mention any of that here. But state
leaders are hoping to get money from FEMA and other
federal agencies. But the bigger question for state leaders is
how much to spend on top of the federal aid. Right, Well,
we don't know what the Feds are going to spend,
and it's not he says. The bigger question is how
much to spend. Actually, that's one of the questions. There
are other questions like when to spend it and on
what Those are very important parts of this puzzle, because
you don't maximize the federal funding if you cover certain
costs and needs early on with state funds. If you
take a bunch of state money and throw it at
some you know, throw it at a project and that
project would have qualified and received funding from the Feds.
They see that you've spent the money and they may
turn around and say, well, we're not going to give
it to you because you already spent it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So there there's this dance that has to occur where
the state is trying to kind of game the system
and the Feds are trying to gain the system, and
the people who suffer are the people of western North Carolina, right,
because you have to do this dance. What are you
going to fund? How much are you going to fund
and where's it going to go? And what's the timing?
And oh, you already spend money on that, so we
don't have to you know that kind of game. Legislative
leaders have appeared to prefer a strategy of waiting to
what the h to see what the federal government will
do before committing more state resources. That will it's not
that they appear to prefer that strategy. They have said
that because that's the way these things unfold, that's the
system as it exists. That could allow the state to
focus on complementing federal relief efforts and devoiding duplication, but
it might also necessitate waiting longer. Stein, however, said, there
are urgent rebuilding needs in western North Carolina that need
to be addressed immediately and specifically by the state government,
which can move more quickly than the federal government. WHOA,
WHOA wait what the state can move more quickly than
the federal government on this stuff? What are you some
sort of maga now?
Speaker 1: Josh Stein.
Speaker 2: Also, I do question whether that's even true, because not
mentioned is ENCORE North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency.
This is the office that Roy Cooper created in order
to respond and I use that term lightly to the
hurricanes down east, Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence that hit
eight and six years ago, respectively, and there are still
almost a thousand people without homes from those storms. Because
ENCORE has been a failure and they just keep coming
back asking for more and more and more money. They
just had legislative hearings last week about this, and now
the legislature is like, we're not going to keep funding
you because all you do is come back and ask
us for more money. And you don't even know when
these people are going to be back in homes.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: You remember what the former head before she was either
pushed or jumped out of her position, Laura Hoggshead said that, oh,
we lost track of the accounting. That's what their excuse was.
We lost track of their accounting. But just give us
another quarter of a billion dollars and we'll totally get
it right now. So bad is Encore that Josh Stein
has set up a separate agency, a different entity called
grow and See Governor's Recovery Office for Western North Carolina
or something like that, grow en See. And so now
we've got another state department or state agency, this one
also under the control of a governor, but it's a
new governor, so this time it's going to be totally different,
I guess. And he wants all the money to flow
into that agency, and he's like, we need a billion dollars,
we need it right now, give it to us right now.
One hundred and fifty million for rebuilding homes, one hundred
and fifty million for business grants. One hundred million to
local city and county governments that are running out of
money after the storm. That'll help keep first responders paid
and the schools open. One hundred million for local farmers
to clear their fields of debris, make repairs and protect
against future flooding. Seventy five million to repair or rebuild
private roads and bridges in addition to state owned infrastructure.
Thirty million to rebuild downtown areas and business districts. Twenty
five million for local residents for mortgage and rent assistance,
twenty million for local food banks. That's what his ask
is for. That's a billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: At the very end of this story, a WIO it
talks about that Helene relief bill that the legislature did
pass last or two months ago now, and that law
did in fact contain more than two hundred and seventy
million dollars for Helene relief, but almost all of the
money is being held in reserve and not yet allowed
to be spent. Lawmakers wrote that the money could not
be touched until they take another vote to RelA lease
the funds by the way. The reports out of Raleigh
today a little while ago, Brian Anderson reporting that it
looks like lawmakers will be setting aside five hundred million
for Hurricane Helene relief. The measure is expected to be
heard in committee tomorrow at two o'clock. So the legislature
is doing this, but you cannot blame the legislature for
being a little wary of pouring hundreds of millions of
dollars into a state recovery agency, considering the track record.
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. Why Well,
because it's how you detect media bias, which is why
I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app
and it's a website and it combines news from around
the world in one place so you can compare coverage
and verify information. You can check it out at check
dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link
in the podcast description too. I started using ground News
a few months ago, and more recently chose to work
with them as an affiliate because it lets me see
clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind
spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the
left and the right. 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.
All right, So, Governor Josh Stein also announced a thirty
million dollar public private partnership cooh I love those to
fund grants for small businesses in Western North Carolina. Small
businesses with an annual revenue of up to and including
two and a half million dollars. Okay, so, small businesses
annual revenue up to two and a half million are
eligible to apply for grants up to fifty thousand dollars.
It was just fifty thousands, okay, all right, So okay,
you can get a grant for fifty k from the
Western North Carolina Small Business Initiative Grant Program. It will
also provide three million dollars in funding to Baptists on
Mission and Habitat for Humanity, two nonprofit organizations heavily involved
in helping individual homeowners rebuild. Apparently the public private partnership
is Dogwood Health Trust. This according to Wrel Dogwood Health
Trust is the that is the entity that was created
when HCA, if I recall correctly, purchased the Mission Hospital
System out West and in order to get approval from
the Attorney General, who was at that time Josh Stein,
they had to create that trust fund or that trust
and HCA, which is the private hospital operator that was
buying the public hospital system, the Mission System, they had
to pour I forget what the number was. I think
it was like half a billion dollars or something into
this trust, which would then spend money on health initiatives.
I have not gone back to look and see, but
if it's anything like we've seen out of the USAID program,
I got a pretty good idea of what they.
Speaker 1: Were using the money for.
Speaker 2: And by the way, this is a common thing that
Roy Cooper began doing. Mike Easily I think was the
first one to start it with the Golden Leaf Fund.
With the tobacco money settlement that came when the state
joined the lawsuit against the tobacco companies. They got a
bunch of money that was in the Golden Leaf Fund,
and it was.
Speaker 1: At the discretion.
Speaker 2: The spending was at the discretion of whoever got put
you onto this oversight body, which if I recall correctly,
was like Mike Easley, the attorney general or maybe the
governor or something at the time. And so then Roy
Cooper did something similar, Josh Stein did something similar. So
this is a familiar model to state democrats. In these offices,
they sue, they get massive settlements, they put them into
these little trusts or whatever, and then they dole out
the money to yeah, people and organizations that are doing
good work, and they all happened to be of the left.
I'm sure it is completely coincidental, but that's the dog
would trust. So they're they're going to be administering the
public private partnership the private side of it, I guess.
So if you are a small business and you don't
have revenue more than two and a half million dollars,
you can get a grant from this PPP public private
partnership up to fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So good luck to you.
Speaker 2: Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to
a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina,
just a quick drive up the mountain and Cabins of
Ashville is your connection. Whether you're celebrating an anniversary, a honeymoon,
maybe you want to plan a memorable proposal, or get
family and friends together for a big old reunion, Cabins
of Asheville has the ideal spot for you where you
can reconnect with your loved ones and the things that
truly matter. Nestled within the breath taking fourteen thousand acres
of the Pisga National Forest, their cabins offer a serene
escape in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Centrally
located between Asheville and the entrance of the Great Smoky
Mountain National Park. It's the perfect balance of seclusion and
proximity to all the local attractions with hot tubs, fireplaces,
air conditioning, smart TVs, Wi Fi, grills, outdoor tables and
your own I had covered porch. Choose from thirteen cabins,
six cottages, two villas, and a great lodge with eleven
king sized bedrooms. Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot
for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations,
call her text eight two eight three six seven seventy
sixty eight, or check out all there is to offer
at Cabins of Ashville dot com and make memories that'll
last a lifetime. Mark Robinson dropped his lawsuit against CNN
and potentially calling it quits on his political career. Not
sure we'll see it's a stunning reversal, says w r
Al for a man once seen as a rising star
in national conservative politics. I don't know if that's the
stunning reversal. I think people were pretty stunned when the
September surprise came out about all of the uh, you know,
the porn related stuff. I think that was the thing,
and I feel the need to point this out once again.
It's not that the left cares about that stuff. It's
that they know the right does, and so that's why
they made such a big deal about it, because they
wanted to make sure you knew about it so you
would not vote for Mark Robinson.
Speaker 1: And it worked.
Speaker 2: I mean, the you know Robinson was he was trailing
in the polls before the before the pieces came out.
You know, first there was the story about the porn
shop worker named ed Eddie Money I think Edward Money,
I think was his really that was his name. His
last name was money, had it legally changed. It wasn't
his given name, but whatever. And he made these claims
that he would make all of these, you know, bootleg
copies of videos for Robinson and such, and Robinson spent
apparently thousands of dollars. And then he was accused in
the CNN piece of You using an alias. Mini Soldier
was the name, which I think it has now been
confirmed pretty well that that was in fact, he uses
that handle. He signed into like right before. I think
it was like the last maybe a board of ed
meeting or something, but it was a you know, a
zoom call or a teams meeting or something, and he joined,
and he joined using that name. So I think it's
pretty clear that he did use the name now whether
or not somebody and we went over all of this
at the time, we had a lot of questions and
him dropping this lawsuit, which.
Speaker 1: He was slow to move on.
Speaker 2: He was slow to respond with, you know, a defamation
suit and to produce any kind of evidence that it
wasn't him. And he also then told his staff like
we're not going to go if he first told him, like,
we're not going to to dignify this stuff, We're just
going to focus on the race and all of this,
and his whole staff quit, remember, which is like, to me,
that's an indication that they did not have confidence that
he was telling the truth about all of that. They
never did bring out his sister in law, who, like,
according to those graphic posts on that Nude Africa website,
he had been sleeping with, he had been having affairs with,
and so they never brought her out to rebut any
of the claims, I don't know why. I'm just just
noting they never did, and that I think conveys a
weakness in your response. So he did finally get around
to filing a lawsuit against CNN, defamation lawsuit, but he
has now dropped that the former North Carolina lieutenant governor
and Republican gubernatorial candidate had sued the network for defamation
over its reporting. Late in twenty twenty four, right before
the election, that Robinson allegedly wrote racist comments on a
pornographic website. This was the quote black Nazi, which when
I read that post, I could see that being a
troll job. Like if he wrote that I could see
him saying that because it was in a thread talking
about Republicans or Nazis, and you know, all of these
people we hate are Nazis and all that, and and
so he's like, well, I'm a black Nazi.
Speaker 1: Then I could see that.
Speaker 2: But he never offered any kind of explanation because he
said it wasn't him. So on Friday, Robinson dismissed his
lawsuit and said in a written statement that it would
be futile to continue pursuing the allegation, but he said
he was pleased at the work until now by his
legal team has uncovered enough evidence to give his family
tremendous closure and peace, but he won't share that with us.
I guess so it just gives his family some closure
in peace.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I'm out.
Speaker 2: In the twenty twenty six midterms, Tom Tillis is up
for re election, and according to this piece at WRAL
again Robinson could. A lot of people were hoping that
Robinson would challenge Tillis in the Republican primary, but Robinson
said that he would not run for Senate or any
other office in twenty twenty six, and he may never
run for office again. He said, quote, while it has
been the honor of a lifetime to serve the people
of North Carolina, the continued political persecution of my family
and loved ones is a cost I am unwilling to
continue to bear. I will not run next year, nor
do I have plans to seek collected office in the future.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that door is still open just a little bit.
Speaker 2: But I do get this if we assume that these
were lies and Robinson is telling you the truth, like,
this is a devastating thing to do to somebody who
is innocent. And that is one of the things that
you're always supposed to ask yourself as a journalist. You're
supposed to ask, like, what is the implication of this story?
When you are chasing a story, you are supposed to
think who can be harmed? So you think through the
ramifications and you weigh that, and every story's different. The
state's first black lieutenant governor and the only black Republican
to hold any major political position in North Carolina since reconstruction,
Robinson was scraping by in blue collar jobs before he
rose to political fame after video of an impassioned gun
right speech that he gave at a Greensboro City Council
meeting in twenty eighteen went viral online and the base
loved him. Absolutely. He's a heck of a speaker, and
maybe that's what he's going to go off and do,
and he's gonna he has talked about that, like he
is at home preaching in a pulpit, and so maybe
that's maybe that's where his journey takes him next.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: All right, I hope you had a happy holiday season.
But tell me if something like this happened at your house.
Family and friends are gathered around, Maybe y'all are in
the living room, 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 to but I just
having gotten around to it. Look, don't let those priceless
memories sit in a box for another year, all right.
Create a video has been helping families in the Charlotte
area preserve their history since nineteen ninety seven. Simply bring
in your old camquarder tapes and creative video will transfer
them to a USB flash drive for just fourteen ninety
five per tape. You have a big collection, they've got
a discount for you. And next year, instead of talking
about those memories, imagine gathering the family to watch them together.
Talk about a memorable gift. So do what I did.
Trust the experts at Creative Video, conveniently located in mint
Hill right off I four eighty five and online at
create avideo dot com. All right about Tillis, people were
hoping that maybe Mark Robinson could run against Tom Tillis.
He says, Robinson says he has no plans to do so.
Last hour we talked a little bit about Roy Cooper,
who seriously is considering a run against Tillis for that
US Senate seat, which is a shock to basically nobody.
Speaker 1: Russ says, the problem with uh oh.
Speaker 2: And then there was a recommendation from Andrew Dunn saying
Tillis needs to do some of these different types of
outreach efforts and the like, and he needs to start now.
He can't just keep running his campaign the way he
did before. And so one of those was one of
those recommendations was for direct outreach, and Russ says that
the problem with the direct outreach idea.
Speaker 1: Is that telling.
Speaker 2: If Tillis is telling voters what he's actually doing day
to day, that'll probably anger a lot of his constituents,
thing like trying to torpedo hegseth. He follows the Lindsey
Graham model of campaigning to the right, but votes and
actions that are almost always center or left. Good Wahoo
says Tillis is the quintessential example of a politician that
goes to d C and the swamp and either gets
enamored or captured by the swamp and begins to take
votes that make absolutely no sense, no sense based on
their local state voting history or how they have presented
themselves as conservatives to their local constituency. Tillis, in my opinion,
has been captured by the swamp, as he has proven
time and again that he votes for the swamp when
it counts. The people of North Carolina that sent him
to d C have deserved so much better, and he shouldn't.
He should never be re elected to any office. So
this is going to be Tillis's challenge. He's got a
Republican challenger already. Although I've heard speculation also that that
guy is set up by the quote unquote establishment in
order to be a stalking horse for any kind of
a MAGA challenge. So I forget the guy's name, and
I don't know that to be true. Just to be clear,
I'm just telling you, like, that's the rumor I have heard,
is that this guy is already in so this way
it will help to fracture and splinter any kind of
opposition in the GOP primary against Tillis. Right, if you
get three or four different MAGA kind of candidates, then
they end up, you know, splitting the vote, and Tillis
gets pasted the and.
Speaker 1: Then he becomes the nominee.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, but he's got a clear I
think it's forty percent, or did they lower that to
thirty I forget. It may now be thirty percent to
avoid a runoff. So there's that all right. Back to
Mark Robinson, he announced he's dropping his his lawsuit against CNN,
and according to WRAL, new campaign finance records made public
show that Robinson's once formidable political fundraising ability withered in
the wake of the CNN report.
Speaker 1: Really, of course, it did in the crucial.
Speaker 2: Final stretch of twenty twenty four, which, by the way,
that is why those pieces drop like they're timed to
drop before the election in order to starve campaigns, because
it freezes everybody. And because Robinson's reaction was what it was,
it never the freeze never stopped.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: The fourth quarter he raised just one hundred and fifty
nine thousand dollars while Stein pulled in six point five million.
Robinson also faced more than one hundred demands for refunds,
totaling just under twenty thousand dollars, people that had given
him money but then wanted it back at the same
time as his campaign began canceling appearances at parades and
festivals all over the state. The campaign was able to
claw back about thirteen hundred dollars in refunds for itself
when it came to spending donors money. The new fourth
quarter records also show Robinson's campaign focus shifted from buying
ads to hiring lawyers, right, and that's sort of the
one two punch, and I would point out, and I
said this at the time, this is the challenge of
you know, of elevating a candidate that does a viral video,
gives great speeches, but you don't really know anything about
their past. And you know, people say, oh, he's an outsider,
he's a reformer, he's this and that, whatever the but
the problem is you don't know his past, and that
stuff finds its way out, and I mean, we're he's
not a democrat here. People like you knew that stuff
was going to come out, and we kept hearing rumors,
Oh there's much worse. There's much worse it's gonna come out.
Yet they never pushed the stuff out. They never like,
there was never a kind of rumor campaign. People never
released the stuff that they had. All we ever heard
inside Republican circles was oh, there's worse coming out. That
was it, and that wasn't helpful. Lead it all right,
that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much
for listening. I could not do the show without your
support and the support of the businesses that advertise on
the podcast, So if you'd like, please support them too
and tell them you heard it here. You can also
become a patron at my Patreon page or go to
thepetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening,
and don't break anything while I'm gone.