FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Midday Mobile - Cameron Smith guest hosts hour 2 - August 9 2024
"There will be no personal nor direct attacks on anyone, and I would ask that you please try to, um, keep down the loud cheering and the clapping, there will be no booing, and no unruly behavior." With that, this is painful, and it will be for a long time. "Don't talk, baby, that's right, this man knows what's up." "After all, these are a couple of high-stepping turkeys, and you know what to say about a high stepper, no stepper, too high for a high stepper." This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FMTalk1065. "Well, Sean's a tough guy, I mean I think everybody knows that, you know Sean, he took some licks, he hangs in there." "Yeah, what's wrong with the beer we got, I mean the beer we got drink pretty good don't it? Did you hear what I said?" Welcome back to the second hour of Midday Mobile, I'm Cameron Smith. If you want to join the conversation, you can always join the phone and text line 251-343-0106. I want to respond to a couple things, I want to tell Tucker, thank you for just being encouraging. I know that when folks weigh in to the political space, I'm a columnist, I do talk radio all over the south, Tennessee, Alabama, everywhere. Not everybody agrees with you, welcome to America, that's fantastic, but I just encourage you, I encourage Sean, help him to say, I know sometimes, I know where Sean is politically, I've known Sean, he's a dear friend, known him for a long time, very, very conservative, very reasonable, just a great human being, you know, sometimes we get down, we get beat up all the time, every time we put our opinions out there, there's a lot of people that agree with us and a lot of people who don't and sometimes, you know, a little encouragement goes a long way, it's all I'm saying, so thank you, Tucker, and y'all remember to do the same for Sean, he's not going to ask you to lift his spirits, but we're human too, we have good days and bad and so the positives go a long, long way and I thank you for that. I wanted to continue the conversation with Jason for a moment because I think this is relevant on the text line and I wanted to make sure I never want to misunderstand anybody, so I'll just I'll just read you what Jason put in here. No, sir, the tax dollar belongs to the people we were talking about, I said, allowing folks to keep their own money isn't government spending. And he said, no, sir, the tax dollar belongs to the people, the people that take care of their own kids aren't interested in funding the irresponsible, regardless of how normalized it's become. And I agree with that. I hear what Jason's saying about if people are irresponsible and expecting the government to bail them out and write them checks, those COVID checks, man, they were they were fine. They were just throwing them out everywhere. Hey, here's a check. Have a check. We have so many government programs. I can't even begin to name them all. But I think there's an important difference between efforts that are conservative, which say, Hey, you get to keep your own money. We're not going to take it from you. And efforts that's that are cutting people checks. If I say you get to keep your money, now we get in the no man's land when it comes to refundable credits and stuff like that, that's more of the government spending. But as far as like tax deductions and non refundable tax credits, what I'm telling you is I'm going to take less of your money for you to do a thing that matters to you. That's conservative. If I take your money and then run it through the government washing machine and give it back to you, that's what Democrats want to do. And if Jason's right, then refusing to raise taxes would be somehow stealing from the from the American people because those tax dollars, they're entitled to. And and therefore the federal government is entitled to that money. And I absolutely as a Republican as a conservative reject that. I think that's that just misses the point. And this is where I think we've blurred some of the lines because there's a lot of a lot of Republicans now that would probably agree with Jason that would say, actually the government spending that Democrats like doing, if it's for things we like, that's okay. And if it's not for things we like, it's bad. I think that's a bad model for government. And it's something that we should have a discussion about like, I don't, I don't hate Jason. I don't want to fight Jason over our disagreement. But I think it is something that we should constantly be talking about. Okay. Let's get to the election because that's what that's what's on everybody's mind. That's what we're looking at. Several of you've asked on the text line again, 2513430106 have asked about the polling data. And I'll issue a couple of caveats here. One, polling data of likely voters across the country doesn't really give you a whole lot because there, even if they sampled evenly, we know this because we've seen this with the popular vote versus the electoral college. In some states like California you have tons of Democrats, New York. And so you can tend to skew a little bit more in those sort of national polls. Now, skew to the left. I say that as a disclaimer, but I do think polls are and remain useful for general tracking to try to figure out where is the election at the moment? The let me deal actually with the Alabama second congressional district first. There's one poll out there that I've seen so far. And that's the Alabama family's pack. And this was July 22nd to 24th. That's when that pull out, pull went out. It's 1000 registered voters and it has figures up three points on Dobson. It's tough to say in that race, it's going to be competitive. It just is whether the that I'm assuming is probably in the margin of error. I think figures probably has a little bit more of an advantage. What I'm not sure is how much of a bump does Harris give figures in terms of electoral turnout because here's what we know. We know that Democrats were, how do I say this delicately? Just depressed about Joe Biden for, you know, four out of 10 were excited about him being the nominee. Now with Harris, that numbers double. Okay. So, so the the thrill was gone. It was a foregone conclusion that Biden was going to lose that race. I will just say it. He was going to lose to Trump. It wasn't close. It wasn't within the margin of error. And now Democratic voters have coalesced around Harris on a conservative talk radio show. I can talk about Harris's lack of record, how she's not great. I can talk about the future unburdened by what has been, but poking fun at her and talking about race and issues and gender. It's a distraction. What I know is she's way more popular with Democrats. They're enthused. I think it matters down ticket. And I think that's a challenge for Dobson. Dobson is a good Republican candidate. I think she's got a real chance of not only being competitive but potentially winning this. Frankly, I think figures is a pretty good Democratic candidate in a state like Alabama. So this one's going to be a nail biter either way. I think if I called it today, figures wins because I do think he's going to get an enthusiasm bump with Harris. We've seen it nationally. There's no reason to believe that Democrats wouldn't experience at least somewhat, somewhat more enthusiasm in Alabama. And if they turn out, I think based on the composition of the district, figures has the inside edge. But frankly, this is a much closer race than I ever thought it would be. So take that for what it is. Again, that was an Alabama family's pack. It's probably my guess is it. It's going to, that survey is going to lean more Republican anyway. Again, I think figures is in the lead. The poll affirms that 37 to 34. But let's see what other information we get out over the next couple of weeks as to where that race actually is. What's fascinating to me is what we're looking at on the national level. I'm going to go through some of the numbers and then we're going to take a break and we'll kind of talk about what they mean. Who's ahead in the national polls? Right now, the national polls, this is 538.com. I find their their averages like a real clear politics averages to be pretty good. But it has Harris up 45.5% to 43.4% for Trump. So that's a, you know, roughly it's having Harris as the leader August 9th of about two points. Now, is that within the margin of error? Yes. So basically, it's too close to call. But this is a, this is a spread when Biden left the race. If anything, Trump was up, we saw a number of polls that had him very much up, particularly in swing states. Those actually matter. Now on the national polls, we're seeing him kind of dot all over the map. So I'm not going to say that even when I'm looking at these averages, Harris is massively up or anything, but I would call this truly too close to call. We've got to take a break. Then we'll come back. We'll kind of break this down a little more detail. I'm Cameron Smith and you're listening to midday. I'm Cameron Smith. You're listening to midday mobile. I'm filling in for Sean as he is. Welcome back. I'm Cameron Smith. You're listening to midday mobile. I'm filling in for Sean as he's doing a college swing, doing those, the move in those type of things. I, I'm excited for him. I think he's going to be awesome. A couple of things I want to talk about that are really important. Monty on the text line, again, 2513430106 says, isn't there a legal argument for Biden just dropping out and the party inserting Harris? How do we allow this to happen? We keep letting dims do what they want when they're, they're rules in place for elections. I understand what Monty's saying. And I think it's important that we take a minute to talk about this. So as, as you guys know, the electoral college is what elects the president in a state like Alabama, the electors are not actually on the ballot in a state like Tennessee, the electors are on the ballot. But basically what happens is each candidate has electors that represent them. So when you go and you vote for, let's say a Democrat in Alabama went and voted for Joe Biden in the primary. Well, Joe Biden would then get those electors as a result of his electoral success. Those electors are who go and cast the vote for him to be the president of the United States. So in this process in the primary, it's kind of the same thing. The, the folks that are pledged to vote for Biden are now released from that pledge. So think of it that yes, the voters pick Biden, but Biden's a free American citizen just like the rest of us. We can't force anybody to run for office. Now, let's be real clear. The Democratic elites did force him from the race. The idea that this was just his decision. He woke up one day and decided to do what's best for democracy is ridiculous. He wasn't going to win. The Democratic brass saw he wasn't going to win. And they pressured him to resign. But the truth is from a legal perspective, he resigned. He's are not resigned. He withdrew from the race. He's no longer an active candidate running for president of the United States. So what did that do? His pledge delegates that were attached to him in the various states now can pledge their support to Harris. That's what they've effectively done. So she ends up being the nominee. I could understand folks wanting to sue and try to stop that from happening. But think about the logical outcome of that. If I can't let's say a candidate died or a candidate, you know, became mentally incompetent. Well, wait, that one already happened. We wouldn't want it to be that that's the only candidate that a party could put up. That's just not what we want. We certainly wouldn't that want that as Republicans Democrats don't want it either. So they're able to go and cast that vote. So money, the answer is, I don't think there's a lot of legal footing there for a challenge to be launched to say that Joe Biden must somehow stay in the race or Republicans can't put any other folks. Now there may be some ballot challenges and other things like that, because every state has different rules about what ballot access looks like, who gets on when they get on. But remember that we just went through the primary, the general is a little bit away. So we'll be dealing with that. So money, good question. I don't think there's a lot there. But it's something we need to talk about. Chris raises the question about why is Walt's military record being kind of fixed in the news? Well, Chris, it's funny you say that we're actually going to get to that really quickly. And then probably for most of the rest of this hour, the, the national polls, we'll get to those polls, we'll talk about them a little bit, and then understand what caused this. So this is what's really, really wild. As I told you before the break, the polling is too close to call. Let's call it that right now. But if you look at favorability, like how to, how do Americans feel about candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump? So previously, the only politician with a lower or the only major on the ticket politician with a lower favorability rate rate, excuse me, rating than Kamala Harris. I was going to say Joe Biden, but that's not true. Joe Biden was more popular than her. You could see it. Over the last two years, she's been underwater. People have very unfavorable opinions of her. And so how this stuff works, when you hear about this favorability, they run these polls and they say favorable or unfavorable. And if the unfavorables are higher than the favorables, you have a net unfavorable rating. And hers had been like, for example, on August 6 of 2023, it was unfavorable by a margin of 16.7 percentage points. Folks really didn't like her. Now, so we're trending, trending, trending, and then about, I don't know, when Joe Biden gets out of the race, boom net unfavorable. So still unfavorable 5.8%. Now let's look. So over the course of the last year, become radically more favorable in the public opinion. Now let's look at Trump. So it's still not good. But in August of last year, let me see August, I'll pull up this unfavorability rating, August 5 2023, 16.9 percentage points. Okay, net 16.9. Still, I mean, that's really bad, right? Well, same thing. Boom. But he's at nine, July 29, 2024, nine. And then, sorry, August 9 just literally popped up on my screen 8.2. So right now in the polling, Kamala Harris has a better favorability rating than Donald Trump after being having one that was horrific, horrific. Well, what happened? Man, that's a curious question. How in the world does somebody with her track record end up just click a snap at the fingers? And guess what? She's, she's much more favorable. The answer is really easy. I'll give you two words. Hope and change. Does that sound familiar to you guys? It should because that was the campaign that Barack Obama ran in his first term when he was a Senator with a very little track record. And it was easy. Everybody projected their hopes and dreams. When I was in Washington, I had Republicans telling me that this guy, he may be our first post partisan president. How lucky we were to have this. That's changed. But now, open change is making a comeback by imprinting onto Kamala Harris. We'll talk about that on the other side of the break because I think this makes a real difference in the Trump campaign better start paying attention. I'm Cameron Smith. You're listening to Midday Mobile. This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. Welcome back. I'm Cameron Smith. You're listening to Midday Mobile. You can follow the conversation. I like to use hashtag al politics or you can follow me at d is in David Cameron Smith on X. It's players choice there. Come and join the conversation every time you guys are great about it on Wednesdays, reaching out when I'm on with Sean and starting the conversation. And I like to have the back and forth. It helps me know what you guys want me to write over at al.com and just generally be more useful to y'all when you're trying to learn about the issues of the day on the text line as I always appreciate y'all's engagement. 2513430106. What about the fishery refrank asked what about the equal time law? Does it not apply? I think you might be talking about the fairness doctrine, which was a Reagan basically did away with this policy that said on issues of public interest, we need to have equal broadcast time. I think it's a very, very bad idea to have the government regulating who gets what coverage when to force media to cover things one way or the other. Because I think a free press is really, really important. And as much as it annoys me when my brethren in what I call the legacy media, right? You're big outlets. There's a bias in the democratic direction. I don't think that that surprises anybody. There are also other places, like, for example, talk radio across the country is much more conservative. This station, for example, when you're hearing from Jeff poor, when you're hearing from Sean, when you hear from guys like me, it's certainly skews more on the conservative side of things. And the idea that we would go back to an era where government regulators get to decide, make coverage decisions about what you and I experience. Again, I'm a limited government guy. I don't like that kind of stuff. So it doesn't apply presently. And I certainly don't hope it makes a comeback, because I think that was really, really bad for us. But that bias is real. Like, let's let's stop acting like this is some sort of normal thing, because when I see these radical changes, I'm wondering what's going on, because Kamala Harris isn't a great public speaker. She has a nervous laugh that's very cringe. And she, frankly, right now is hiding. She's running the Joe Biden basement campaign. Why? Why is she doing this? Again, I go back to those two words, hope and change. That was the sum total of the campaign of Barack Obama in his first term. And it worked. Why? Because he didn't have much of a track record. He didn't have those accomplishments. And so when Republicans now are talking about, well, hey, tell me about Kamala Harris's signature achievements. She was a terrible borders are. She failed at that. And then the Biden administration didn't give her any other responsibilities. Oh, tell me about her accomplishments as Senator. Well, we already know the answer. Nobody can talk about that. Not even people who like Harris. They don't go out and talk about her record. They talk about her being a champion of democracy. Remember that hashtag democracy dies in darkness that she's a truth teller. She and governor walls are the everyday candidates. Wait, what? You're telling me a California liberal and a Minnesota socialist are effectively just middle of the road moderate politicians? No, it's not true. But it's the hope and change campaign all over again. It's what do you want? Well, I don't like Donald Trump. We have a place for you here at the Democratic party. Oh, well, I, I'm very pro choice. We have a place for you. Well, I'm pro life, but I think Donald Trump is a mean guy. We have a place for you. Project whatever you want onto this candidate, because they pressed the format button and said, you know what? We're going to erase everything. So governor waltz isn't exactly correct about his military record. We'll, we'll tweak that a little bit. Harris wasn't for crazy wild liberal policies. We'll re imagining that it goes down the memory hole. Hope and change. That's really what we're focusing on here. Are you for the light or the darkness? Are you for good things or bad things? And that's how media is putting this out there. And it's very interesting to see that the media has its orders. I don't want to be real clear about this. On the same day that Joe Biden tanked the, the conversation or tank the debate. We all saw it. It was ghastly. It was terrible. Even Democrats were live. And that's what ultimately precipitated his withdrawal all. But what we're not talking about is that same day. He launched his attack on Trump via project 2025, which is the heritage foundations mandate for leadership. They've been doing this since the Reagan administration, that document that is sort of a policy primer on what they'd like to see in a conservative administration had been out since April of 2023. So we hadn't heard about project 2025. We had it had not been anywhere. The Biden camp cane popped up a web webpage talking about how this policy product was a clandestine project from Donald Trump. And it would terminate the constitution, just insane stuff, right? And then immediately the national conversation started being, well, we should be concerned about project 2025. We should. What about this? And the memo went out, literally, that's not a, that it's not a turn of phrase. That's not figurative. They're, they literally sent out, Hey, this is what we're pushing right now. The media picked it up. And I want to be careful when I talk about the media, I use that word legacy media. This is the old school newspapers, the big sort of commercial establishments. There are a lot of smaller outlets, right? Y'all see them, you know what they are. But they don't have the same audience that the big outlets have. Like it or not, for example, in a state like Alabama, ale.com has the biggest audience in the state and it's not close. There are a lot of other, you know, we'll say they might lean more conservative. They might lean more liberal. But ale.com is the behemoth. Well, guess what? New York Times on the conservative side of thing, a little more Wall Street Journal that you know, the names of the big outlets, right? Well, the Biden campaign blasted this out and then wallah, we're all talking about project 2025. Well, when Governor walls, he decided to coin to use the approach to go after Republicans of their weird. Like I said, I wrote about this because it's just well, frankly, bizarre. My wife was like, are you sure you want to go there? Are you sure you want to talk about this? Because Republicans do have their fair share of weird, like whenever Donald Trump does the Hannibal Lecter stuff, it's like Stop Man. That's not helpful. Like just move on. Republicans have that. I won't deny that. But how many of you guys have seen somebody this year driving in their car wearing a mask? And how many of you have recognized instantly that person's almost certainly a Democrat? My wife was like, you can't say that. They'll get upset with you. Well, maybe they will. But the truth is that's weird. We've talked about the gender bending stuff. I for one don't think that males should participate in female sports. That's weird. There's a lot of Democrats that say it's perfectly fine. What are you talking about and why are you so big at it? I think it's weird. The and it's a bad idea. Just let's put it that way. And it's unsafe. But this weird campaign started and Democrats actually picked it up. The media just uniformly started saying, well, you know, JD Vance is weird. And as I started the show talking about Senator Brit and the things that she's doing in a bipartisan, bipartisan fashion, I highlighted that Vox article that just it clarified in case you were curious that JD Vance did not have sex with a sofa. Now think about Vox doing that to any one of us, just clarifying that, well, we don't do weird strange things because there's no basis in reality. But by doing that, it's not actually definite defamation. We're just clarifying something you don't do. This is the famous, well, well, sir, tell me, you know, what it is that I'll back up. If I take something horrible and just clarify, you don't do it, it puts it in my mind that that's the thing you do. That's easy. It's well, you know, how regularly do you beat your wife? Well, I don't. Well, is it regular or is it not regular? What are you saying? They're those traps that the media engages. And there's one of them right here. My favorite is that they took the attacks on Joe Biden because he was actually about to be the oldest nominee in history, major party nominee in history. And he indeed had diminished capacity. And now that's an attack they're using against Trump. Democrats are doing this. I saw this. Here's a headline. August 7th, 2024, from stat, which is basically kind of a healthcare type thing. But this is where you sort of dump these headlines. Trump keeps losing this is the headline. Trump keeps losing his train of thought. Cognitive experts have theories about why. Okay. Don't, don't miss this for a minute, folks. This is an order. The media has coalesced around these narratives that Republicans are just weird. Being pro life is super weird being a wanting fiscal responsibility, super weird. If you don't want the government to regulate everything weird, it's only weird if you sort of dismiss the fact that half the country is legitimately pro life. That's just a disagreement we have over a very important area. On the second amendment, half the country, very conservative on the second amendment. It's not weird. It's what we believe. But yet the legacy media has said, well, we know the campaign we're running. Harris is a historic character. She is our hope and change. She is our pro democracy candidate. And well, Republicans are just weird and Trump is a diminished old man. He's the oldest major party party nominee in history. Well, what they don't say is, well, it was going to be Joe Biden. Now it's Donald Trump. And so they're trying to do a judo move and dump this on Trump's head. I understand why I get it. But this is what makes people just not trust the media. And then when we're wondering why these favorability things are starting to change, Harris goes underground. She's not talking. She's not giving the media ammo to say, did you just say unburdened by what has been again? Did you just have that like condescending laugh that people hate that we don't have that? Why? Because you didn't want to talk. So Trump goes out at Marlago and for an hour talks to the press. What did the press do that they say? Good job. You know, we appreciate that you're talking to us. Harris won't talk to us. No, they said Trump on fire immediately and said, well, this is desperate. He's just trying to get the attention back. I was listening to it on cable news last night. He's just, he's just trying to steal the spotlight from Harris who is just soaring. Well, yeah, I think it's appropriate to have the conversation of we want to talk to the media. She doesn't and to create that contrast. But the media went ahead and just bash Trump in the head over that. Here's part of the problem. Chris LaCivita was running the best campaign I may have ever seen. He had taken Trump who was known for having distractions, known for sticking his foot in his mouth, meandering all over the place. And he had created a winner. This was always going to be tough for Trump. This campaign was always going to be tough for Trump. He is not, and I'll say this. He's not the best candidate because he had not proven over time that he had any discipline and he gave the opposition what they needed to attack him. They were going to attack him anyway. These aren't honest brokers. They were going to attack him anyway. But Trump committed unforced errors during his term in office that ultimately led to his defeat. We can argue about, well, it was still an election or not. That's passed. The bottom line is Joe Biden, who's barely there, has been the president of the United States for the last several years. This was going to be a tight election regardless. The campaign that was run against Joe Biden was excellent. Why was it excellent? Because Trump was crushing Biden on inflation, immigration and foreign affairs. Let's be real clear about the debate that we all saw that was terrible. Trump let Biden be the story. He was himself. He was his usual Trump on that stage, but Biden became the story. And ultimately, all the attacks on Biden, but they landed and then were Democrats yank team. And now, and I'll just say it and we got to be careful here. Trump's back to, let's argue over crowd size. Let's talk about race. Let's insult folks. You can say, well, that's just Trump being Trump. No, actually it's not the Trump that was going to win versus Joe Biden knew that it was inflation immigration foreign affairs, inflation, immigration, foreign affairs, stay in the lane. All he needs to do to project that on Harris was his focus on inflation, immigration, foreign affairs. And she's going to try to say, well, that's, that's Joe Biden. It wasn't me. And then Trump should say, why not? Did he not trust you? Did he not trust you on those policy areas? If the fading Joe Biden didn't trust you, why should the American people trust you? That's his campaign. That's the path. That's the discipline line. But we're, we're seeing a little bit of sloppiness. And when you convey, connect these two, it's a big problem. We got to take a break. I'm Cameron Smith. You're listening to Midday Mobile. I appreciate you being with me today. I'm Cameron Smith. Again, go join the conversation over on X at D Cameron Smith or just follow hashtag AL politics. It's where we have the conversation. It makes a lot of this a lot easier. You guys have been a great audience today. I really appreciate y'all's engagement on the text line. It's just fun on a Friday to have those conversations. I also appreciate you guys asking me those questions. Well, why not this? Why not that? I think a lot of folks just, you know, frankly, just don't tell the truth. They don't, they don't say they have an agenda when they come on. When I talk, I try to tell you where I'm coming from, who pays me, what those influences are. And I tell you that, Hey, I'm not some kind of neutral broker. I have an opinion on right versus wrong, good versus evil and conservative versus liberal. Those are the things that, you know, frankly, make us interesting. And when it comes to the media, I'll wrap up with this. The idea that the media, any media is somehow a neutral broker of information. Just isn't true. It wasn't ever true. That was something that was invented to give credibility to an institution. You and I know that we've understood that, but also want to caution us of throwing the baby out with the bath water, because when we weaken the voices that are talking about the politicians, when we say that they can't be trusted, guess who that benefits. It's not you and me. It's the political class. We need the first amendments there. Those of us who love the constitution should love the idea that the first amendment still matters, that free speech still matters. And if we want to hold truth, if we want to speak truth to power, the media is the easiest way to do it. Do I recommend you guys call your elected officials, call Senator Britt, call Senator Tupperville, call Gary Palmer, call Jerry Carl, go down the list, you call them, check in with them. They want to hear from you. They want to know how you feel, but it's really the media's job. It's the news organization's job to hold truth or hold power accountable with the truth, whether it's Trump, whether it's Harris. Right now, we're seeing a lot of, Hey, we're holding Trump accountable, but a lot of the media is allowing Harris to hide. And we shouldn't have a double standard because at the end of the day, for media to do its job, it needs to be a little bit antagonistic towards the political class. And right now, the political class basically enjoys aligned media. Republican outlets say good things about Republican and trash the Democrats, Democratic outlets say good things about the Democrats and trash the Republicans. If that's where we end up, then our republics in trouble. And I don't want it to end up there. So, when I say something and you're not sure, ask me those questions. When you disagree with me like Jason did, let's have that back and forth exchange. And let's get it right, because it's more important that we trust each other. And we hold the politicians accountable that we trust politicians. And well, I don't know who's accountable. Thank you for your time today. You've been a great audience. I'm Cameron Smith and you're listening to Midday Mobius. (dramatic music)