Mitch McConnell's Legislative Legacy

The Jay Weber Podcast is presented by Creative Planning, helping clients simplify their journey to financial wellness one personalized plan at a time. The Jay Weber Podcast is a production of iHeartRadio Podcast s. Good day and welcome to the Jayw ard Podcast. It's heavy on continuing analysis of the fall election today, including whether John Cornyn's loss in the primary makes it harder for the Republicans to hold on to the Senate. But I'll start with a segment that be'll more unique, I think, and something that you aren't likely to hear elsewhere, at least not maybe until next week or the week after, because uh Pride month starts. You all know that the alphabet activists insist that June is is gay and trans and fifty gender pride month. But there's an untold story here, and it's this. There are going to be far fewer pride events held around the country this year because these activist bullies have found that they finally pushed things too far. There's there's been a major loss of corporate sponsors hip, so we'll talk about that. Are you aware of the major funding uh shortage of pride organizations that are seeing the Gregory Johnson? No, I you know, as a matter of fact, it's funny that you brought that up because I've seen a lot a lot more athletes uh Well, I mean the Michael Jordan had it right so many years ago. You know, both party people from both parties buy sneakers , so why would I possibly get involved in politics? He's right. But I I really want to talk to you about something different because you've been in broadcast for decades and you know one of the popular business models in radio and television is to sell airtime that doesn't get great ratings just to sell it off in chunks. Those lower ratings times of day you just sell them off in half hours and one hour chunks. This is basically how we got late night infomercials on television. The Uh did you catch this then yesterday when CBS executives basically admitted that the once precious late night time slot after the local news at ten is now going to be sold off in chunks like infomercials through the week. That blows my mind. You know, you would think that, you know, this block programming, you would see uh let's just say CBS fifty eight or CW, they would sell off, but this is a an entire network. And Monday and Monday through Friday, this is what this has always been, you know, prime time or better ad rates. You even have the Yesterday, CBS executives decided to prove to the the world that Stephen Colbert was losing the money and that's why he was fired, not due to some favor for Donald Trump. So C BS put out the official figure. Colbert was losing the network forty million dollars per year, and he had been for years. So if anything, he really should have been fired sooner. And since Kimmel and Fallon have also been losing about 20 to thirty million dollars per year for their networks, uh, they should also be fired and replaced. But I think people in the audience know this has been a tough nut to crack for these networks. They're not sh quite sure what to replace these late-night shows with . Included in the CBS news story was this little tidbit I found interesting that Colbert is being replaced by an infomercial sort of deal wherein Byron Allen's company pays CBS fifteen million dollars a year for an hour worth of broadcast time following the local news. You're kidding me. So basically he's getting uh an hour on network television to do anything he wants? Is he going to bring on clients? Byron Allen has some sort of clean comedians show that apparently runs a half an hour. And you know, he is what he's a production company. And some people in in Milwaukee are are gonna be familiar with Byron Allen because he was on TV here many years ago. But he has some sort of uh company that that produces its own TV show. It's clean comedians. All right. Runs about half an hour. So he's buying two half hour chunks of air from CBS, and he's gonna run back-to- tob backack episodes on CBS Mondayday through Fri instead of Blair. I was thinking, you know what would be funny if they would to bring back swap shop or uh help your neighbor, the old Gordon Hinckley thing. Yeah. Just do that on TV. It almost is like CVS, yeah. This this is just a step away from selling two half hour commercials to the Shark Vacuum or for the Shark Vacuum. Monday True Price. Network TV. It blows my mind. This was such valuable property for decades and decades, but it explains a lot because when I heard that Colbert's replacement was some Byron Allen thing, I I thought, what? They're trusting their late night ratings now to Byron Allen? He's the CBS savior? I mean, this makes no sense. It turns out he's not. It turns out that CBS won't care about the ratings. It doesn't matter what Allen does with this this hour. They get their 15 million dollars. And as you say, he then goes out and finds sponsors or ads on his own and he keeps that money. Now if you're a fan of Steven Colbert, don't worry. He's got his little uh he's got a little uh uh public access show in Monroe Michigan. Hello. Also welcome. It's time for another edition of Only in Monroe. I'm your guest, host, Stephen Colbert. Yeah. Yeah, well at least you can make fun of him. So I I understand that CBS initially tried to enforce a no compete or something and have him stop doing this little silly uh public access thing that he's doing. And then they realize that would be a little much. But yeah, so this deal has uh Alan paying CBS about fifteen million dollars and then keeping all the ad revenue that he can generate off of this little hour of comedy. So this is how it's it's gonna work itself out. The execs at these big three networks have struggled for years to figure out what to do with this once valuable time slot. I'm blown away as someone who's been at broadcast all this time. CBS Execs finally just gave up and said, look, we'll just That's sort of sad and pathetic to see another great TV legacy late night end that way. But they're they rightly pointed out, look, this is a fifty-five million dollar swing in our favor. No longer do they lose forty million dollars every year on Col bert, but they collect fifteen million a year from Byron Allen's company. So it's a pretty profitable swing. It's almost like they should just turn it into like a QVC, right? You would think so, but if hey if they, can make their money uh from Byron Allen, if he gives them fifteen million regardless of how uh well he does with it, fine, they get their money. But you wonder if they aren't showing NBC and ABC the way here. I'm thinking Kimmel and Fallon are gone once NBC and ABC can find their own deal. Oh yeah. I I can see that. But how humiliating for these hosts. I I recent for people that have just found the podcast, I recently retired from the most successful morning talk show in Wisconsin. But I put myself in Colbert's shoes there for. If the station had fired me in disgust because even a show selling erection pills was more profitable, I'd probably hang myself . I mean, can you imagine? Oh God. By the way, how's that Benjamin Youth Show doing as my replacement? Yeah. The radio. Sounding good. I was listening. I was listening just this morning. You're sounding good. Well, this podcast has one wonderful premiere sponsor and is creative planning. Have you heard of creative planning? They're one of the nation's largest independent wealth management firms, offering fully integrated financial and retirement planning, investment management, estate planning, tax strategies, business services, and international wealth management, all in house and coordinated through your wealth manager. Their fiduciary wealth managers are here to help you navigate every piece of your financial life. Visit Creative Planning dot com to schedule your introductory meeting. That's Creative Planning.com. Your team awaits. Paid for by Creative Planning and SEC Registered Investment Advisor. The speaker's statements are not an endorsement of the firm. nineteen drag queen story hours that the city of Boston is sponsoring and holding in their libraries during the so called Pride Month. That story is circulating this week. But did you know that the little gay rainbow is a little dim this year? Have you heard that Pride Month ain't nearly what it used to have been canceled, and most interesting to me, the bulk of them were canceled in January and February and not because of anything that Donald Trump did just because the activist left and their morons are so depressed over the fact that Trump is back in charge of the country. Seriously they, want to blame it on Trump's assault on DEI or his assault against their transgender bullying, etc. But it isn't really. They could have held all of these events if they'd wanted to, but the truth is they're mostly just depressed and really don't want to throw the party. The other hard truth is they can't get funding to hold these events unless they bully it out of people. It's going to be interesting to see what sorts of coverage or alleged analysis we're going to get on this next week as June or Pride Month begins. Trust me, they're going to claim it's hardship because all sorts of corporate funding has dried up and they can't get their normal sponsors, and there's some truth to that, but it's also true that it's not Trump's fault. It's their own fault . Folks, it's due to the rabid left's activists overplaying their hand that pride events, etc., have fallen out of favor. It was them who bullied and shamed corporate America into giving them all of the sponsorships to put on these pride events in the first place. It was them who created litmus tests for anyone and everyone and every corporation that they could then use to further bully them and force their gender assignment BS and outright perversions at us and insisted we all had to agree it was normal. The rest of us, or worse, try to lure in or sexualize our children with it. And for decades that was the rather reasonable working relationship that most of us had on all of this. And then the trans bullies and their brand of activism came onto the scene. That changed the game. So called activists who are really just perverts who wanted to force their brand of belief or perversion onto the country under the banner of gender confusion. That's where it all broke down. Wait, because you say you're gender confused, we should let you dress up like sluts and put on quote shows where you waggle plastic penises in our kids' faces and we think it's good clean fun? Come on. Or worse, because you're gender confused, you want to go into schools and prey on vulnerable children going through their own sexual awar Come on. And that's not even talking about all of the other genuinely perverted and offensive crap that has come along with this alleged activism. Even many of the gays and lesbians who'd been in the activist trenches fighting for these causes over the last fifty years took offense to this. In fact, one of the great untold stories of the gay activist movement is that in truth, gays and lesbians and bies, etc., they want nothing to do with the transgender activists and reject their brand of so-called activ ism. They really did not like it when the trans community, so to speak, swept in and co-opted the LGBTQ banner. They are smart enough to know that these trans bullies have completely destroyed the LGBT Q cause. When it was just LGBT, most liberal activists and gay and lesbian groups were good with things and how their movement for equal rights, etc., was going. But when others started to add the Q, and then all sorts of other things Donald Trump retook office. Yes, he and J.D. Vance and the Republican strategists at the time were smart enough to take advantage of the divide to capitalize off of the fact that the trans bullies had turned off corporate America and most average Americans with their bullying demands . But this year's pride events weren't canceled because of Trump or anything he did. They were canceled because even before Trump got reelected, average Americans and corporate America were finally saying enough is enough. Stop bullying. Stop forcing your radical crap into corporate America and our consumer decisions. Stop forcing your perverted nonsense onto our kids and trying to normalize it. Stop trying to force men and boys into our girls' restaurants That's why the shine is off the pride rainbow this year. Many months ago, the Tucson Pride Festival announced that they weren't going to hold it this year, and worse they were simply going to dissolve their organization. Why? Because all their corporate funding had dried up. They'd also blamed mismanagement and lower attendance over the last few years as reasons. And I'll highlight that. A once large pride festival in lefty Tucson has been seeing a noticeable drop off in attendance over the years, not just since Donald Trump got back into office. The lack of interest started to show well before then . Across the country in, Tampa for, example, you'd think that that's a place that would draw big alphabet attendance? No. Both its Pride Festival and its diversity parade are canceled this year. New York City's Pride Event organizers say they've lost sponsorships for years , and this year they're down seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in sponsorship money. Wow, that is a lot of rubber penises. Even in San Francisco, sponsorships are down, and the drag queens dressed as nuns are sad. Companies that backed out include Anheuser Busch, Comcast, and Nissan. Three hundred thousand dollars in quote pride money evaporated in San Francisco. Good. A story I ran across about two months ago tried to blame a quote singular turning point event, the loss of Kamala Harris and the reelection of Donald Trump. To that, I say bullplop. This was already a country that was rejecting this new brand of angry, vile, disgraceful activism, and Trump and Vance were simply smart enough to add it to their platform. Remember? But this year's Pride Month isn't a hollowed out piece of crap because of Trump. They did it to themselves. A survey of corporate America last year found that forty percent of corporations said they were either reducing or eliminating their corporate funding for quote pride events. One claim that may or may not be true is that when Trump and the current political climate forced companies into killing off their DEI budgets, a lot of that alphabet money got cut too because, that 's the part of the budget where the funding for the gay pride parade was listed. So DEI went, but so did the corporate sponsorship of pride event. The bottom line is, if the general public or the major private donors wanted these events to continue, they would have stepped up and donated or raised the money, correct? What is completely being missed at this point is that the pride event organizers of Frisco, Tampa, Tucson, etc., they didn't pivot to simply working to find a different funding source. They didn't decide we'll work a little harder to get this done. They appear to have simply quit, given up on the notion that they should even continue holding these pride events. Isn't that interesting? To me, that's the most interesting part of this. So you finally pushed and bullied people too hard and you lost your wave of let's call them guilt sponsorships and And since bullying doesn't work, you're giving up. Don't you find that interesting? It's almost as if these lefty activists know that if they can't bully, they'll never come up with the funding. They seem to know that if it's a matter of popularity or a form of entertainment, people don't really want it. So if a sliver of activist can't force it onto us, we're not going to pay for it. Isn't that the truth here? After all, we're living in the city of summer festivals here in Milwaukee, and we've sort of seen this. This podcast, if you don't know, originates in southeastern Wisconsin, where I did a talk radio show for nearly forty years. Milwaukee's the home base. And we have ethnic pride festivals all summer: Irish Fest, German Fest, Festa Italiana, Polish Fest, yeah, there's a pride fest. But over the years, at some point or another, some of the organizers of those festivals have fallen on hard times. Occasionally it happens. You've got lower donations, and then threats are made. You know, we might not have an Irish fest this year, we might not have Polish fest this year. Invariably the community rallies and saves the festival. Corporate and private donors step up, they find the money, the party is held. So what does it say about this so called pri be movement that if they can't bully companies into big donations, no one else wants to fund the party? I think we all know what it means. Even the organizers of these events know that if they can't shame and bully and use tricks to play on people's emotions, they can't find a way to get people interested in the cause they're selling. And that's pathetic. But it's also authentic. It rings true, doesn't it? It puts this entire twenty or thirty year farce of path Most Americans though never asked for any of this to begin with, but were okay with live and let live. Then it became some twisted litmus test for tolerance. Then worse, they came for the kids. And no, Americans never asked for drag queen stor y hour and they never wanted it. They only ever wanted it to go away. If you want to dress up like a hooker and show your genitals and call it art or lip sync to a song and pretend you're singing and you're talented, fine. Do it in the clubs. At least there people are seeking it out and coming to see you do it. But don't try to corrupt society with all sorts of vile crap and kink that you're into and insist that it needs to be normalized for the rest of us or for larger soci ety. If you're gender confused, I feel for you, I do. If you're just a pervert who gets his kicks out of corrupting innocent kids with your dildo show, you're a scumbag. That's not normal, and neither are you . News Talk 1130 WISN. He's proud to present the Jay Weber Podcast. Jay Weber draws from his 35-year career in radio news and commentary to craft an insightful look at the major stories and impactful issues from around Wisconsin, the nation, and the world. And after you've enjoyed the Jay Webber Podcast, we invite you to go to your radio or go online and listen to News Talk 1130 WISN, Wisconsin's most listened to radio station. So Donald Trump's endorsement proves definitive yet again this week with longtime conservative Republican John Cornyn being defeated in his primary in Texas. After fourteen years without a single Senate incumbent being defeated by challengers, this year we have at least two, and they were defeated in their party's primaries. They didn't even make it to the fall election day. And unlike Bill Cassidy, the first Republican senator to get bounced out of office after the president endorsed his opponent, unlike Bill Cassidy, John Corden actually is a very good and consistent Republican. He's got like a ninety-nine percent voter rating when it comes to conservative and Trump priorities. This is a guy who really had no larger beef with Donald Trump and was known to have a very strong conservative voting record. The only weakness , was that John Cornyn was another guy who would occasionally decide to quote work with Senate Democrats in order to get something done or have a piece of legislation move forward that he believed in , but Corny was not and is not some squish rhino, or whatever Trump loyalists might want to label him or call him now. He's also the longtime incumbent with no obvious baggage who would have been very difficult to beat in a general election. And so Ken Paxton's elevation here as the Republican Party candidate in this fall Senate race does open some questions as to whether this is a seat that is now in play or can be won by a Democrat. And I think a lot of you know that as deep red as Texas seems to be, the Democrats have had these delusions in the past wherein they thought they had Ted Cruz beat with the pathetic beta or orch and came up short. And so I think the vast majority of arrogant Texas and DC Republicans would probably say, Oh, you'll come on, we're not going to lose the Senate seat, even if Paxton is more controversial. Oh, really? And for the record, I don't I think he probably wins this, but you never know. Remember, the only reason that genuinely dreadful Raphael Warnock is a Democrat senator in Georgia is because all sorts of Trumpy Republicans had to tamper in that race in twenty twenty two and nominate a horrible primary candidate there. My assessment would be that yeah, Texas is safer, even from a more boisterous, unconventional candidate like Paxton, but you never know. There's always a chance of an upset depending on the voter sentiments at the time. The other thing that needs to be said is it's very probable that Ken Paxton would have won this primary race even if Trump hadn't have endorsed him at the last minute. The polls were close, but they showed Paxton leading in the weeks and leading consistently in the weeks before Trump officially endorsed him after earlier saying he'd stay out of the race. And now with Trump's endorsement, Cornyn absolutely got shellacked, with Paxton getting sixty four percent of the vote in the primary. Ouch. But I'd suggest that it's more accurate to say that Trump's endorsement affected the size of a Paxton victory, even if he probably would have won the primary either way, rather than handing in the primary. outspent nearly nine to one by pro Corning forces. Nearly all the establishment and longtime Republicans, conservatives, and their donor base wanted John Cornyn to win this primary, given what a reliable and decent lawmaker he has been, and given how it's nearly impossible to beat a Senate incumbent in an election. And so nearly all of the GOP money was on John Cornyn's side. And by the way, John Cornyn's ability to outspend an opponent nine to one tells you how powerful a Senate incumbency is and how much money flows to that incumbent. But what makes RNC officials and insiders furious now is that this is all the money that could that could have been used on fighting smarter election battles against Democrat s. At least that's the way most of them see it. I don't think Paxton loses the general, and so I'm not overly upset that John Cornyn was defeated. I do think he would have had the easier path to victory in November, though. But you can see the strategist's point. Even if you don't agree with it, okay, our forces had to spend over a hundred million dollars in this primary erase that Ken Paxton forced and Trump raised the stakes of. And now our forces are gonna probably have to spend another three hundred or four hundred million dollars to defend Paxton on his train load of baggage that he brings with him in order to ensure that he wins in fall and will keep this seat for Republicans. That's how the strategists and the insiders are looking at this, and why they're so upset this week. Again, you can either agree with it or not, but if you pretend not to understand the logic, you're being obtuse. And as for the general, you've still got most Texas Republicans and Trump supporters, I believe, dismissing the Democrat James Telarico as a lightweight. This is the former minister who's getting so much attention down in Texas and is allegedly leading in the polls down there. Telarico has managed to, like better O'Rourke, raise huge sums of money from leftists and get all sorts of glowing press coverage from the accomplices in the mainstream media. And he's a national darling right now. And so you're gonna hear a lot about him. It's also true that from where the national and Texas Democrats are sitting, they also got the matchup they wanted. They didn't want to take on a powerful incumbent in John Cornyn either. They wanted to take on Ken Paxton with all of his ethical baggage and his ability to say things that sound outrageous. Trust me, Democrats are loving the results of Tuesday's race. But it also might be their undoing in fall if this ends up being a close fight to gain control of the Senate and they lose. Remember, they too are going to want to spend four hundred million half a billion dollars trying to win the seat, and if they do, they could starve other Democrats in House, Senate, and Governors races of money that might have actually helped them win. A loss by James Tellerico following a four hundred thousand dollar or half billion dollar expense could end up being an incredibly stupid waste of resources for the Democrats in fall. So this cuts both ways. But if there was any doubt that this is Donald Trump's Republican Party now, the results of the Paxton race settled it. Folks, John Cornyn was considered the most influential politician in Texas, period. The GOP donor class loved him, obviously. Now he's suddenly done in January when the next Congress takes over. A forty year political career ended by the very same voters who seem to have loved him right up until this moment. As pollster Frank Lunz put it on X, there is zero doubt tonight that Donald Trump is in complete and total control of the Republican Party. He's chief strategist, chief advocate, and chief voice of the GOP. His name may not be on the ballot in November, but make no mistake, nothing and no one will have a bigger impact on voter behavior. I think you have to agree with that. And it will add to Donald Trump's legend if all these endorsed candidates win in fall , and Republicans either keep both chambers or only lose the House by a slight margin. If this all works out for Trump, it adds to the presidential and political legend that we're seeing in real time surrounding Donald Trump. But if his candidates lose and or leave the perception that that's why Republicans got shellacked, well then a very different history will be written, of course, won't it? And because I've seen several exciting false hopes crash and burn over years or months of hype in Texas. This is the Democrat who can win statewide in Texas. I'm skeptical James Talarico can win this. Especially the more you see of him, the more you realize how ridiculous he is. He is not a moderate Democrat or a reasonable sounding Democrat on any issue. Once you see more of him and hear his platform, that is what makes me say I can't imagine more than fifty percent of Texas voters would actually vote for this guy Because James Telarico isn't a Democrat who's trying to adopt moderate positions and running as Republican light, which would be the smart way to run as a Democrat in Texas. No, no, no. For the most part, Telarico is sounding like a new age socialist , he just proudly announced that he's running a vegan campaign. Good grief, in Texas, in cattle raising, hog raising, Texas. I once stopped in Hereford, Texas for a morning breakfast buffet. We were just traveling through and we saw it on the side of the road. Great, let's stop. This was your prototypical Texas stop. Nothing but pickup trucks in the parking lot with gun racks in them. The group of customers who were in there were all between no kidding, two hundred and fifty and four hundred and fifty pounds. There wasn't a skinny person in this place. And we soon found out why. This breakfast buffet stretched for an acre, and it was all different forms of meat. There were some eggs and some fried potatoes , but the bulk of the buffet was bacon and steaks and ribs and ham and chicken and sausages as far as the eye could see. These voters in Herford, Texas, are gonna be excited to hear James Telarico is running a w oke vegan campaign? Not a chance. But he's also pro trans, pro abortion, pro woke, pro taxes. He wants to double the minimum wage on Texas employers. And so I don't care how slick a talker he is as a former minister or whatever, most Texans are not going to vote for that guy. And don't take my word for it. Listen to Scott Jennings over at CNN this past Tuesday night as the results came in and their lefty panel argued over All these uh analysis of this race is sort of the differences between what a corn inner or a Paxson would look like here. I'm thinking about the differences between Talarico and literally every other Texan. Don't know any Texans who believe in six genders other than Talon Rico. Don't know any Texans who said it's immoral to eat meat other than Talarico. Don't know any Texans who walk around saying things, you know, God is not Jennings went on to make it clear yeah Telarrico will continue to be flooded with outside money from national democrats, and it will pour in now from California and New York and Illinois. But that money is going to be used to magnify this message vegan wokeism, trans rights, and Trump is evil ? Okay . The bigger worry for most Republican strategists is likely to be how much money do we now have to spend defending Paxton and carrying him through the finish line unnecessarily that a corn and win would have saved us from? That's really the question that most national and Texas Republicans are grumbling about now. And short term, Corden's defeat raises even more questions about whether President Trump can get any part of his agenda passed in Congress now. Not a thorough Republicans who already bristle against him. Yeah, Cassidy and Cornyn are still in the Senate and still voting through January, but how do they vote moving forward now? We are already seeing Bill Cassidy be a dick and vote against a few Trump priorities. John Cornyn on primary night was already promising to keep voting for the pro Republican, pro Trump agenda between now and January, so let's hope he does. I think he probably will. But moving against Cassidy and Cornyn has really angered people like Lisa Murkow ski and Rand Paul and Susan Collins, and probably a dozen others who are quietly stewing over Trump's attempts to take out his enemies. John Thoon, the Senate Majority Leader, is already admitting that it's going to be difficult to find the votes to pass Thun's caucus is upset that Trump is spending his time on intraparty grudges instead of focusing on defeating the Democrats, at least that's how they see it. There's also a chance that Trump is disenfranchising a sliver of his own voters with this stuff, although I think that's less evident. And to be clear, I don't share in any of the angster negativity that the insiders and the strategists have about how Trump is making this harder for Republicans to keep seats and win. And I don't because Trump has really only targeted and taken out incumbents and reliably red districts and states. It's not like Thomas Massey's House seat or Bill Cassidy's Senate seat is gonna go to the Democrats and fall. And so I don't see Trump's maneuvers here as having a net result of losing seats in either chamber. But I do criticize him for not defending John Cornyn in Texas because he was a very good lawmaker. John Cornyn has been a very reliable vote for Trump. He's proven to be very good strategist and thinker and leader, and to undercut him for a more unreliable and ethically challenged Ken Paxton was foolish. Republicans keep the Texas Senate seat? Very likely yes. Meanwhile, there's another possible Senate pickup for Republicans that no one's focusing on. This is a game of numbers of course for fall with very few open Senate seats for either party to swoop in and poach. And so you'd think that there'd be more national attention being given to an open Senate seat in Michigan that Democrats were expected to keep no problem, and how it might be slipping away from them. The Democrat who's retiring and leaving the open seat is named Gary Peters. He's just retiring, but it means what? It means no powerful incumbent in that seat, starting with millions of dollars on his side and easily able to defend it. The Senate chamber is famous for very powerful incumbents that never lose, never lose once elected. Great. So this could be an opportunity for the Republicans. It's an open seat. But it's still Michigan. Blue State, Democrat governor, that's shiny faced Gretchen Whitmer. She's in charge of the state's political apparatus. The Democrats should be able to keep this Senate seat, especially the year that's supposed to be good for Democrats. So what's going on in Michigan when the Republican running has been quietly leading all of the polls and as the jackals going up But if the primary voters in Michigan choose the most extreme and unappealing candidate of the three that are running on the Democrat side, I see this as a real possibility. The three Democrats running are a state senator named Mallory McMorrow, a state representative named Haley Stevens, and a guy who's kind of been an activist and local official named Abdul El Sayed. Now, Democrat primary, based on name alone, which of these three do you think is appealing the most to today's lefty voters in Michig an. You have a blonde white woman named Mallory McMurrow, she's got state level political experience. You have a dark haired congresswoman named Haley Stevens with DC experience, she's a congresswoman, and you have a Muslim man named Abdul Al Saed who has basically no political experience but is a socialist progressive Jew hater. Which candidate do you think today's Michigan Democrats are finding most appealing? Yep. The useless activist and Muslim Jew hater. Yeah. Al Saed is currently leading the primary polling. This is the clown that AOC and uh Zoran Mandani were just out doing an event for this week. But in Michigan, this is stacking up to be a situation in which the primary voters of a state actually select the most extreme and unreasonable sounding candidate that isn't going to appeal to a wider voting base in the general. They could screw over their own party in the general on this one. There's a chance of this happening in Michigan this fall because the Republican Mike Rogers has already served in Congress and is going to be seen as a sane and safe choice if voters have questions about El Sayed's nutty campaign and extreme position s, and they will, increasingly so, I would think, between now and November. So to sum up, I'll just say it again. I don't see Republicans losing control of the Senate. I don't see a Senate seat yet. The Democrats have a great chance to flip or nab. And so yet again I find myself a contrarian who doesn't see what the mainstream media and their left wing pundits are really pushing here in terms of Trump or Republicans really screwing up this fall election on top of everything else . You're listening to the Jay Weber Podcast, a presentation of News Talk 1130 W ISN and iHeartRadio Podcasts. Jay Weber draws from his 35-year career in radio news and commentary with an irreverent wit that simply can't be matched. Right-minded alternative to media outlets that substitute self-serving narratives for candor and truth. Listen to the J Weber Podcast, published every Tuesday and Friday. Be sure to subscribe It would have to be a very, very pronounced blue wave and pro Democrat election in order for that to happen and so far it's not stacking up that way. Ratings, but they never want to talk about the polls that show support for the Democrat Party is around twenty seven or thirty percent, with nearly six in ten voters saying flat out they do not approve of today's Democrat Party. Surveys and the fact that the Democrats simply will not pivot away from their pro woke anti America agenda suggest to me that this is not going to be a big blue tsunami year. When you pair that with the fact that the Senate map simply isn't a great map for Democrats in the Senate Well, it doesn't look like Republicans will lose control of the Senate to me, even if they lose control of the House. And that is the prediction I'd make today if you held a gun to my head and asked , Will Democrats retake control of the House of Representatives? I'd have to answer yes for the simple reason that they only have to flip something like three or four seats in order to regain control. Well heck, if gas is still four dollars a gallon and most Americans are still grumbling about how Trump hasn't really improved things since Biden, well then even if the Democrats still aren't very popular, you could see them winning at least three or four seats, winning if more seats than they lost. The historical patterns suggest this is going to be a good Democrat year, and if all they need to do is gain a handful of seats, you'd basically be a fool to insist that Republicans are going to keep control of the House at this point. You hope they do, but it isn't the most likely scenario . Also, just a few weeks later, I'm being proven right by warning you, these redrawn maps probably aren't going to play a significant role in this fall's elections either. Maybe by twenty twenty eight, certainly after twenty thirty, but this attempt to scramble around and redraw the congressional maps in six or eight red states and have them in place for fall was always sort of a polyannish hope. After the Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for the decades long racially rigged maps to be made I said, Don't get your hopes up. The mad scramble on the Republican side to redraw maps comes with an equally frantic scramble on the Democrat side to block them in court, which means most of them will be delayed and hung up in court long enough that they won't be in play for this fall. Well, what happened this week? Federal judges for now blocked Democrat attempts to delay the new Tennessee and Florida and Missouri maps, but a third judge, and a small group of politici ans, blocked maps in two other states, Alabama and South Carolina that would have helped Republicans out. I'll start in Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis was really ready to go with the new map the moment the Supreme Court rema The court ruled it's unconstitutional, and within days, Florida's Republicans had a new map approved. Several groups to block or slow the process to get that in place for fall. So that's a win. But it's also just a first win, and an appeals court will surely be asked to block it next. It'll be interesting to see whether that Florida map will really be in place by fall . Interestingly, in this case, the federal judge argued that the certainty of the new map being in place for fall was a better outcome than scrambling the election with haphazard arguments over maps. That's basically the same excuse that other judges have used to not implement a new map this close to an election. So that's one map still on course to be implemented by fall, Florida. Tennessee is another. In Tennessee last week, their Supreme Court denied the NAACP 's request to scrap their new map. Tennessee Republicans have eliminated the final Democrat congressional seat with their new changes, and so having the state Supreme Court back that new map is big. Still, don't doubt for one moment that the NAA CP and other left wing organizations aren't going to try to move that fight to the federal court system now if they haven't already. So Tennessee and Florida are on track for fall. Missouri is for now, but a judge blocked a new map in Alabama , and in South Carolina, a handful of Republicans in the state Senate made good on their promise to be weak little weenies and block any new map there for now. In South Carolina, the governor in the lower house wanted the new map in place for fall, but a few Republicans in the Senate joined with South Carolina Democrats and blocked that maneuver. This is another state that only has one blue congressional district in it, and the seat is held by James Clyburn, who Democrats venerate as someone wonderful and powerful and oh you have to kiss James Clyburn's ring every time you go to South Carolina. Whatever. He should lose his seat like any other illegally protected congressman, but a few pathetic South Carolina Republicans don't want to do it yet. They're saying, well, let's put a new map in place for 2028 or 2030, but not this year. And their one argument is at least defensible. South Carolina has their primary in June, just a few weeks from now, so a new map really would be more immediately upsetting in that state. Then in Alabama, we might have the most interesting case of the week because a three member federal court blocked Alabama's new map from being put into effect, even though the Supreme Court ruling basically was about Alabama's map and the justices said it should be put in place. Folks, Alabama is one of those southern states that were specifically mentioned and argued over at the Supreme Court level. It was specifically a state in which the Supreme Court just said you need to change your map because it's racist. And yet here comes a three judge federal panel saying you can't change your map. That's infuriating all sorts of Republicans and conservatives as it should. But the more accurate decision by those judges would be this. They say they're rejecting a map that Alabama Republicans drew years ago and basically admitted it they were drawing it with a racial element included. Well, what was actually included in the rare exceptions that the US Supreme Court just put in their decision as they made this ruling . Maps are still illegal if they're drawn based on race or have a racial consideration attached to them. And so this is what these judges in Alabama were hanging their decision on this week. You've already admitted you drew this new map with some racial intent or some racial motivation. It's still a racist map. Judges did. So a lot of people are asking how can a federal court block Alabama from putting a new map in place when the Supreme Court just ruled that Alabama has to put a new map in place because their current map is racist? Well, they can because they can say you need a new map, but you can't use this map. You've already spilled the beans and admitted you drew this map with racial motivations. Get it? So that's what's going on in Alabama. We don't know what mad sc ramble this is going to lead to next in that state, but this is all part of the dance. And it's part of the reason that I said most of these new maps aren't realistically going to be ready for fall. One bit of coverage says that Alabama's attorney general, Steve Marshall, said he was disappointed but not at all surprised by the ruling and said the state would appeal to the Supreme Court. He said no this, in my mind it's not a matter of whether we win this case, only when. I agree with that . This new map that they submitted would have had one black majority district and six white majority districts. And the judges said the plan was unconstitutional and directed the state to use a previous approved map that had two black opportunity districts or black majority districts. So if nothing else changes, Alabama for fall would be back to a prior court approved map that has two black Democrat districts and five Republican districts. And moving forward, these Alabama Republicans can do what Tennessee and a few other red states are already doing. They can rework things so that there are no zero districts that include a majority of Democrat voters. That's what the Supreme Court ruling allows for . No racially protected districts. All right, that doesn't mean there's got to be at least one Democrat district either, obviously. It gives Alabama Republicans the freedom to carve up those two remaining Democrat districts any way they'd like to and dilute those voters with some Republican voters in neighboring areas. That's how all these other states have done it on both sides of the aisle. My point is this. this This could mean a net pickup of two more Republican seats in twenty twenty eight and beyond in Alabama, if the Republicans there do this right, and they erase those two blue districts without ever mentioning race. The Supreme Court ruling basically states you can't be motivated by race or racial considerations. Okay, fine. Then my advice to Alabama Republicans is don't even mention race when you redraw yet another set of maps. Don't be so foolish as to mit uh, you know, uh a skeeter and me, we was thinking about those black voters in mobile on this part of it. No, you dope. Just redraw the map based on Democrat versus Republican voters, regardless of skin color. Then your new map is perfectly defensible, perfectly constitutional. And that's what will happen, I'm sure. Just not in time for fall, I'm guessing. Oh, and I got a kick out of this moment this week. Rabid lefty pretending to be a reporter, Kirsten Welker, asking Vice President Vance if Trump's agenda is so popular . Why do you guys gotta cheat the maps? His response, I thought, was near perfect. President Trump's agenda is so popular. Well, first of all, Kristen, you have to ask yourself, why have Democrats gerrymanded their states aggressively over the past 10 to 20 years? If you look, for example, at the popular vote in a lot of these states and Massachusetts, where thirty-two percent of the residents of Massachusetts voted for Republicans, zero Republican Federal representatives. So we're not trying to sort of all we're doing, frankly, is trying to make the situation a little bit more fair on a national scale. The Democrats have gerrymandered their states really aggressively. We think there are opportunities to push back against that, and that's really all we're doing. In all of those New England states, Hawaii, etcetera, in every one of those states, at least four in ten voters never are never represented in Congress by someone they voted for. Ever. Just think about that. The elections come and go, year in, year out, and at least forty percent of the people in Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island never ever see someone they voted for win and go to Washington, DC to represent them or speak for them. How is that at all fair ? And since this has been going on for decades and decades in about half of the blue states, why shouldn't Republicans do the same? Play the same game? Folks, as much as anything, these two Trump administrations have been the only time in my lifetime that we've actually had Republican leaders decide we are going to play by the same rules the Democrats want to play by, and that is what's fair. For the entire forty years I've been watching politics closely, it has always been the Republicans and their leaders who have wanted to be fair, play by the election and campaign laws, play by the rules. We want to win, yes, but we want to win fairly. And it's always been the Democrats just doing anything to win. A wayny to cheat , any way to have an advantage. For conservatives and Republicans, it's always been take the higher road. Don't even try to push back on and demand fairness until Trump. Now, finally, for the first time in my lifetime, I feel like the elected officials and party officials are finally saying on the Republican side, we refuse to be Pollyanna's and Democrat doormats anymore. If they are going to relentlessly rig the game in their favor, we have no choice but to try to rig the game in our favor. We are going to try to stop what they are doing and even use some of their own rules against them. And that's what these extreme gerrymanders and the red states are. They are people on our side of the political aisle finally saying, Fine, you want to play this game where you won't allow a single Republican to be sent to Washington to represent your state. All right, we'll play that game too. I now want to pivot to a related topic. How much joy it gives me and should give all of us on the right to see longtime nasty House Democrats being shoved out of their districts and or defeated in primaries. Everyone talked about the Ken Paxton win over John Cornyn in Texas in that Senate race. Fewer news outlets talked about the two longtime Democrats in Texas who lost their House seats for twenty twenty seven because they lost in new primaries. Fantastic. One of the two that was simply put out of a job is the perpetual ass hat Al Green. This is the old clown with the cane at the State of the Union address who's yelling idiocies at the president. This is the same guy who files bogus impeachment proceedings against Trump about every two weeks in the House . That clown, who always looks dirty and deranged to me, because he is, he lost a primary on Tuesday. He was forced to run in a different district because Texas's new congressional map erased his district and he lost . Another woman named Julie Johnson did as well. They lost their attempts to simply take over someone else's district because theirs is gone. Good riddance to them. In fact, come on, how can you not giggle at the list of long time goofs and slime bags who finally will not be part of our Congress next year? Have you seen the list? In twenty twenty seven, for the first time in many decades, Nancy Pelosi will not be in Congress. Allelujah. Jerry Nad ler will not be in Congress. Alleluia. Nor will clowns like Eric Swalwell or Jasmine Crockett or Al Green. Wonderful. On the Republican side, for the first time in many of our lifetimes, Mitch For the skills that he didn't have. He was great at playing defense and blocking nearly everything Obama and Biden wanted to force onto the country legislatively. He really was. But Mitch was terrible at offense. Never went on offense. And by the way, so far John Foon is only slightly better. He's not exactly covering himself in offensive glory either. But Mitch was a great parliamentarian and a tactician when it came to insider baseball, and his real legacy, of course, is going to be the t taste of their own medicine that he gave Democrats by ending the filibuster for Supreme Court justices and federal judges. This was after Harry Reid and the Democrats demanded to end the filibuster for every other federal appointment. Mitch said at the time, you will rue the day that you try to cheat in your own favor here, Democrats, and they did. He made them pay. He did by stacking the federal courts with a new wave of conservative judges, and by playing a brilliant game of stacking the Supreme Court with a new wave of younger, more conservative justices. That is Mitch's legacy. And if you think about it, you really have to give Mitch his due. Every one of the great, constitutionally correct and, constitutionally conservative rulings that we've been getting out of the Supreme Court since Trump's first term, and will continue to get into the future, they will all be Mitch McConnell's legacy. Folks, Mitch McConnell's work finally overturned Roe v. Wade. Yes, Donald Trump wanted to put conservatives on the Supreme Court, but it was Mitch McConnell who really decided he was going to focus on this like a laser beam. He was going to get it done because these implications Mitch McConnell's work finally overturned Roe v. Wade, finally ended wild regulatory overreaches in Washington, D.C., finally just the spring ended racial gerrymandering and the rigged game that Democrats had set up for themselves with it over decades . Every solid pro America pro constitution decision and constitutional correction that we're going to get out of this Supreme Court mov