From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Why The GOP Lost Gen Z

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

On this episode, Sean and Rachel sit down to discuss their trip to Florida for the Patriot Awards, some theories why the Republican Party may have underperformed during the 2022 Midterm Elections, and Fox News Senior Meteorologist and host of the Janice Dean Podcast, Janice Dean stops by to say hello.   Later, Rachel and Sean are joined by their daughter and author at the Federalist Evita Duffy, to break down an article she wrote where she shares her belief as to why the GOP is missing the mark when it comes to Gen Z voters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Hey, everyone. Welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my partner for the podcast, my partner in life, and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy.

Thank you, Sean. I'd love to say it's so great to be around our kitchen table, but we're not today. We're not. We're not. We are in Hollywood, Florida. That's right. We're at the Hard Rock Cafe, Hard Rock Hotel. I was going to say Hard Rock Cafe, Hard Rock Hotel.

And tomorrow is the Patriot Awards. So we came in today. We just landed. We just landed. We came right up to our hotel room where, by the way, we ran into so many fun people on our way up there. It was so awesome. It's kind of like we ran into so many colleagues.

We ran into Will trying to find the elevator. And then we ran into our producers. And we ran into Jimmy Fallon. And then we ran into, who else did we run into? I can't even remember. There's so many people. There's so many people. And then so many people that are going to be watching the show.

So many fans of Fox. The number of people that were on the plane coming down for the Patriot Awards and then the number of people at the hotel. It's just this cool energy that's going on for the Patriot Awards tomorrow. You were here last year. I didn't go. I told you. I said, I never want to come to another Patriot Awards without you.

And so here you are. So here I am. By the way, I get on the plane and who's sitting next to me? Not Sean Duffy. No. By the way, Rachel sits in first class and Sean sits at the back of the plane. So Rachel's in first class with who? Steve Ducey. Steve Ducey, right? We sat together.

They were drinking wine, laughing as my knees were up to my chin. They were not. I got an exit row actually. So it wasn't too bad. Steve Ducey likes a Chardonnay on the flight. He's a Chardonnay kind of guy. So anyway, it's been really fun. It's so fun running into everybody. And some people still, you know, as happy as this occasion are, some people still reeling from the midterm elections and it not being the red wave that everyone thought it

could and should be. And so we talked about this last week, kind of the philosophy behind what happened. I've digested now for over a week what happened. I'm going to give you my brief theory. I'll give you mine and then we're going to bring in our daughter who's going to give us her theory, which might trump all of ours. It may. No pun intended. No pun intended. Last night, Donald Trump announcing. So here's, so I, again, I've talked about the number of factors that I think happened in the election, but I think in hindsight, Democrats were really effective in driving

fear into their voter base. And we talked about this last week, but the fear comes from, you have semi-fascist Republicans. Abortion is on the ticket. Paul Pelosi was attacked by a radical MAGA Republican who, by the way, flies a BLM flag and is a nudist, right? And seems to know him. Seems to know Paul, per the body camera from law enforcement. And so I do think that fear driver for the Democrat base really motivated them. And especially when you look at-

So they got out their base. They got out their base. And you also look at single- So we got out our base too, Sean. But single women came out in droves for Democrats at, I mean, almost uncompetable numbers. And I think that was an abortion issue. Yeah. And then Republicans lost significantly in the 18 to 29 year olds which is gen z the gen z phase and i think is is that the

you know free student loan debt relief loan forgiveness was an abortion but those if you look at those two groups democrats crushed it with them and again there could have been some republican complacency right you could have been some Republican complacency, right? You could have been complacent and go, oh, the red wave is coming. I don't have to go vote. And Democrats thought they were fighting for their lives and all went to the polls. And there is a factor that it's easier if you have, you know, a month or two months to get all your voters to the polls and bus them in and, you know. Harvest their ballots. That's right. And a lot of Republicans voted on election day.

And if things go wrong on election day, you have to bank all your votes that day. And so if machines go down in Arizona and the lines are really long, people might just go home. And when you have races that are that close, and we're seeing right now, the House hasn't even been called yet. If they're that close, I mean, every vote counts. And so that could have been a factor as well. So that's my take on the election. What was yours? Mine is indoctrination works.

Indoctrination works. And so, yeah, we lost Gen Z. And I think that the Democrats, the liberals, the progressives have been in a very long game of indoctrinating our kids. And we focus a lot on the schools, and we're right to focus on the schools but i think there's another component that's sort of a silent player in this election and that is big tech and we saw we saw in a very direct way like how they suppress the hunter biden laptop you know so big tech and the media and the fbi all colluded together to change that election but people aren't really thinking about how big tech alters algorithms so that conservative messages are turned down, Democrat messages are turned up. And then on top of all that, you have the fact that in school, if you are the average American

kid who goes through high school and college, you virtually never hear a conservative case being made. It's always the case against conservatism, as crazy as whatever. The Marxist case is made in schools. Yeah, the Marxist case is made. So I believe that indoctrination works. It works in every single fascist, tyrannical regime you've ever seen. And it's working here. We just don't see it.

We can't, I don't get to see, I was hoping when Elon Musk, Sean took over Twitter, that we would get to finally see the algorithms that were going, working there. And, and, and by the way, the emails as well, be colluding between the, um, yeah, we're live Janice Dean is, is walking by right now. We're trying to break down the election and like here's Janice Dean. Nothing to say about it. Flowing by. She said it's a sunny day. She's like it's Florida and it's sunny.

You guys talk about the election. I'll do the weather. We should. we need to have that's a great idea come say hi to our this so this this was we both rachel and i made the everybody it's janice dean from the dean's list that rachel made the dean's list and and when when rachel came home and made the dean's list first she was like i made the dean's list and i was like I made the Dean's List and I was like then Janice asked me to do the Dean's List and I made it as well I'm like that's the first time Sean's ever made the Dean's List

I've never made the Dean's List either but I did make it to Congress both of you were amazing guests I was honored to have both of you and I've gotten really good feedback too. You know,

Pete, not so much. Rachel, really good. Sean, yeah. Well, group us together

when you rate us. Not just me but myself. So next time, both of you have to come to make the Dean's List. And then you have to come to the kitchen table. Of course I will.

I love it. Am I going to come to New Jersey? Yes. Can I ask you a quick question? We just talked about we're at the Patriot Awards. We just flew in. How's the weather going to be?

It's going to be fabulous here. It is? Yeah. I mean, close to 80 degrees and sunny all the time. That's what I'm talking about. Right? It's always sunny when Janice is around. Oh, I love you both.

Okay, next time there has to be another microphone so I can sit down with both of you. Absolutely. We're going to do that. We're going to do that. How long are you doing this for just for another maybe 15 20 minutes and then you're gonna hit the casino i'm gonna hit the food and then the casino well rachel might go to bed i might go to the casino do you guys have beverages when you do the show only water janice this is a non-alcoholic podcast. We're going to do a special alcohol version. With Janice.

It will be the best podcast ever. Or the worst. It'll get rowdier and rowdier as the day goes on. You're the best. Thank you. So as Janice said, it's sunny and 80 degrees in Florida right now. So good call. So now we are taking a picture with Janice. and you'll see she has a beautiful dress on like this is like a sunny dress herself for the weather which i know

well i did i wore a winner's jacket i had a flannel shirt on because the planes are so cold janice the weather can be warm but the planes are cold cold and i cold. So I bundle up. Do you still wear the flannel? Of course, absolutely. That's a real deal. I just took it off. I just had the flannel on, Janice. That's why we need drinks for this podcast. All right.

That is... It's on the kitchen table with drinks. Yes. That is Janice Dean doing a flyby on the kitchen table. Thank you, Janice. That was awesome. I'm going to go back to the conversation to your point. So I think if you table. Thank you, Janice. That was awesome. Can I make, I'm going to go back to the conversation on, to your point. So I think if you listen to our podcast, you're like, how could anybody be affected by big

tech turning information up or turning information down because you're a high information voter? There's a lot of Americans who are really low information voters. And if you turn those dials up when they're searching for information about who they should vote for, that has a real impact, which is why it can move tens of millions of people. So that's actually a good point. So that's a factor.

Look, every Republican thinks there's been shenanigans as well. And we can talk about that on a different show. But we have a daughter who brought up a point and she wrote a fantastic article about it in the federalist that i think brought up some amazing um insight into what could have happened that we're seeing so many people here it's hard to concentrate we're walking people walking by we're waving hi it's so crazy okay well i'm gonna give i want to

come back to this because you know our daughter wrote an article that i thought you know deserved attention not just because she's my daughter because i think she makes a really important well one that we didn't think of well yeah you're right we didn't think about it this way of course we didn't think about it in terms of how it affected the election and i think she's right so the name of the article is dems Abuse Gen Z with COVID Lunacy and GOP Campaigns Ignored It. So let's bring in Evita Duffy. Evita? Welcome to From Your Kitchen Table. Hi.

Happy to be here. Sorry you can't be in Hollywood, Florida with us, Emma. Yeah, you guys moved and left me in Wisconsin and it's very cold here. It's snowing right now. It's 80 and sunny here in Hollywood, Florida. My heart's in Wisconsin, though's very cold here. It's snowing right now. It's 80 and sunny here in Hollywood, Florida. My heart's in Wisconsin though. Sorry. I know. Daddy's heart's always going to be in Wisconsin. So I read your article and I thought it was a very interesting take that I really hadn't thought about, but you know, when you lay it out, it made a lot of sense to me. So

for our listeners, kind of talk about your theory on COVID and kids in the election. And how Gen Z, as you pointed out, Sean, was a big factor in this. Yes. Yeah. So Gen Z was huge, played a huge role in this election. I think Democrats might be overstating it a little bit. I mean, there's been a lot of gushing over young voters, but they definitely played a key role in a lot of really important states, particularly in Pennsylvania, actually. And what's important to know about the youth vote is that

there's a Democrat machine on college campuses. It's, I mean, they have their door knocking candidates to visit campuses. They have, they have consultants teaching candidates how to use social media, especially TikTok to really reach young voters in sort of unique and interesting ways. Republicans, on the flip side, had no strategy for how to handle young voters. I mean, they literally didn't completely ignore them. I mean, did Republicans have a chance at winning Gen Z? I think the answer is probably no. But did they have a chance to shrink that gap? I mean, it Republicans have a chance at winning Gen Z? I think the answer is probably no. But did they have a chance to, you know, shrink that gap?

I mean, it was a massive, I mean, they won by a 28 point margin over Republicans. So could Republicans have closed that a little bit? I think they could have. And it could have been really key in this cycle because covid really was torture for so many young people yeah so they had covid mandates i should say so i mean this is like i mean the democrat machine on college campuses is something that's always been there right republicans always suffer with with young voters but there was something special about this election cycle. And that was that for two years, over two years, Democrats tortured Gen Z with their

COVID mandates. I mean, if you're 18 or 19, you were in high school at the beginning, you were sent home your senior or junior year of high school. That's really hard. Then you come to college. There's no college experience. Kids were sent home. They had remote learning.

Once they were in person, they had to wear masks. They weren't allowed to visit each other in dorm rooms. They had vaccine mandates for healthy students. Now we know that some of those vaccines actually injured students. Some of them had heart issues, had impacts on women's menstrual cycles. And these were issues that I think if a lot of kids had the genuine choice, do you want to take menstrual cycles. I mean, and these were issues that I think a lot of kids had the genuine choice. Do you want to take the vaccine? Do you not? Most of them would have said, no, I'm healthy. I've already had COVID. I don't want to take the vaccine. But the schools

said, essentially, if you don't take the vaccine, we will put your registration on hold. We'll turn off your campus Wi-Fi. In some cases, they even expelled students. I mean, your whole education was on the line. You couldn't enter your dorms. You couldn't enter your dorm. Nope. I mean, it was real communism on college campuses. Nobody suffered the COVID tyranny more, I think, than Gen Z did.

Evita, can you explain to people how? Because there are people who haven't been on campus in 20, 30 years. We used keys back in the day. Yeah, we used actual keys to get into our dorm room. So explain these really creepy kind of Chinese-style tracking apps that were able to control students who didn't follow the rules. Or even key cards. And the key cards, yeah. So explain how that worked. Yeah, right.

Or even key cards. And the key cards, yes. Explain how that works. Right. So your key card, the university has the ability to turn it off and on whenever they want. And your card will get you into a residence hall. It will get you into a library. It will get you into any classroom building. So if they say, if you're an unvaccinated student, you haven't gone to your weekly testing, shut off your card.

a student, you haven't tested every, you haven't gone to your weekly testing, shut off your card. If you are, if you, you know, have refused to get the vaccine, haven't gotten an exemption, they can turn it off. I mean, you're literally not able to enter buildings. They threw students out of housing. My school didn't have a tracking app, but UW-Madison did. And it's a lot of students reported that when they would gather in, so they had had they had an app on their phone that said it was like a COVID-19 university app when students would be gathering in large groups their campus officials would come and break them up and the suspicion was that they were they were doing it because they could use these tracking apps that they were requiring students to download on their phone now this is this is I mean this is is something that I were not we're not sure about. We're not sure how they were exactly how they were using the phones, how they were data collecting.

But there was a lot of talk about it on Reddit and on social media, and all of them seriously disappeared during COVID. So right. That's it. That's it's an interesting story. Not not verified, but everything else that I've said is 100% happened. It happened to me. And it was terrible. And I think what we have to like, a lot of times we look at what happened on college campuses during COVID and we say, look at these sheep, these college students who stand up for themselves.

The 60s liberals would never have done this. And to an extent, I agree with that. But I also think we can't underestimate the social credit system that exists now that didn't exist back then. Students are in extreme fear that they will jeopardize their relationships with their friends, job opportunities, their reputation, if they didn't obey these COVID rules. And so they did. We'll have more of this conversation after this. Breaking news coming in from Bet365, where every nail-biting overtime win,

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But I thought, tell me if I'm wrong, I thought all these little Gen Zers are little commies that are all enforcing the rules on each other and loved to be masked up, loved to be isolated. Loved the vaccine. So would have that messaging, if you talked about the freedom that was taken away from this generation, would have that worked, especially when the social pressure is not there in the voting booth, you get a vote, you know, it's a secure vote. It's a silent vote. It's with no one watching

you over your shoulder. Right. So this is, so it's interesting that you say that. What I believe is that there is a very loud minority of students who during COVID would turn in their friends, were masked police, loved the vaccine, got every single booster. Those definitely existed. And they're loud. There's a silent majority, I believe, who on campus were just afraid. I mean, they were literally just I mean mean, they didn't want to accept the consequences of standing up for themselves. And so they said, you know what, I'm just going to get through this. I'm going to graduate, get my degree, get my job and be done with this. And it was really frustrating for the rest of, for people like me who were, you know,

upset about this. Like, why aren't, like the people would come up to me and talk to me about how annoyed they were in private, but in public, they were completely compliant. What Republicans could have done is they could have used social media. They could have messaged via door knocking or pamphlets, anything. I mean, anything would have been better than nothing, which is what they did to remind students that what they went through wasn't normal. I don't think that they understood that what happened is not something that they should have just taken lying down, that there is a party that wants to stand up for their rights, that would never let this happen to them again. And I don't think that Republicans made that clear. I mean, they were actually.

But Avita, I think. Exactly. I was just going to say it. So, first of all, I think the point that you're making is so important. And you know that I go to college campuses and speak with all kinds of groups. And like the one thing I'm just adamant about is reminding everyone, especially those who are younger, that what happened during COVID, shutting down schools, shutting down churches, the government telling you that you couldn't do this, you couldn't move here, that you had to get a vaccine, that you had no bodily autonomy, that there's no such thing as health liberty. I mean, all of these things are not American, are not normal, never happened in the America we knew and grew up in. And that this was just this new, I call it the Chinification of America. I think COVID put that into overdrive. That said,

I don't really believe that the Republican Party was as united as they should have been during COVID. So there were voices like, you know, Senator Ron Paul, Senator Rand Paul, you know. Ron Johnson. Yeah. Ron Johnson and even. I think you said Ron Paul. Oh, did I say Ron Paul? I meant Ron Johnson.

I said Ron Paul and Rand Paul. I'm like. Oh, God. I meant Senator Johnson. Yes. You Paul and Rand Paul. Oh, God. I meant Senator Johnson. Yes. You're welcome. I'm here to help. Or even the congressman who took your place, Congressman Tom Tiffany, another person who stood up for liberty. I mean, there were voices out there, but I don't believe there was a unified message. And if I recall the paper that the Kevin McCarthy and the House majority put forward with all the things they were going to do,

one of the criticisms of that pact that they were going to make with America is that it didn't very overtly criticize what happened during COVID in terms of our liberties and didn't promise to restore every single constitutional liberty that was violated during that time. Yeah. I think that what's actually really interesting to point out about just in general, if you look at what happened during COVID and midterms, the candidates that stood up for people's bodily autonomy and stood up to this COVID regime did well. I mean, they talk a lot about like they talk a lot about COVID. I'm sorry, candidate quality. And they've been blaming Trump for

Republicans doing poorly. And I think, first of all, anybody that tells you that there's one reason Republicans didn't do well in the midterms is lying to you. I think there's a lot of reasons why this happened. But one of the reasons that they're purporting is that we needed more. We needed less loud candidates. We needed less Trumpian candidates. We needed candidates that didn't focus about 2020. This is something that the Daily Wire is pushing a lot. I think Jonah Goldberg and, you know, David French, the sort of the usual suspects. And it's just it's just not true. I think especially if you look at the people who were

strong on COVID, they won their races, especially Ron Johnson, who was incredible. He had a really difficult race. So I think anybody that tries to tell you that this one thing is not being truthful, and we have to really look at it by a case-by-case issue of which candidates were actually doing the right thing, because we know that Kevin McCarthy and McConnell weren't. They didn't have any sort of strategy. So here's what I think is, and this goes to your point, Amita, but it goes to a broader point. So I look at Lee Zeldin, who understood that he's never going to win New York City, but he had to get 30% in New York, if he had New York City, if he had a chance of winning the governor's race. And he played really hard in New York City to try to get to 30%, and he didn't get there.

But he understood that 50% plus one is not winning. 30% is winning, and there's a lot of voters there. What happens is that Republicans think, oh, I'm going to lose this vote, so why am I going to play there? So I'm going to lose the college campus. Why am I going to go talk to college kids? Well, give them a reason to vote for you. Go talk to them. Advertise to them to your point of vita. And you might actually increase your vote by 2%, 4%, 5% with college kids. And in close elections, again, that's really meaningful.

And it's not just college campuses. So when I ran my first congressional race, I had one county, it was Portage County. It's gotten more Republican over time, but it was- Very liberal at the time. Of course. So the average Republican vote was 38%. We played hard in Portage County

and we wanted to get 42%, but we worked hard and I got 42.5% in Portage County. And that was a win. I had to get those votes in that liberal county to make sure i could win and not have to run them to score everywhere else and one of the problems in wisconsin and i go back because i know wisconsin well but in madison where you're at in dane county like republicans got what 22 of the vote got absolutely crushed in dane county and dane county county is a growing. It's kind of very calming. And so Republicans didn't play there. But that's a problem because you got to take that 22% and

get it to 25%. And Republicans are disheartened. They're not messaged to. They might not go to the polls because they're surrounded by all this Marxist liberalism in that community. And so if, and again, we're talking about 5,000, 10,000 votes that are decided in elections, you got to play everywhere. Everywhere you have to have your message. And even places you lose, you have a winning message that can drive your vote up in very liberal areas. But when you don't, in tight races, it makes all the difference. And I think, Evita, you bring up such a good point about how, okay, you might've been disheartened in Dane County. We're going to take, you know, Madison as an example where the University of Madison is, but this is happening across college towns everywhere. But you had an issue that would resonate with a lot of people who

maybe were too afraid to come out and say how angry they were at what happened during COVID or angry about, I mean, we know in our own family, our son, your brother, he didn't get to go to his prom. He didn't get to go have a graduation, a normal graduation ceremony. I mean, there were so many things that people were robbed of during COVID. And so I guess I think you're right, Evita, there was a missed opportunity because there was a unique moment for the Republican Party to stand up for liberty and against this, you know, COVID madness. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't have said it better. writing us writing such a thoughtful piece i think i'm kind of the thought leader after rachel and the family but you kind of crushed us on this one that was a good job um that when mom told me this first that you that you'd written and i'm like i love this article if you haven't read it that's a

really good idea it's i mean we broke it down but there's so much more about it so avita tell everybody where they can find it on social media and otherwise yeah So thefederalist.com. And then it's also up on my Twitter, which is avitaduffy1. Underscore one. Avitaduffy underscore one. And then mom will retweet it too. So you can go to my Twitter as well. It is. It's a great article.

Pull it up. Read it. And again, I think we have to play at every level. And this is a level we didn't play at. So Avita, great job. Very thoughtful. Thank you for joining us at the kitchen table but while we're in uh hollywood florida at the hard rock hotel um we miss you and i'm sorry it's snowing there but it's 80 degrees here he's just rubbing it in you guys totally rubbing it in you guys have a good time thank you vita

bye honey all right listen everybody thank you for joining us at the kitchen table. Rachel and I have to go upstairs and get a buffet, some food. We haven't eaten all day. So we're giving you way too much information. So we're going to go upstairs to eat. We're doing the Patriot Awards tomorrow. And then you're actually doing the Patriot Awards. You're actually, you and Will are joining Pete's.

We're actually getting to be part of it this year. It's amazing. Pete let you guys on stage. Surprisingly, that's pretty nice of him. It is nice of him. Anyway, thank you all for joining us. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe, wherever you get your podcasts.

We would appreciate it. And until tomorrow, listen, we're going to do this live. We're going to have people here, and we're going to have a special guest. It's so special that we actually don't know who it is yet. But we're going to get it because everyone from Fox is here. So we're going to get a great guest tomorrow. So tune here. So we're going to get a great guest tomorrow. And so tune in. So we're not going to tell you who it is. It's going to be a surprise.

We're going to surprise ourselves. So anyway, thank you guys for tuning in and listening to you from the kitchen table. Until tomorrow. Bye-bye. Bye, everybody. Listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast plus subscription and Apple Podcasts and Amazon Prime members can listen to the show ad free on the Amazon music app.

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