The Glenn Beck Program - Best of the Program | Guests: Andrew McCarthy & Salena Zito | 4/29/24

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

Pat Gray joins Glenn and Stu to discuss America's various yearly protests over the past few years. National Review contributing editor Andrew McCarthy joins to discuss the arguments heard before the Supreme Court over President Trump's presidential immunity case. New York Post columnist Salena Zito joins to review Biden's lawsuit against a hometown favorite gas station in Pennsylvania and its potential consequences. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's never too early to plan your summer story in Europe with WestJet, from rolling countryside to cobblestone streets. Begin your next chapter. Book your seat at westjet.com or call your travel agent. WestJet, where your story takes off. Well, in a time where it's super, super special, where Ford Motor Company comes out and says that they're losing $130,000, I'm sorry, $130,000 on every EV they build.

I don't think we're in I don't think we're in trouble at all Of course, you know, the White House Correspondence Dinner happened this weekend And it was Oh, it was Well, I don't know, because I didn't watch it And we're not going to talk about it

Although Sophia Bush, the actress that nobody knows And nobody cares about, has come out as queer At the White House Correspondence Dinner, which is, Well, I don't really care Because I don't really know who she is, But I'm glad that's part of

a, you know, part of the news today. Iraq has now passed, you know, kind of a, well, a death penalty, you know, if you're gay. So, so you got that going for you there. Hey, hey, hey, ho, ho, Palestinians, go go. And speaking of that, we do about probably 30, 40 minutes on what, some would say, the, I don't know, mental institution that is our college campus grounds. We're going to see some of the exciting things that they're doing, including calling for that caliphate and the death of all Jews,

which is, you know, always everybody's super favorite that kind of, you know, it might be something that you look at and go, gee, I wonder, is there something to be concerned about with this group of people? No, uh-uh. And Russell Brand. Russell Brand was baptized, became a Christian over the weekend. All this and so much more on today's podcast. My family and I, we are preparing.

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You're listening to. The best of the blend. I don't know about you, but when I hear a la Akbar, I think God is great. And that's why he'll destroy that other imposter that's saying kill people. And anyway, how are you? Welcome to the program. We're glad you're here. Pat Gray joins us, fresh off a student protest.

How was the weekends due? Or Pat? Oh, was protest-tastic. Oh, really? Yeah. Was it? Protest-tastic. Really?

Yeah, really was. Which one did you choose to protest at? I went to the one at Harvard. At Harvard? Yeah. Oh, did you race the flag? Mm-hmm. I helped.

Yeah, I helped. Lower the American flag first. Yeah. Which had to be taken out of the way and then raise the Palestinian flag. Amen. Yeah. It's a beautiful moment for all of us. What about the flag for tolerance?

Well, all those colors and, like, the, it was the rainbow, but then they've changed into like 943 colors and directions and diagonal lines. Did you get that one? Yeah, we got that one too. Yeah. Which is interesting because in the Gaza Strip, you know, those people would be killed. And so it's great that they support the Palestinian cause anyway. I love that.

Very, very tolerant. Selfless. Yeah. Very selfless. Very selfless. So, you know, I was looking at the trend here on the summers. And there's something here that I don't know if anybody else is caught. I mean, in 2017 in the summer, you know, we still had the women's march going on.

That was 2017. All, you know, that was the big protest that year. Then the march for our lives, which was against guns in the, in 2018, 2019 became very busy because you had Greta, you know, very upset about how dare you? And the climate change and everything else. And so she got a bunch of people to block traffic and throw social. soup at really expensive paintings, which I think, you know, it really turned me. I was like, I don't know if I trust this, you know, little puny pipsqueak. And then she will, like, you know, we've got to destroy paintings. Yeah. And the soup. And I thought, okay. Then the, oh, by the way,

that year also we had, we set Portland on fire. I think we set Minneapolis on fire. Chaz was built in Seattle. How's that doing now? Up in Seattle. Well, I don't even want to ask. I'm sure it's doing well. Then in 2020, we had the COVID protests, which couldn't be done because of COVID. It was really, it was wrong. But if you happen to want to march with BLM and loot some stores, you know what I'm saying, then it was okay. Then it was okay. 21, we had the masks vaccines.

22, it starts to slow down. Strangely, after Joe Biden is elected, it kind of, you know, the mask and the vaccines and nobody really pays attention. Then 22, you know, the Putin stooge. You know, if you're for, if you're, if you're not willing to send all of your money, all of your money over to Ukraine, you love Putin. Then 23, last summer was kind of a yawn fest, which I think it was kind of like, hey, let's just take a break because we got a big, big summer coming up.

And if our guy loses, we're going to have to just keep upping the ante every, every summer. So this year is the summer of global jihad. So that's great. Next summer, I'm not sure, but I think it's the summer of Satan's neat marches, which will display the rainbow flag, but it won't look exactly the same. It's exactly the same, except it's all black. And like the caliphate flag, you know, but that has right whiting on it,

or white riding. So, you know, all the diverse colors, even the white stuff just fades right directly to to black. So Satan is neat coming next summer. Make sure you prepare your kids in college. I was thinking of the, the t-shirt we made a while ago that's just says, learn-then protest. The order is important. And I feel like it really applies today.

It seems more relevant than ever right now, doesn't it? Are you saying that big fat dummies? Yeah. Yeah. Kind of saying that. Big fat dummies. Learn then-protest.com, by the way, if you want to get the shirt.

Because it's something you could wear to the protests because I don't think they know what the order is. No, they don't. They're at least doing one of the things. They're protesting. There's no evidence that they're learning, but they should know that the steps are clear. You need to learn about the topic you're protesting.

And then you go to the protest. Well, you saw the... They have the receipts on learning, okay? They have the receipts. $90,000 a year. And they're learning. They're learning a lot. You saw the girls interviewed last week.

week, right, at some of those protests where they're asked, why are you here? What about the Palestinian situation has, you know, motivated you to get out and speak on their behalf? And none of them knew. Not one of them understood why they were there. In fact, they said, yeah, I'm not that educated on it. Then why are you standing there with a placard? Why? They don't know. They have no idea. So, yeah, I think it's really important. Learn, then protest.

It would be nice. It would be a nice change. I think it would solve a lot of these problems. And again, you guys were, I know one over by the soup on the paintings. Myself, I like to at least miss one flight. I want to be on a road on the way to the airport. And I want to miss that flight. And then I think, wow, the galsons.

are the good guys in this. Yeah, because there was people laying in the roadway? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I love that. That convinces me. Oh, every time. I've talked about this for decades because of the protests in Houston. The dumped garbage

in intersections. Man, that won me over to the janitors downtown in their plate. I wanted them to make a thousand dollars an hour after they dumped garbage in my way. I loved it. I loved it. So it's weird because I didn't see all those protesters. I just noticed, I was near campus this weekend. I just noticed how many speed bumps

they put on the roads all around the campus. So I didn't see the dying at all. Anyway, by the way, there is Marianne Allwan. This is a very sad, tragic story. This is from AP. Merriam Alwan, she figured the worst was over when the New York City police in riot gear, mind you, arrested her on the Columbia University campus and then loaded her and others onto the bus and held them in custody for hours, hours. But the next evening, yeah, she thought it was over, but it wasn't. The next evening, she received a Kurt email from the university, and I'm talking Kurt. Is she and other students, it said were being suspended for their arrests at the Gaza Solidarity encampment. And this is a tactic that a lot of colleges are using now.

You know, they're just saying, hey, we want you out of here. And so now the student's rights to protest for these things. And there's faculty that are standing with the protesters, and they're like, hey, they shouldn't be forced out of school. What do you mean you're going to suspend them? And the terms of the suspension vary from campus to campus at Columbia. and its affiliated Bernard College for Women. Alwan and dozens more were arrested

on April 18th, barred from campus and classes, unable to attend in person or virtually and banned from the dining halls. I mean, where are you going to eat? I mean, it's practically a food desert there in Manhattan. Questions about her academic future remains.

Will she be allowed to take final exams? What about financial aid? Graduation? Columbia says the outcomes will be decided at disciplinary hearings. And she and her attorney said, this is very dystopian. I mean, all we were calling for was chanting was death to the Jews. And now we can't, now they suddenly don't want us on campus. That's weird.

Huh? That's weird. That is weird. You would think we would tolerate death to Jews' chance, wouldn't you? At a major American university, you would, in fact, you'd welcome it, right? Because when we said never again, we didn't mean never again. We meant until 2024. Yeah, never get until now.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. An attorney for the Palestinian Legal Fund, which is, gosh, I'd love to know who set this all up for them. But they're helping groups all over college campuses, and they filed a civil suit, a civil rights case against the school, accusing Columbia of not doing enough to really address the discrimination against the Palestinian students. Yeah. They're the victims. There are the victims.

Amen. And the level of punishment, according to the attorney, is not even just draconian, okay? It's like over the, I love attorneys that say, it's like, it's like over the top callousness. Is that worse than draconian? Because it seems like draconians worse than that. Yeah. I mean, draconian. Callousness?

Think about what the word callousness means. Like you have calluses on your hand. Right. Well, okay. Yeah. Yeah. It's that bad. So it's the, wow.

That's bad. Yeah. It's bad. It's not, it's not good. No, that's not. Drakonian. What is? It just conjures up.

I don't know. That's about Dracula. Dracula's not even real. Calluses are real. That's true. Yeah. And the only real Dracula is count Chocula, which he produces incredibly delicious cereal. No, seriously.

Right. Which is not a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all. So Draconian is a positive word. It means chocolate. Well, thank you. Definition. Chocolat.

Right. Palestinian legal filed a complication. at the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights. Oh, it's going to be fixed there. The four pro-Palestinian students and the student group of Columbia students for justice in Palestine are the real victims. The group calls for an investigation into the university's handling of alleged discrimination and harassment against pro-Palestinian students by Columbia students. As a Palestinian student, I've been harassed, docs shouted down and discriminated against by my fellow. students and professors simply because of my identity and my commitment to

advocating for my own rights and freedoms and of course taking over the campus illegally and pitching a tent there and then just causing mayhem on campus and enchanting death to the Jews but other than that they're just wanting their own civil rights they've done nothing wrong nothing that's wonderful can we hit on this doxing thing that they keep complaining about like this big complain that all these protests are upset because people are coming. They're taking pictures of them. They're on video. And the doxing they're talking about is potentially leaking the fact that they were at these protests where the Jews were being threatened that might be leaked to future employers.

And that is, of course, very, very wrong. This, by the way, coming from this same group of people that after the Charlottesville rally went through every frame of video to try to identify every person who was there. And I will remind you the story of Cole White. Cole White, a guy who went to the Charlottesville protest and then was tracked across the country and eventually pressured his employer for him to be fired. Is this the hot dog guy? He worked at a hot dog stand. They got a man fired from a hot dog stand because he went to, I don't know if the hot dogs were racist or not.

I'm not 100% sure on that. But now these people who are going to go get jobs as lawyers and doctors and all these other things, they are worried about them not being able to get employment after they freaking got a guy fired from a hot dog stand. I have no sympathy for you whatsoever. I mean, you know, it is a double whammy with him. He not only was a Nazi, but his last name also was white. Oh, yeah. And, you know, that's always a problem.

Too much, too much. too much. This is the best of the Glenn Beck program. Annie McCarthy, a National Review contributing editor, the Institute's senior fellow, and a former chief assistant U.S. Attorney General. We won't hold this against him. He was a former U.S. attorney in the district of Manhattan, so let's leave that alone. Andy, how are you? Good. I'm doing great. How are you? Very, very good. So let's start with the big story, I think, and that is the Supreme Court and what they were arguing last week, can you give me your honest take on what this is really about for the future beyond Donald Trump and how you think this is going

to affect what is happening with Donald Trump? Glenn, I think it's important that you frame the question that way because it seemed to me, and I reread the transcript over the weekend after. listening to the oral argument, the court is a lot more concerned about the presidency than about Trump. Sure, it should be. Yeah, and it's an important point to make because a lot of the coverage has been this hysteria over whether, you know, the Trump-packed Supreme Court is in the tank forum and they're

going to get rid of Jack Smith's prosecution. I don't think that's going to happen at all. It's possible that Smith won't get his case to trial, depending on what the court does. What I think the court's going to do is send the case back to Judge Chuckin, who is the trial judge in Washington, with instructions to sort out what things in the indictment against Trump are what you would call official acts that might arguably be immune from prosecution because they go to the core responsibilities of the presidency. and what are private acts or private wrongs that he would not have immunity for, even though they happened during his presidency.

But the upshot of the questioning of the lawyers, including Trump's lawyer, and this is particularly by Justice Barrett and Justice Kagan, Trump's lawyer admitted that there's a lot of conduct charged in the indictment that is private conduct. that really wouldn't be covered by an immunity claim, even though Trump's been saying a lot of stuff about absolute, complete immunity. And I think the concessions he made in the argument, that is John Sauer, Trump's lawyer, would be enough. If Smith was willing to tailor his indictment down to the things that Sauer conceded, they could go ahead with a trial on just those acts. He'd lose a lot of evidence, but he probably should.

So what are some of the acts that could fall under, you know, private and so you could prosecute? And what are the acts that are the president and you don't prosecute? Yeah. So the one bright line we can take away from this is that there seems to be consensus that there is a, a divide between office seeking and the carrying out of the duties of an office. So if something is purely in the nature of trying to get reelected, that's deemed to be private because it's not part of the duties of the presidency. It would be the same for anyone who was seeking office, whether that person was an incumbent or not. And then there are other things that are clearly

presidential. So just to give some solid examples that came out of the argument, Trump's lawyer conceded that if Trump made a private scheme with private lawyers to get slates of electors designated for him and to supply documents to the Congress suggesting that they were the authentic actual slate of electors designated by a state, that would be private conduct because it's purely office-seeking, and he carried it out only with private lawyers. On the other hand, there's an allegation in the indictment that Trump tried to use the Justice Department to signal to states that there were serious concerns about fraud

and considered both removing the attorney general when he got pushback and considered sending a letter that they never sent from the Justice Department to the state of Georgia to tell them that they needed to do more scrutiny over what happened in the popular election. Trump argues very strongly, and I think the court will probably go along with this, that that is the president's control over the Justice Department is purely a presidential act that you have no part in a criminal prosecution. So those are the kinds of things that the court is talking about sorting out. But Andy, didn't when Trump sat another group of

electors or tried to, that's what the friends of Ders did. I don't remember all of the attorneys in the 2000 election. That's what they were recommending to be. done. You have to do that, or you have no case. Yeah. Let me just be clear, Glenn. They're not saying that Trump wouldn't have a defense at trial. What we're talking about now is purely immunity. That is could he prevent the trial from happening in the first place? I think that there's significant defenses to the fraudulent electors claim, beginning with the fact that the electors themselves didn't think they were fraudulent, they thought they were contingent. They thought that basically they were sitting in as the

slate of electors in the event that Trump prevailed either in the state courts or with the state legislature to throw out the popular election, then that would activate. But they weren't trying to fool anyone into saying that they were the actual electors that had been certified by the states. can he get a fair trial on that if if indeed he has to go to court well i think it's tough for him to get a fair trial in washington why isn't why can't someone make the case here why can't his people make the case that you can't get a fair trial with the jury pool in new york or in Washington, D.C. I think Trump's

problem is he's too famous. In some ways, I mean, the problem is that unlike almost any other defendant, he goes into, you know, one of the things that they can always say about him is he's the most famous guy in the world and no matter where you had the case,

you would have the same pretrial publicity problems. And they kind of reject out of hand the thought that because a jurisdiction votes substantially against Trump as a political matter that that means they can't be fair to him as a legal matter. You know, you can debate that all you want about whether that's a sensible distinction to draw or not, but it is the distinction the courts draw.

Okay, so what do you think is coming down the pike on this? I think on the... Go ahead. Yeah, I think that they will send the case back to Judge Trump. Chuck in with instructions to go through the indictment and figure out what's a public act and what's a private act. If Smith wants to fight on that, then he's never going to get to trial prior to Election Day, which of course is his big aim, because this would still be a live immunity claim.

And immunity is one of the few things that you can actually appeal pre-trial. So I don't see how he would get to trial. But I do think Smith, if he wants to, and if it's that important to him to get to trial quickly, he could say, you know what, I'm going to dispense with all of the acts that you say are immunized official presidential acts and we'll just go to trial on the private stuff. It would be a weaker case for him, but it wouldn't be an unwinnable case. And what is the punishment? Well, that's an interesting question because that may depend on another Supreme Court case this term, the one that they argued a week before on the obstruction statute that's key to Trump's case. That obstruction statute has a 20-year penalty, and it's the two main counts in the indictment against Trump.

The other two counts only have, I think, five-year penalties. So if the Supreme Court says that it rejects the way the Justice Department has been using the obstruction statute, which it might, then that would require probably a big overhaul of Smith's case because those charges are very important to him. But if the court upholds that statute, which it also might, then you're looking at a potential of, you know, 40 years imprisonment. Now, he won't get 40 years, but statutorily, there would be availability of 40 years. imprisonment on those charges, and I think 10 on the other two. The other two are fraud on the United States and the civil rights charge. So he'd be looking at, you know, statutorily 50 years imprisonment, which would indicate under the sentencing guidelines that he would get, I would think, you know, four, five, six years of a sentence if he gets convicted on those charges.

unbelievable. You know, last week the Biden administration was making the case, well, Donald Trump's the only one that's ever broken the law. That's why we've never had this before. That's such crap and we all know it. Why haven't we had this problem before? I think a lot of the criminal, the potentially prosecutable criminal conduct has come up late in presidential terms. Like, for example, with Clinton, the pardon scandal, happened as he was going out the door. And I was in the Justice Department at the time. There was over a year of pretty intense debate within the Justice Department about whether he ought to be charged with bribery or not in connection with those pardons. But I think there's always been, maybe this has changed now, but there's always been a current of like when a new administration comes in, particularly if it's a new administration of a different party, they don't want to revisit what happened with the last guy.

They want to just go ahead on their own stuff. You know, this old idea of, you know, we're looking forward, we're not looking back. And I think that that certainly had a lot to do with why the Bush Justice Department didn't prosecute Clinton. And I think with Obama, there was a lot of rhetoric during the 2008 campaign about war crimes against Bush and all that stuff. But when they got into power, they not only went. weren't interested in prosecuting anyone on war crimes. I mean, they reopened the CIA investigation, but then they closed it. But they actually ended up adopting a lot of Bush-Cheney counterterrorism. So, you know, I think there's a lot of rhetorical campaign stuff about how, you know, lock her up and

we're going to put these guys in jail, but it doesn't come to pass. I actually think Trump is serious about it this time because he sees what they've done to him. And that's why I thought it was amusing in the Supreme Court argument for the government lawyers to get up and say, you know, you don't have to worry about this. This is just sui generous with Trump. It'll never happen again. And in the meantime, Trump is ahead in the polls and he's running as the retribution candidate. He's promising if he gets in, he's going to do this stuff, right? So it's an amazing time to be alive, right? You're streaming, the best of the Glenn Beck podcast. To hear more of this interview, find the full

episode wherever you get podcasts. Selina Zito, welcome to the program. How are you? Hi, good morning, sunshine. How are you? I'm good. So you're, you were out on the road with Joe Biden and Donald Trump and things couldn't be more different for the two, but you were in Pennsylvania. And the week that Donald Trump came into, I think it was a chick-fil-a, he just said chick-fil-a on me for everybody and it was a really cool gesture then a few days later joe biden did something and take us through what what he did not only there at the restaurant but the next day so just so trump was actually in atlanta when he went to chic-frey however the next day he

was in pennsylvania in the lehigh valley now i just want to explain why lehigh valley is important is a working class area. It's a swing district. It's also a heavily Hispanic district. And we've noticed how Hispanics have moved to become more conservative. Anyways, to the point, there were 42,000 people there. 42,000. That's a lot of people in the Lehigh Valley for a Republican.

I think that's important to note. And it's in the middle of what I call the middle somewhere, but where most people call the middle of nowhere. And that is also important because there is, an intuition, whether you like Trump or not, there's been a very good intuition is to show up in places that people don't expect you to. And earning votes. Now, let's contrast to that to what Biden did. He went to very three, very specific, safe areas where he knows he's going to win the vote.

There is not going to be a rally. These are elected people and sort of party people that come to all. of these events in Scranton and Philadelphia. In Pittsburgh, it was union leaders. Now remember, that's very different than rank and file. And so these events were very orchestrated, very minimally attended. And what was really fascinating to me was that he had a message about something and Wall Street people. I don't know. I mean, that's not the people. I don't even know. Like I looked at, I watched his message. I'm like, I don't, I don't know why.

Did nobody tell you that people are not upset about Wall Street people, but they really, really upset about inflation? And then he goes to Pittsburgh. And I saw the most extraordinary thing. There were two sets of protesters outside, a robust level of protesters. On one side were like independent and Republican voters saying, hey, hey, ho. Ho, Bidenomics has to go. They were singing at the same time with pro-Hamas people, not together, but they were using

the chant at the same time who were saying, hey, hey, ho, ho, genocide Joe's got to go. My brain was scrambled by that. But Biden made the safe bet. He went to the places where he thinks he needs to bring his base back. Trump went to places where he needs to earn new voters. And that's the difference between the two of them in Pennsylvania. And I think in a state that's registration, Democratic registration has dropped dramatically from 2020, where it was 600,000 advantage over Republicans, Democrats to now 389,000 Republicans.

Holy cow. Democrats still have the advantage. but there's a whole heck of a lot of people. Holy cow, that's a lot of people to lose. So go ahead. Well, I think what's important, Glenn, to pay attention to, people are looking for this big moment, right? In particular politicians and strategists,

this big moment that's going to change everything. I believe as the way that it is going, it is tiny little cuts that are hurting my people. It is the closing, oh, my God, it was so heartbreaking watching that Weirton, West Virginia steel plant that has been around for 120 years closed down on Friday. And you say, oh, West Virginia, who cares? Well, guess what? People from Ohio, that's at the panhandle. People from Ohio and Pennsylvania work there.

And it was closed down because of its care because the Biden administration refused. I'm going to, I might mix this up with another pair. problem. But anyways, it didn't give American steel and even playing seal. So they had a close. And so it's that kind of tiny little cut. It is the pausing of the liquid natural gas, which doesn't just impact people in the industry or even people that are downstream of it, like barbershops and machine shops and hotels and so forth. It also impacts farmers. Why? People don't think about this, but farmers are profoundly impacted by the liquid natural gas being paused because they have leases on their land. Oftentimes with natural gas facilities on their extractions on their land.

Oftentimes, these leases are what keep these farms going. So I think it's really important. And then there's 45B. It is the IRS tax code only implemented in Pennsylvania or impacting Pennsylvania that is going to keep us from getting that big hydrogen plant that he came to the state, that Biden came to the state to brag about, losing billions of dollars and thousands of jobs. So these are the tiny and then sheets. I mean, why do you go after sheets?

People don't know who sheet, what sheets is. That is a belt of gas stations, kind of like Buckees is in the south. It's beloved. It's just good service, et cetera, et cetera. And this is where he bought the sandwiches for the workers. On Friday, he goes, no, on a Thursday, he goes in and buys a bunch of sandwiches. It's clear he's never been in a sheet or a gas station. and the next day, the administration,

shoes, sheep. Forget this. Enforcing criminal black background checks on all of their employees. Why? Because they said it's racist. Which, by the way, I think if I were a minority, I'd be highly insulted that you think, you know, no minority can pass a criminal background check.

It's just insulting. Not only did he pull that out as a race card. He has now retracted his war on menthol cigarettes because he is afraid that's going to hurt his black base because I guess all black people smoke are menthol cigarettes. And so, you know, I'll kill you, you know, over time. But I just need your vote this time around. It's just astounding. So what is your gut tell you, and I know we're a long way away, but they seem so confident, so confident. What does your gut tell you that is coming?

Because I cannot believe that still there's 42 percent of the country that says, yeah, I'm for Joe Biden. Well, you know, there are people that will always vote Democrat. They just will. I think they were called Yellow Dog Democrats. Democrats in the South. No, Yellow Dog Democrats in the South. And that's the preference. It always will be. And then there are others who just cannot abide Trump's comportment. However, you are seeing people that have left him in 2020 and post-2020 that are coming back

because people decide on their lives and their livelihoods and their communities and their communities. Those are the things that impact them. They look at the pocketbook. They look around in their lives. And I feel as though I am reliving 2016 all over again. 2020 did not feel this way. I don't know if you remember having me on. I was hesitant to say that Trump would win. And much of that had to do with COVID and how and all the things that surrounded COVID. But there were millions of things that impacted it. And also that September 29th debate wasn't his best moment. And a lot of people had voted right after that, early voting.

So I think that this, 2024 is much more similar to 2016. It feels very much that is something that is Trump's to lose. What remains to be his most important asset is his understanding that he needs to earn votes. Okay. Do you remember years ago, Billy Joel had that song Allentown. Right? And everyone across the country sang the song with earnest and heart. Not because they loved Allentown, but because they saw their city in that song.

They saw themselves reflected that loss. of community and jobs. Trump intuitively understands that while he is in Harlem campaigning or at a construction site campaigning, he isn't just campaigning in those places. He is campaigning with a backdrop of a reflection of what a thousand different cities look like across the country. And he intuitively understands that. And it's interesting to me that he makes those kinds of of choices and Biden makes the choices that he has that doesn't earn him new votes. He is quite brilliant at sensing the pulse and knowing it. And I'm so glad because I really, I think your opinion matters so much because you don't, you're not hanging out with experts.

You're hanging out with people in the rural areas. And so you just have a better sense. And I'm so glad to hear that you say this is feeling more like 2016 than 20, So, Selena, everybody is concerned about the theft of an election, and the best thing we can do is shore that up. So whoever wins, we know we can trust the election. How are you doing in Pennsylvania on this? Pretty well. Shapiro, Governor Josh Shapiro, Democrat, they've done a good job of clearing out the voter rolls, meaning the dead people. and also it's done on a county by county effort.

This is a general mix of Democrat, county executives and Republicans, or like a three-person commissioner. And they've all done a fairly nonpartisan good job. Republicans, by the way, this is really kind of funny. So in October, Governor Shapiro made it easier to change your voter registration or to register to vote by doing it when you get your new driver's license or you renew your driver's license. And I thought it was pretty funny that Republicans, some Republicans, like, flipped out and said, this is going to get more Democrats. Well, there are 55,000 new Republicans within the first month of that law being enacted. So I think right now it is, while the Democrats still hold a majority in the state, Republicans have been doing a robust effort, not just on a grassroots level.

You see them everywhere. But you also have seen that on their own, they're doing it on their own. own. They go to change the driver's license picture and they're like, oh, I can change my voter registration or I can vote register to vote if they're a young person. So for one in a blue moon, the Republicans have actually done a good job of taking advantage of all the technology, but also the enthusiasm that is on their back. If you had to, and I wouldn't hold you to this because it's so far away. But if it were being held today, how would it end? In Pennsylvania, right now, I mean, it's super close. It's going to be super close. However,

I would at this moment give the edge to Trump because of the small tax. The tiny little cuts that I've been talking about, the LNG pause, the 45V, the closing of the steel mill, the sheets, these tiny little things. And inflation, inflation is the biggest thing in this state. Costs are soaring, and they haven't stopped, and they're insulted when everyone tells you, the economy is fine. Look, it's not 2008.

2008, the issue was jobs. We have jobs. It's not the job. Some people are working a lot of jobs because they can't afford basic costs. Selena, thank you so much. We'll talk again. God bless. Selena Zito, you can find her at salinasito.com. SelinaZito.com. She is, I mean, she really has her finger on the polls, especially in Pennsylvania where she is from and spends a lot of her time. But she's listening to people. And that's the one thing that I feel like our government doesn't do anymore.

They don't listen to people, you know. We used to say, I don't want a president that is, you know, going by the polls. I don't know. It would be nice once in a while if he would just open up the windows of the White House to hear the chance all around the White House of the protesters, you know, because they don't seem to be listening to us.