transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Now, on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor & Company.

Speaker 2:
[00:10] It's 5.07 Thursday morning, 23rd day of April, and just like that, a Virginia court has stepped in and put a temporary injunction blocking the implementation of the constitutional amendment that would have changed the districts for Congress in Virginia. It's not done, it'll go to the state Supreme Court that was discussed yesterday with Ken Cuccinelli, but already a court has blocked this because, well, it was just illegal. We'll get into all of that momentarily. Also at 7.05, Matt Schlapp of CPAC will join us. At 8.05, Katie McFarland, and then at 8.35, Representative Rich McCormick. He's got a sort of solution of sorts on the whole Northern Virginia situation and how Virginia votes. He thinks the federal government could take Northern Virginia back. Retrocede and as he puts it, make DC square again. Why not? We need another fight on our hands. We're here for it. All that coming up, thankfully, I'm not here alone. Thank God. I've got Bethany Mandel. Mom Wars podcast. Mom Wars sub stack.

Speaker 3:
[01:18] The Mom Wars. Speaking of the Mom Wars, a new episode of the Mom Wars came out yesterday and I interviewed Congresswoman Elise Stefanik.

Speaker 2:
[01:25] This is huge news.

Speaker 3:
[01:26] Yeah, it is huge news. It was a really great episode.

Speaker 2:
[01:29] Absolutely. I love that. I saw the notification because of course, I'm a subscriber, but I have not listened to it and I will. I absolutely will. You're well, Bethany?

Speaker 3:
[01:40] You know, I am. Thank you for asking. We went through a little bit of a trial. One of my kids had his tonsils out, so it's been a very long week, but I think we're on the other side of it. Great.

Speaker 2:
[01:52] I'm a little scratchy. I'm, this is my, we've mentioned at the beginning of the week that this is going to be a very long week because every night there is a late night event in Washington, DC because many interests gather and sort of do things, events and social things because of the White House Correspondents Dinner. And last night was a very specific event for Town Hall, which is the website I'm the editor for, the news set I'm the editor for. And so it was a late night, late night, a lot of talking, a lot of socializing, a lot of networking, lots of good stuff. Sean Spicer says hi, by the way.

Speaker 3:
[02:24] Oh, Sean Spicer. It is discriminatory against morning show talk hosts to do parties at night. I have become such an old lady. I, by 8.30, I'm ready to go to sleep and all of our listeners who are listening to this live, as opposed to on the podcast, are laughing along with me because we are all old people.

Speaker 2:
[02:46] But no, we are responsible, diligent, hardworking people. I refuse to accept being an old man or old lady. Thank you very much. Let's just leave it at that.

Speaker 3:
[02:56] I am a much more productive human. I used to be much more of a late night owl, and now obviously, I'm awake at four in the morning, and so here I am, and I get so much more done. I love this new schedule.

Speaker 2:
[03:10] Yesterday afternoon, a Virginia judge blocked the state referendum that's narrowly passed on Tuesday by about a point and a half or two points. It came out of Tazewell Circuit Court. The order blocked the referendum after repeatedly deeming the vote and the resolution for the referendum unconstitutional. This, of course, will set up a Virginia State Supreme Court challenge, but the language here was unambiguous. Multiple counts, the court declared that the HJR 6007 is void because it violated House Joint Resolution 428 and House Joint Resolution 60001, and any action taken thereon is an invalid expansion of the General Assembly's call to the governor for the 2024 special session. That was count one that Ken Cuccinelli laid out yesterday, that the special session was called under false pretenses and against state statute. Also declared that it was void because it violated the Virginia Constitution as there has not been an ensuing general election of the House of Delegates, and such ensuing general election cannot occur until 2027. It also declared a void because Virginia Code was not complied with. The votes on the proposed constitutional amendment taken during the 2026 regular session of the General Assembly, ineffective as being a second vote of the General Assembly under Virginia Constitution. But the most damning language came here. It declared that HB. 1384 violates the submission clause of Virginia Constitution, Article 12, because the ballot language proposed submits to the voters a flagrantly misleading question to the voters and because the ballot language did not accurately describe the proposed amendment as was passed by the General Assembly. Now, Kucin always said yesterday in the program, we had him for half an hour, that although that is the most flagrant violation of the law, the language that was used and the deception involved, he doesn't think that's actually going to be enough to single-handedly make this unconstitutional. He said, oh yeah, it's against the statute to put such flagrantly misleading and deceptive language in the ballot referendum, but they might still get away with it because that's just how politicians roll. But all the other things with regard to the General Assembly notification and all the provisions, those were obviously violated. We'll see if the state Supreme Court steps up and actually follows the law.

Speaker 3:
[05:39] If you read the actual language on the ballot, it was incredibly misleading. It's honestly, it's a relief for the court to just recognize that, even if the Supreme Court doesn't do the right thing, and they punt on this issue. The fact that a court has at least acknowledged, this ballot initiative was bonkers. The whole thing was bonkers. It's, you know, at least it's validating, if I'm looking for silver linings here.

Speaker 2:
[06:09] I've got proof positive that the language was misleading and purposeful. I saw a campaign sign from the Southern portion of the Virginia downstate. It had a picture of Donald Trump, not in some sort of mean, menacing way. It was Donald Trump smiling like, you know, I'm Donald Trump and I endorse this message. And the sign merely said, vote yes, stop rigged elections with a smiling picture of Donald Trump. And if you are a Trump supporter and you believe that some elections have been rigged and you read the language of the referendum, it sounds like this is right up your alley. If you think that, you know, the 2020 election was rigged, if you think, you know, again, if you're not a deeply informed and well read voter, you would think that this is a Republican endorsed, Trump endorsed idea that this will finally stop rigged elections in Virginia. And Donald Trump wrote the language himself, vote yes, when in fact the opposite is true.

Speaker 3:
[07:16] Yeah, I mean, it's not just the language of the bill, but it's also the insane way that it was that this map was drawn, the fact that it's like a tentacle that reaches out. It was drawn to disenfranchise millions of Virginians. That was the whole purpose of it. And it's funny from the people who have spent years yelling, no kings, no kings, no kings. They are actually comfortable with kings as long as they live in the vicinity of Washington, DC. But only some of them. Only some kings.

Speaker 2:
[07:55] We love our kings.

Speaker 3:
[07:56] Yes, yes.

Speaker 2:
[07:59] Jay Jones, the Attorney General, you know the guy who texts his friends about fantasizing about Republicans' children being killed. He said yesterday, Virginia voters have spoken and an activist judge should not have veto power over the people's vote. We look forward to defending the outcome of last night's election in court, an activist judge having veto power over that. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like Democrats love employing lawfare and finding a single judge to overturn the will of the people on a regular basis. Ken Cuccinelli, as I mentioned, we had on the program, he commented on this and tweeted quite a bit, giving his commentary. We'll tell you what he had to say about this judge's decision and what the odds are that the Supreme Court will do the right thing. That's coming up in a moment. Yeah, Ken Cuccinelli, former Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia and our guest on the program for a good half hour yesterday sort of laid out what he believed was going to happen and he was right on all accounts. I just didn't expect it to happen later that day. This was very quick and for the first time in a long time Republicans seemed to be poised and ready and have their legal act together. Usually they don't right after an election when something has gone wrong, but in this case they did. The judge declared for multiple reasons that this was unconstitutional and inappropriate. Ab initio. Are you teaching Latin to your children in your home school yet?

Speaker 3:
[09:26] I am, but that one's beyond me.

Speaker 2:
[09:27] From the beginning. This was wrong from the beginning. For instance, when the special session was convened two weeks before the governor's election in November or late October and early November 2024, it was obviously a political dirty trick to try to get Winsome Sears off the campaign trail because she had to preside over that session while Abigail Spanberger could just campaign, campaign. What a marvelous campaigner she is too. So that was partly just an obnoxious dirty trick by Democrats in Richmond. But also they notified the governor that they were requesting a special session for budget purposes. But then once the special session was called, they, and that's a limited scope. Okay, you want to come in and talk about the budget? Come on in and talk about the budget. Then during the session, they expanded the session to include a constitutional amendment on redistricting. The judge said, well, based on Virginia law, that would require a two-thirds vote of the assembly to expand the session and the purpose of the session, and that vote never occurred. He said, so this makes it void ab initio from the beginning. That's just the start of what they did wrong here. He went on to lay out, he did this late, late, late Tuesday night after the election, Ken Cuccinelli laid it all out and basically everything showed up in this court in this judge's decision yesterday. But he said, the Supreme Court will have the final decision in this, not the Supreme Court of the United States, mind you, the Virginia State Supreme Court. I have to be honest with you, I have no idea what the current makeup of Virginia State Supreme Court is. Maybe we should have asked Glenn Yonkin that, hey, who would you put on the court while you were there? I don't know how many nominations he had while he was there.

Speaker 3:
[11:16] Yes. I'm reading a little bit into Ken Cuccinelli's tweet on this. Remember folks, Skova is not SCOTUS.

Speaker 2:
[11:25] Yes.

Speaker 3:
[11:26] I think that he's setting some expectations on what the Supreme Court of Virginia is going to do here. I hope I'm wrong. But the language of the ballot initiative, let me just read the question because the whole premise of this is the fact that the key statute on this is that the ballot initiative was written in plain English. So let me just read you what it was. Question, should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia's standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 Census? First of all, I don't think that's plain English. I don't think it's clear. But then that verbiage, restore fairness in the upcoming elections, it's really carrying a lot of water. It's doing a lot of work there. And it doesn't accurately explain what they're trying to do here. Because what they're actually trying to do is say, we want to give more votes to people who live in near Washington, DC. And I don't know how you phrase that in a way that is clear and also appealing.

Speaker 2:
[12:44] Yeah. Good point. The current makeup of the Virginia Supreme Court is seven justices. They serve 12-year terms, by the way. They're elected by a majority vote in both chambers. And because of the nature, they're not appointed by the governor. Because of the nature of how the Supreme Court justices are determined and voted on, it has not been seen over the years as an overtly political or ideological body of individuals. I can tell you that roughly five to six of those justices on the Supreme Court were elected when Republicans controlled or at least held significant power in the General Assembly. But one was just elected under Democrat-controlled Junius P. Fulton III. Boy, if that's not a character in a novel from the...

Speaker 3:
[13:37] Is that a real name?

Speaker 2:
[13:38] That Junius P. Fulton III, he was just put on the Supreme Court on January 1st of this year. The others were elected...

Speaker 3:
[13:46] Are we being mean for making fun of that name?

Speaker 2:
[13:49] I'm not being fun of it.

Speaker 4:
[13:51] I'm relishing it.

Speaker 2:
[13:52] I'm celebrating it.

Speaker 3:
[13:54] There's a Sandra Boynton book where the main character is... Oh, God. But it sounds the same as a Sandra Boynton board book that I've read to my children 3,000 times. Anyway, sorry.

Speaker 2:
[14:09] It's fine. They haven't had an overtly political or ideologically fueled decision in recent years that they have had to make, but most observers assume that they lean a bit to the right just because a majority of those justices were elected under Republican control. But this is Virginia. And also these are judges. You can never necessarily hang your hat on. And I think you're right. I think when Cuccinelli says, remember, this is the Virginia Supreme Court, not the United States Supreme Court, I think really just what he's saying is don't think that anything is an ideological slam dunk just because of what we know about these justices and the confirmation process. We shall see. We shall see. I think it's up in the air. And based on our interview with Cuccinelli yesterday, he thinks it's sort of like, yeah, it could go either way. It could go either way.

Speaker 3:
[15:02] Do we have any timeline on this?

Speaker 2:
[15:05] Well it's got to be done before the primaries because all those candidates who are running in these districts sort of need to know what district they're running in. And the primaries are set for August. So look for it to be fast-tracked. It's kind of a big deal. Speaking of which, John Roberts, you might want to move that old Voting Rights Act decision along for the Southern states. We have an election to take place this year. It's 524.

Speaker 1:
[15:28] Now on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor & Company.

Speaker 2:
[15:40] It's 537. Thursday morning, the 23rd day of April. We continue our journey through a active news cycle here. Post-Virginia election, we've got more discussion about where this is headed. And the Supreme Court showdown in the state of Virginia coming up later in the program, will kick things off at 705 with Matt Schlapp, who is a Virginian, represents CPEC in the American Conservative Union, and he is spitting mad about this. Also at 805, KT McCarlin, latest on whether there would be negotiations to end the conflict in Iran, and also about the revelation that we had a resignation of the Secretary of the Navy yesterday. Kong Cao, Deputy Secretary, friend of this program, is now acting Secretary of the Navy. Can I get anything out of that?

Speaker 3:
[16:26] I was thinking that also. I was thinking, what kind of perks can we ask for?

Speaker 2:
[16:33] When you know the Secretary of Navy, you should be able to get something out of that, I think. Like a ship named after me or something, right? Can we do that?

Speaker 3:
[16:40] No, that's too big of an ask. I think like a joy ride for our families on the 4th of July.

Speaker 2:
[16:46] Now you're talking. Okay.

Speaker 3:
[16:48] Let's do it.

Speaker 2:
[16:48] Let's do it. Oh, on one of the ships commemorating the 250th up in New York Harbor, maybe?

Speaker 3:
[16:56] Yeah, let's do that.

Speaker 2:
[16:58] Maybe just an extra liberty for my daughter. Maybe I should think a little smaller and more personal. And by the way, I don't know, Hunkow, now acting secretary of the Navy, I don't think he talks about it too much, but his son is a Naval Academy midshipman. He graduates this year. And I've gotten to know him pretty well here with my time in Annapolis as a sponsor. He's not one of my sponsor kids, but he came over to one of the events that we had with some of our sponsors. He's just a great, great kid. And we'll be joining the fleet coming up in May, getting his commission. Imagine being Hongkou right now, acting Secretary of the Navy with your son about to get his commission. I think he's commissioning to the Marines. I'm not sure. Amazing. Just an amazing story, an amazing guy.

Speaker 3:
[17:47] We'll never forget interviewing him during the primary years ago now. That's right. We hung up with him and I looked at you in studio and I said, that guy is going places. I don't know if he's going to win the primary. I don't think he did. Did he win the primary? He did.

Speaker 2:
[18:04] He won the primary, but he didn't defeat Tim Kaine in the Senate.

Speaker 3:
[18:09] I looked at you and I said, that is not the last we will hear of that fellow. Here we are.

Speaker 2:
[18:14] Congrats to Hung Kau. Good stuff. Sorry, I went on a tangent there and neglected to tell you the congressman Rich McCormick will also be joining us at 835 to talk about his proposal to make DC square again. All you Northern Virginians could be DC residents again. That's actually a real thing. I just don't know if Trump wants to stay. Trump's got a lot of fights on his hands. I don't know if the president wants to add that to the list, but why not? Southern Poverty Law Center, as we mentioned yesterday, there was a stunning announcement on Tuesday by the acting attorney general and the FBI director that a grand jury has handed down 11 indictments. Basically, let me summarize it. Elon Musk tweeted out this meme. You know the meme of Mad Men, the character in Mad Men, standing there with a whiteboard and he's making a pitch, right? He's pitching an idea. And the idea pitch has the Southern Poverty Law Center on the whiteboard behind him, and it says, we pay people to be racist so we can fight racism. That's, in a nutshell, exactly what the SPLC is accused of doing. Except add to that that they don't just fight racism, or so they claim, while they're actually funding the very racism. But they make hundreds of millions of dollars in donation from vulnerable and misled people who think that when they donate, they're actually going to fight the Klan. Little did they know that a portion of their donation actually paid Klansmen to do Klan-y things.

Speaker 3:
[19:45] It's not an insignificant amount of money either. One of my favorite responses, and I'm actually curious to hear your take on it, was Daniel Goldman. He's a congressman from New York, former lead counsel of the Trump impeachment. He's very proud of that fact. He tweeted, the DOJ uses paid informants all the time. Why is it okay for them to do it but not the SPLC? What do you think about that?

Speaker 2:
[20:17] Well, there are a lot of good answers to that. I think the very first and most important one is, SPLC is not a federal law enforcement agency with congressional oversight and constitutional empowerment to actually enforce the law. What do you, how are you comparing the FBI to the SPLC other than you can refer to both agencies by their initials? At that point, the similarity ends. It's an outrageous and ridiculous comparison.

Speaker 3:
[20:46] They paid the leader of the American Nazi Party, who is also a former KKK member and the Aryan Nations Director. So this is the top. This is the head guy, the head honcho. Seventy K while they also listed him on their website. I can understand paying underlings to be informants for the folks at the top. But this is the honcho. This is the big man, the big cheese at the top. What benefit is they're paying him? Because he's leading the ship. That argument falls apart when you realize who they're actually paying.

Speaker 2:
[21:24] Well, and again, I just want to be clear. This is a partisan activist group. This is not law enforcement. This is not some organization that is beholden to the Fourth Amendment or the Fifth Amendment, or any other kinds of self-incrimination and search and seizure. Why are we encouraging and supporting and rationalizing, Congressman Daniel Goldman, a private political entity to spy and conspire and basically pay people to commit crimes? That's what he's saying. To what end? When the FBI does that, the theoretical end is that it will then result in an arrest and a dismantling of the criminal organization. There's no evidence that the SPLC, by paying these people, did anything to actually stop their behavior and dismantle the organizations. If anything, they kept perpetuating it. Daniel Goldman is either stupid or completely deceptive. I open the possibility that it could be both.

Speaker 3:
[22:31] So FBI Director Patel Cash, or I'm sorry, Cash Patel, who I have been assured is drunk all the time by the Atlantic. But unfortunately for them, he was doing his job, and this was one of the important things that he's done. He went on Fox and talked about the charges that they filed, and I think he put it really well.

Speaker 2:
[22:55] Well, hold your thought. We'll actually hear him say it himself from his own mouth, but you're going to have to wait for it just a couple of minutes. Hold tight. It's 544.

Speaker 4:
[23:04] Money doesn't lie. The charity that supposedly fought the Klan funded the Klan. The charity that supposedly fought neo-Nazis funded neo-Nazis. The Southern Poverty Law Center ran a methodical, calculated scheme to defraud their donor base of $3 million and lied to them and used an illicit banking structure system to create shell companies to hide their money and who it was being sent to specifically for the reason so discord and hate into our society. This is the ultimate definition of hypocrisy. And if you look at the indictment produced by the Department of Justice and the FBI, you will see that these banking institutions tie directly the funding mechanisms in which the Southern Poverty Law Center used to fund at least eight hate groups they supposedly wanted to take out, but they were paying the very villains of our society they supposedly wanted to protect us from. That's the ultimate hypocrisy.

Speaker 2:
[24:02] That's Cash Patel, as you were referencing there, and he lays it out pretty well. They were supposed to be fighting neo-Nazis and they were funding neo-Nazis. It doesn't get any richer than that.

Speaker 3:
[24:12] The purpose of what they're doing was to sow discord and hate in our society. They don't want to put themselves out of business. They don't actually want the hate to disappear. They want it to grow so that they can fundraise off of it.

Speaker 2:
[24:30] That's right. Last night, Cassie Smedley made a good comparison to the human rights campaign and it's a perfect example because these entities exist. They raise hundreds of millions of dollars. Everybody gets a fat paycheck. And so the worst thing that could happen for them is that they actually win their fight that they were supposedly created to do. So if there are no more Klansmen and no more neo-Nazis, SPLC is out of the fighting clan and neo-Nazi business. So they actually ended up funding the very thing that they claimed that they were fighting. Human rights campaign, they were formed for one purpose and one purpose only, to get gay marriage. Once you had the Obergefell decision that enshrined same sex marriage, at least for now, through a Supreme Court decision, what are they going to do next? Well, now they continue to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. But now it's about pumping sex change hormones into 10-year-olds and radically mutilating their genitals so that they can change their sex, which of course we can't do. And now they're engaged in that fight and that's become their new litmus test. All right. So CNN took up this story and listen to how they reported it because they even kind of concede the facts of this case, but they just can't quit the Southern Poverty Law Center. Listen.

Speaker 5:
[25:42] What these charges allege is that over the course of years, the SPLC paid, according to the Justice Department, as much as $3 million, paying informants to infiltrate some of these groups, including the KKK, including far-right groups, for instance, the group that did the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. What the Justice Department says is that constitutes bank fraud, wire fraud, money laundering. And look, I'm not sure how well this case holds up, but what it tells you a lot about is really the bigger story of the Justice Department. Todd Blanche, the acting Attorney General, is under pressure to bring some of the cases to appease the president and his allies. And so you're seeing a lot of activity on things like this.

Speaker 2:
[26:32] This is the legal analysis. The bigger story here, the bigger story, he claims, is that the Justice Department is just doing this to appease President Trump. Here's the really inconvenient fact that they left out. This investigation began during the Biden administration.

Speaker 3:
[26:48] But they were a little too busy investigating Moms for Liberty for being domestic terrorists. So it kind of took a back burner to that investigation.

Speaker 2:
[26:57] Yeah, exactly. May I just do a way back machine? It's not too far in the past. It's only about four months ago. But the reason it's relevant here is because it's your congressman, Bethany Mandel, congressman Jamie Raskin, just four months ago in Congress during a hearing. Take a listen to this.

Speaker 6:
[27:16] Now, in other times, Democrats and Republicans alike would rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center to help us keep track of the movements of violent white supremacy in the country.

Speaker 2:
[27:29] Yeah, it was another time. It was another time, all right. It was the 40s and the 50s and the 60s. And that organization has now been warped out of existence. But Jamie Raskin there in a hearing, he went on and on, just sort of dying on the hill of SPLC. We need them. We need them. They're so important. They're so vital. Yeah, he's on the wrong side of this one. I want to leave you with this. I mentioned it yesterday and I got a little passionate about it right around this time of day, actually, if I remember right, about how the real evil here is not just SPLC funding the very hate that they claimed that they were stopping and defrauding good-natured and I think, you know, probably a bunch of older boomer liberal hippies who were Birkenstocks and remember the good old days when they were fighting for civil rights. They defrauded them out of their money without telling them that they were in fact going to funnel a lot of that money to the very hate groups that they claim to oppose. But there's more to this. As I mentioned yesterday, the Family Research Council shooting that happened here in DC, the mass shooter who tried to kill as many people who worked at an organization who had basically two main goals to ensure that marriage was between one man and one woman and to make sure that babies after conceived had a chance to live all the way through birth. Because of that, they were put on a hate list by the Southern Poverty Law Center and that hate list became basically a kill list for a crazed assassin. Knowing that, listen to this man speaking just a year ago about the SPLC, Charlie Kirk, knowing what happened to Charlie Kirk and why it happened to Charlie Kirk, listen to him talk about the SPLC and what they did to his organization, Turning Point USA.

Speaker 7:
[29:09] They're literally putting high school chapters of ours on a hate group next to the KKK and next to neo-Nazi groups. And I mean, we can laugh this off. There's an element to this. Remember that there was a shooter that went to the Family Research Council years ago, inspired by the SPLC list. This is them trying to make us basically surrender at Turning Point USA. We're going to do the opposite and our students are only going to lean and even more. But they can't debate us on our ideas. They cannot have dialogue. They cannot actually go on to the merits of why they are right or why we might be wrong. Instead, they must smear us with the age old one liner that you are a racist or that you are a hater and they're finally realizing the power of Turning Point USA, which is why they put us on this list.

Speaker 6:
[29:51] Well, when you're effective, you're a threat.

Speaker 2:
[29:56] Charlie Kirk would not back down as you just heard and he kept fighting the Southern Poverty Law Center. And four months after he said what you just heard, he was dead with a bullet wound to the throat by a man who hated him because of his beliefs. But Southern Poverty Law Center is not just a criminal organization, they're an evil organization for what they've done to Americans and how they poisoned our minds and divided us. It's 554.