Chad Adams Filling in On The Brett Winterble Show

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Good afternoon, folks. Chad Adams here, your guest host, sitting in for the vacationing Brett Winterbill, and we hope he's having a wonderful time here on Charlotte's News Talk Station. And I know it. 107.9 FM, WBT, Charlotte's News, FM News Talk. Now, if you want to get in on the conversation, it's 704-5701079, 5701079. That is also the text line, which I've been watching it, it's been lit up all day. And so Pete, I guess Pete, in the process of telling us not to break things, broke people. I mean, the situation with the AI data centers, the Dillon Rule stuff, he was just stirring it up for you. And doing a fantastic job. He's trying to inject common sense. And I know Pete well enough to know the frustration you feel when you feel like you're having kind of this pedantic argument that this circular, you've discussed it. You've given the facts about it. And people want to drag you back in and say, well, that's not the way it is when it is. it's it's this endless you know you put gasoline in the car it goes no it doesn't well yeah you put gasoline and the engine and the cars working and it goes down there no no you're not taking into account this this this these other issues I mean, the entire issue of the closed loop system, which is what your air conditioning in your car has on data centers, it's maddening that people can't get that. And they also are not getting the fact that these data centers, which, by the way, we've had data centers for a long time. They're just getting bigger and more powerful. than they have been. We've had data centers. And if you went into, I can remember going to see more Johnson Air Force Base back in the 90s when they had these terabyte disk. That was a data center. Things would get hot. Blue Cross Blue Shield had a raised floor for their data because it got so bloody hot in there with all the processing they were doing back in the 90s. So this isn't new. It's just gone much larger and the amount of data that can be handled at 10 times, 100 times, a thousand times the speed. And it's going to get faster and faster and more powerful every day. So to sit here, and put our head in the sand and say, oh, you can't have data center. They're too loud and noisy. Treat them like chicken coops. Nobody wants to live near a chicken or turkey farm. So there are rules that keep them a couple thousand feet away from where you live. Are they noisy? Yeah. Chicken, turkey farms and all, and they smell. Much worse than data centers, by the way. And they use an obscene amount of water. And they use water that isn't cycled back through. They have to use it and then have pipe it into fields. It's a mess. But we have crossed the threshold of big farming with animals that we like to eat. Surely we can do this with AI. It's not the end of the world. And I love people. They've gone from climate change fear to the end of the world as AI fear.

I guess it's Cyberdine, The Terminator, and they'll be back. That kind of stuff. I don't know. I don't get it. I don't get the fear of data centers. And it's commingled with the fear or not fear of AI. And by the way, I don't see it probably the way Pete does. I think that there's equal degree of suspiciousness to tech in general on all sides. Until one side or the other learns that it's really advantageous, they'll both be kind of suspect about it, for lack of a better word. They'll be suspect about it. So, if you want to talk about that, we're welcome to do so. There's also a lot going on. The Southern Poverty Law Center had a hearing today. I don't know if the hearing's over, but certainly there's a lot of great clips from it. Southern Poverty Law has been accused. The indictment says that they've used the money they've received from donors and others. It's kind of the weird thing. If you imagine if you're in Charlotte, I don't want to. hone in too much on what might be truthful. But imagine you've got a group and you're like, you know, there's not enough people paying attention to us saying that there are race problems in downtown Charlotte. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to take some money that you guys give us and then we're going to give it to people that will go out and act really racist and commit things and cause problems so that we can then say we have a race problem and use that to raise more money. It's kind of the reverse of a pyramid scheme from a fundraising standpoint. You're creating the problem you say you're there to solve. That's the accusation against the Southern Poverty Law Center. And the hearing is absolutely hysterical. The Charlotte Observer has given them cover for decades. I mean, the Reverend William Barber would regularly trot them out and see, we've got to stock all these hate groups out there. And he would go into Raleigh and the News and Observer and the Charlotte Observer the same. I know. If you follow them, they're both the same. But they have given groups like this cover. And now it turns out that there's a great deal of evidence to suggest that these people paid people to be agitators. They would pay the Ku Klux Klan. They would pay for people to the Charlottesville. But both sides lie that the left keeps saying. It looks like the SPLC may have been the agitators in that situation also. How far this goes? I don't know. I have no idea how far and why this investigation we'll see. And so that's going to be one of the issues we'll discuss today. The AI centers, I'll let the listeners drive that if they wish. One of the fact, one of the people on the WBT text line brought to you by. Liberty Buick, James. He said data centers use so much electricity, they raise the cost in the small towns they are built near. Aware of that, so small towns get punished, does it speak. Now, there is a town in California that's been... discussing its electrical. I think they're being cut off, but it's been ongoing for a long time and into data centers. Data centers do use use, by the way, this is a strange thing. If you watch power fluctuations, the utilization of power doesn't necessarily raise the cost of power. In other words, if I had to produce power for 10 houses, the cost per house would be a lot higher than if I produce power for 100,000 houses on a per house basis.

So you get to average that out. Beach communities in the summer, in North Carolina, in the summer, banks, you get those high utilization, but they don't raise your electric bill. Your use raises your electric bill. Now, in North Carolina, they're going to have a rate increase. That has nothing to do with AI data centers. That has to do with Duke Power and the legislature and the utilities commission and all this stuff. So anyway, the point I'm making is that. The use of power and deriving power, what we found, and here's another thing, you know what increases the cost of power is subsidizing solar and wind, which is not convenient. It's not 24-7 power. It only works. when it works from a time to time, it's never a break-even proposition. It loses money, and you have to dispose of all that stuff. So I would say once we get into nuclear, I think that the AI power issue and the nuclear, the need for nuclear power are going to be very synonymous and fascinating to see. Because at scale, you can go up with nuclear in a far safer way than we could 30, 40, 50 years ago. And if the left would stay out of the way and realize that that is a truly you know, kind of pollution free way of, it isn't kind of, it is a pollution free way of producing power, we could have just enormous amounts of power over time at a very affordable cost. And that's the goal. And it is also ironic, the political left that wanted to get rid of gasoline powered engines and everything. And now is complaining about the cost of gas, also ironic. And you want to see that lower because utility cost, whether it's gas or the production of power 24-7 reliable power, that drives an economy. So I'm not overly worried about what AI is going to do to that. Do they use electricity? Yes, they do. Do they pay for it? Yes. And in a way, they may even, data centers of the future or currently being designed, many of them will have their own power production facilities and will likely sell that power back to the grid. We don't think of it in that way. It's a great way to think of it. But I love the instant knee-jerk reaction that all progress is bad. You know, it doesn't take a lot. The fact that they elevated people like Greta, not Greta, the environmentalist, you know, she should have never been elevated. She was wrong on so many fronts. The Germans are going back to nuclear power. This whole idea that we were going to be on a massive solar grid, which destroys every bit of land you can shove a solar panel into for the most part. It's not a green way to be. Windmills, chop up birds. I mean, I'm not saying they do it. They do. They chop up birds. They're bird quason arts. They do. And they take up massive amounts of space. And you ultimately have to have landfills to put all that stuff in. We need to be looking at 24-7 reliable power that can be produced consistently when we need it the most. Hello. Good afternoon. Hope you're doing well. Now, the entire concept of this AI discussion. It's fascinating to me. As someone who, while I'm no futurist, I'm enamored with the innovative ability of mankind.

I just am. The innovative, because any given problem, the first reaction in the media today, the 24-7 cycle is it, because it, kind of it bleeds, it leads. I can remember that in college when I was running a UNC paper as an editor that if there was an accident, people wanted to rush to put the image, the most violent image they could find to attract attention. It was the 80s version of Clickbait, the early 90s, late 80s version of Clickbait. It was clickbait when there was no clicking. So looking at any kind of news story, it's always the rush to judge without knowledge. You see a trial, he's guilty or she's guilty or she's not guilty. We rush to judge without being informed of knowledge. We rush to condemn if it's like tech or something like that. It's the end of the world. Even the social media stuff, it can be horrific and it can also be a blessing and a curse. Almost everything related to how we invent and modernize. What is Toyota affordability? It's buying smart. Your local Toyota dealer has great deals available today on RAV4, Grand Highlander, Camry, and Corolla with the features and style you deserve. It means driving for less with hybrid and plug-in hybrid options across the lineup, delivering great MPGs. And it means trading for more. Toyota is known for building long-lasting vehicles, meaning your car will hold its value for years to come. Shop Toyota.com to find out more. Toyota, let's go places. And evolve technologically in our society is both a blessing and a curse. Our cell phone's a really good example of that. They can destroy relationships. They can also save lives. So you can go either way. So when I see the knee-jerk reactionaries on the AI data centers, I'm somewhat perplexed because it relies on the supposition that its goal, forget about the actual goal of processing data and really transforming the way in which we do business and many other things in life, which is amazing. But I'm going to go to the step further. It pretends that the goal of being a successful data center. means exclusively harm to the environment or your fellow man or both. The instant knee-jerk reaction is it's going to be bad. It's going to be bad for the environment. It's going to be bad for your fellow man. It's going to destroy people's hearings. It's going to, and it's fascinating to me that the political left, when we were having this discussion about solar panels and windmills, that they would act like it was no big deal. You know, 1,000-foot windmills, it's okay. It kills a couple of hawks and bald eagles. The same people that would have screamed about killing a bald eagle 10 years earlier. Now, it's okay. A couple bald eagles, no big deal. And no way to dispose of it. These are real things. These were tangible things we didn't have an answer and still don't have answers for with windmills and solar panels. But we do with AI data centers. These are people that are on the cutting edge of technology. They're building things that... that are much larger scale. They use a lot to the callers and the people texting in. They use a lot more power, the energy. They use a lot of water, these things. And you think, oh, we're going to, they're putting them in the desert. They're doing these things. But they're not. They don't adapt their thinking to think, okay, do you think these people haven't thought of these things? Do you think the people that are putting billions and billions of dollars being? I sound like a little like Carl Sagan there.

The people putting in the time effort and energy, time tools and training into these data centers haven't thought about those things. They haven't thought about the energy consumption. They haven't thought about the water consumption. They had to. They had to do it to make it work. And so just to give you an idea of some of the thought processes here, and you can do these searches yourself, major tech companies and data center operators are planning to build and utilize nuclear power. Driven by the explosive energy demands of AI and commitments to round-the-clock carbon-free energy, the industry is bypassing traditional grid constraints by turning to both existing reactors and new reactor technologies, which are much smaller. In fact, some of them tech giants are actively co-locating with or sponsoring the restart of mothballed nuclear reactors. Microsoft signed a power purchase agreement to revive a unit at 3 Mile Island facility in Pennsylvania to use for its AI operation. New small modular reactors called SMRs. Traditional nuclear plants take about 10 to 15 years to build, which is way too slow for tech. To solve that, companies are funding these SMRs called microreactors, factory built reactors that can be deployed on site. Faster, for example, Google partnered with startups in the Tennessee Valley Authority to build an SMR in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, designed to directly feed its data center. So the innovation of tech for data is taking place in the way to deal with it. So you would then say, what about water? They're going to put them in the desert and it's going to rob all these towns of water. It's not going to be any water. You're not going to be able to ski because there'll be no rain and snow. I don't know. Just insert fear, whatever fear there is. And don't think that I'm saying there are not problems. Because we get into this all or some mentality. Oh, it's all problems. Or it's all taken care of. And what I'm saying is we are evolving in that space in almost live time. So when you look at the way you cool these things down, so we've already talked about the energy and the innovative stuff with energy, it's going to be a lot of it. And I think that what you're going to find is as they bring about these SMRs, many towns and areas are going to look at ways to do that kind of energy production. We're going to be able to get away from and really spread the grid out and make it far more efficient overall over time for all involved, which would theoretically bring down costs. We get away from a 10 to 15 year. regulatory, expensive, burdensome process and into a way that you can get an operational power producing facility in a year or two. It would be amazing, wouldn't it? What if an HOA or what if some giant neighborhood could have its own power production facility?

I know I said HOA, but the point I'm making is you get away from these monopolistic energy producers. What if you could get away from that? That's what the left glammed onto with solar and wind before those guys all took advantage of the government subsidies. And there's much more. I do want to get into the... cooling part because some of the cooling tech is rather remarkable as well. And so definitely want to talk about that. By the way, my name's Chad. I'm sitting in for the vacationing Brett Winterable here today at News Talk 107.9 FM, WBT. And what we're going to do, I'm going to take a break here in a couple seconds and kick it over for news. But when we get back, the tech behind that, you definitely want to get to that. And We'll get to another. I definitely want to play some of the clips from the hearing today on the Southern Poverty Law Center. It's absolutely, I want to say hysterical, but that's the wrong phrase. It's sad. Because these people have been grifters for decades and led a lot of decent folk, and I mean that sincerely, there were a lot of decent folk that felt they were doing good by donating to this group. And this group in the meantime was kind of grifting them to keep itself relevant by paying for hate to take place. And a lot of good folks were coughing up money to support them. And that to me is tragic, sad and unbelievable. We have some good clips of that as well.

Thank you. Thank you so much, everybody. Being a part of what makes this show amazing. I'm pleasure to be a part of it in a small way. And thanks to the audience. And also to Brett for the opportunity, Brett Winterville out this week, having some fun. I hope he's having a tremendous time. And while he leaves, the news keeps happening. So I'm trying to do what Pete said. Don't break anything. But at the same time, you know, hurting people's feelings. The path to happiness is paved with liberal tears. I'm kidding. That was terrible. Shouldn't have said that. I can't believe I said that. And so this moratorium of this knee jerk, you know, Charlotte is really good at the knee jerk reaction. We're talking about data centers. As Charlotte, you know, as you've heard earlier on, on other shows. The Charlotte City Council approved a moratorium on data centers amid concerns over their impact on infrastructures and utility costs Monday night. Now, this is interesting because they have to meet all of the current development ordinances to exist. And as one listener said, instead of a moratorium, why don't you, anyone that's interested, then have them come before the county. It's great. And by the way, I'll give the shout. I do. Deserves it. And that was Steve on the on the. Talk line, which you're welcome to be a part of. It's 704-570179. That's the WBT Text Line, sponsored by Liberty Buick GMC. You're welcome to call in as well, 704-5701079 as well, 5701079. You know the number. But they said, I don't understand why they haven't brought in a good representative of Duke Energy to tell about the ins and outs for facilitating power for the data center to those council planner meetings. Great question. Again, very common sense. That's when someone on counsel instead of, yeah, I'm going to go get those data centers. I won't stop them. Which they don't have that accent, obviously. That would be like more of a Beaufort T. Justice things. But the point I'm making is instead of knee-jerk reactions stopping it and stopping what is clearly a need or they wouldn't be building them. Just ask them to come in and explain. Hey, where are you going to get? And a lot, by the way, I don't know if you knew that, and it was probably discussed earlier, but there are tons of data centers all around. You know, there's 150-day moratorium. There's North Carolina has 93 data centers. 35 of them currently operate in the Charlotte area already. Has it destroyed the life of North Carolinians? Has it? Has it ruined things? No, it hasn't done any of those things. Many of those facilities, they had won, by the way, the great picture on the story I saw. Where is it? From the outside of the building, after months of request, two different companies to tour at Data Center, digital reality was the only one who granted WCNC Charlotte access into one of its uptown Charlotte facilities. It's downtown. You wouldn't even know it was there. It looks like any other office building in downtown. It's not destroying life. And again, you know, I guess in people's head, the data centers are like from some sci-fi movie. Maybe it's, you know, is an 80-story building that goes underground and, I don't know, hatching zombies. I don't know what the images, but it must be horrific. Yeah, there are massive. There are places where they're, I mean, an Amazon fulfillment center is huge. So imagine a data center that size. And that would be massive. But again.

The power utilization, water utilization, let's talk a little bit about that because we talked and addressed the fact that I think some of the most astounding energy producing innovations will happen because of these data centers. We've seen that. We talked about that with the small-scale nuclear reactors. I think we're going to look at nuclear power in a much more serious way than we have the past 30 years because we got sidetracked by the environmental movement to say they needed solar and wind when they could have been spending all of that money. on nuclear. Probably didn't need to subsidize it either. We spent tons of government money on a bunch of these facilities that are going to age out and die. But let's look at where the nuclear facility, so Florida, by the way, the Florida Water and Pollution Control Operators Association. I know, very obscure, right? But it's got a fantastic summary. What about the water? People are like, water, water, water, water. How do you cool these things down? They use water a lot of them. And again, it's just as novel as the energy side of because they have two things with data centers. You need energy and you need to cool stuff down because all that energy utilization produces heat, which you've got to get rid of. So there's air cooling. Many smaller and older data centers rely on air conditioning and chilled air circulation to remove heat. These use mechanical chillers or heat exchangers do not consume water for cooling. Air cooling is common in cooler climates are where water is scarce, but it can require a lot more electricity to run compressors. Okay, check, we're aware of that. The one in downtown Charlotte probably uses that. evaporative cooling, which is an open loop system. A majority of large modern data centers use water-based cooling for better energy efficiency. This often involves cooling towers or evaporative chillers. Warm water absorbs heat from the servers. It's then cooled by evaporation in a tower. If you're ever driving around and you see one of the, especially if you're near Raleigh, the Sharon Harris plant, you see the big towers, those things are like 9,000 gallons a minute. It just evaporates. When you see that. stuff coming out of the top of those big towers, that's just evaporated water, just water vapor that's cooling. It's cooling after it's been heated up. And that's what they're saying. They use cooling towers to do that. Now, if you were out in the desert southwest, this is where people would get upset. If they were using that to cool things down, you don't have water, you're taking precious resource and then evaporating it into air, which evaporates pretty instantly out there. But that doesn't seem to be what a lot of them want to go to. Then there's a closed loop system. The water circulates in sealed pipes or coils that cool the servers without directly exposing water to air because the water isn't evaporated. Losses are minimal. It's mostly the same water recirculating. These systems include water-cooled heat exchangers or liquid-to-liquid cooling loops. It reduces freshwater use by up to 70% compared to open evaporated. They are far more water efficient since the water isn't burned off into the air. Direct liquid cooling and immersion when you take these systems and you put them under into a liquid, which is a way to cool things down.

And then in colder places like Canada, you just use outside air or cold water. So there's what I'm saying is, again, innovative, innovative utilization of technology. These things are straight up innovation with respect to providing services that you, your family, and everybody else needs, uses. AI, it isn't just out there doing nefarious horrible things. It can be used as a horrible, evil nefarious tool. And we, Americans, we need to be the masters of this technology. We need to be able to combat those nefarious uses. We need to be on the cutting edge of the chip production. We need to be the cutting edge of the chips that are made. And then when AI starts producing its own chips, we need to be very careful about that. So there's a lot of things. that we need to be watching out for because, you know, the same words that can heal can hurt and the same technology that can help can hurt and be harmful. So it's worth asking questions. But again, with Charlotte, just say, oh no, 150-day moratorium. You know, there's many other things Charlotte should try to put a moratorium on, I don't know, like crime. I don't know. Maybe it should put a moratorium on building light rail and really look at its road utilization and taking care of the roads and making traffic flow better. Maybe it should do things like that. Maybe it should continue to find a way to be more efficient and less wasteful. Maybe it should find a way to lower taxes and promote more freedom for economic opportunity. Maybe you should do things like that. Bah, bah, humbug, why would it ever want to do things like that? Why would it ever want to do things like that? Yes, we'll hear it. It's an amazing, it's a beautiful day. It really is. It's a beautiful day. And I, I, I. It is interesting to, well, I'm not going to. You know, it's easy to be the critic. It's easy to sit here in his poke holes. Why Charlotte did 150-day moratorium. I'm sure they have their reasons. Maybe they got caught behind the ball a little bit. They didn't take the time to understand the issue, their staff. You know, a lot of local, you know, Charlotte actually has more of the pick of talent working for a city than most folks in North Carolina. I think cities, small towns. and counties across the state are entering a very difficult series of years. It could be forever. I would say that probably anywhere from 10 to 15% of towns in North Carolina should turn their charters in. They simply don't have the resources. They don't have the depth of staff to comply with all of the state laws, rules, and regulations that are imposed upon them. So let's just forget. providing services, you know, law enforcement, things of fire protection, things of that nature. But they have to comply with all this. When the state says you need to contribute X number of dollars for the retirement system, and then on the state, the legislature, we're a Dillon Rule State, as Pete probably mentioned in his show. So the legislature says, you have to cough up all this money for your retirement system. And then the local government's got to do that. And at the same time, the legislature's like, oh, we're going to put limits on how much you can raise your property taxes. So you're

So cities, towns, counties will be ultimately going to say, well, you're making us spend more money here and not where we need to be spending the money. But again, we're in rural state. So they can. They can screw over any town, city, county they want to at the legislature. It's just the way the Constitution is written. Now, as Pete said, you go to home rule, you end up with a whole different set of challenges. But there are a lot of cities in this state that should just be done. They've lost population. There's no way they're going to get it back. They don't have much depth staff. They should be... And counties should be looking at that and probably saying, hey, many counties now, by the way, are providing the services that cities here to four did. I mean, counties are providing fire protection. Counties are providing planning and zoning. Counties are providing all of these things in jurisdictions all over the state. And so many of those small towns don't have a need to exist. I'm always amazed you get down toward Columbus County. If you travel from Charlotte to the coast, you go through Columbus County. Whiteville, Whiteville, North Carolina, the county seat of Columbus County, Whiteville. I have relatives that come from near there. And they have a school system in Wifle, population several. They've got their own public school system there. Asheville, until they haven't merged. Asheville has its own school system. It doesn't need it. It should just surrender that to Buncombe County. What is Toyota affordability? It's buying smart. Right now, your local Toyota dealer has great deals available on some of the most reliable trucks on the market, like the off-road ready to coma, rugged, full-sized tundra, and legendary forerunner. Each with the space, tech, and features to handle it all from the work site to the trails. It means driving for less, with efficient hybrid options available, extending your overall driving range and delivering great MPGs, meaning bigger savings at the pump without sacrificing power. And it means trading for more. The Tacoma and Tundra are ranked number one and number two in resale value over all vehicles, according to Kelly Boo Book, which can mean thousands more than average right back in your pocket when it's time to trade in. That's Toyota affordability. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. Shop Toyota.com or your local dealer for deals and details. Vehicles projected resale value is specific to the 2026 model year. For more information, visit Kelly Blue Books, KB.com. Toyota brand average resale value is 53% versus the average vehicle at 45%. Toyota, let's go places. And merge with it and be done. But there's a clinging to power. Whenever you hear me talk about certain political parties wanting to cling to power, you see this in small town, North Carolina, front and center. Because many of those towns should be gone, but they just don't want to give up power.

in some way. They feel like, or, you know, the other opportunity for many towns, if they're adjacent to towns that are, they should merge. Let's get our planning zone. Let's bring down the cost of local government because instead of having two city or town managers, instead of having two of everything, you have one. And then you can make it much more efficient. I mean, Charlotte Mecklenburg merged many things, many years ago. So the Charmec stuff, there's no need. I mean, Miami Day did it decades ago. I think that Charlotte Mecklenburg could do more. and get rid of some of the problems they have. At a certain point, you don't need a city council and a county commission. You can merge all of those and save a lot. But again, that's me. I mean, a former county commissioner is someone who spent a lot of time trying to help local governments be more efficient and more creative in the way they address problems. That's what I did. And so when I see this, it's the clinging to power that amazes me. So in Charlotte's case, it says, hey, we don't understand data centers. So we're going to just stop them. We don't understand them, so we're going to stop. And I don't think that's progress for Charlotte, but again, they can choose to do that which they wish to do at any time. Let's see one of our class 4 or 5 data center, one of the text line there, class 4 or 5 data center on Arrowwood at the spectrum buildings. The data center is quiet. You can be standing outside of the building and I hear a thing. There's always a ways to dampen generator noise. And so that's one.

By the way, I pass something because Florida, I love the way Ron DeSantis trolls online. He's kind of Trump in a way, except Trump without all the meanness, but Ron DeSantis will challenge California's status quo stuff. And so he puts a lot of stuff out there. And I think that if you're a Floridian or you have a connection to Florida in any way, and you're looking at Cuba, Cuba could be the next great thing in the Caribbean. Likely, it's going to see substantial change. in the next couple years. In Florida, sitting right there next to it. It could be a ground shift. I don't know what's going to happen next. But I appreciate everyone that's going on to our text line there. I'm trying to get to all the comments. I've got to make sure. Let's see where this one came in. This one came in very soon. Oh, it's over there. It's beautiful on in House here in Pittsburgh, North Carolina, House in Southwest Florida. At least one of them, I won't have to pay taxes, honestly. Because Florida has something going through the legislature. Actually, went through the legislature. It'll be on the ballot this fall that will allow people who are full-time residents. to be exempt from property to homesteaders will be exempt from property taxes. Not your second home, your primary home could be exempt. I mean, I think it's the first 250 or 500, but they're trying to do in Florida to get rid of property taxes for the people who are there. Now, that's fascinating how they're going to fund local government, things like that. But Florida. Florida's amount of money they're spending on government has come down year after year, even as people flock there and love living there. So they're doing something right. And instead of chastising and ridiculing Florida, people in California ought to be emulating and say, hey, how come Florida is able to do this? How come Florida is able to have cheaper gas than we have? How come Florida is able to do all these other things cheaper and better and not have $6 gas?

Hour 2 underway, the Brett Wonderful show. Chad Adams, the host today. Appreciate you being a part of it here on 107.9 FMWPT, Charlotte's FM News Talk. You're welcome to be a part of the conversation at 704-5701079. 5701079. That is also the text line. You're welcome. And that's been very busy today. I'll try to get to all those comments. They've been, you guys are fantastic. I'm not going to belabor this because I don't really want to get into the California voting situation. I'm not there. It's not my state. It affects us where they mail ballots to everybody. But someone said... It's someone, gosh, it was a, I wish I could name it because it sounds like I'm just repeating a rumor. And it was that it's, the late voting will skew to the left because young people vote by mail more often. And I'm thinking, I don't know many young people that know how to put a stamp on an envelope and send it. Heck, you put a rotary dial phone in front of them. They think it's from a museum. They had no idea. And they're not putting them down. It's just not their thing. They don't send mail. It was the last time you saw someone under the age of 35, like, write a note and send it in the mail? I just don't. I'm not going to get into that. It's just kind of crazy. Now, I do want to get into this hearing today. This Southern Poverty Law Center, which the Charlotte Observers given a lot of shade to over the years, given them, excuse me, giving them a lot of props over the years and legitimized them. They've been around since 1971. They've been accused of their goal is to. Their stated goal is to help people get out of poverty and expose hate groups and things of this nature. That's the stated goal. But what it has become is in the Southern Poverty Liberal Center, which has been aimed at going after right-leaning groups and espousing hatred of them and trying to say that only right-leaning groups have hate. They also now have been... exposed for having given money to groups like the KKK and others to foment violence and to stir up stuff to give them more meaning and purpose. So they Southern Poverty Law Center president, Mr. Fair, was at a hearing today. And I just want to give you some of the exchanges. I don't know if there may be a little cranked up a little loud. But so Chip Roy, a representative Chip Roy has asked, you know, how many Islamic extremist groups do you have listed on your hate map out of the 1,500 groups? So it's 1,500 Islamic extremist groups in the country. Southern poverty law, you know, puts out the list of people that are hate-related groups. So how many, you would think, you know, 1,500 of an Islamic extremist groups as identified by the State Department, on the left and right, this isn't unique to Republicans. So what do you think Southern Poverty Law Center did? So here's how that exchange went. How many extremist Islamic groups do you have of the 1,500 or so organizations you have on your hate map? Again, anyone can go to our website. My office has been looking over and can't really find one. Again, it is the SPLC's... You think SPLC can provide us a list of the Islamic-oriented groups do you have on your hate map? Mr. Roy, we don't target any group because of its religion. Really? I want to be clear about that. Really? Yes, that's exactly right. We target no group because of its religion. We target groups because they...

express statements and engage in activities that demean and vilify. So you brought up LGBTQ groups a second ago? So you brought up LGBT groups a minute ago. So you think there's a bunch of Islamic groups that are pro-L-GBTQ? Is that the position of the SPLC? I just want to make sure the record is reflecting that. He hammered him. The SPLC has no groups. There's none in the list. Southern Poverty Law Center puts out the hate list to list all the groups that push hate. And he could have gone. It would have been a lot easier to say some of those Islamic extremist groups have some seriously anti-Semitic hate. But the SPLC said we don't target religious groups. He said they target hate. They don't. Or at least they don't. They only target one group. So there was another good one from Brandon Gill. Brandon Gill was at this hearing today. And he was asking him if, like, Graham Platner's Nazi tattoo. So that's a known. Look, this isn't anything I haven't told you before. And I'm going to tell you some interesting stuff about the polling on that. But let's just, I want to play for you what this exchange between Representative Gill and Mr. Fair from the Southern Poverty Law Center. And here's what it went down. It has to do with the Nazi tattoo. I think that this should disqualify him politically from serving in the Senate. Again, I'm not sure with the line of questions. That's going. The SPLC, if you're asking me, I'm sorry. Go ahead. If you're asking me if the SPLC opposes Nazis and Nazi symbols, the answer is yes. Yep. The SPLC is referred to this same tattoo as a racist skinhead symbol and tattoo. You can see the resemblance there. You wouldn't want somebody with a tattoo like that in the Senate? No. No. So he held up a copy of the SPLC from their website, a copy of the tattoo. I mean, excuse me, the symbol. And then he shows a picture of Graham Platner's tattoo next to it. He says, so you wouldn't, you say that's a skinhead symbol. And he's like, well, yeah, you wouldn't want that person serving in the Senate. The guy had to reluctantly say, no, I don't think we want that one in the Senate. this this hearing is damning it's difficult for the left and the left is hating this they can't really they can't really justify what's happened here so what they're trying to do is minimize it and stop the damage the the stuff with platinum is problematic for them they know it and so what they're saying is and what they're trying to do with all the platinum stuff is just say you know what everybody makes mistakes Now, what's interesting is Plattenor's mistakes that they're trying to discuss have occurred recently. These aren't like, remember when Justice Brett Kavanaugh was being confirmed. They went back to his high school yearbook and allegations that were never substantiated ever. And they tried to destroy him. And people on the left try to dox him, which is review where he lived and identify his house since then. This kind of hatred is vile and disgusting. But with Graham Platner, you know, it's just that, well, you know, it's just, it's not the same. It's just, as Pete would say, it's different when they do it. Because if there was anybody on the right that had his past, Graham Platner's past, they would be vilified.

And interesting in that way. So James Carvel, who many of you familiar with, is supporting Graham Platner. And he's saying that basically we need Platinum because it stops. Trump. And he makes an interesting comparison. And I do this for a reason. There's a reason we will talk about Jim Carvel because he is appearing with fundraising letters and stuff like that for Governor Cooper. Coopiners aligned himself with Carville. Carvel's absolutely looney tunes at this point. Brilliant back in the 90s. I don't know what happened to him, but his hatred's overtaken him. Trump, I think, has sent him into the need for psychiatric treatment. But he has made a couple statements. And I think that Governor Cooper has opened the door for questions from the media based on his affiliation with Jim Carville, with James Carvel. And I think he should answer those. The least of which is, do you think, because Carville has said, we need to make Puerto Rico estate and DC estate. That would give them four more senators and at least two more representatives in the House, depending on Puerto Rico would probably generate three or four. But so that would, they see that as a Democrat grab. Also, they want to pack the court. They want to change the Supreme Court from nine to 15 members. That way they can get ahead of what's happened because the court, when the court was left, they didn't want to do that. But now that they're more constitutional related justice is there, they want to change the Supreme Court from 9 to 15 when they get a Democrat president and maybe they can get some resignations. Excuse me, they don't need any resignation. They would just add six more members to the Supreme Court. And they would just pack it with their, and that's what they want to do. So, so. The reason I say that is because James Carvel is affiliate with Cooper now. Cooper opens himself up by that connection to lines of questions, and he should. He is one of the most competitive races in the state, in the whole country. It will certainly be the one up in Maine, probably if Graham Platner is the nominee. It'll be the one in Texas with James Talarico and Ken Paxton, and certainly Michael Whatley v. Roy Cooper, former Governor Cooper.

I love this listener line. The text line is lit up today. The WBT text line that is 704-570179. Same number you can call in is also the text line. And, man, Rodney and Don and Jeff and a bunch of folks out there. Chat, I'm your guest host, by the way, in case I didn't mention that, Hour 2 underway here. Still, I guess we're still in the second hour. A lot more to go, an honor to be here in Brett Winterville's chair, having a great time here at News Talk 107.9 FMWVT. Now. I'm just going to go back a couple of comments in a realtor in Florida. I'd mentioned that Florida was trying to get rid of its homestead, getting a homestead exemption, and it's the first. What is Toyota affordability? It's buying smart. Right now, your local Toyota dealer has great deals available on some of the most reliable trucks on the market, like the off-road ready to coma, rugged, full-sized tundra, and legendary forerunner, each with the space, tech, and features to handle it all. from the work site to the trails. It means driving for less, with efficient hybrid options available, extending your overall driving range and delivering great MPGs, meaning bigger savings at the pump without sacrificing power. And it means trading for more. The Tacoma and Tundra are ranked number one and number two in resale value over all vehicles, according to Kelly Boo Book, which can mean thousands more than average right back in your pocket when it's time to trade in. That's Toyota affordability. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. Shop Toyota.com or your local dealer for deals and details. Vehicles projected resale value is specific to the 2026 model year. For more information, visit Kelly Blue Books, KB.com. Toyota brand average resale value is 53% versus the average vehicle at 45%. Toyota, let's go places. 150,000, and then at 2027, it's going to be exempt from property taxes. So the first quarter million of your house, if you're a Florida resident, if you claim residency in Florida, is... property tax-free. And I think they ultimately would like to go even higher than that. And I appreciate the listener adding to that. And you know, you wouldn't see that. Can you imagine that in North Carolina, especially, well, different, like the coast. You know, we have kind of a senior citizen thing. But our property tax system in the state is a bit of a mess or the way we do revaluations. And it's just confusing to people what they have to pay. It's just a bit of a mess. I'm not putting it down necessarily, but it is a mess. Between that and insurance, especially if you were in the mountains or you're at the coast, it's the cost of ownership is strange. You pay all your taxes. You pay all your bills. You paid for the house and you mess up on the property taxes. They can take your house away from you. I'm not, it sounds like I'm being just a reactionary of myself. I'm not. there isn't a perfect system. In Florida, they make up for it with different fees and things of that nature. So what else? Roy Cooper, I mentioned Roy Cooper before he went to the break. One of the listeners said Cooper running is a southern moderate. And Republican activists see Michael Whatley as a Thom Tillis light. I don't know. Thom Tillis and Michael Whatley were always close. I don't know. I know Michael Whatley personally. I've known him for several years now. And I don't, I know he's very much affiliated and hooked himself.

I can remember I helped put together an event for Mike Pence years ago involving Michael Whatley at the time. And we also were part of an event for Donald Trump in the state. And Michael Whatley was very, very, very close to Trump. I don't know how close he was ever to Thom Tillis. I don't see him as Thom Tillis Light, but we'll find out what happens. So anyway, back to Roy Cooper, though. I do think it's interesting. AP Dillon had put it out on Twitter a couple days ago. And I'd seen it because I have a friend who got one of these letters. It says, this ain't my first rodeo. I've been around politics a long time, so trust me, I know which races are the races to pay attention to. Folks, this is from Jim Carville, James Carvel. I'm telling you that North Carolina will determine control of the Senate this November. I should put it in his accent, shouldn't I get that Louisiana draw in there? Roy Cooper's Senate race in the Tahoe Hill State is a toss-up. The only way he can swing it is with you. We need joy. So Roy Cooper is okay affiliating himself with James Carville. I think if he does that, that allows, then there should be every question asked of both candidates, but the press tends to hone in on. the Republican often more. I would see they'd go running to Pat McCory if someone on the right said something they'd run. Pat McCoy, do you agree with this, Governor McCoy? So I think, in fact, at one point he says, what's happening in our country right now is bat crazy. back guano crazy truly billionaires and special interests making millions on the backs of working families that's interesting because billionaires are helping to fund Tom Steyer a billionaire George Soros a billionaire they're giving lots of billionaires giving money to the likes of people that james carwell supports now to that end I think it's worthwhile because Carville has openly said if the Democrats get in power, they want to pack the court, they want to defund ICE, they want to raise taxes, they want no voter ID, they want to restore the USAID funding, they want to make Puerto Rico and D.C. states. So I think every one of those topics, because Roy Cooper is using James Carvel's name to try to raise money, those questions should be asked of Roy Cooper. Do you support these things? Because he's on TV every day with his ad saying what he claims is going to lower cost for North Carolanians. He never did that as governor. In fact, during COVID, I think it went up substantially. He didn't say anything about $5 gas when it was $5 while he was still governor. He says things. He can just say them in political ads because you can say about anything. The media has an obligation, a curious media. A media intent on finding truth should ask him. And I'm not saying they should treat Michael Whatley any differently. They should ask Michael Whatley about his connections to the oil and gas industry. Those are all fair questions they have. But they should also ask the former governor where he stands on these issues that are of national import to the Democrats.

He's been able to skate. Now, maybe when we get past Labor Day and people really start paying attention to this. Right now, it's fundraising season. It's friendly season. The hurricanes are playing tonight. You know, the Nixon Spurs are dominating some of the media stuff. Trump getting booed last night at the Knicks game full of New Yorkers. And Spike Lee. So the point being, yes, we're going to be distracted quite a bit for the next couple months. But after Labor Day, when this gets going, I think that the media can do a lot to redeem itself here in North Carolina by asking Roy Cooper tough questions. He's never had to really answer tough questions. but we'll see how that all plays out. I'm hopeful. I'm well, hopeful. I'm not overly hopeful. I'm wishful. Hey, that's a better way. I'm wishful. I'm very wishful. I am wishing that the North Carolina news media would ask him tough questions. When we get on the other side of the break, I do want to talk about the Arena Zerutska murder briefly. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, but I think it's worth noting for those of you haven't heard what happened in that case. I want to give you the update. I'm as sure it's newsworthy. And I will go back to the hearing. Not the hearing. I will go over to what James Carville had to say. Since Roy Cooper associated himself with him, this was just about six hours ago. He made a statement on Andrew Cuomo's show. So I think you ought to hear it. I think it's worth hearing.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Hi, I'm having a ball as, as always, here at WMT. I'm actually, it's so funny in the, in the, in the, in the, in the break, I was curious, you're kind of laughing. Everyone in this show is going to laugh me. I've gotten to learn about the SpaceX IPO. So I'm kind of interested because I think, I think it's going, and my gut is that the IPO in SpaceX, if I'm able to get into it. and go up initially, and it's going to crash back down. And over the long haul, though, I think it's going to be a phenomenal endeavor. So, you know, as an investor and someone who enjoys and appreciates all this stuff, I'm kind of fascinated to see what's going to happen. Now, speaking of, fascinated with what's going to happen. The situation in South Carolina, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it. You're welcome to if you want to. And you can get into the conversation anytime. 704-701079, 5701079. The South Carolina Republican primary with the Senate. So sorry about that. I'm more fascinated by the Senate race than I am the governor's race, although Nancy Mace is intriguing. And I say that because she has, forgive me, really high name ID and the rest of them don't. But I definitely see, I don't know why I'm choking all of a sudden. but that you have to get over the 50% line. And Lindsey Graham's not going to get there. Don't worry. I'm not dying. I'm just choking. I got something in my throat. So Lindsey Graham is around 49%. He has to cross the 50% line to avoid a runoff. And Nancy Mace is now at like first, second, third, fourth, fifth place. in that Republican primary for governor. So we'll see Trump carried the state overwhelmingly, but right now his approval rating down there in South Carolina appears to be a disapproval around 63%. We'll see how that plays out for Lindsey Graham in the election. So having said all that, I do want to mention that the man accused of killing Irene or Zurutska on the light rail train in Charlotte last year was in federal court on Tuesday. The 35-year-old De Carlos Brown Jr. was found incompetent to proceed at trial. U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, Russ Ferguson, said he addressed reporters outside the courthouse after the June 9th hearing expressed confidence that Brown will eventually stay in trial. To me, this is fascinating. It's easy to get really upset about the fact that this guy isn't going straight to the electric chair or the lethal injection or death by firing squad. But at the same time, the legal system is what it is. And so he has a right to fair representation. He has to be competent to understand what's happening to him. It is astounding that he was arrested as many times as he was and released back into the general populace, obviously with serious problems on board. So we'll see how all that shakes out. Now, I want to get over to the North Carolina thing. I mentioned Jim Carvel. James Carvel. I keep calling him Jim for some reason. Maybe it's just because I want to make fun of him. But here's what he had to say with some of the things that he advocates for. And I just wanted this because he is in a fundraising letter for Roy Cooper. And I want to play for you what he says about Graham Platner.

Because I think it's very important. Churchill. Who did they work with? Well, Joseph Stalin. Well, this is saying, Bach. Let me start this a little earlier. Who did they work with? Well, Joseph Stalin. Well, this is saying Bob. Because there was a larger good here. There was something else. We couldn't, you know, today's progressives, oh my God, Stalin killed me. It's even worse than Hitler. He may have been, but they perceive that the threat, I think correctly. And we never go in history and say, well, I just can't like Franklin Roosevelt because he sent Stalin. billions of tons of equipment. Or Churchill snuck off during the war to meet with him in Moscow. Or he was at Yalta. He was at Duran. You name it. Terran. When you sound something like this, sometimes you make alliances that you would not have made under a different set of circumstances. So what he's saying is Graham Platner. The Democrats need to support Graham Platner because Graham Platner is Stalin. And you have to stop Hitler. And the way to stop Hitler, who in James Carvel's analogy is Donald Trump. Again, the Democrats stick with this. They are consistent in calling Trump Hitler. They are consistent in calling Republicans these Hitler-like individuals. They are consistent in this. They continue to push this out there that the Republicans are fascist or that Trump is a fascist. Someone who's tried to, and a fascist, by the way, would never get rid of the powers of government. You've seen Donald Trump get rid of, trying to get rid of the Department of Education. He's trying to scale down the many areas of government. A fascist doesn't do that. A fascist consolidates power. Watch the rise of the Third Reich. You see people in the Third Reich of the Nazis consolidating power. Ironically, the guy who adds a tattoo that is a symbol of that Third Reich. is part of a party that wants more power. Every, if you look at what Democrats want to achieve, they want, and I'm not putting it down, it is what they say they want. They want a larger government. They want more funding. They want an infinite supply of money. They feel entitled, the money you work and earn every day, they feel they're entitled to that. Many of them would like to be able to just confiscate that. One of the looniest taxes out there is a net wealth tax. They could just take your net worth. sorry, net worth tax, and say at any given time on January 1st, whatever you're worth, they just tax you on that. You have to pay, I don't know, 2% of your net worth at the beginning of every year. It's insane. Now, whether you lose money or make money in the stock market is irrelevant to them, it's what your worth is. Unrealized capital gains. That's another moonback crazy Democrat idea. What is Toyota affordability? It's buying smart. Your local Toyota dealer has great deals available today on RAV4, Grand Highlander, Camry, and Corolla, with the features and style you deserve. It means driving for less with hybrid and plug-in hybrid options across the lineup, delivering great MPGs.

And it means trading for more. Toyota is known for building long-lasting vehicles, meaning your car will hold its value for years to come. Shop Toyota.com to find out more. Toyota, let's go places. So if you had invested in stock and you made money, technically you haven't made money on it until you sell it, but it's worth more. Let's say you made $100,000 on SpaceX. The Democrats could then say, well, that's an unrealized gain. You haven't taken the gain, but we're going to tax you on that. We're just going to take $2,000 of that as an un-you haven't cashed it in, and maybe you're never going to. And the next year, your unrealized gain could be $200,000. And they'll tax you on that. So. Those are the ideas. Those are the way in which you fund this massive expansion of government vis-a-vis the Democrats to do it. Now, I'll castigate the Republicans a little bit here, too. Our national debt is a travesty. It's a travesty because of Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats spend it more quickly, but Republicans are contributing to this. They have done nothing to stop it. Even the doge cuts. They didn't enact most of the doge cuts. They should have, but they didn't. They didn't make any of them permanent. Really, I think one, they need, at some point, some people in government, with control of the levers, have got to slow down the way in which we spend ourselves into oblivion. But back to James Carvel. James Carvel equated the Republicans to Nazis and Graham Platner, and I think one of the most telling things he said about Graham Blitz is sometimes you have to line yourself. Progressives today would say Joseph Stalin was worse than Hitler because he killed like 20 million of his own people. In that instance, he recognizes that Stalin was worse in some ways than Hitler, that the United States had allied with him. But he's saying Graham Platner is Stalin, which is kind of a Freudian slip saying, you know, Graham Platner may be worse than anything the Democrats could have dreamed up about Trump. But right now he's a means to win it. Now, personally, me, I want Graham Platner to win that primary. Why? It's not that I want him in the U.S. Senate. It's that I want all of the moonbat crazy things he has said and done and stood for and represented and all of the stuff that Democrats accused everyone of the right of being he is. He is everything. He has marginalized women. He has abused women. And I'm not just saying that. On the other side of the break, I'm going to tell you how weird and wacky that story becomes. So here I was in the break thinking, oh, I can't wait to see what music they throw at me as they come back out of the break. But they've been so busy doing a million things and communicating with the host, making sure I didn't die on the floor. You know, no CPR necessary. That was on me. But I appreciate the concern and everyone. But welcome the show. And you know what I'm going to do something that, and I'm going to bring them in. And Mike, welcome to the show. And listeners, you might appreciate this. Go ahead. Mike, you have the floor. Well, thank you very much, Chad. I can sing something if you need some leading music or something, but maybe we want to keep listeners not get rid of them. By my singing, it would definitely cause folks to turn off, I think. Mine too. We agree on my singing doing the same, sir. No duets from us today, for sure. I have been listening on and off.

Thursday and Friday and yesterday and some today. And I've got to say, Chad, I've said this to you before. I think you really carry, even though you haven't had a whole lot of callers, I think you have carried the conversation really well. You've covered lots of issues and you've had good discussions on them. I don't agree with lots of your views, but nonetheless, you put it out there and you will also... uh... you're like he did with the uh... the deficit and and national debt in the last and last segment you know uh... pro stones uh... where they're deserved against the republicans and i appreciate that i think that's good uh... i wanted to go back some yesterday if i can sort of derail the conversation just a little bit because you were talking about something i think it's really really important to emphasize these days and that's confirmation bias that I don't think a lot of people really know about, and I think it really has a lot to do with the discussion that we have, and we can weave that back into a little bit of the Graham Platner argument. But you spoke about confirmation bias yesterday, and I thought your explanation of it was really good about how we as human beings, and this is just the way we're wired, is that we will make... a decision on something real quick. If we meet somebody or we go to a restaurant or we see something in the newspaper or whatever it is, we will make a real quick blink of an eye decision about it, whether we like it, whether we don't like it, whether we're skeptical, whatever. Okay? And then from that point on, we as human beings, tend to filter... The information that we get from whatever source comes in, we tend to really agree with and amplify that information that agrees with our bias. And, boy, we tend to really discount. the things that make his question. So, Mike, I mean, Mike, so far you're restating what I said about confirmation bias, which is we look for things that we agree with what we believe and project those as facts. So I think you've got a point you're trying to get here. I'm just trying to get you to it. Well, no, and I think part of it is now from my standpoint, I think that. You know, I see that a lot more. I certainly see it on the left as well, but I certainly see it really more on the right. And again, that's probably my confirmation, bias, you know, coming into effect. But I think the main thing that we need to be aware of, and this is kind of what you were saying yesterday about the Atlantic article, and not being able to agree really on what patriotism is even, that we as Americans, if we realize. that part of basically being an adult is that we understand each of us have that confirmation bias and we need to be more understanding of and more critical of the information that we're getting from wherever it's coming and that's kind of Mike I think another easy way to do it is is number one challenge have that discussion at a personal level challenge your own beliefs

That's the easiest way to overcome that bias is to look, say, what does this issue really mean? How does it play out for me and my family? And you play that out and you often arrive at where your real belief is and where the real truth is. And so now all that dovetails a little bit and getting back on track to what you were talking about is to Graham Platner. And I will tell you that, you know, I like not everything he says, but a lot of what he says and a lot of the issues that he's trying to put forward. But, you know, I've got to admit that if some Trump supporter for some Trump candidate had the same sort of baggage that he has, I'd be living about it. Okay. that's something that I've got to come to grips with. And the question that I have in looking at that particular race is, okay, how far in the past was it? Is any of the mistakes he made in the past? Are those things that linger in the present? Mike, he covered up, he covered up the tattoo in October. Yeah. And so that's recent. That's not distant. It's not like Brett Kavanaugh. It's not 30 years ago. It's this past year. And the allegations with the girlfriends are the past few years. The allegation with his campaign staff was just this present time. So he's got some issues there. And I'm not, it's not, I'm not a main resident. Isn't my choice to make. But I'm going to give you some results of a survey that are going to shock you on how people feel about that. So, but maybe you may, I don't think you'll like the survey, but it's why people like him. The more, the more he gets sullied up, the more people like him. That's the scary part. Well, maybe it's not they like him, but they get, they want to trying to get more defensive. I don't know. But, you know, they're trying to find more excuses to be able to say, okay, but even so, I still would rather have him in the Senate than Susan Collins. And. that's you know that's a rational point of view but to not acknowledge the baggage and to say hey that's a problem is again a product of the confirmation bias that we have we're seeing the same thing down in texas the people you know are calling James Talarico this fake christian and you know trying to sell Well, they're judging him on his words about God being non-binary and six genders and things of that nature. That's where that's coming from. Is that saying that all Jesus followers should be? No, no, no, no, wait, wait. I said that's where it's coming from. Right. I just said that's where it's coming from. So that's for them in Texas. Again, not my candidate. Mike, I'm up against a hard break. Got to run. Thank you for the phone call. Third hour, getting ready to be underway here on the Brent Winterable Show. Chad Adams, your guest host, sitting in. Much more to go. You guys heard what Mike had to say, do you agree? Give me fire. Give me that what I desire. So.

Just as the production crew predicted, and I had spoken to Mike before, I don't know if it was in this incarnation working with Brett show or with Pete's show, but at some point I've run across Mike a number of times. He's at least he's a nice gentleman. And so, but here was the prediction that the message boards would light up, that the text line would light up. And indeed it did. Chad Adam's singing for Brett Winterble here. Brett enjoying his time off, solving the world's problems. He'll be back full of F, vinegar, in my full of breath coming back next week. If you want to get on the conversation at 704-5-701079, that is the same for the WBT text line, which is 704-570179 here at 107.9 FM, WBT, Charlotte FM News Talk. Now, I mentioned something to Mike. Mike at least got the, and gave credit to the fact that we talked about confirmation bias yesterday. And it's not just that like someone said, and they're right, that on the one hand, if you're a state fan and you can't stand in Carolina, you look for things that make state look good and Carolina look bad. That is, that is the simple version. I mean, sports fandom is absolutely, and I find it remarkable, confirmation bias shows that they're easily. Now, where it gets confusing is if you're a big fan of a given quarterback, let's just say you were a big Russell Wilson fan, and all of a sudden Russell is playing for Seattle, who you don't like, do you pull against Seattle because Russell Wilson was there? Then he leaves, he goes to Pittsburgh. Are you still a Russell fan? Are you not? Things of that nature. You know, the trading of players makes the confirmation bias. Are you wed to the player or wed to the team? But let's take it a step further, and it's, for instance, climate change is one of those that is riddled with confirmation bias, where people are absolutely, Greta Thunberg, you know, wed to the idea they look for every bit of bad news and ascribe it to that issue. People who look for rate that see the world in terms of race do this. regularly. And what ends up happening is you end up associating yourself with tribes. Now, the white hate groups, they do this, I mean, I'm sorry, the racist groups, whatever it is. It's how you end up in cults. You end up in a cult because you associate yourself with people who shrink, they have a shrinking view of the world. And they all ascribe to that belief system. And no matter what you say to them, that belief system trumps reality. It becomes, you can kind of see it. A lot of people with TDS have this confirmation bias to the point that it's a religion to them. It's as if the sheer fact that Donald Trump draws oxygen on the planet Earth makes them incapable of rational thought. And you can see that.

There are many, many people that can't have religious discussions for this reason. Race and religion are two of the areas that emotion gets out in front of rational discussion. And now we find with Trump in the White House that the Democrats have become unglued and unhinged and incapable. I mean, the fundraising letter that James Carver wrote for Roy Cooper had nothing to do with the issues. It was not about the issues. And we're finding it increasingly difficult to talk about the issues. And that's the real crime. Now, to that point, so I was just looking at generic ballots and stuff like that. But there's a poll. And I didn't believe it when I saw it. When I saw the post, I thought, you know, this is, this is not real. But it is. It's an actual poll, TPSI. How to pull out there. And they poll folks about the Susan, if Graham Platner were to prevail and run against Susan Collins in Maine. And I say this because I want you to think, could this happen here? And the answer is yes. In Maine, it can happen anywhere. And this is alarming. It's not alarming. It's not that we haven't seen stuff like this before. It's just hard to believe that we're that easily. baffled or fooled. People would say, all the Trump people were fooled. No, Trump's been remarkably consistent. It can upset you. And he can say moonback crazy things sometimes with the exaggerations, which we know he's trolling the left a lot of times. But he's consistent in the limiting the scope of government, wanting to make the country great again, changing the New York sky. I mean, he's accomplished a lot of things. You can't like it, but you can't say he hasn't accomplished a great deal. The U.S. Senate race in Maine. When they polled it June 8th, Susan Collins versus Graham Platner, it's a dead heat. Susan Collins, 43.7%, Graham Platner, 43.1%. And so when you inform, when you let people know, so when voters are informed about the sexual assault allegations, when they're in Graham Platner, actually, when they learn more about what he's done to women, his numbers go up. Now, let that sink in for a minute. You've got a Senate candidate who's on an oyster farm that is, he makes, I think, $3,000 to $5,000 on the oyster farm. Most of it's disability. I'm not following that, but don't claim you're an oyster farmer when it's not really about oyster farming. He says a lot of, the more people learn about him, and I want you to let this sink in, the more they like him. This is on the political left. Democrats are more enthused because I think it pushes back and forces them into their confirmation bias. Now, I'm not saying that's true. That's my belief. I'm saying what would make someone that if you said, well, I'm not really sure I could vote for platinum. He'd say, well, you know, there's these sexual assault things people are talking about. He's got the Nazi tattoo. He's said a lot of things about how he can grab women. What is Toyota affordability? It all starts with buying smart. and your Toyota dealer has great deals available to qualified customers on reliable cars and SUVs, including the redesigned RAV-4, spacious Grand Highlander, sporty Camrys, and Corolla's. It means driving for less, with efficient hybrid and plug-in hybrid options available throughout the lineup, extending your overall driving range and delivering great MPGs, saving you money at the pump. And it means trading for more.

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Now, I don't think in the end that that will prevail because we're a long way from the November election. He's got to make it through the primary today. And he's getting all the name idea he could possibly stand. And calling him a communist is not something that he would see a problem with. He's openly said he has, he's a communist. And that we're in a country today that says, apparently that's okay. Or at least from the political left, they do. Oh, fun fun. Um... I did, I continue on our third hour here. And I, there was a, there was a legitimately good. I didn't feel it was, it's, it's a little political. Well, of course, everything here is, it seems. But I, but I like the question. I think it was a good question. And it was, let me see if I can get this. Why, it was good. It's from, Marty? Yes, from Marty. So Marty had asked, you know, I'd like for you to address why Trump continues to fall for Iran's constant putting off the peace talks and why. Trump allows it. I understand why Israel takes their stance as Iran uses Hezbollah to attack Israel. I have a different take on that, and it's not completely 100% pro-Trump. This is a... Foreign policy is ugly. It's probably uglier than any kind of sausage you've ever seen being made. And this has been addressed multiple times by Marco Rubio, who I think is, I believe personally has done an absolutely stellar job. He way surpassed my expectations of him, moving from the Senate into that role. I think he's been stellar, both with the Venezuela, Cuba situation, certainly with China rolling over into the Middle East, just on point. The Iranians, if you were to step back from it and not just look at it from, why don't we just finish them off, we can just launch a kinetic strike and take out. There's rumors now that Israelis and their strike did take out the lead guy from the IRGC. I have not seen confirmation of that. So I'm letting you know the I, the Republican Guard out there, the fierce, what's left of the fierce. hardliners, that's where a lot of the nothing's taking place is coming from because they are absolutely still waiting for the path to Allah, I guess, I don't know. They're certainly fearless. What's left of them, you know, I think they're going to be like Ahmad the dead terrorist in the near future, especially with you, you don't play with Israelis, they don't, they're going to do what they do. And with Hezbollah and the Houthis and this, I think the Iranians would love to see this expand. I don't think it's going to. But about Trump, specifically, why is Trump continues to fall? I don't think he's falling for anything. I think the inner libertarian that is Trump, he likes very limited military action. He likes a direct outcome. He prefers diplomacy over kinetic action. Connecticut is very expensive. Lives could be endangered. And certainly he would prefer one to the other. The Democrats want to make this.

Trump's long war. It's probably one of the shortest incursions we've had. It was very limited in scope and devastating. The consequences were devastating. The Iranian economy, inflations through the roof. It is starving them of funds. The gamble the Iranians are doing is trying to put it into the election to make this a midterm election issue, trying to figuring it'll help the Democrats. And if they can help, and I know that sounds horrendously partisan, but if you're an Iranian... If you're the Iranian leadership, that's what you want. The only way to stop, you're not going to be able to stop him kinetically. You're not going to be able to stop him militarily. So what you've got to do is stop him politically. And you can only do that by making sure the midterms go against Trump. So it puts the Democrats in a weird Baptist bootleggers relationship with the Iranians, at least from a leadership standpoint. The Democrats would love to see this. It sounds terrible. I hate myself even saying it. But the Democrats. have not been supportive of this. They've multiple times tried to cut off Trump's ability to do anything. We haven't hit 60 days of kinetic actions. Theoretically, he's got another week or so where he could do take action militarily. Now. So I think what he's doing is he believes that the starving of the Iranian regime, because food medicine is not being limited, but the rest of it is oil's not flowing for them. It's not flowing for others either, but it's starving the Iranians in a way that's damaging day to day. He's not unfrozen the funds. That's damaging them day to day. It's strangling what's left of the leadership. And he's playing a game of, you know what, I can wait. You don't like it. I may not like it either. I'd love to see this thing finished off, but that seems to be where we are. I don't think he's falling for anything. He's, I think he's very, his team is very aware of the Iranians with respect to their nature of slow walking, lying, misleading, twisting. And I think they want to trust but verify every single thing that they can't. Now, complicating that matters, the Apache helicopter that was shot down. shot down, interaction with a drone. There's a lot of speculation about what absolutely occurred. There have been multiple military experts saying, hey, the Iranians aren't known to have the type of missiles that do that. They are speculating it could have been a shoulder to air missile because a drone wouldn't fly in such a way to take out the helicopter, at least none of the ones the Iranians have shown to this point. So they're wondering, you know, was there, there hasn't been a defined... what happened to this Iranian. Now, the pilots were safe. They've been rescued. They were rescued by drone, some kind of drone thing. So, yeah, I like that. Also, like what Bob said about, you know, Iran's like Lucy with a football game. And Trump's like, I don't think he's like Charlie Brown. It looks that way. And I'm not trying to let my own confirmation bias. But I've just seen the game play it enough. What the Israelis did with Hezbollah with the Pagers was made a James Bond movie look, you know. cheap. That took years of planning. The Israelis don't want to slow walk anything because their life and death depends on the success of this operation. So they've got to deal with Hezbollah and the Houthis are sitting there saying they're going to affect things in the Red Sea. I don't think they will. So this is a chess game and it's not pretty and it's not easy. And it's not easy. Especially if the rule of engagement is you don't want troops on the ground. And I don't think Trump wants boots on the ground.

in Iran in that theater of operations. He's done this from the air. He's done this from sea. He's done this in a very methodical way he and his team and Pete and those guys. So we'll see. There's so many different things. There's things. There's just things. There's so many things. On the Trump-Iran situation, the helicopter, the president said, you know, they have to answer. which would indicate that they believe it was taken down. It wasn't a accidental drone thing that there was some intent. Worth noting the Iranians who love to brag about the things they don't do, meaning that they have destroyed Israel multiple times and that their attacks are all successful. They have not taken credit for the Apache helicopter downing. Iranian media appeared to acknowledge the incident with the semi-official mayor news agency reporting that Iran had not claimed responsibility. One U.S. official told CBS News the BBC's U.S. partner that it's not clear if the drone deliberately attacked the helicopter. We don't know. There's just a lot we don't know yet about this, but the president has already said there will be a response. I don't know. There's a lot of confusing things. It's a highly... tenuous situation. It's a powder keg. And the, I mean, the fact that the Iranian media doesn't want to claim credit for it tells me that their entire slow walk is exactly the way the viewers and listeners see this, which is their attempt to just kind of walk through time. They have no intention of giving up the strait of removes. They have no intention of surrendering the nuclear dust. Those are the two, that's it. This isn't a fancy negotiation. It's pretty straightforward. And the Trump administration knows the Iranians are trying to play it. They're doing what they've done for the past 50 years when no other president would take them on. It just wouldn't. So we'll see how that all goes out. Now, the other thing is, and this is completely shifting directions. It has to do with, Hakeem Jeffries is one of my. favorite Wackadoos in power, I guess. He and Chuck Schumer kind of battled it out. But Hakeem is saying, you know, that Trump attending the Knicks game, and this just happened not long ago. It's not too long ago. So they attended the next games. He's just, and this is the kind of stuff he says. You know what? Better than that, I'm going to play it for you. So I've had a few things to say about Donald Trump going to the next game. And, you know, at this point, is game day? And I think Knicks fans just want to enjoy game three, the first home game that we've had in 27 years. But it also is not clear to me that Donald Trump is a big Knicks fan. I mean, does this guy even know the difference between Carl Rove and Carl Anthony Towns? I don't think so. He's just injecting himself. into the NBA finals.

because he always has to bring the MAGA circus into town. Now, here's where that gets funnier. So here's where this gets funnier. Trump was a ticket holder. He's set court side for years. He knows the Knicks. He knows the players. He's been a part of this. The fact that Hakeem Jeffries doesn't know that and that Governor Kathy Hochul didn't know that just made them look infantile and shallow and cheap. And what's funnier, here's the funniest part of this to me. It's not that what he said. You know, it's... It's when Democrats try to act. You remember when Elizabeth Warren tried to act like she was one of us and said, hey, I think I'll have a beer. You know, that's kind of, I'm one of you. Or when Chuck Schumer made it look like he was trying to cook on the grill with the frozen burgers and the cheese on top and acted like he knew what he was doing. And anybody who ever grilled knew Chuck Schumer's nuts the way he did it. James Talarico's saying his whole campaign was kind of vegan and then now they're... posing him with meat. At every occasion, he's eating meat, no matter where he's eating meat. And then at Tim Walz, you know, they show him, I'm a hunter. I hunt. And John Kerry carrying a dead goose around. Michael Dukakis, the favorite one of mine was Michael Dukakis riding around in the tank with a little helmet on. I'm tough. See, I'm a tough masculine dude. It doesn't sell. It doesn't work. And this is, but again, back to Hakeem Jeffries, what is so funny to me. is that he's wearing a Nix hat. He's wearing a pink Nix hat. Ironic again, the pink Nix hat, trying to show support for women, while being unable to answer any questions about Graham Platner and the allegations by women, hey, they said, hey, what about the Me Too movement there, Hakeem? You said, believe all women, but now you don't. You attacked Supreme Court justices for things that allegedly happened 30 years ago. This happened like last year, and you're okay with that. Hakeem has no answer. Again, that's not the funniest part about Hakeem to me. Hakeem Jeffries is wearing a Nix hat. at the press conference. And these nicks, that buy these hats, by the way, when you buy them, for those of you know, when you buy them, there's a sticker underneath the bill of the cap. This Knicks hat that Hakeem's wearing still has the sticker on it. He's trying to act like he's been some kind of Knicks fan forever, and he's wearing a brand new hat that he hadn't even taken the sticker off of to the press conference, as if we can't see it. It's just, again, the desire to seem rather than to be. And he can't. And this allegation about Trump not being a Knicks fan, all he had to do was look it up. I mean, anybody with any grain of common sense could look up and know that Trump has been a Knicks fan for a very, very, very, very, very long time.

It's not new. Now, they can get mad that he showed up at it, and that's fine. You're welcomed. It was sold out. I mean, it was a people sat through. They got a chance to boo him. A couple people did. But to act like he wasn't, it said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver went full Trump mode at the Madison Square Garden. Quote, he was a fixture at Madison Square Garden. He had courtside seats. He was here all the time. He was at the drafts. He is a genuine Knicks fan. The arena was packed. People got through extra security. We should be using sports to create more community, not less. But the political left cannot stand that he goes to these things. I don't know why. Look, I can like you and disagree with you. I'm sure many of you have spouses you disagree with all the time. And you took a lifelong vow and you love them to death. Why do Democrats insist that we must agree with them? Trump being at the game, you guys have bigger issues. Don't you worry about the other issues, but instead you've got to attack the president, the president of the American people showing up at an American event, of which he has shown up at many, including the drafts. But Akeem's like, he doesn't know, he can't tell the news he's car roved. So that's the kind of lunacy we're up against. And again, the media at that event should have challenged Hakeem Jeffries, but they didn't. They should challenge Governor Kathy Hochul, but they don't. They should challenge Roy Cooper. They won't. That's where the political left gets a really strong pass. And that's where I am always hopeful. I always have hope that the media is going to challenge. We're finding it more and more. They are getting challenged a little bit more and more. But when the NBA commissioner just basically said he was a fixture of Madison Square Gardner, had a court side seats, he was there all the time. He was at the drafts. I mean, that just, like, excoriated the political left and made them look like the children that they act like.

Good afternoon, good music. Appreciate the staff. Special shout out to all you folks, Lonnie. And company out there, you guys have been fantastic to deal with there, Nick and all. So, Chad, I'm your guest host, in for Brett Winterville. I will be wrapping up my tenure here today at six or just before six here as we get to the top of the hours. It's been a pleasure and honor. Brett will be returning next week of guest hosts tomorrow and Friday and Wednesday. Anyway, at any rate, wanted to follow up because a lot has taken place. I was just trying to track things. U.S. Central Command. put out there that U.S. Central Command, Sendcom, forces began launching self-defense strikes against Iran at 5 p.m., which just short of an hour ago, at the commander-in-chief's direction. And Trump had tweeted and truth media data out there and saying, you know, a response. In response to yesterday's downing of U.S. Army Apache helicopter, the mission is a quote. I'm not quoting. The whole thing is a quote. This mission is a proportional response to unjustified Iranian aggression. Now, the choice of words is very intentional. You wouldn't put that line in. It means something very specific, a proportional response. I don't know how you have a, what do you find one of their helicopters, you kill that would be proportional? Because that's just tit for tat. And, you know, a lot of people are going to say, you know, that's not where you need to be. It needs to be punitive. It needs to be devastating. It needs to be, don't do that again. Now, what this also could mean is that the... leadership within Iran is completely fractured. That there's one group doing this and another group or two groups that are trying to stop the third group and saying, hey, they're not under our control now. Whether you believe them or not or they're lying bat rasters, I don't know. But clearly, there is something shaking up at what's left of leadership in that failed Islamic regime. And they are trying to sort that out by trying to thread the needle of peace through the auspices of violent directives from someone is making those shots. Now, it's interesting because no one's entirely sure. You know, in fact, I'm looking at this. Iran is responsible for shooting down to U.S. Apache helicopter Tuesday. President Donald Trump claimed in a truth social post. The military hasn't been able to confirm. The Iranians have not taken credit for that. I don't think they want to take credit for that, which would tell you it's kind of a either. And this is the problem with the IRGC and much of the control from what I understand have read and studied is that they are.

designed to be kind of satellite units that once the leadership's chopped off, they're supposed to continue the directive like Japanese soldiers trapped on islands at the end of World War II that didn't know the war was over. So we'll see. Two senior officials told multiple news sources the helicopter was downed by an Iranian drone, but several military people have commented they don't have drones with that kind of tech. Their drones are not that complicated, which could present a problem if they do have that. The U.S. Central Command announced the two pilots were rescued. by an autonomous underwater drone and a first of its kind mission. And so we'll see. So this is an escalation, maybe, maybe not. I think many Americans that they want to see this end and say, hey, finish it. Get the kinetic stuff out there and finish it. But we have to know who's in charge. That's the problem is I'm not sure they know who's in charge because someone has to be left behind to pick up the pieces. Otherwise, you just end up in total chaos. And you have fractional groups that are. just at each other's throats, and it doesn't benefit the world in any way to have that descend. The Islamic regime falling, good, great, wonderful. In fact, you know, several people, James Woods, who's a phenomenal commentator out there on Twitter, the actor James Wood said, you know, what would the, someone had tweeted, you know, what would the world look like without radical Islam, more Islam in general, and trying to be mean or disrespectful, but they put a picture of the World Trade Center still standing. I was like, wow, that's an iconic. that's that's in what picture worth a thousand words that's that's what it would look like that's what it would look like so see another thing i want to bring to your attention that we get at the top of the hour and this is a news that is Just kind of breaking out there, Will Doran, WRL State Government Reporter reporting that a handful of counties around North Carolina would be blocked from using their newest property appraisals to assess taxes on local property owners, a pair of Republican-led state house bills moved through the legislature today. Every few years, county governments reappraise what every piece of property inside county limits is worth. from hotels and office buildings to homes and vacant lots, fences and pools and everything else, those appraisals are then used to determine how much owners pay. The proposed bill would block any new appraisals done this year from being used. That's kind of weird because a lot of times what you do with that is certain people's property goes up in value. So you... you lower the rate, but it's kind of, I don't know the rationale. Usually it's pretty self-evident. I think Republicans think they're lowering taxes in some way, but they're changing or not allowing you to reassess property values, and we know property values are changing all the time. So I don't know what they're trying to do there, but here's the problem. This isn't every county in the state. A lot of them do it every four years. That's a lot. Some of them do it. They're required by law to do it every eight. Many cities and counties around the state have already approved their budgets for this coming year. The new year starts July 1. And the rest are planning to approve their new budgets before the end of June. That prospect could now be forced to reassess how much they're able to collect in property taxes because they're collecting it based on the valuations.

And if they don't know if those valuations have to be thrown out, then they have to adjust everybody's, I just don't know. But even as Republicans praised the bill as being good for protecting people's pocketbook, several of them also maneuvered to exempt their own homes counties from being affected. Do you get that? So Republicans have maneuvered to exempt their own home counties from being affected after a lengthy and contentious debate, it tentatively passed. along party lines, a final vote is expected tomorrow. So the Senate bill originally would have affected 20 counties statewide. Now it's down to 12 and then lowered further in the House in a series of convoluted provisions that rushed through with broad confusion on both sides of the aisle. So this thing is a mess. It's an absolute mess. The Republicans did this to themselves. I don't understand why they did it. And if you want to shoot yourself in the foot heading into an election year, By all means, this is one way to do it. So with that, have a great day, folks. It's been an honor and pleasure. Chad, Adam, signing off for now. Have a great evening.

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