Vicki McKenna Show - Stuck with Status Quo

Good morning and welcome to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. I hope everybody had a nice weekend. I'd like to personally thank Sophie Cunningham for hilarious memes that kept me entertained all weekend long. And if you haven't seen the memes yet, go find them. She's hilarious. I don't know if she intends to be hilarious, but she is just hilarious. However, we're not going to spend much time talking about the WNBA because nobody cares about the WNBA. We are going to talk about socialism on the program. Brian Schimming is standing by. We'll get into that in just a moment. We'll also talk about the, I guess, the flailing and twitching of the dying corpse of climate change. We will get into that because it's still wreaking some havoc. But we're going to start here. The United States Supreme Court just this morning released the decision on mail-in ballots. And the Supreme Court of the United States delivered the Trump administration a big loss on this one. Yes, you can count mail-in ballots, I guess, for as long as you'd like. This was the Mississippi case. The Supreme Court was taking up whether or not. You could have mail-in ballots counted after Election Day. As long as they were postmarked by Election Day and the Supreme Court said, feel free. Have at it. So we now have election season in the U.S. That aside, we are still awaiting the birthright citizenship case. That may come down today. I don't know. But in any case, we'll let Brian jump on straight away here. Brian Schimming, Chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. I guess. It's status quo, right? Because this is what states have been doing. They've been counting ballots late, creating election season rather than election day. All it does is reduce people's trust in election integrity when ballots trickle in for two weeks, for three weeks, just like you saw in Los Angeles. It also creates potential for shenanigans, election shenanigans. That's why people don't trust the process at this point.

Is shimming there? Can he hear me? Yes. There he is. How are you? Jump on in, Brian. Yay. Yeah. Yeah. So we're stuck with this for the 2026 midterms and going forward, I guess. Yeah, the, you know, in Wisconsin, an absentee ballot has to be received by the close of the polls. There are distinctions there if the ballot is lawfully received by the deadline or, or. you know but but otherwise generally no but it's terrible and in some of these um states i mean look at california look at some of it and california is always kind of held up as an example uh it's probably the worst example but not not There are other states like it. So as, you know, party officials, what do you do? I mean, the Supreme Court has ruled on it. So I always say, okay, let's take what we have in front of us here and decide that we're going to use it. Yeah, you got to play the cards. Got to play the cards. And I really, as you know, I just flew back from Washington and met with state chairs out there on Friday. and then was over at the white house for the president that night but i i always kind of tell these people especially in a state like wisconsin where we have a very late primary and we have no partisan voter ID you know i've kind of taken a different path since i've been chairman and that is i have to i can't sit around whatever i got to deal with to your point, to the cards that I am dealt. And if the cards I am dealt is that there's early vote and it's legal and whatever other set of rules, those are the rules I'm using. And I'm not going to sit there while the Democrats kick my head in. And if we didn't have early vote, not because I love early vote, because I don't, but if we hadn't had it four years ago, Donald Trump would have lost the state. that is to say if republicans didn't use it not if we didn't have it so we used it and what early vote meant for us is identifying people earlier number two we end up mailing them earlier not just to get them to early vote but to get them to vote period because there are a number of people who won't early vote. And I respect that. In fact, interestingly, there was a show of hands in that room of state chairs. There was probably 20 of them there, I guess, 22, 3, 4. And some of them had early voted. Others hadn't. I early vote. I have early voted by mail, but I generally do it at my clerk. So to me, I have to deal with the rules as they are, not as I wish they are. And because we did that in 24, it helped Donald Trump win the state.

And I told the president that to his face. Yeah. And, you know, had we not had so, you know, such a slack approach to absentee balloting, which we adopted after COVID. Correct. COVID's over. Right. But we decided to keep. And I actually shouldn't say that. We didn't decide. Most people wanted to go back to the normal way. Right. Of doing voting, which would have, in our, in our case, it was limited early vote. Right. Absentee balloting. Most people voted on election day. We didn't have indefinitely confined voters. We didn't have absentee ballot drop boxes. We didn't have any of that BS. Yep. But we didn't go back to that. You know, and I personally think it's because. the legislature was relying on the Supreme Court, Wisconsin Supreme Court, instead of just trying to aggressively attack the legislation or put it to a constitutional vote. Now, maybe we can do that going forward, assuming we keep control of the legislature, because that is going to, it's now in each state's lap. on how they're going to contend with that. And I told legislators at the time, I said, don't sit around waiting for the courts to do you a favor because... Obviously. I mean, it's ridiculous. And yet some were like, well, I think we'll be a right. And that's a conservative court and blah, blah, blah. Well, we just had what is a right-leaning court, not all the time, but most of the time, a right-leaning court rule against us on this issue. So I say to folks, you got to, as the old saying is, do what you can where you are. You know, for us, in Wisconsin, it has an effect. It's not as dramatic as it is in a lot of states. But for all these states, I mean, Florida gets votes counted the same night. So, I mean, Florida is like one of the biggest states in the country. And we used to. We used to do that. Before COVID. There is no reason. We can't get votes counted the same day. And, you know, you can argue about law and things like that. But so it's very, very frustrating. But as I say, I'm not going to go to a, you know, poker table and think I'm there to play solitaire. So let's talk. Let's shift a little bit because there's nothing we can do except try to dial it in as best we can. And the importance of early voting here for Republicans is manifest. It should be clear to everyone that until when or if we can change conditions on early vote, then do it, then embrace it. Let's have us own it as well. So I want to talk about socialism. A lot of that going on lately. This is incredible. There is not a single candidate in Wisconsin that has got at least double digits in Democratic polling who isn't at the very least holding hands under the table with socialism.

Most of them are just open. You've got Francesca Hong, who's the lead candidate. She wants to abolish prisons. She wants to abolish the police. I mean, she is running on the DSA platform. The DSA platform, by the way, also includes the seizure of private businesses. So when we say socialism, we're not talking about a welfare state. We're not talking about European style social democracy. We're talking they're running a socialist. Zohran Mamdani was just interviewed over the weekend. And he was talking about exactly what he means by socialism. Abolished prisons. You know, even Jonathan Carl had to say, really? You want to abolish prisons? Yep, we're going to abolish prisons. Francesca Hong couldn't even say she would put murderers in prison, but it's not just her. Let's say they clear her out. Now you've got the lesser Mandela Barnes. He's already committed to that. Letting criminals out of prisons is sexy, you know, high taxation. All of them want to eliminate the manufacturer tax credit. All of them want to commit our grid to green energy. All of them want to have woke social justice replaced reading and math and school. And they believe it. And this is the new Democrat. They're now running openly. Can they win by being obvious about it? Yeah, so I think there's two things there. There are some who are making the bet. Again, it's a seven-way Democrat primary. I mean, I have seen some really smart analysis of the Democrat primary, and I've seen some of the dumbest stuff I've ever read on social media about how this primary, I mean, suddenly people are like, well, if two points move here and the, you know, the cow jumps over the moon and, you know, all this. And about, you know, Mandela Barnes was thought to be sinking last week. Well, they just put a half a million dollars in a... advertising up for them. You know, Lieutenant Governor's got independent groups coming in for. Francesca Hong is kind of organically more supportive, but do I know that some left-winger in California is not going to throw, you know, a couple million under her? So I... I think the truth of the matter is probably three or four of the Democrats in this primary could win. But I also don't know if an extra million or two or three is going to come in next week. But the truth is the leaders in that primary, the ideological leaders in that primary, which include Francesca Hong from Madison and Mandela Barnes from Milwaukee, and now the lieutenant governor, they're either left or the secondary effect they have. is to make the others lean left, to try to get through the primary, try to be the acceptable one that's not openly socialist, but whatever. So they're all playing to the socialist now. They're all playing to them. Even the ones who claim they aren't are playing to the socialist because they're trying to get that little margin in a tight seven-way primary, or it doesn't take 50%. I mean, this isn't a runoff here in August. It's, you know, you could get...

31% or 28% and get through the Democrat primary and be the Democrat nominee for governor of Wisconsin. So here's the thing. And I talked with Jessica McBride. She did, she and I were shooting this around last week. Yep. They will, they will go as far left as they have to to win the primary. By the, whoever wins the primary. I don't care if it's, you know, Sarah Rodriguez, who is actually just a white girl from Waukesha County, but she sounds Hispanic because she married a guy with his Hispanic last name. She's radical. She's a radical. She's trying to present sort of as a moderate to the general public, but she's trying to present as a leftist to the Democrat primary voter. So none of the moderates. I guess you can, you know, such as they are. In fact, one of them got out, Missy Hughes, would have been considered a moderate, or have any, made any splash whatsoever. There's, I mean, you have to be extreme. You just had Barb Lawton with early last week. The former lieutenant governor, Democrat lieutenant governor, say, you know, the one who can really win is Kelda Royce. I think there's only one more, one person who might be a little crazier than Francesca Hong regarding her leftism. And that's Kelder Royce. Yeah, and Calda. Tries to come off as a mom. You know, mom, they adopted some kids. She's an attorney. She's been a legislator. She's like trying to position herself as the crazy, but you can't label her crazy because she's got all this other stuff. So I wonder if she's trying to position herself to be the crazy that can win. Yeah. So the question is, though, when they hit the general election. and the media starts writing the stories, they will do a daily hit piece on Tom Tiffany, and they will either say nothing about the Democrat, or they will pretend that the radicals are completely normal. Right. Just like they did with Tammy Baldwin. So I want to kind of circle back to put my Jen Socky hat on and circle back. Circle back to the Baldwin of the original Baldwin election, where she beat Tommy Thompson. Now there's a whole bunch of reasons why she beat Tommy Thompson, not the least of which is Thompson and had a brutal primary, spent the last remaining campaign dollars in the primary and went dark for a bit. But besides that, the media did a daily hit piece on Tommy Thompson, and they did the soft pillow routine for Tammy Baldwin. They turned the most far left member of Congress into just G. Aw Shucks Tammy from Wisconsin. Yeah. She's just Tammy from Wisconsin. That's what they will do to whoever wins the Democratic primary. Exactly. And because they have to. I mean, Tiffany, I. like Tom Tiffany's chances. I like Eric Tony's chances statewide. I don't know that they're affected or not affected by what's going on nationally. But that's where the Democrats are put, the only unifying factor, the only unifying principle for Democrat candidates in Wisconsin right now is hatred of Donald Trump.

That's it. That is what motivates their base. Every piece of research, focus group work, everything shows that their base is massively motivated by hatred of Donald Trump, which is why the third party groups have put a million dollars into these anti-Trump ads that are up right now in Wisconsin. I see some billboards around the state, too. I saw them on lacrosse when I was there last week. So the truth is, it's hatred of Donald Trump, and it's, as you say, these people who, you know, uh, uh, Brennan or the lieutenant governor or maybe David Crowley, the Milwaukee County Executive, who otherwise would be considered a legitimate candidate. He's the county executive of the biggest county in Wisconsin. And he's almost an also ran at this point. So is Brennan. Well, exactly. People have a hard time coughing up those two names, Crowley and Brennan. Like, oh, did you guys know those guys are still in it? So I don't think based on. talks i've you know had either with democrats or what you see i don't think brennan gets out My sense is that Joel Brennan does not get out because he thinks he can be the last man standing amongst the moderates. I don't know. I don't know if Crowley gets out. They're all filed. So one way or the other, all seven of them will be on the ballot. It's a question of whether they pull the plug on their campaigns. And as every day and every week, every hour goes by, there is pressure because the Democrats are apoplectic. that Francesca Hong or Mandela Barnes gets through this primary because there's so much on both of them. The other ones, you've got to kind of dig a little bit, although they're getting very better. They're getting better at talking publicly about how they can lean left. So that's great for us. We got opposition research to the ceiling in the studio right now. So I was just, you know, trying to do a quick cocktail table analysis of the likelihood that this new surge toward open socialism. And again, DSA socialism with a platform that says abolish the presidency, abolish the United States Senate, seize corporations and run them by the government, abolish the United States Supreme Court, abolish immigration laws. You know, I mean, we go on. Abolish prisons, police, et cetera. That's their platform. I'm not making that up. They put it out on a poster. Yeah. They're proud of that platform. True confessions. True. Yeah. So this is, but this is where the surge is and the enthusiasm is. And it's not just Trump for the young people. For the young people, it's also just this visceral hatred of Israel. It's bizarre. It's a visceral, and I mean, they can't even explain what's going on in that country. They have no clue. They've been told to hate Jews and claim that they're just anti-Zionists. But that's another thing. Why on earth?

Is anyone spending any time talking about Gaza in Wisconsin? Sure. They are. And so I think that's the new abortion for them. It is. And the truth of the matter is for the Democrats right now in Wisconsin, but I would argue nationally. In fact, everywhere is they have a two-front war going on. They have a war against Donald Trump because until they get their candidates cleared up or covered up, the Donald Trump thing is I say, is there one year? unifying principle. You know, abortion and these other issues are always their hot buttons. But hatred of Donald Trump is there one unifying principle. But they have a two-front war. The second front in the Democrats war themselves. Because now these lefties are challenging the Democrat leadership. I mean, Hakeem Jeffries is from New York. So, I mean, their leadership, Chuck Schumer is from New York. So they get these crazy candidates, and the socialists aren't interested in backing down and playing nice with the old guard in the Democrat Party, who are liberal, too, of course. I mean, it's not like Chuck Schumer and these other people that are suddenly the new moderates. They're liberal, too. But they get pushed farther to the left, the longer this goes on. And who is it a gift to Republicans? It's a gift if we use it. And frankly, have the guts and the good sense to take it to them and call them out for what they are, whether it's emptying prisons or a... on immigration issues. I mean, the sitting Democrat lieutenant governor who's running for governor now won't admit to Jessica McBride that her husband was in this state illegally, which he very likely was. Yeah, and why just, I mean, I thought you were all about illegal immigration and regularizing people and abolishing ICE. Just cough up the info. One last thing, and then we'll close out. And that is we've still got, and I can't even believe it, but our biggest problem is the fact that we have people who vote in presidential elections, but do not vote. in the other elections and the midterm elections. And I, I mean, we need to crack the code on this. I don't know if the Republicans have a plan, if national RNC is in here trying to help out with that. But if we don't do that, this could be a nail biter and potentially a loss. Yeah, people have to go out and vote. The president, when I was with the president Friday night, he addressed this issue. He's going to be active in the campaigns, but we got to say to people, if you want a new course for this country, I mean, Wisconsin, and he always points out Wisconsin. and the other target states and how we won them. But we have to replicate what happened there and get people to go vote. It used to be Republicans voted more in off years. Now they vote more in on years. Well, this is as much of an on year as we have had in decades. Agreed. Brian Schimming, thank you very much for coming in on the program today. You bet. And we'll take a break in the Vicki McKenna Show. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show.

And that's why they're kind of running from it. It's really stupid, particularly since the Iran thing is people say what they want. It's not popular among voters. And they need some of these other issues to stir up the base going into midterms. And I don't understand why they're running from something that has been such a victory for them over the last five years. All the all the. wonderful things we've seen happen for the pro-life movement and then for them to just go cold. It's not smart politically and it doesn't make sense. The only explanation is they're just tired of talking about it. I think, yeah, I think it is one of those issues. You're going to, I mean, talk about it. They've warned, the Democrats have worn themselves out. They've, they've just unwound the ball of yarn on abortion, abortion, abortion, abortion for, I mean, for three election cycles, abortion, abortion, abortion, abortion, abortion, dobs, dobs, stops, stops, stops, row, row, row, row, row, row, your boat. It is now. at the point where there's not much more they can do on it. You have Democrats, Democratic candidates here in Wisconsin. They could not be more radical. They want abortion as a right up until the very last moment of pregnancy. They want to be able to say it's my right to kill a, you know, a third trimester baby because I'm just, you know, I don't know. I just don't feel like having the kid. I mean, that's radical. You can't even get your head around it. And yeah, this is a time to start going hard because they're trying to hide that position in Wisconsin. I'm sure they're trying to hide it in other places as well. But no one's leading on it. Now, to the Iran War, that's just not motivate, that might be, that's, I'll tell you what that's motivating. That's motivating people who hate Israel. And beyond that, that's like nine out of 10 on an issue. You might as well not even bother to run on that. So pick the stuff that people want you to talk about. And this is one of those things the pro-lifers out there are saying, wait a sec. do we not matter anymore are we just the ugly girls at the dance because you know it's still it is still an issue that is that is motivating for a significant portion of people and for the portion of people who have gone back to god which is not insubstantial 100% not only is it motivating for a lot of the base, it's the issue that the other side is so weak at. And so you can really kind of put your foot on their throat when it comes to abortion. They're not good at articulating their point. They do want abortion through all nine months. You can ask them, hey, just out of curiosity, if the baby boy or baby girl survives the abortion, what do you think we should do? And you can get them on infanticide, which are like eight states have now.

I don't understand it. They're weak on it. We're strong on it. And it's a winner. It's based in science. It's based in faith. It's easy to articulate to any crowd. And they're just not doing it. So, you know, I don't know. I don't know if it's the fatigue. But. I'm very optimistic for the Republicans in the midterms. I think that the Democrats have really dug into some of the trans theft. And if you just take Trump's State of the Union address alone, that's like 10 political ads that'll be successful in the fall. But I think the Iran thing is a problem. I mean, this is the war that's ended five times or eight times or 10 times. And they've been obliterated. They don't think. People stop paying attention. No, it comes up and they're like, oh, yeah, we're doing all that thing. I should like pray for the soldiers and everything. I mean, people just forget about it. I just want to, you know. I want to say something about it, back to Dobbs. Post Dobbs, there has been, now it's not the majority, but there has been a pro-life shift among young people. I mean, that's, and let me tell you, the pro-life shift was eight points. That's huge. Now, again, it's not the majority. We're still talking under 40%, just but 37% is pretty good for young people who have been told constantly that they shouldn't have children and they should abort their children and that's empowerment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You shouldn't expect the numbers to go up on pro life for young voters, but they have. And this is since, and this is since Dobbs, just since Dobbs. And Gen Z is the most pro-life generation ever for their age. And they're also the first generation where every single one of them have multiple pictures of themselves in utero, their ultrasound photos. And so the left has really left them on that. And the Republicans underestimate how pro-life they are. The stat that should give us so much hope for the future is that Trump won the female vote 30 and under. He didn't win it. Females 30 and under voted for him 40%. He won 40% of women 30 and under. If you would have said that in October of 24, I would have told you you need to get your head examined. And that's exactly what happened. He won 40% of women 30 and under. That's insane. That's insane. And so, you know, a lot of it came down to abortion, and they are more pro-life. And, you know, that's why. It's just amazing. I guess the weakness of the Republicans, it seems like we just do this every single time where they kind of come out strong and then they just, they go cold. She's like boring. And it's a huge mistake. And it could cost them. It could cost them. I mean, the only thing the Republicans have going for them. Yeah. The left is crazy. That's what they're running on. Well, yes, the left is crazy. And I think that's a good thing to run on. But this is the reticence of the Republicans to touch the culture war. They have been told the elites. I'm not talking about regular rank and file people. The regular rank and file people, I love this lady. I met her and her and her little piece of personal activism is walking into libraries, finding those filthy books and forcing the librarians to explain to her why it's okay to talk about anal sex for six-year-olds. That's my, I mean, that's the kind of stuff. That's what our people want them, want the Republicans to fight on. That culture stuff, they want to see a fight.

on the culture stuff. They want to see a fight against DEI. They want to see a fight against all this trans stuff. They want to see the fight for pro-life. It's the elite Republicans who've been told that the culture war, just stay with the economy. Nobody cares about the culture war. Okay. Well, the left didn't take that advice, did they? The left is like, yeah, well, we care about it. We're going to tell you that you lost it and nobody cares about it. And that, I mean, I would say since Paul Ryan was House Speaker. is when we started to adopt this idea that we should just not touch anything that has to do with culture, anything that has to do with kids, anything that has to do with abortion, which blew my mind because he was a Catholic. But that's when it started. I peg it back to Paul Ryan in 2016. That January of 2017, Trump wanted to defund Planned Parenthood and he didn't want to do it. I mean, Trump was more pro-life than the Republican Congress. And it's just unbelievable. So that's the thing that the, and I think it's a matter of clearing the deck, Sean, because. And Trump has begun to clear the deck. Now you can say, well, Trump's part of the problem too. People are so viscerally hateful of Trump. We just talked about that with Brian Schimming, the chair of the Republican Party here in the state of Wisconsin. And that is, there's something to be said for the motivating factor of the left-wing hatred of this guy. But Trump has cleared the deck of some of this dead weight. And this 2026 election. The problematic part of it is we can't get the SAVE Act pass. We can't get anything decent past because we've got the anvil of Mitch McConnell and Thom Tillis and John Cornyn and all of these people who have been, you know, literally stuck and getting us stuck so that we can't do anything big. So I think that's what needs to happen is a reset. of the Republican majority. And I think in the case of Trump clearing the primary dexter, I think we're going to get wins in all of those cases. So maybe we've got good things to look forward to in 2027. I think we do. And everything you said is happening. And if you just look, I mean, just mentioning Paul Ryan, I'm like, oh, my word, how far along have we come since then? You know, I mean, Trump has reshaped the whole party and for the better, in my opinion. But we had dead weight from that generation. We did. We had lots and lots of dead weight that were sort of in that realm. And I can't even say they were fully in that realm because they were fans of debt spending. I mean, they were fans of increasing the debt to stratospheric levels. So I can't even say that they care just about the economy or just about the fiscal end of things and abandon the culture where they just. We're, you know, go along, you know, get along to go along Republicans. And I hope many of them are going to be, you know, going into that gentle retirement so that we don't have to contend with them anymore. Sean Carney, though, this is, I am taking a positive away from this. And I'm normally a black pill kind of, kind of gal. Yeah, you are. Because, because of that shift in young voters, I think that is going to pay dividends that we can't even imagine yet.

I do too. And people just, because some people hate Trump so much, people just forget how popular he is. He is extremely silently popular. And he's had a tremendous impact on policy, on what it means to be a politician. And people just underestimate that. They have every election he's been involved in. You know what? Every Republican should have just tied their boat to Trump. They should have. Instead of running away from the guy, oh, he's not popular. Oh, yes, he is. He's exceedingly popular, particularly among Republicans. He's, he's, you know, just galactically popular. Do appreciate the time. Sean, thanks very much for joining me on the program today. Thank you, always. And we will take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. I'll be right back. Okay, coming up, we're going to talk about the rash of Supreme Court decisions that came out on Friday, plus the one that was released today, which is on counting absentee ballots. So Michael O'Neill is going to join me on the program. I'll also talk about net zero clampdowns in the UK. This is the twitching corpse of climate change. They don't, in the UK, they just don't have. a way to fight like we do. So we've had Trump drop the bomb on the climate lie. And it's already begun to pay off here in the United States. They don't really have that. And they've committed a significant portion of their grid to renewables like wind and solar. So we're going to talk about that because there was a heat wave last week in Great Britain. There's a heat wave coming up. and they're being told they can't use their air conditioners. In fact, some people are being told to remove their air conditioner so that they can't use them. Anyway, we'll get into all of that coming up in the next hour on the program. We'll be right back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show.

So we're going to get into those Supreme Court decisions. We've got a few. Well, there were a few from Friday, Thursday, and then one today, well, three today, but one that really matters. And then tomorrow should be the birthright citizenship case, the decision on that. But we'll dive into some of those on the program, just in a couple of minutes here. Before we do that, do you have the audio that I sent you, Brandon, ready to go? Okay. So this kind of gets us, this is, it's a multi-purpose cut of audio. One of the purposes is to just be shocked that the media was able to hide this guy for as long as they did to the point where he damn near ran for president again. The other, though, is. what the Democrats are doing to him in this audio. And I'm not sure it's really clear. You can certainly hear Joe Biden. But maybe you can hear the heckling because he was heckled at the Democrat confab in Maryland, fully heckled. By his own people, not by a bunch of mega folks in the audience, by the Democrats. We'll just play it. Trust me, I'm not going to torch you for long. It's only about 35 seconds long. Play the audio, please. I should use nice, straightforward and simple. It's time to get up, damn it. Get up. Get up now. And continue this fight. So let's get up and fight back. God darn it. Touse seat. That was previously held by a Republican. She had won the last election by 19 points. That seat just happened to represent Quainting Little Place of El Herdo. Marlago. I love you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, you can't really hear the heckling too well. They're cheering over the hecklers in the audience. So unfortunately, that didn't come out as didn't come out as clearly as I had hoped it would. The cheering is cheering over hecklers. If you find the audio yourself on your computer, you can see what I mean. So you've got people in an audience heckling a former Democratic president. And then, I mean, obviously there are people there are just cheering over them to kind of shut, you know, shut them out. We do that too. Republicans do that too. Typically you'll hear us chant USA. But there's Biden. The guy. This is why, although I'm somewhat. less pessimistic about these upcoming elections than some others. But this is what he is why I am worried. Everybody else out there is saying, oh my gosh, these guys are running as open socialists. No, no, no. He is why I'm worried because the media hid him, hit him throughout the campaign in 2020, hit him throughout his presidency. enough so that when the switch happened to Kamala Harris, she almost won. It wasn't that people were saying, oh, thank goodness we've got Kamala Harris because the guy's got dementia and he's, you know, practically disabled at this point, is functionally disabled at this point. No, because Democrats just vote for Democrats. They hid him. Now, maybe had they trotted him out all the time and he had been drooling on himself openly, not just that one moment in the debate, maybe people would have said, yes, yeah, I can't go with that, just going to stay home at least. But they hid him so the Democrats would just go vote for a Democrat. And had Joe Biden run against Trump, they would have hid him. And Democrats would have voted for a Democrat. And Joe Biden would have gotten as many votes as Kamala Harris did. In terms of the popular vote, she came close. Democrats will vote for Democrats. So when you've got the raft of Democrat candidates in Wisconsin who are talking to each other about socialism, by the time, and no one's paying attention, nobody paid attention to the candidate forum, zero people except media, paid attention to that. None of you, and I certainly didn't glue myself to my computer and watch that thing. I watched it afterwards. Why? Because I have to. You didn't. The Democrats didn't. Nobody watched that thing. So, well, they're trying to out-left each other. By the time they picked their candidate, I don't care who it is. Calder Royce, Mandela Barnes, Francesca Hong, Sarah Rodriguez, I don't care who it is. The media will sanitize that person and hide them, if necessary, minimally hide their record, and Democrats will vote for Democrats. Because it's what they do. That's why I'm not quite as comfortable.

as some people are with the embrace of socialism. Not because I think people want socialism, it's not popular in the United States. It's unpopular. But because that's not how any of the socialists are being presented. We are talking about it. Consider yourself in the end group because most of the media is not talking about it. The conservative media is talking about it, but by comparison, How many people consume our media, right-leaning media, versus the mainstream media, which is broadly left-leaning media? We're a fraction, a small fraction of that. A small fraction of that. So great, you know, you're going to have to be the ones to let people know what they're up against. You are, individually. Because the media got Joe Biden elected in 2020. That plus bad COVID policy. Period. They got Joe Biden elected in 2020. They would have hid his dementia had he been the candidate, had they not done the swap with Kamala Harris. He might have even pulled in more votes. There is pretty good modeling that suggests Joe Biden would have actually pulled in more votes because Kamala Harris was aggressively off-putting. Because the media won't tell you the truth. And most people do not listen to talk radio. They don't listen to right-leading podcasts. They don't sit there and scour red state or PJ Media or bright barred or daily caller, daily wire or the federalist. They don't. Joe Biden, the president of the United States, was exactly like that when he was president. Now, that they were being, that he was being heckled, unfortunately you couldn't hear that because it was drowned out by the cheers. But you could, if you, if you listen on your own computer, you can see the hecklers. Is a tell. Democrats heckling. standard issue democrat is a tell they want socialism and they want it to the point where they will kick other candidates out because they do understand one thing and that is democrats vote for democrats regardless of whether they're socialist or moderate or even conservative democrats vote for democrats always we'll take a quick break Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. So as promised, we'll go over some of those Supreme Court decisions. Again, we're hearing that tomorrow, tomorrow is birthright citizenship. So we don't have that. We're not going to get that today tomorrow. But we do have some big ones. Boy, I'll type Michael O'Neill from Landmark Legal is joining me on the program. I guess I was surprised. at the at the rnc decision i really did think that was going to come down uh in favor of the rnc that's the absentee ballot decision so let's start with that one the court said and i think it was a five to four decision the court said oh yeah feel free to count ballots after election day um and you know if you want to change that then then you know congress which does nothing right so let's start with that case

Yeah, that one was surprising to me. And I think I've probably been on with you, Vicki, talking about Watson versus RNC with an expectation that the court was going to conclude that Election Day means that has to be cast and received by Election Day, by the conclusion of an election day. And that sounds to me like a pretty straightforward textual analysis of what Election Day means. But apparently, Amy Cumming Amy Coney Barrett, John Roberts, Sotomayorkegon and Jackson all disagreed with that. And they concluded otherwise uphelding, again, upholding. Narrowly, a narrow, a narrow opinion here, authored by Amy Coney Barrett, saying that the Mississippi law in question, which permitted, Mississippi law mandated that you had that postmarked by Election Day, but it could be received five days after Election Day, was permissible, did not violate, did not run contrary to federal law, and therefore Mississippi's law is to be upheld. Very bad news, I think, from context of election integrity, election security. I think she did, at the end of the opinion, I just finished reading this opinion again, keep in mind these just came out about 10 o'clock this morning here at Eastern Time. So she did conclude that she wasn't getting into the policy issues. That's what I oftentimes talk about. particularly with this, with allowing these ballots to be received after election day, really incentivizes all kinds of malfeasance, voter creation, vote creation, possible fraud, all those parades of horrors, and that, you know, you really could have gotten a kibosh on it by just doing a particularly textual inclination. She does acknowledge that, and she goes, it's not our position, and I agree with this generally. I wholeheartedly agree with this. It's not the Supreme Court's role to weigh in on policy issues. They interpret statutes. And that's what we want to see. That's what we see. We see that in other decisions. Those are, that's good. However, I think that it's not unreasonable. I think a clearly textual interpretation of election day means that ballot has to be both received and cast and received by the conclusion of election day. So if you want to get into this, we can get into the debate about the merits of policies and all the problems that arise with it. And that's certainly legitimate. And obviously the court could consider that. That shouldn't be dispositive. What should be dispositive is what is the meaning of the text. And there's the federal law says election day. And interpreting election day to mean balance cast and received by election day, that's what it means. Voting is not just... casting a vote. It's actually having the ballot received by the requisite election officials. So we basically have the redefinition of the word day here. Put aside the postmark issue, folks. That's Mississippi's law. The question here was, is it election day, isn't the day? Or is it election season? And that was the concern here. So, you know, Mississippi's law, well, it's got to be postmarked. Postmarked, okay. Well, but that wasn't, is postmarked okay, right? The debate was over whether or not you can count ballots after election day. So what if California says, well, it doesn't have to be postmarked, but it has to be cast.

has to be cast by electionary, right? You can see this. You've got to cast your vote. How are we going to determine what proof of casting your vote is? They have absentee ballot drop boxes. There is no postmark in an absentee ballot drop boxes. Does that mean that any absentee ballots that are harvested from drop boxes after, you know, close of election can't be counted? Oh, no. We're going to have a battle royale on that. I guarantee you. This just means that we're going to drag a whole bunch of more cases in the court. The states are going to go crazy. Yeah, and I think you're going to have to do that. You're going to have to find a more permissive law and then see whether that violates the federal statute here. And then again, again, as I was saying, you know when you see an Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts joining with. the left wing or the liberal contingent on the court, it's going to be a very narrow opinion, right? It's going to be very narrowly construed. So you raised an incredible point, a really great point here, Vicki. You're going to have situations here where it's going to be a different allegation. Well, California doesn't require them to be postmarked. And these are ballots that are that languish in a drop box for... hours, days afterwards. Also, the other thing is limiting principle here, and this is an important consideration, is let's not lose sight of the fact that some states have it. It's absolutely absurd. You're talking Washington State. Pretty week after Election Day. Now, again, the court doesn't address Washington State's law that allows ballots to be received up to three weeks, 21 days after Election Day. I wonder if the outcome would be any different if that law were up in challenge. But again, as you said, I think it's... We're looking at this. There's going to be other groups. These other state laws are probably going to germinate up to the Supreme Court. But for the time being, and this is unfortunate here, this is kind of the national implication, all those laws we're talking about. You're talking about California's laws, Washington State's laws, of course, Mississippi's law in this particular instance. And I think about 30 states here, those laws are all going to be allowed to be on the books here going to the election season. And look at what's happened in the mayorial election for California. We know what happens after election. So the battle is not over in this particular case with regards to receipt of mail ballots. However, you know, there is there is a disappointing outcome from the Supreme Court. It's status quo. Unfortunately, so all the crazy stuff that's going on could have been rained in by this case. Los Angeles could have been rained in by this case. Washington State could have been rained in, but no, nope. So it's status quo. I mean, it's not like anything got measurably worse. Things will, I think, get measurably worse because I think more states, particularly blue-leaning states, are going to go forward and try to do something like this, including Wisconsin if we lose control of the legislature and don't get a governor, a reasonable governor. But, you know, again, so my favorite is the punt. And it is a punt now, even though that if you were, you know, viewing this from Mars and you didn't realize how feckless and useless Congress was, maybe this makes sense to you. Congress can always pass a law. Congress can always pass a law. It would be nice. But they don't pass the law on the state. They can't pass the state of America. They can't pass a law saying a simple law. Here's a simple law. Let's mandate you show identification when you show up to vote in person on election day. Here's a great law. Here's a great law. But this is pie in the sky thinking. Election day is a federal holiday mandating if you want to vote in federal elections, you have to vote in person on a federal holiday on election day, in person via paper ballot. Is that too hard?

Other countries can do this, but apparently that's too much for Congress. Well, we talked about some negative stuff. Let's not let's say to the fact that there's a huge win here for the Constitution and Separation of Powers, Trump versus Flotter decision. I don't want to get... It's important to understand that Watson versus R&C is a disappointing decision, yes. But the big takeaway from today is the Trump versus slaughter decision. This is an imperative, important decision that's affirming... This is a victory for separation of powers. This is a recognition on the part of the court that the executive power is vested within our president. In this case, of course, President Trump, but all presidents, and they have the power, the authority to determine whether these heads of these quasi-independent agencies can terminate it at will. In other words, President Trump comes in and doesn't want to have to deal with the Biden holdovers in a lot of his administrative agencies. So he can terminate their employment. He doesn't need for cause. Congress can't insulate these individuals from termination of employment. There's a recognition here. This is an important plan for the separation of powers, understanding the simple principle that the executive power is vested with the President of the United States per article two of our Constitution. So that's it. This is FTC, an FTC case, but it could be the FCC, it could be the EPA. Oh, yeah. It could be. So does this also, it could be the National Labor Board. But is this, is this all, all members of these quasi-independent agencies are only the heads? Well, the heads are the ones who are protected, right? The heads are the ones who have the statutory protection. You can fire everybody else. Right, exactly. So again, when a new – and this is interesting, and you know, you'll hear the left might scream and holler about Trump, Trump. This is an acknowledgement of a presidential power. This goes beyond just a President Trump or a President Biden or a President Obama. This is – The president's power. So this empowers, and again, this is not empowering the president. This is recognition of a fundamental principle under our Constitution that the executive power is vested with the president. Now, I'm going to bear with me for a second. There's another decision, Trump versus Cook. Again, this is regarding the Fed. This is President Trump, whether president can terminate Lisa Cook, who's all the Fed Board of Governors. Now, the court held narrowly in this case, again, we're talking about another narrow decision here. This is narrowly. She hadn't been afforded her necessary due process, right? In this case, so for now, she's insulated. They ruled that the Fed stands outside a little bit more than those other agencies I'm talking about because there's some history with the Fed and banking. But, again, the big takeaway here is Trump v. Slaughter, recognition of the power of the president to terminate the heads of these, terminate employment of the heads of these quasi-independent agencies, and it's vested with the President of the United States. That means presidents, and again, if we have a President Trump or a President JD Vance or whomever, they're going to be able to come in and effectuate their agenda. Because keep in mind, one important thing here, Vicki, is there's only two individuals in our country that the whole nation chooses. That's the vice president and the President of the United States. We have to recognize that fundamental principle when we're dealing with these separation of powers issues.

Oh, I think it's huge. I think it's huge, particularly some of the agencies that I worry about. But one other thing that actually recognized the executive, the authority of the executive, and that was last week's TPS decision, temporary protected state decision as well, which was enormous because you can't say that the president doesn't have the power that the president has. If you want to take away the president's power, then you're going to have to, and it's a constitutional power, you're going to have to change the Constitution. So temporary protected status is, if the president wants to cancel it, so be it. Right. And again, the law, again, as you say, you make a great point. There's the constitutional powers of the president. There's also the statutory powers of the president vested to him via Congress through the law. And what is the word we just talked about? Over and over again, this is temporary. Congress used the word temporary when it vested the power of the president to determine temporary status. So temporary means temporary. That means if the president makes a determination via the Department of Homeland Security of Homeland Security that he wants to cancel. That status, that's his power vested to him via the law. This is pretty simple stuff when you actually think about it, right? It's not, again, as I was saying, it's not the Supreme Court's role to determine whether there's justice here, whether it's going to be unfair to deport Haitian immigrants who are here under temporary status, who, by the way, have been here for 16 years. Under what, if you're here pursuant to a temporary status, that means. you're not certain to, there's no certainty to your presence in the United States. And if the powers that be want to revoke that presence, that's their authority. That's their power. So if you want, if you want to change this here, don't use the word temporary. If you hear, if you hear come on, if you're, if you're present in the United States under temporary protective status, that means you're here temporarily. And there's the expectation that at some point you return to your country of origin. Well, yeah, but it doesn't matter if it was permanent. It doesn't matter if they use the word permanent. It's still the power of the president. You know, the power of the president gets to say, okay, I'm done with granting permanent status to these people. And it seems to me that it wouldn't be functionally much different. If you don't want the president to have that authority, take away, then just eliminate that law entirely. Take away the president's authority to do anything like that. Yeah, it was an even easier case. Yeah, it was even easier case because the country, you know, it's just, it's the same word. The court didn't have to quibble. Justice Cleaver didn't have to quibble with the terminology. It's plain, ordinary meaning of it. Similarly, arrived at the United States. This was the, this was the folks, whether, what is the arrival at the United States for applying for asylum status? Right. You actually have to be. At the United States, you can't be 100 miles offshore or en route to the United States. You actually have to arrive. We're talking about, and that's what the court does, is what at base, what are they doing? They're trying to get us the best meaning, the ordinary meaning, oftentimes, of these statutory phrases. Temporary, arrived. What do these mean? And again, good news. Those were two wins for common sense, wins for the country. Another huge win for separation of powers and for the country here is the Trump versus slaughter.

Step back with Watson versus R&C, but that battle will continue, as you pointed out. Yeah. So we had the Supreme Court comfortable defining, you know, using Miriam Webster on the word, arrive and on the word temporary. But on the word day, on the word day, they struggled. It was a struggle. That was, you know, I mean, maybe someone stole their dictionary. I don't know. But Michael O'Neill, thank you very much for joining me on the program today. Take care of Vicki. Have a great day. Talk to you. Oh, tomorrow, well, we're going to get the big one. So I'm happy to talk about that one too. Yeah. Good to have you on the show. Thanks, Michael. See you. Talk to you later. Bye-bye. Okay. Bye-bye. Worthright citizenship coming out tomorrow. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. So the twitching corpse of climate change. It is still wreaking havoc, and it may still wreak havoc here in the United States, but it certainly is in the idiotic areas that have adopted net zero as government policy, government energy policy. And we're going to get into both of those things. One, how the twitching corpse of climate change may actually somehow be shocked back to life in the U.S. by a simple change to a court handbook, but we'll also begin with... with what is going on in the net zero areas, which, thank God, do not include the United States. Bonner Cohen is joining me on the program from C-Fact. Gosh, it's committee, right? It's now committee or is it community or? Committee. Committee for a constructive tomorrow. And so I want to start with the UK stuff. Net zero. is their policy, their government's energy policy. In pursuit of that, they have tied an enormous amount of, quote, renewable energy into their grid. So wind and solar. Because they've done that, they have a very shaky grid. And because they have a shaky grid, they are now, and I'm not even kidding, in London, removing people's air conditioning units and telling them they're not allowed to turn them on, even as temperatures last week were in the 90s, and late this week will be in the 90s and maybe possibly breaking 100 degrees. So let's start what net zero can actually do to completely foul up life on, you know, modern life in a first world country. Yeah, net zero, of course, refers to a goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by a date certain. What that means is we must reduce our use. of what we are told are planted warming fossil fuels in the case of britain that would be natural gas and coal

What that really means is you become dependent on the only alternatives at your disposal, alternatives that have been pushed by successive governments in the UK and elsewhere in Europe, and for a long time by both the Obama and the Biden administrations here, namely wind and solar. Now, for anybody who's ever been to Britain, solar power in Britain. You have latitudes there that are roughly the Hudson Bay over in this part of the world. You also have cloud cover. There is very little solar power you can generate in Britain. Yes, there is breeze, but it's intermittent. Neither. taken together, will ever be able to power the British economy. So what we're really talking about here is net zero means net zero economic growth. And in certain circumstances, it can be net zero air conditioning when you need it the most. Yep. And that's what they're doing right now. They're, in fact, as I understand at 10 Downing Street, the lower seven floors where the plebes work, they've turned it off. And of course. Yes, that's right. A few upstairs downstairs thing. Very upstairs downstairs, yes. That's right. Where the very important people are. That's right. Never mind they get thrown out of office every couple of years, but nevertheless. So this, importantly, though, it's the climate you're talking about cloud cover, not a lot of sun to generate solar energy, not a lot of wind to generate wind power. This commitment, though, to net zero is what's destabilized the London power grid or the UK power grid. And this has happened across Western Europe. You adopt these policies, you destabilize your grid. This is exactly what the climatistas want. here in Wisconsin. Tony Evers said we have a, we have a carbon, a zero carbon, net zero policy that we are pursuing here in Wisconsin, which has destabilized our grid. It's also resulted in 47% inflation and our utility rates. You know, so you've got this in the Midwest where the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. And so, but. But the backup generating power now has to be coal or natural gas. In our case, it's going to be exclusively natural gas. And so you're still going to be using the backup power because you've got intermittent sources of renewables. So it's a dumb idea, right? Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Um, and yet, yes, very dumb with horrible consequences for ordinary people who are going to be left holding the bag. In our case, it's just, it's high utility rates. They haven't gotten so crazy to say you can't have air conditioning. That's the UK. They're, they're actually in a heat wave. And they had this little break in the heat wave. And so all the climatises out there saying, it's only going to be 75 degrees in London today. Yeah, well, on Friday, it was 91. And on Thursday of this week, it's going to be 96.

It's going to be very, very hot. It's going to suck for those people. So we don't have quite that level of crazy, but I'll give you a level of crazy. In Nevada, all of the projects that you build, commercial projects or government projects in Nevada must be. climate, lead certified in climate, you've got to check all the climate boxes. So you can't use cooling towers, for instance. I know of a project that's going in in Nevada right now where they've said you can't use cooling towers. You're going to have to use ground source heat pumps and ground source, you know, whatever, geothermal well fields, okay? At the same time, Bonner, they put one of the largest AI hyperscale data centers that needs so much water. You know, in Nevada, all of the other buildings, because of the water usage, we got a water crisis here, but the AI hyperskilled data center is good to go. Yes, and I would remind people that Nevada is a desert, where water is scarce, always has been, always will be. Why would you put a hyperscale data center in Nevada? Anyway, so let's get to the more important thing here. I mean, you know, Europe is Europe. We haven't gotten there, thank God. Although some of the energy policies have gotten us so we've had extremely high energy inflation. But let's go to something that nobody's paying attention to. And that would be a very small change. It's a handbook on science that the court uses. And with regard to science, Bonner, the handbook updated that was delivered to the United States Supreme Court, now instead of saying scientific evidence, has switched in scientific consensus. Tell me what's going on here behind the scenes. Yes, and it really is behind the scenes because this has not received the attention it deserves. But by fiddling around with something seemingly innocuous as a handbook, you can change the outcome of court decisions all across the United States. What has happened here is a chapter in a handbook designed to give judges, federal and state judges, some guidance in dealing with cases that involve science. It can be climate science, medical science, what have you. In other words, which evidence should be admitted into the courts as... based in science according to the scientific method and which evidence should be kept out because it's little more than quackery.

And we've had a standard for that beginning in 1967 and updated through a Supreme Court decision in 1993 that the scientific method is that system to be employed to determine what can be admitted and what not. That has now been quietly rewritten by a scientist who not coincidentally has served as an advisor to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on the climate change. Out goes the scientific method, and in comes scientific consensus. No less than the late great Michael Crichton once said, and I quote, There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it's not science. If it's science, it's not consensus. End quote. Science doesn't work on consensus. Science is a constant inquiry. What we think we know today is going to be overtaken by what we learn tomorrow. Take plate tectonics in geology. Well, we realized that a lot of the things are going on geologically in the Earth were attributable to plate tectonics. There was huge resistance to that in the 1960s. Today, it's accepted science and will be accepted until perhaps something else more compelling comes along. There was a consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed for a new Ice Age. We know where all that went. There's something more important that needs to be stressed here. That is the use of the word consensus. Consensus is used by people in high places to shut off any and all debate on a matter relating to science. We don't discuss the merits of the issue that those merits have been settled. Now it's time to move on to regulations, mandates, and what have you. And you mentioned a couple of consensus that fell apart. Here's some more consensus that fell apart. There was a consensus that thalidomide was a good drug to give pregnant women. There was a consensus that lobotomies were an effective way to treat mental illness. There was a consensus that electroshock therapy was an effective way to treat mental illness. Right now, there is an alleged consensus that you should lop off the body parts, the reproductive parts of children. So. This is consensus is political. That's what that's that's the takeaway here. If you see consensus, that is a statement that we want the politics to be determinative, not the science. The scientific method is pretty rigorous. Scientific consensus is an opinion. What's your opinion about this? What is, you know, everybody doesn't agree on, you know, all the different types of exotic.

you know, matter that has been identified or that has been theorized by physicists. Should we just go with consensus on all of this stuff? I mean, there's a consensus that we have, you know, been visited by aliens, Bonner. Perhaps we shouldn't include that in court documents. What makes this so important is, particularly in the field of climate science, is that this rewritten handbook chapter in a handbook, will be at the disposal of six thousand federal and state judges around the country before whom there are already over one thousand climate related cases A judge reads the newly rewritten chapter in the handbook will see, well, I should rely on the consensus. And the consensus is, man-made emissions of greenhouse gases are leading to a potentially dangerous warming of the climate. Well, how do you expect a judge who otherwise has no particular knowledge on the issue is going to decide? So allowing this handbook to stand will affect the outcomes. of court decisions that will have an effect going into the trillions of dollars. But what's next? What if the law became the subject of consensus? What if the law schools start to teach that, well, you know, everybody thinks that you should discriminate against white people because black people have been historically marginalized in the past? What if the law starts to adopt the concept of consensus instead of going to the law, right? That's what the risk at swapping in consensus and this is not going to be limited to science. It isn't. It's going to be devastating. in science. That's right. I don't think it's going to be limited. The proverbial nose, Campbell's nose under the tent. Once consensus becomes acceptable in science, it becomes acceptable elsewhere. And that's how you drive an agenda that otherwise may have absolutely no merits whatsoever. Bonner Cohen, citizens, I'm sorry, used to be citizens, committee for constructive tomorrow.cifact.org. Thank you so much for joining me. Well, thank you. Good to have you. And we will take a quick break on the Vicki McKenna Show. Good afternoon and welcome to the Vicki McKenna Show. Would you like to win $2,500? Hopefully you heard the keyword, but if you didn't, it's travel. You could win $2,500 in our 250th birthday's celebration for America. Just under the keyword travel at either newstalk 1130.com or WIBA.com. It's a nationwide contest. We've already had, I think, six winners, which is pretty good, given that we're only doing this contest a handful of times a day rather than every single hour. So I hope you win. Remember, we'll call you.

If you win, so don't screen your calls. If you have the call screening settings turned on, which are very nice, turn them off if you are playing the contest. So what are we getting into today? The Politics of Envy. Really, that's what we're getting into on the program today. What is the rise of socialism? It's the politics of envy. I saw a really pretty good ex post that said Democrats want the black vote, so they teach black people that whites are the enemy. Democrats want the female vote, so they teach women that men are the enemy, et cetera. And yes, that's true, but they have to first teach envy. And that's what we've got in the K-12 public schools, the politics of envy. That's what we're teaching. We're teaching people that if you don't have something you want, you really want it, you should be jealous of the person who has it. And then you can take the next step. First, you've got to teach someone to want something they don't have and then tell them the reason they don't have it is because someone won't let them have it or someone's stolen it from them. So you first teach women to want something they don't have, the things that men have a job, rather than, you know, the traditional role of motherhood or something like that. And then you teach them that the reason they don't have that is because someone's prevented them from having that. Now, then they get it and they still continue to process the envy. So that's what we've got. That's socialism. That's the new socialism. Teach the envy and then teach people that the reason they don't have all of the things they want that other people have is because other people are preventing them from getting it. Whether it's a house, whether it's a fancy car, a big bank account, or whatever. The reason why you don't have it is because someone's preventing you. It has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with you not making the right choice. Has nothing to do with you not studying hard in school. It has nothing to do with any of your failings because, of course, you can't fail. You're a victim. The whole reason you don't have what you want is because somebody's prevented you from having it. That's 100% of modern democratic socialist of America. indoctrination that's it you don't have some teach someone to want something they don't have and then when they want it and they don't have it tell them it's because someone prevented them stole it from them if you will i don't know how you undo that except through jesus christ but that's where we are. That's why I'm a little more worried than some people about the rise of socialism. A lot of people say, well, it's not a big deal because it's not popular in the United States. I don't know, folks, envy's pretty popular. You can do an awful lot of damage just with envy. So we're going to talk about that on the program. Then we're going to talk about data centers. More on data centers. More on the...

bamboozling of people on data centers. So that's coming up as well. We'll take a quick break on the Vicki McKenna show. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show, and I've got Duke Pesta. Professor Duke Pesta, University of Wisconsin-Ashkosh. She's a professor of English literature there. He also runs Freedom Project Academy, a classical academy that is both standalone virtual school and homeschool support. And it's in your capacity really as a longtime professor in university that I bring you on the program to talk about. The rise of socialism. And I don't mean the rise of socialism that you have been seeing. I mean the rise of socialism up in your face, advertise it, rub your nose in it stuff. I'm talking to Zohran Mamdani's, the hard play that the socialists are making to take over the Democratic Party is if they haven't already sort of done that. But we're talking these socialists that are not afraid to say, abolish all prisons, abolish all police. Abolish all immigration laws. Abortion to the very last moment of pregnancy. Eliminate the president, replace the president with a consensus committee. Eliminate the Supreme Court. You know, public ownership of major corporations like Apple and Amazon and X and SpaceX, et cetera. This kind of socialist, the socialist that is stupid. and the socialist that is radical and motivated, very, very much like, nobody remembers this, but very much like it was during the rise of Mao. So you've seen it, but that's what I want to talk about and how. how hard it will be to undo it if it ever seizes control in the United States. So we can talk about the fact that it is being overtly taught in K-12 and university. Well, what we're creating right now is the generation that is going to be the Red Guard of America. I mean, that's how Mao did it, right? You for... decades, a couple of decades, you turn the schools into incubators, not for thinking or logic or history or philosophy. You make it all about grievance, right? Think about it. What's the difference between Mao's Red Guards and today? These kids have been taught to believe that everything in our history is evil, is exactly what they felt about China before the revolution, that our history had to be destroyed, books banned. And that the enemies are intelligent people, high earners, professional people.

intellectuals, you have to get rid of them, right? And everything that they have, people who are old enough to have cars and bank accounts and houses, that's been stolen from you. Already they're talking about this, right? That the way we do this was a, there was a Yale professor a couple of months ago who said that we must forcibly take the money and the power away from retired people and transfer it to young people, right? And so this is the exact same play sheet that we saw with the Red Guards and they murdered millions of people. Now, it may not be murder, but it may not, but it may be. But it may be because we're talking about people. And I'd love you to share this story. You just recently ran into a young person who is so angry. And so committed to the belief that private property is theft, that capitalism is evil, that billionaires are evil, that the United States is the worst country ever to exist. We were the worst slave country ever to grace, you know, civilization itself. It is the rage that they're also incubating in these young minds that is saying things like, you know, you should kill Brian Thompson because, you know, he was the CEO of a health care company you hated. Things like that justifying the political violence in pursuit of the end game of revolution. Yeah, I was teaching a class last week of high school kids, mostly inner city kids. And there were a couple of college kids that were the RAs, the older kids college who were looking after those kids. So it was not a college class. But it was a business writing class. These kids were being exposed to business concepts in high school. And so I started by pointing out about how many of you want money. If I gave you, how many of you want a billion dollars? They all raise their hands. I said, so then why I asked, why do you hate billionaires so much? Why is your culture telling you that billionaires are all evil and yet you want to be billionaires? And I posed that. I made the argument that before you can engage in social justice, before you can fix the world in progressive ways, you've got to have the money to do it. That's what business is. Afterwards, this young man. who was an RA 22 maybe, African-American kid, good looking, smart kid, came up to me and just excoriated me for an hour after the class was over. For simply suggesting that...

Some billionaires have used their money to do really good things. I told him, look at the names on the buildings on this campus. Most of them are not named after progressive professors. They're named after people who come to business class, graduate, make millions of dollars, and then give it back to the universities. But his whole worldview was predicated that I as an African-American man. have suffered more than anybody in the history of the world, that what America did to me, not my ancestors from 200 years ago, what America has done to him is so outrageous that the only way he can cope is to despise every aspect of it, push the need for revolutionary violence to fix the problem. And this kid is wearing tennis shoes and clothes, probably three, four hundred dollars of footwear, right? And talking about how, at the end of the day, he, as the great, great grandfather of people who may have been slaves, that his whole reality is that he has had everything stripped from him. And I don't know how you get, I spent an hour with him. He got madder and mad. I kept giving him history that he didn't know. I talked to about all of this with him. And at the end of it, he very kind of sulkily said to me, well, well, at least you're like some of the other Republicans who always have to use the N-word when I try to explain this to them. And I kind of looked at them and said, yeah, I don't really believe that. And so the rest of the class, he just, the rest of the week, he just sat in the back and scowled, wouldn't look at me. But it was really an abject lecture in this is a completely emotional and egotistic movement. Socialism is not what this is. This is about economics. It's about that I am entitled because I have a certain skin color or I don't have the things that people who have lived longer me that have had. And I don't, there's no way you can break that kind of mindset. You can't. So you can't break envy. You can't break if somebody is committed to envy and somebody is committed to coveting and somebody is committed to, you know, wrath. I mean, this guy went through almost all of the deadly sins, you know, except for lost. I didn't hear you describe lust, really. But he pretty much, you know, ticked off everything from pride to greed to, you know, rage, to coveting, you name it, you know. So. This is education. So when we talk about the rise of socialists, it's being driven by young people. There's some old crusty heads of state up there, right? Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. They're like sort of the, you know, the wise elders of radical socialism.

But it's the young people that are doing this. And then it manifests itself. The rage manifests itself. How? Antifa. The rage manifests itself in the murder of Charlie Kirk. The rage manifests itself in the attempted assassination of President Trump. The attack on the baseball game. The, you know, uprisings, the attack on police, the transviolence that is being, you know, executed across the United States. It comes out of the grievance incubation. And where does that come from 100% of it? If you had normal education Duke and you still had TikTok and you still had all the social media crazy stuff and you still had Reddit, you would not even have this problem. All of it is driven in the education system. And that's why it worries me. Over time, that's why it worries me. Well, and the thing is, When I asked this kid who was obviously well fed, he was a football player at the university, he's taken well care of, he's got the health care that from all that stuff. And I asked this kid, who's stopping you from doing anything you want? And he said, it's not about me. It's about everybody else who looks like me that doesn't have a chance. This is what you hear from all of them. All of them have education. They have luxury. They have cars. They have cell phones. They have $1,000 beats to listen to their rap music. But it's always that they want this because everybody else can't do what they do. They've been lucky. They've been given things. They've been boosted. They've been allowed to be really kind of elite. about around all the other kids because of the social status of being a big time athlete. But in their minds, everybody, every other African American in the world, certainly in America, may as well be wearing chains. And that's what they're doing it for, right? And you can't, if you can't connect those two things, you see how. dangerous socialism gets. It's why it becomes so murderous, right? Because it cannot acknowledge what is real, is true, right? Under your nose, can't do it. No, and this guy is saying, oh, it's not me. I'm just so altruistic. This is the way he convinces himself that he's a virtuous person. This is every blue-haired white astro-nazzi. This is every cranky boomer, you know, woman with gray hair and pigtails. That it is, it is the excuse. They say, oh, you know, I'm doing this because other people can't have what I have. They're not willing to give it up, Duke. See, that's the thing. They're not willing to give it up. Here's the, I was talking earlier about, you know, the heat wave in London and the, in their restrictions on AC because of net zero. All the climate change people aren't willing to give up their own luxuries. They want to take it away from other people. They don't want to give it up themselves, but they're feeling virtuous because they're saving the planet. This is the same thing. None of the left wing, none of the Neville Roy Singums are the Alex Soros of the world or the Hans-Yorg Vise of the world. None of the Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warrens want to give up their stuff. But they got to make themselves feel better. And so they got to take my stuff. Yeah, this is the Hasan Piker, right? This is a.

A nepo baby. These are nepo babies, right? That can deplore wealth and Zohran Mamdani's the same way. These are silver spoon brats who had the best of everything. And they're still wearing their Armani's jackets and coats and the suits and the Italian shoes while they're telling about how we have to pull everything around to pull civilism. civilization down to the ground these people are grade a grifters they are you know what they are they are the modern day cultists that what socialism has become a weird suicidal uh it's a cult the people who are being enlisted it like you said in the public schools we are churning out this cultic, cultic maniacs. And it's the public schools that are actually pushing this cultic behavior. There's no evidence historically, philosophically, morally, ethically, that socialism, and particularly the kind of socialism we're seeing now, which is more like communism, has any redeeming virtues. And yet, drinking that Kool-Aid, that socialist Kool-Aid from kindergarten to grad school. Only it doesn't kill you fast. It kills you slower. But it's suicidal nonetheless. It's that suicidal empathy you keep hearing about. But education, isn't it always, let's, you know, circle back. It always circles back to education. And we do nothing about it. It is the ultimate root cause. And we stand by, stare at our shoes and do nothing except complain at the outcome. Duke Pesta, as always, thank you for joining me on the show today. Thanks, Vicki. And we will take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. I will be right back. Welcome back to the program. It's the Vicki McKenna Show. I have Michael Lucas from the McIver Institute. And I dare say, Michael, I don't want to oversell you. But I think you're probably the person who's most knowledgeable about what is going on. vis-a-vis these data center projects, the way the utilities are going to be expected to manage these things, the ratepayers exposure and the public service commission. So I don't think I'm over selling you on that. I don't think anyone knows as much as you do, and that's in that capacity is why I have you on the program today to pick your brain. Well, thank you. I appreciate the hype. Live up to the hype. Michael's like, now I've got to live up to the hype. But you can't live up to the hype because you know this stuff. So I guess I want to start here. We'll go broad and then get specific. What I've seen in an effort to diminish the complete rejection by and large that both the conservatives and the liberals have on these hyperscale data centers, the...

Pro data center people are out there trying to confuse people. So let's first start with a video I saw of a man on the street style interview. It's a guy from Iowa. He's just a rube, you know, just a regular Iowa guy. And the guy tries to trap him by asking him if he likes data centers. No, no, no, no, I don't like data centers. Well, do you like... the photos on your iPhone, you know, do you like being able to have the text messages stored on your phone? Well, yeah. Well, that's a data center because that's the cloud, right? So the guy was just kind of left staring at the camera, look kind of dumb. And it was so disingenuous that I wanted to start there because that's clearly one of the tactics they're using to try to make people feel dumb about not wanting these monsters in their backyard. Yeah, this is super common. I see this all over the place on Twitter, on Facebook groups that I'm a part of, you know, conservative groups, left-wing groups, where these pro-AI folks will come out and say exactly what you said. Like, hey, do you have a smartphone? Yeah. Do you have apps on your phone? Yeah. Do you go to, you know, YouTube and Google and Facebook? Yeah. That all uses a data center. So you're a real big dummy for opposing data centers because you don't even realize. the data centers are responsible for all of the internet. Therefore, you have no basis on which to object to these AI data centers that are being built. In logic, this is a fallacy. Okay, this is called equivocation. You cannot lump together run-of-the-mill data centers that host websites like YouTube and Facebook and allow you access to all of the content of the internet. with AI data centers. AI data centers have absolutely nothing to do with any of that. When you go into Facebook and their little AI, you know, chat box comes up, that's a completely separate entity, okay? It has nothing to do with the functional operation of Facebook or on YouTube or with AI mode on Google. Those requests, those queries that you put into these AI products are going to the AI data center. You get them out. Google still operates. Facebook still operates. YouTube still operates. Okay. They are absolutely equivocating between these two types of data centers, and they're making people feel dumb for not knowing the difference. But how can you blame anyone? No one had ever heard of a data center until AI. came along if people started building all these hyperscale data centers. Hyper scale is what we're talking about. We are talking about hyperscale data center. So data center's been around. And by the way, a guy on my Facebook page, I think, you know, made a really good point. He said, so let's stop calling it the cloud. It's just servers. They're just a bunch of servers in a building. That's the cloud. The servers aren't in your building. The servers are in somebody else's building somewhere else. That's all the cloud means a whole bunch of racks of servers. things that we are talking about are four, five, six.

times the size of those developments. They require orders of magnitude more energy. They require orders of magnitude more water. And by the way, I thought these were closed systems regarding water. Apparently, most of them aren't. And so they are draining water tables. They are creating a crisis with regard to water availability and water costs. So don't reject that. Just say, we're not talking about apples and apples here. We're talking about apples and cum quads. the cloud data center to the AI data center. Absolutely. Just for the folks who live in Milwaukee, if you drive from Germantown down to Caledonia, you pass by eight data centers that are in operation right now. Did you ever know that? Did you ever realize, like, oh, that's a data center? No. These what are called co-location data centers, the run-of-the-mill data centers that have servers, these things fit into a single room. Okay? They use no water. They, you know. produce some noise, but how do you get rid of the noise for these things? Just close the door. You can't hear it unless you stick your head up against the wall. Let alone hear it from across the hall. Let alone hear it from the street. You have no idea how many data centers you have. For example, McIver's website, our website developers are our data center. They have a single server rack that's about the size of a skinny refrigerator, and they host dozens and dozens and dozens of website, and they store all of our content. It's a single shelf. Within, you know, a five-room, you know, little apartment that they've converted into their work office, that's a data center. You have, no one has any idea where these things are. Unless you live in Mount Pleasant or you live in Port Washington. And all of a sudden you see, you know, 600, 1,500, 1,500 acre plots that are being developed to build these hyperscalaries, which only do AI. They have no function beyond the product that they're trying to sell, which is... chat bots, which are LLMs, right, chat GPT, and maybe some limited, like AI software is like Microsoft's co-pilot. Does everyone love co-pilot? I think not. No, and by the way, not everybody loves chat GPT or grok or anything else. No one's in love with these things. And, you know, until like five minutes ago, nobody was, you know, even relying on using these things. But again, to compare, you're talking. Orders of magnitude, more noise, more disruption, more land use disruption. You're talking just the disruption and the power demand. So the biggest concern, I think if you're living near it, is noise. But the general biggest concern is the power demand. Now, let's go to the PSC. The Wii energies. and I believe its vantage are suing the Public Service Commission because there's a rule that says if you don't have a very good bond rating, then you're going to have to set aside X number of dollars in the contingency area for the risk that might be incurred if you don't deliver what you said you would deliver, right? Just kind of just general, this is sort of a risk payment you've got to make. They're suing the P.S.

to say, uh-uh, we don't want to incur any of the risks. Everybody else, the rate payer should incur all of the risks. This is the Port Washington Data Center. And they said, oh, don't worry about it. Where they're going to set aside a fund? No, no, no. We energies and the data center, I think it's vantage. which I think is Google, are suing the Public Service Commission to say, no, we shouldn't have to set aside any amount of money, even though the amount that they would have to set aside they, one, can afford, and two, wouldn't be enough if things go south. No, all of the risks should be on the Wisconsin rate payer. Yeah, so initially when we energies had proposed their tariffs for data centers, which they call very large customer tariffs, they had said a couple of important things. First thing is they said it would only apply to people who use 500 megawatts or more. 500 megawatts is ridiculous. I mean, a regular run-of-the-mill data center uses one megawatt. The biggest one in Milwaukee uses only 12. Meta. For example, up in Beaver Dam is using like two or 300 megawatts. So if they were in the service territory, they would have been exempt, which is absolutely ridiculous because they're building a hyperscale data center for, you know, just shy of a billion dollars. But they lowered that to 100 megawatts, which includes virtually all the hypers you would ever want to include. It would include all of the AI data centers. You need at least 100 megawatts in order to, you know, functionally operate one of these things. The second thing they did is what you said. So they said, People will have to put down as collateral X amount of money depending on their credit rating. And initially, we energy said you need at least a triple B bond rate, right? That's the quality of your debt. Triple B, according to S&P and then the analog is Moody's. A triple B rating is medium risk, right? There's a chance that you actually might default on your debt, right? You're getting into, you know, sort of. troubled waters here, okay? And Oracle has a triple B bond rating. Well, the PSC actually did something pretty good here, and I said, no, you need at least an A minus credit rating, which is institutional grade, you know, box, right? You're not going to default. And it's actually we energies and Oracle who are suing the PSC saying, hey, we need to lower it back down to Triple B. Otherwise, Oracle has to put $100 million up as collateral every single year. And so what do they want? They want a free lunch? I mean, why shouldn't there be some protection for the utilities and their ratepayers, especially given the Oracle's market cap has been cut in half over just six months, especially since they haven't been able to turn a profit on any of their AI, especially since their only customers, Open AI, who apparently is going to spend $1.4 trillion renting chips.

in large part from Oracle and from Google and from Microsoft over the next four years, despite only ever having raised $180 billion. And despite the fact that Ed Zittron, just two weeks ago, learned from a whistleblower within Open AI's company that Open AI lost $38 billion last year. Okay. In 2024, the revenue is $3.7 billion. They lost $5 billion. In 2025, they made $13 billion, $3 billion, which came from Microsoft, by the way, and lost $385 billion. So over just that one year span, their revenue increased $3.5 full. But their losses increased $7.7. In other words, their losses are growing at twice the rate that the revenue is growing. So Oracle gets a free pass because their sole customer, Open AI, is apparently like... this unlimited growth AI company that's going to usher in frickin' Star Trek within the next five years, and we're all going to be going to, you know, some food replicators saying computer, Earl Gray, T, hot. It's absolute bogus. Oracle's just pissed off that they weren't able to basically get one over on ratepayers. And Wii energies is pissed off too because the PSC actually, you know, stood up to them for once because... At the very least, I think they understand at the PSC that this is a highly speculative industry, and especially when you're looking at a company like Oracle and OpenAI, who are not exactly forthcoming about the profitability of their AI, you know. We just expect it, right? We're expecting that it's profitable. But there's no way they're going to knock out a trillion dollars in rented chips when they can only raise $180 billion. And their biggest customer is seemingly sort of on the brink. And we're just pretending that they're not a high-risk company. But again, they're going to build the thing in Port Washington. It's a monster. It's a monster. Welcome to the nonstop noise. Welcome to your property values going in the toilet. Welcome to all of the risk being assumed by the rate payers that everybody promised at the outset wasn't going to happen. And now you've got the lawsuit taking place. And Wii Energies is part of the lawsuit. We Energies is like, yeah, yeah, I definitely think that we should put the rate payers at risk and on the hook for the potential failure of this thing. Yeah, and the great irony here is that, you know, all these people, Oracle, Open AI, all these, you know, pushes of AI saying that this is a wave of the future and there's all these productivity gains and blah, blah, blah, and what a huge advancement we're entering into the space age and things like that. If it's so profitable, why don't you have the money? Why can't you put down $100 million a year? I thought this was like a revolutionary technology that was going to totally transform the economy and usher in a utopia. You don't have a hundred million bucks. Really? Your company's worth $450 billion. You don't have $100 billion cash? It's absolutely ridiculous.

100%. And one last thing before I run out of time in this segment. The other thing is that we got to beat China. We got to beat China. Don't you want to beat China? Obviously, you're a CCP, you know, mole or spy. That's what, you know, people. I've actually been accused of that, if you can believe that. I decided to look up the hyperscale comparison. So hyperscale is AI. The United States has 642. 642. These are completed. Then I don't know how many are in development, Michael, but we have 642 of these things. China's got 190. They have 190. The only advantage China has is they can bring power capacity on faster than we can because we're stupid jerking around with green energy and renewables. But as everybody heard detailed in my program recently, China is going to have a huge economic problem if it cannot get its pennies on the dollar barrels of sanctioned Iranian oil. So, I mean, we've already won the AI data race, a data center race with China. I mean, we've already won it. But apparently we're losing to China if we don't ruin Port Washington and skyrocket the utility rates for everybody there. Yeah, this narrative that, you know, we're in an AI race and whoever, you know, gets to artificial general intelligence first will, you know, wipe out the other, like if China beats us, they'll kill us all. This is propaganda. This is fear mongering. This is being, you know, peddled to you by all the people who have a vested interest in the success of the AI industry. And there's actually no evidence that China is anywhere near being even a pure competitor to it. competitor to us in the AI space with exception of their models, but they don't have the infrastructure. They don't have these hyperskillers and these data centers. And would that they did, because we're number one right now, and this is the biggest bubble of all bubbles. Like, this is incredibly obvious to me and other people in this space that this stuff isn't going to last. These data centers are going bust. These companies are going bust within five years. Absolutely. And so it would be much better if China was beating us because they would wreck their own economy. By virtue of the fact that we're number one, we're wrecking our own economy. We're poised to. A bunch of people in the process are wasting all this money. Yeah. I mean, I don't think AI goes away, but all of this hype is going, it's going to be, it's going to wipe out. So one other thing, Canada's beating China right now. That's all you need to know. Canada is meeting China in hyperscale. Thank you very much. Michael Lucas, always wonderful to have you on the show. Thanks, Vicki. Have a good one. You as well, and we will take a break on the Vicki McKenna Show. That is it for me on tomorrow's program. We've got major Supreme Court cases outstanding. We expect to have the birthright citizenship case tomorrow and also the big case about boys in girls' sports. So both of those big cases are expected to come out and we will have hopefully information about that and coverage of that for you on the program. Tomorrow, have a great afternoon. Stay cool. We'll see you back here on the Vicki McKenna Show.