The MAGA Split: Understanding Friction Between Kentucky Republicans and the President

Mr. Speaker, we're not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We're putting coal into boiler and setting a course for the iceberg. That's Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie, speaking on the House floor back in May. He's addressing President Donald Trump's signature legislation, the big beautiful bill. Oh, I don't think Thomas Massie understands government. I think he's a grandstander, frankly. In response, Trump is pushed for a primary challenger within Thomas Massie's own party. Here's an attack ad, released by a Trump-supported political action committee. President Trump is cutting taxes and saving Kentucky families $10,000. Thomas Massie voted against it. And after Trump obliterated Iran's nuclear weapons program, Thomas Massie sided with Democrats and the Ayatollah. Let's fire Thomas Massie. MAGA, Kentucky is responsible for the content of this advertising. It's one of several high-profile breaks between Kentucky Republicans and the president and the broader MAGA movement. Here's President Donald Trump addressing Senator Rand Paul's absence at his Rose Garden lunch on October 21st. He automatically votes no on everything. He thinks it's good politics. It's really not good politics. He's an automatic no. But I don't know. Look, if he wanted to come, I'd probably let him come, right? And here's Senator Paul, addressing President Trump's tariffs on the Senate floor on October 28th. No country, no business, no family can plan a budget when the tax rates, the import tax rates, and the costs of every commodity are determined by the whims of one man. President Trump has been extremely critical a Senator Mitch McConnell, especially in the last couple of years. And he wanted to go to the end and he wanted to say leader. He wasn't, he's not equipped mentally. He wasn't equipped 10 years ago mentally, in my opinion. All I can tell you about him is that he shouldn't have been a leader. He knows that. He votes against almost everything now. He's a, you know, very bitter guy. For his part, Mitch McConnell let loose on Trump on the Senate floor in the wake of the January 6th insurrection. President Trump is practically... and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day. No question about it. Now, with Mitch McConnell set to retire at the end of this term, several new candidates are fighting to fill the space he leaves behind. and define the future of the GOP and the Commonwealth. I think people are ready for change. They're ready for something totally different. It's a conversation about whether we lead on it or whether China leads on it. I still think rural people feel like the political elites often overlook them, that their communities have been hollowed out, that they don't get the same opportunities that people in larger places get. This week on the Crossword Suncast, from war powers to the Big Beautiful Bill and beyond, why Kentucky Republicans have been consistently breaking from the national MAGA movement. understanding the fractures in the GOP and what that says about the future of the party. I'm Bryce Patterson. This episode is part of a series exploring shifting political tides ahead of the 26 midterms. Let's start with the basic motivators that drive the Republican Party in Kentucky. Here's Murray State University history professor, Brian Clardy. People in this Commonwealth tend to rely on faith.

family, the sanctity of life. They tend to be a little bit hesitant on questions of LGBTQ issues. I'm not saying that Kentuckies are homophobes. I'm not saying that at all, but they tend to shy away from those kind of issues for some reason. Lexington Herald Leader Opinion columnist Linda Blackford paints a similar picture. When I say conservative, I don't mean Republican conservative. I mean, they... They are conservative people. They are churchgoers. They oppose abortion to a large degree. They oppose the government getting involved. The Republican Party has been viewed by many people in this state as supporting gun ownership. faith in the public square, supporting a, as I said, robust law enforcement, you know, reliance on capital punishment if necessary, tougher sentences for people who commit crimes, sell drugs, murder, and all these other things. Kentucky has always been, as many parts of the South have always been, focused on law and order. Here's Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, an elected Republican, describing his vision of the relationship between federal and state governments. Until my parents' lifetime, Washington didn't even work full-time. Members of Congress would go up for a few months a year when the weather was nice, but it was too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. They would go home. There was no heating and air in the Capitol, right? And then once we had climate control in the Capitol, it became a full-time job. And more and more people have focused on, on Washington. And federal government has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and relatively gotten more attention compared to everything else. But that's not with the Constitution and visions. The Constitution envisions that local government governs best. And you're likely to know who governs you locally, your mayor and your... city council and your county judge executive and your commissioners and your magistrates, right? Central issues for the Kentucky GOP include limited regulation of business, lower government spending outside of the military, and a focus on the social issues that matter to evangelical Christians. Scott Jennings is a political commentator for CNN and author of the new book, A Revolution of Common Sense, How Donald Trump Stormed Washington and fought for Western civilization. And he's a native of West Kentucky. There's no more common sense voting base in the country than in Kentucky. And I think that's ultimately what they're looking for. They look for people who seem to exhibit the kind of common sense that you find in West Kentucky, certainly. And so because of that, they wind up gravitating to different kinds of personalities, but overriding it is this theme of common sense. I think it's why Donald Trump is so popular in Kentucky. Ronald Reagan narrowly takes Kentucky in the 1980 election, facing off against fellow evangelical Jimmy Carter. But running for re-election in 1984, he carries the state by more than 20 points. Reagan's model of the Republican Party dominates for decades.

In the mid-80s, it's the model followed by newly elected Senator Mitch McConnell. Mitch McConnell, when he first got elected in 1984, he is a very pragmatic... right of center Republican. Broadly, Kentucky has a history of moderation and marks an intersection in American politics. Longtime Kentucky political journalist Al Cross says pragmatism is baked into Kentucky politics. I think that there will always be this sense in Kentucky that government needs to be about getting things done, not just about getting people elected. or serving the interest of one person or the ego of one person. We're in the middle of the country. And Kentucky has always been a state that has produced people who could bridge divides. I think Kentucky is a border state. It's very confused and confusing about its identity in a lot of ways. So, you know, some places really identify with the South. Others are more sort of Midwest industrial. Secretary Adams says Kentucky remains a place where people can find common ground. Kentuckians are actually less polarized than national average. Kentucky, we studied this a few years ago. Kentuckians are likely to split their tickets. Kentuckians are likelyer to have friends or even a spouse whose politics are different. And that's good, that's healthy. I like that. Every election for constitutional office in this millennium, Kentuckians have split their tickets and voted for some Democrats and some Republicans. So Mitch McConnell starts as a more centrist Republican, but he pivots harder to the right over time. And Mitch McConnell was always about getting things done, getting some appropriation, getting some earmark, delivering for the state. And he was not an ideologue. The only time I ever heard him mention abortion, for example, and campaigning was one day in lie uncounted. He knew that was a big issue in Lyon County, but it didn't come up in his other campaigns as long as I was following him. He was really a middle-of-the-road kind of Republican, really a Nelson Rockefeller kind of Republican in the 70s. But as the party embraced abortion and other social issues, opposition to abortion, he went with the party. He went with the flow. And he was never a great tribune of these ideological beliefs, which made people suspicious of it. Moving through the ranks of the broader party, Mitch McConnell becomes Senate majority leader in 2007 and brings his pragmatic approach to the national stage.

Starting in 2009, that often means squaring off with President Barack Obama. He becomes Obama's chief nemesis. He was the one who said that it was his goal to make President Obama a one-term president. And certainly, on a number of issues, he thwarts President Obama at every turn. But Mitch McConnell's influence on the Republican Party is tested in that era. Dr. Clardy says several different threads come together to form a new conservative movement in the late aughts. Ron Paul brought his own libertarian streak into the 2008 election. He had pretty significant following. Of course, he didn't get the nomination John McCain did, but Ron Paul, who had served in Congress before as a libertarian, he had clearly made his mark in Republican politics. Then there's a subprime mortgage crisis. and President Obama's stimulus package designed to reinvigorate the economy. In 2009, CNBC on-air editor Rick Santelli makes an impassioned speech from the floor of the stock exchange. You people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills. Raise their hand. How about we all? President Obama, are you listening? We're thinking of having a Chicago tea party in July. All you capitalists, I want to show up the Lake Michigan, I'm going to start organizing. That speech becomes a galvanizing cry for a new movement on the right. Here's Dr. Clardy. It was an opposition to federal government spending and in particular the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare. This idea that Obamacare and the ACA, ACA rather, was government overreach. And you hear that is a major theme within libertarian circles. And clearly, national health care policy had been attacked before socialized medicine. But now you see a situation where the. The Tea Party is totally genned up over this question of the Affordable Care Act because they view it as an invasion, not only of their personal privacy, but also excessive government spending. And so that coupled with the fact that the party in power, especially in the first midterm election, loses seats in the Congress anyway. That's a particular trend. The Tea Party movement really gets behind Republican candidates and takes over the U.S. House, but not the Senate. Not the Senate. That wouldn't happen until 2014, but the same momentum is in play. The Tea Party movement comes with a fresh crop of new faces entering the political sphere. Stop lobbyists from taking our tax dollars and then using that money to lobby for more. Most importantly, expand our liberty by downsizing big government. I'm Rand Paul and I approve this message because government is the servant, not the master. Paul runs as an outsider. I'm Rand Paul. I'm a physician, not a career politician, and I approve this message. In part, his initial run is marked by a rebellion against Mitch McConnell's definition of the Republican Party. That includes Paul's focus on term limits, though his state's senior senator had been in office since 1985. Here's how it shakes out.

Jim Bunning is running to keep his seat as Kentucky's junior senator after being elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2004. But Mitch McConnell thinks Bunning will lose in 2010 if he's the Republican candidate. Mitch McConnell, as the Senate Republican leader, part of his job is to maintain or gain the majority and likewise to keep himself as a Republican leader. So he put the word out. Don't give to Jim Bunning. And Bunning's money dried up. And Bunning got out of the race. Mitch McConnell puts his force behind Kentucky's Secretary of State, Trey Grayson. They were both from northern Kentucky. Grayson cut a good figure. He was really very much like Mitch McConnell. But... There had been this increasing dissatisfaction with Mitch McConnell. Cross says Rand Paul's use of the internet for fundraising and his appearances on Fox News helped to propel him to the front of the primary race and eventually win the seat. Here's Secretary Adams. So my first real job in politics was working on Mitch McConnell's re-election campaign in 2002. I was out of law school in my mid-20s, and I was research director, and I was there to help put together the advertising. And all the advertising was about how Mitch McConnell got more money for this and this and this and this and this. And I, you know, it's all great, but it was a little depressing. I was just... This hot-blooded Republican. I want to talk about Republican stuff. And all of our messaging was aimed at showing Democrats how much money was coming into the state thanks to Mitch McConnell. So I was shocked in 2010 when we had a candidate in Rand Paul who didn't play that game. And to his great credit, I mean... I never thought I would live to see Kentucky have a senator who didn't engage that way and was interested more in cutting spending than in getting money for the state. So Mitch McConnell had this... Tea Party element to deal with. And he and Paul managed to come to a symbiotic relationship for about six or eight years. But after that, they've really separated. Living Father DeFour, Thomas Massie is the fifth generation of his family to call Kentucky home. 100% pro-life, member of the NRA and man of faith. Thomas Massie shears our bluegrass values. Thomas Massie comes from the same libertarian strand of the Republican Party, running for the House of Representatives in 2012. So where do Kentucky libertarians differ from the national GOP? Both Thomas Massie and Paul are deficit hawks, challenging the big, beautiful bill because the spending cuts weren't deep enough to offset the revenue lost in tax cuts. And both men have significant differences with the president and Mitch McConnell when it comes to foreign policy and war powers.

Here's Senator Paul, addressing President Trump's strikes on suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean. They go against all of our tradition. You know, when you kill someone, you should know if you're not at war, not in a declared war, you really need to know someone's name, at least. You have to accuse them of something. You have to present evidence. This summer, Representative Thomas Massie joined with Democrat Ro Khanna to introduce a resolution limiting Trump's ability to support Israel's conflict in Iran. Thomas Massie has also broken from the Republican Party on Israel's war in Gaza. I don't want to condone what Israel's doing. I don't want to condone the way Benjamin Netanyahu is waging. the campaign against Hamas because I think there are too many civilian casualties. Here's how Thomas Massie described his split with the president on the Epstein files and beyond. I vote with my party 91% of the time, which means I have agreed with the president 91% of the time. But they, when they're protecting pedophiles, when they are blowing our budget, when they are starting wars overseas. I'm sorry, I can't go along with that. And back home, people agree with me. They understand, even the most ardent Trump supporters, understand sometimes he gets bad advice, sometimes he gives bad advice. You can still like Donald Trump in Kentucky and like what I'm doing and what Ro Khanna is doing, which is trying to get transparency.

Outside of Kentucky, much of the Tea Party movement has been subsumed into the MAGA wing of the GOP. Here's Dr. Clardy. That libertarian streak is still there within many sectors of the Republican Party. They're not going to break, some of them are not going to break with President Trump openly. or the MAGA movement openly that would be a political death sentence to a lot of them. They'd get primary, they would lose. But there's still this Tea Party movement that believes in certain constitutional guarantees, such as... right to privacy, no trials without jury, First Amendment guarantees, and restrained government spending. There's still going to be that element within the Tea Party. But by and large, I would say that the Tea Party has taken a proverbial backseat to the MAGA movement within the Republican Party. And that's probably going to be the case for a pretty good time to come. Elsewhere, Republicans that publicly broke with the president have generally left their seats. Senator Jeff Flake clearly fell within that category, clearly, and he's no longer in the Senate. As did Senator Mitt Romney, of course, he's no longer in the Senate. It pays if you're a Republican. to steer the very practical course. And even if you disagree with the president, you just kind of have to bite your tongue and bide your time and hold your fire lest you also be primaried. So what has kept Paul and Thomas Massie in their seats, despite Trump's popularity in Kentucky? I think that they've been very consistent. Of course, yeah, they're going to give the Democrats heartburn, clearly. Clearly they have conservative followings. They have followings among evangelical Christians and so forth. I get that. They are traditional Republicans in that sense. But when it comes to their views on right of privacy, low taxes, spending, asserting Congress's role in foreign policy decisions. I think they've been fairly consistent. I don't see that much, I don't see that much difference between when they started and where they are in 2025. Thomas Massie has very, very strong support in his district. You know, he's been there a long time. He's, he's. stayed true to his values up there. Here's Scott Jennings. You know, both of them over the years have exhibited, you know, a willingness to talk about certain policies that go ignored by other politicians. And I think one thing in the Republican voting base in Kentucky that's true is that we always like to have all our bases covered. If you think of baseball or politics is a baseball game, we got people in every position.

And I don't know if it was on purpose or not, but strategically, that's how the voters of Kentucky have positioned us. And frankly, because of that, it's made us, I think, you know, we're a small rural state, but it's given us outsized influence in Washington, D.C., whether it's Mitch McConnell delivering something, you know, through the appropriations process, or Comer delivering something through the oversight or Thomas Massie and Rand, you know, talking about, you know, with Rand, you know, he was probably the first and loudest person talking about Dr. Anthony Fauci. And what was going on during COVID? In the 2022 midterms, Rand Paul won re-election by more than 20 points. Representative Thomas Massie held his seat in the same election with 65% of the vote. He ran unopposed in 2024, but it remains to be seen how well he'll do against a Trump-backed competitor in 2006. Mitch McConnell survives the libertarian insurrection in his state, but he's been gradually pushed to the fringes of the party he helped to build. That process intensifies with the rise of the MAGA movement in 2016. Here's Al Cross. He does not expect Donald Trump to get elected, but lo and behold, Donald Trump does get elected. And he did so partly because of what Mitch McConnell did with the vacancy on the Supreme Court. When Antonine Scalia died unexpectedly, Mitch McConnell decided within hours that he was not going to allow a nominee to go forward in the Senate. Donald Trump announces he'll pick a Supreme Court nominee from a list provided by the Federalist Society. It helped convince evangelicals. which are especially important in Kentucky, that he wasn't such a bad guy after all that he was worthy of their votes. And I think it was a key factor in Trump being elected in 2016. So at that point, Trump becomes the most popular Republican in Kentucky. Rand Paul second and Mitch McConnell, really a distant third in terms of statewide perception and ranking. A poll conducted in early 2024, around the time Mitch McConnell announced he would step back from party leadership, put his approval rating at only 28% of Republicans nationally. Here's Scott Jennings on the appeal of Trump, as opposed to the vision of the party put forth by Mitch McConnell. Whoever follows Mitch McConnell has big shoes to fill. And, you know, I know some Republicans and conservatives have carved about Mitch McConnell in recent years. Of course, I always say the same thing. Do you enjoy the 6-3 Supreme Court? They always say yes. And I always say, welcome to team Mitch. If I could pick one sort of political characteristic that Trump has really changed in the Republican Party, it's... He fights. It's the fighting spirit. You know, for years, I would go to these dinners and party events and people would say, why do we let the media get away with this? Why do we let the Democrats get away with this? Trump shows up and says, I'm not going to let anybody get away with anything. And he's been fighting him for 10 years. And he was, you know, he's fighting him this week. He's never lost his zeal.

for the idea that you don't have to accept these political fights laying down. Mitch McConnell, a pragmatic conservative rather than a passionate ideologue, focuses on getting things done for Kentucky and blocking the Democrats where he can. It's a tough marriage with Trump's brand of populism and the MAGA movement as a whole. Mitch McConnell is horrified by the January 6th riot, blaming Trump, though he eventually votes to acquit him of inciting an insurrection. He also votes against some of Trump's nominees for key appointments during the president's second term. Support for Ukraine's fight against Russian aggression has become another fracture in the Republican Party. As a party fixture going back to the Cold War, Mitch McConnell sees Ukraine as a bulwark against enemy expansion. Both the MAGA movement and libertarians like Rand Paul and Thomas Massie have taken a more isolationist approach, arguing for less U.S. involvement. I mean, people like Mitch McConnell backed up the truck for Ukraine. That conflict should have never happened. We should have never been in that. And I think most Kentuckians believe that to be true. And I think a lot of Kentuckyans stand with us on this issue of no more these globalist wars that we can't win and we shouldn't be involved in. That's Nate Morris, a Kentucky businessman and Senate hopeful running for Mitch McConnell's seat in the 2026 midterms. He's part of a crop of GOP Senate hopefuls rejecting Mitch McConnell's vision of the party. So what is the future of the Republican Party in Kentucky? Here's Al Cross. You do have Nate Morris running as the most MAGA-like candidate and the most anti-Mitch McConnell candidate. If he was to win the primary, that would... turn the state Republican Party into much more of a MAGA-oriented organization. WPSD evening anchor Todd Faulkner sat down with Morris in early October. I think we've had leadership for the last 40 years. that's been at odds with our president, that's been in odds with a lot of the issues that animate Kentuckians and that Kentuckians are passionate about. And I think people are ready for change. They're ready for something totally different. Obviously, with the election of Donald Trump, we knew that the country has changed very rapidly since Joe Biden. But I look at Kentucky and I feel the same way that... there is a surge of will to change and to have something totally different and to disrupt the status quo and the establishment of what we've had in Washington. I'm very proud that I'm one of the few, if not the only Republican candidate at this level to really critique the record of Mitch McConnell and litigate it. I mean, this is someone that has stabbed our president in the back over and over again, blaming him for January 6th, helping put lawfare on the president. trying to put him in jail, and also voting for things like red flag laws, keeping our border open. The border is a central issue for Morris. Mitch McConnell talks about all the power that he's had in Washington. He's done nothing to secure that border. He's done nothing to make sure that all these illegals go back. And I think these are the things that animate our campaign that we're passionate about and must happen in this country, not just to preserve our country, but to preserve Western civilization.

I mean, we look at the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has gone because of mass migration. And that stuff is coming right here in America. If we don't stand up, we don't stand strong, and we don't get leadership that's ready to fight in Washington. Scott Jennings' name has come up in some discussions of candidates for Mitch McConnell's seat. He had no comment on that in our interview, but he did reference Western civilization in a similar way to Morris. Here's how he defines it. Western civilization is not just a place on a map. It is a set of ideas that was born in Jerusalem, Athens and Rome. It's a set of ideas that underpins, I think, the American founding and underpins really how we operate our society and our culture here in the United States. And more broadly, in Western nations, many of them are in Europe. But I think it's under assault. We have low birth rates in the West, but we simultaneously have a mass migration crisis. We have people coming into the country from non-Western countries, but we also have a low birth rate. So we're sort of, you know, we're seeing a population shift. And then we have these cultural issues that I think have really illuminated, you know, a lot of different ideologies, whether it's the trans issue or whether it's the DEI issues or whether it's the idea that you divide the world up into two buckets, oppressors and oppressed. And that's fundamentally anti-Western. It's fundamentally un-American. Former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a protege of Mitch McConnell, is also running for the same Senate seat. While he's less direct in his criticism of Mitch McConnell, He's not running as a continuation of the senator's legacy. I think of, you know, moms and dads that are worried about fentanyl coming across the border and making its way into Kentucky. And so having a secure border, standing up for our law enforcement community, again, as I go across the state, these are things that a lot of, that are on the hearts and minds of a lot of Kentuckians. Secretary Adams says that focus on the border is a product of a broader shift in the way people engage with politics. People are being driven more by national issues and cultural issues, tribal issues, whatever they're seeing on MSNBC or Fox News is what they're concerned about. And so immigration, you're a lot about that. We're not a border state. And historically, Kentuckians weren't especially concerned with immigration. We're a thousand miles maybe from the border, but we get a lot of calls for people who care a lot about immigration, even though we're so far away from the border. We get lots of calls about national stuff. What we've seen is a deconstruction of jurisdictional lines in how people view politics. Cameron sees Kentucky is a potential leader in the country when it comes to energy and technology. When you think about the technologies of tomorrow, whether it's data centers, whether it's AI technologies, blockchain technologies, those things will be driven by... tons and tons of energy. What we have here in Kentucky to offer the nation is tons and tons of energy that is backed by reliability.

You see some of these rolling blackouts that are occurring in other parts of the country. It's because they don't have the certainty that comes along with coal and natural gas. We can offer that. And if you pack on top of that or layer on top of that, the fact that there's an opportunity for nuclear as well, I mean, this is an exciting time. Otherwise, he's made law and order a key issue, as well as an anti-DEI stance. Kentucky representative Andy Barr filed to run for Mitch McConnell's seat earlier this month. The United States is the greatest country on earth, and it's not even close. But here's the problem. The woke left wants to neuter America, literally. He's also jostling for an endorsement from President Trump, saying he'll be, quote, President Trump's number one ally in the United States Senate. He's a key member of the House Financial Services Committee and the Financial Institutions and Monetary Policy Subcommittee and serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Regardless of who wins the seat, it pushes Rand Paul into the position of senior senator for Kentucky. Seniority means a whole lot insofar as committee seats, positions within the leadership and so forth. And you're able to get more done for your state and you're also able to help to set the national agenda. Senator Paul's not at that stage just yet, but he's in the hunt for it. And I personally believe he'll have that seat as long as he wants it. And he will reach that, he will reach that level of seniority and that level of political credibility very, very soon. Secretary Adams says in the post Mitch McConnell era, he doesn't really see the same kind of party leadership. No one really aspires at the moment, at least it appears that way, to take that role on and to have a separate identity. And they gets back to my earlier point that the identities of, especially in the Republican Party, the identities of. of non-presidential office holders and candidates has really been dissolved. So the Senate candidates are all talking about how much they support President Trump. And that's a good strategy for them. I'm sure they've they've fucked that through. But no one's really talking about I'm going to do this or that for the state or I'm going to do this or that against the tariffs or right. They're not talking about the state issues, the state. is dealing with. And you know what? They're not wrong because their voters care a lot more about national issues and they care about state issues. So that's different. So, you know, certainly I can say as a Republican, President Trump is a solar eclipse that really blocks out other personalities in the Republican Party. In the 2024 election, Kentucky voters made two key decisions that might hint at the future of the state. Here's Linda Blackford. We've had two constitutional amendments, one that would ban abortion into the, put a ban on abortion into the Constitution, and one that would allow charter and vouchers, charter schools and vouchers in our Constitution, and both of them were defeated. So that is fascinating, right? And I think. I can't really explain the abortion one, except that I think the total abortion ban in Kentucky really shocked a lot of people. People who would consider themselves pro-life were shocked at the lack of exemptions. And then the Amendment 2 on the schools showed...

Just how important, you know, in every rural district, the public schools are sort of the center of the community, and people showed up to say that they care about that. So that, and that sort of got beyond politics in a way. Both of those things did. Later this season, we'll take a look at the dynamics of an overwhelmingly red state with a popular two-term Democrat as the governor. How we got to this point and what that could mean for the future of the country. Living by the Golden. That resonates very well with Kentuckians, and I believe that same message is going to resonate throughout the country in 2028. Editing support on this episode from Colby Ferris. Special thanks to executive producer Morgan Regal, who works incredibly hard to make this show happen week after week, and edits my scripts as they get longer and longer. Thank you for listening.