Welcome.
It is Verdict with Ted Cruz and the Weekend Review Ben Ferguson with you, and these are the stories that you may have missed that we talked about earlier this week. Let's start off with what's happening in Michigan. In a shocking move, Democrats are looking to buy votes by giving home owners cash thousands and thousands of dollars a year if they will house illegal immigrants.
How is this legal? We're gonna break that down for you.
Plus, Mexico's president decides to come out and do a sit down interview with sixty minutes.
What he said was pretty clear. You gotta well bribe him and then he.
Might help you stop the flow of illegal drugs and illegal immigrants coming across the border. But if you don't give him billions of dollars every single year, he says, the problem is gonna continue and Americans will die. And finally, you may have seen the world get rocked when a Democratic mayor it's the Republican party in a major city in America, So why did he do it? We're going to have the story of Eric Johnson, the mayor of Dallas. It is Verdict. We can review and it starts right now.
There's new poll numbers out over the weekend that show that Donald Trump, who lost Michigan to Joe Biden the last election he won it in sixteen, Trump now tops Biden by eight points in a Michigan poll.
That is significant.
The President's approval rating in Michigan is at thirty five percent. So what has Michigan been doing? I guess it's time to buy votes. They're now offering homeowners a five hundred dollars a month stipend if they'll welcome what they describe as newcomers. What that is is an illegal immigrant into their home, and the state of Michigan will subsidize you five hundred dollars a sayzen a month up to a year. So basically six grand is what they're willing to give you to house someone.
Now, well, that's right. The program that Michigan is rolled out, it's called the Newcomer Rental Subsidy and it's designed to provide shelter outside of state shelters for so called refugees, and refugees is simply the term they use for illegal aliens. It lasts for up to a year, and according to Michigan, those eligible include refugees, assylees, special immigration visa holders, victims of human trafficking, Cuban entrance, Haitian entrance, Afghan nationals, and
Ukrainian humanitarian paroleese. So get this, the state of Michigan is quite literally paying individuals, paying homeowners to house illegal immigrants in their house. And by the way, it's not just them. Others who qualify include individuals who arrived under the family Reunification parole process for El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Columbia who in Michigan. Michigan taxpayer says, you know
what I really want. I want my taxes going to paying my neighbor to put an illegal immigrant that Joe Biden led into this country into his house and we'll send them five hundred bucks a month to keep the illegal immigrant there. That is how nutty today's Democrat party is on this issue.
Well, and my question is that I'm not joking when I say this. Is this not a form of just buying votes? If you're talking, each person is now worth six thousand dollars to a Michigan a homeowner to house them. And I don't know if there's a you know, a cap that you can only have one or maybe you have two. What if it's a family. I'm assuming we're not going to break up the family. So is if you have a family of four and you house them or are we now talking that there were twenty four
thousand dollars to your bottom line? How is that not the Democratic Party basically buying vote, saying, hey, you better keep us in office, you better vote for us, because we're we're twenty four ran a year to you right now.
Well, and look, I'll read you a quote from Amy Hovey, who is the executive director of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, who said the program would help migrants quote build a new life here and she said, quote this program is truly a win win as it addresses the most pressing barrier to refugee resettlement by meeting housing needs while setting up families for success with increased employment and opportunities.
That's the position of the Democrat Party. You too, can have an illegal alien in your house.
Do they care about the cost of housing going up? I mean, is that a conversation you guys have in DC? Is that a question that anyone asked of the Democrats when you have this many illegal immigrants coming into America. And I'll go back to what you were talking about the very beginning and these votes. It's not just the three hundred and twenty thousand legal immigrants that we have flown into this country at the taxpayer's dours paying for
these charter flights. But if you look at how many illegal immigrants have come across the southern border since Joe Biden was torn in, it's at least at minimum seven point two million illegal immigrants have entered the US under the Biden administration, which is greater than the population of thirty six individual states in America. And now we see housing cost issues, rent cost issues, and we see inflationary issues, and we see that we're seeing wages that are being
undermined by illegal immigrants. If Michigan does this and other states go along with it, which other states are as well, they're saying the same thing, housing illegal immigrant will give you cash. Is that not the definition of undermining hard working American families who are just struggling to survive.
Well, look, you got to understand the modern democrat view. As they can spend in unlimited money, trillions of dollars, they can print unlimited money, and.
If they want more, they'll just tax the hell out of you.
And it's a giant Ponzi scheme where they print money, they raise taxes, they spend more money, Inflation goes up, so they print more money. And when it comes to if the voters don't like it, don't worry. They'll change the composition of the voters. They'll let ten point four million people into this country illegally. Those guys the Democrats are confident will vote Democrat, and so they stay in power. That is, you know, there used to be a time
when you could have a common sense discussion. There are no longer any Democrats in Washington and Congress who engage in common sense. I mean, look, we saw these votes, every single one of them lined up over and over and over again. Illegal immigrant who beat up a cop, Nope, don't deport him, like fuck, tell me what world does a sane or rational person believe that?
And yet every Senate Democrat that's their view.
Last question on this when they vote lockstep like that, is that pre planned with a conversation they have behind closed doors and they say, hey, no matter what they throw out, you know, no matter how sane it is. You do not agree with the Republicans on anything, full stop.
It's why it took all night. They knew what we were gonna have votes on. We had put forward these early mements we want votes on, and we spent the entire day Friday just doing nothing because Schumer was talking to his Democrats saying, okay, here are the votes. We need every Democrat to stand lock arms and just vote against all of them.
And he had John.
Walk me through Friday that day because people don't understand. I think how dysfunctional Schumer can make things when they're trying to get things done like this. So you guys wake up Friday. You know you had to stay over another day.
But we didn't.
We actually thought we would be done Friday afternoon. In a normal world we would have been. We stayed there the whole night.
So tell me, like, you guys, wake up Friday morning, do you have a vote schedule yet?
And then he changed ours.
He just say, hey, wake up and stand by until I tell you when you get to vote.
Yeah, it's much more of the latter, and the way the Senate works worked. It's a strange place. So the majority leader only has one real power under the rules, and it's what's called priority of recognition, which means he is recognized first if he's on the floor, and he uses that to control the Senate calendar, to fill the pending business with whatever he wants so that no one else can can put anything else on the Senate calendar. So you spend a lot of time just sitting around waiting.
It's a very weird thing. I'll tell you When I was new in the Senate, and I'd be a typical Senate week. You will fly to DC Monday mornings, and you'll fly home Thursday nights, and then typically I'm home in Houston Thursday nights. Friday, I travel somewhere around Texas. Sometimes Saturday I travel around Texas. I try to spend Sunday's home with a family, and then Monday morning I fly back to DC. That's the usual rhythm of things.
But on Thursdays I would call home. Back when Republicans had the majority, I would call home and my daughters would ask, well, are you coming home tonight, And I'd say, I don't know. It depends what Mitch schedules. When he schedules votes, and we have no idea. My daughters used to say, is that mean man going to let you come home? And by that mean man, they meant Mitch McConnell. Because you literally have no control over your schedule. It
is it is utterly incoherent. So Friday we spent all day we were waiting to see if a deal would be reached. We were waiting to see if a deal would be reached, and throughout the afternoon and evening it looked like there was going to be no deal. At midnight Friday night, funding for the federal government was set to expire and we were going to have a shutdown. So as the evening went on, I was on the Senate floor for a while it looked like there was
no deal. I went with some senators, grab some food, watch some basketball.
And actually I had gone home.
I changed, changed out of my suit, was getting ready to go to bed, and then after eleven PM I got the note, note we're getting ready to vote, and we he began voting at eleven fifty six pm, so I had to get dressed again head back to the capital. Everyone did, and we voted from eleven fifty six pm until two oh three am is when it was over. But that's just kind of how hectic things are center.
Lastly, this story broke.
It's not being covered, of course by the media, because why would they want to tell you about this. But apparently now the Biden administration has decided we don't want to offend extremists jeehatis extremists, and they want to change the way you talk about actual terrorists.
Well, that's exactly right.
This is a story that The Daily Wire broke, and it's a memo that was sent by the diversity, equity and inclusion officials at the Biden administration's top intelligence agency, and it warns personnel not to use quote problematic phrases when discussing Islamic terrorism and foreign adversary such as China. The unclassified newsletter, and it's from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is called Quote the Dive, and it was obtained through Freedom Information Act requests by The
Daily Wire. It argues in its cover story that the intelligence community needs to focus on quote changing terminology related to counter terrorism because quote words matter. Here's more quote. The article is about one of our goals disentangling Islam from words and phrases used to discuss terrorism and extreme violence. It goes on to declare that trying to remove quote certain phrases to identify international terrorism threats that are hurtful
to Muslim Americans. Some of the problematic phrases include, but are not limited to, Salafi Jihadist, Jahadist, Islamic extremists, Suni Shia extremism, and radical Islamist.
Only in America.
Could you have a memo that someone took this much time and waste his time under the Biden administration to make people that are directly associated with terrorism feel better about I guess what not being a terrorist.
Well, and sadly, this is continuing the path of putting politics above national security that we saw when Barack Obama was president. When Barack Obama was president, I actually chaired a hearing that examined the purge that the Obama White House insisted DHS do to remove from their records any reference to radical Islamic terrorism or Islam or Muslis or Muslim or Jahadist. And they erased over eight hundred times.
They erased those words from their records. And by the way, the word purge, that's not me adding that word to it. That was the word that was used by the political official in the Obama White House in the instructions to DHS purge your files. Well, these same radicals are now
running Biden's intelligence agencies. And this article is part of a newsletter that is created by ODNI that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Intelligence Community Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Accessibility Office, and it was sent to personnel throughout the intelligence community, which includes the CIA, the NSSA,
the FBI, the DHS, and the Department of Justice. All of them are being told the fact that Palestinian Islamic Jihad was one of the two terrorist groups that carried out October seventh. October seventh was carried out by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Apparently that is an inconvenient fact to the Language commissars, who I presume want to edit out the word Islamic from the name of the terrorist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Look, they're not murdering Jews because they
dislike their hairstyle. They are murdering Jews because they have a perverted view of radical Islam that mandates Jahad and countering Jahadism, countering the radical religious extremism behind it. It is only possible if you acknowledge it exists, and so on one level you say, Okay, this sort of language political correctness stuff, it's silly, But in this instance it's
much worse than silly. It is dangerous because if the intelligence community has no idea, refuses to acknowledge what is actually happening, it means they will be utterly ineffective in fighting against it and keeping Americans in our allies safe.
Yeah, and this is one of those moments when you say, what are they focusing their time on right now? Is it political correctness or is it actually keeping us safe from actual jihadis teraris that they're afraid of offending by
using the name. It reminds me a lot of the President saying that the a individual that killed an innocent young girl in Georgia was an illegal immigrant and then apologized to the illegal immigrants for calling that individual who is the alleged murderer an illegal immigrant.
It's like, what are you focusing on? What is important to you?
Protecting innocent people, protecting people from terrors tax or is it this pr PC wokeness? Is that matter more than actually fighting the bad guys?
Well, unfortunately, based on things like their late night votes, where every Democrat voted against the American citizens voted in favor of Illy Laliens voted in favor of sending billions of dollars to Iran. It's not difficult to figure out where their priorities lie right now.
Now, if you want to hear the rest of this conversation, you can go back and listen to the full podcast from earlier this week. Now onto story number two, Senata, I want to move to another issue. There was an issue a interview, I should say that happened on Sunday. A lot of people don't watch sixty minutes anymore, but the Mexican president did do a sit down interview, and it actually took a couple days until anyone noticed it, which was I think the most unique part of this.
First off, and then what he said it was diplomatic blackmail, as it's been described by many as the Mexican president said that the flow of illegal immigrants will continue unless the US meets some of his new demands.
In an interview, he was.
Asked about the flow of not just illegals, but also drugs coming across the southern border. And here's what the President of Mexico said about America.
He thinks you have the power in this moment to slow down migration.
Do you plan to I'll just say we do and want to continue doing it, but we do want for the root causes to be attended to, for them to be seriously looked at.
With the ear of the White House, President Lopez Obrador proposed his fix that the United States commit twenty billion dollars a year to poor countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, lift sanctions on Venezuela and the Cuban embargo, and legalize millions of law abiding Mexicans living in the US. If they don't do the things that you've said need to be done, then what.
Bomb the flow of migrants?
And if you will continue your critics have said what you're doing or what you're asking for to help secure the borders, diplomatic blackmail?
What do you say?
I'm speaking frankly.
We have to say things as they are.
Senator, There's like five different things I want to discuss with you. Let's just start with number one. This is diplomatic blackmail. Twenty billion a year. And if you give me twenty billion a year and then you allow all the illegal emergateants to become citizens in your country they are there. Then you give what we want with Cuba in Venezuela, and then if you keep giving us twenty billion a year, we might stop the flow of fedneal coming across.
The southern border.
This is extortion on a level that I can't even get my head around.
From Mexico, well, look, of course it is. And the Mexican president everyone calls him Amlo. Amlo is short for his full name, which is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. He is a thug. He is a hard leftist. He's been a hard leftist his entire life. He has been vocally and visually viciously anti American his entire life. That has been That's how he got elected. That was his campaign standing up against the Yankee imperialists to the north. That's who he is. And by the way, notice his demands.
His demands are in the embargo against Cuba and in the sanctions against Venezuela. He's standing with communist dictators in Cuba and Venezuela. That's who he aligns himself with is the hard left anti American communist axis through Latin America. That's who Amlo is, so it's not surprising. That's who he's always been. Now that being said, is he trying to extort America?
Of course he is.
The threat that the flow of migrants will continue unless you pay us off twenty billion a year to Latin American countries. It's kind of like, you know, a mob enforcer. Nice little bar you got here, shame if something happened to it, boy, a fire would do real damage. He's saying, well, we'll keep these migrants coming unless you pay us off. Just you know, a bag of cash each week would be good. I'll send my guys to pick it up. Yes, that's exactly what he's trying to do.
But it's almost like, is there a difference between the President of Mexico and the cartels of Mexico because the way he was talking seems like the same type of conversation you'd have with the narcos.
Well, and by the way, Amlo, one of the problems is his government has very much been in bed with the narcos and it is devastating the nation of Mexico. The people of Mexico are facing murders, they're facing kidnapping, They're that they're they're facing enormous violence from these multi billion dollar global criminal cartels that that Amlo has facilitated. But I'm gonna say something that's gonna surprise you. I'm actually not terribly upset that AMLO's doing that.
That's who he is. That's you know, it's it's like.
Brand is what you're saying. It's not like he's betraying us. This is who he is.
He is an anti American leftist who is gonna behave like a thug. He is just like Nicholas Maduro. He is just like the Chavista's in Venezuela. He's just like the Gasadistas, uh, Fidel Castro at all of their prodigy in Cuba.
And and that's who he is.
But but you know why I'm actually not all that worked up about what he said. Why is that because Joe Biden wants him to say this. Understand, this crisis at our southern border is not because Amlo, like his comment, you could stop it, couldn't you, And and well, yes, but pass money for us to stop it. Understand, Joe Biden doesn't want it to stop. Chuck Schumer doesn't want it to stop. The Democrats, don't want it to stop. The ten point four million illegal immigrants. They're glad of them.
They want more. They want ten million to become twenty million, to become thirty million. Those they view as future Democrat voters. And so Amlow listen, you know, do you get mad when when when a little like yapping dog comes and yaps at the door. No, AMLO's gonna scream. So what if we had a president? I'll tell you, when Donald Trump was president, Amlo was terrified of him, utterly and
completely terrified him. By the way, Amlo actually did a pretty good job when Trump was president because he was so afraid. Let's pause and ask how did we secure the border under Trump?
What happened?
And I'll tell you what happened. Trump threatened Amlo, and what he said is you either help us secure the border or I'm going to oppose I Donald J. Trump, I am going to impose a twenty five percent tariff on everything coming out of Mexico. And Amlow ran screaming. It terrified him because he believed Trump would do it. It wasn't an empty threat, and he was terrified. And what happened. Number one, Amlo put six thousand troops on Mexico's southern border. You know, remember the shape of Mexico.
Mexico is much more narrow at the south than it is at the north. At the north, Mexico has a two thousand mile border with the United States. At the south, their border is much much smaller. Amlo put six thousand soldiers on their southern border to stop the flow, and critically, because of Trump's threat, Amlo agreed to the Remain in Mexico Agreement. What was remained in Mexico. It said, anyone that crossed illegally into Mexico, and most of the people
coming at that time and now were not Mexicans. They were from elsewhere. At the time they were mostly from Central and South America, remain in Mexico. Said they would stay in Mexico. These illegal immigrants would remain in Mexico while their US asylum case was proceeding. In what happened when suddenly people paid cartels thousands of dollars, traveled all the way north and discovered, Holy Cow, I don't get to come into America. I'm stuck in Mexico. I can't
cross over. The numbers plummeted to the lowest rate in forty five years. So when Amlo says this, by the way, the incidant Joe Biden became president of the number of skyrocketed because Biden is weak, Amlo isn't afraid of him. Amelou isn't scared at all. And actually everything Amlo is threatening Joe Biden and every other Democrat in Congress wants him to do that.
It's almost like he's empowered to say this because he's actually backed up by the American policy.
That's what you're telling us, that that is.
Exactly right, that he's doing what what they know he'll do. He's look, look, Marxist, gonna Marxist, that's who they are. He is going to engage in anti American rhetoric. The only thing he responds to his strength. This Biden White House is not capable of strength against leftist, against enemies of America. They're only capable of strength against our friends.
They're only capable of undermining allies of America. But because Amlo is a leftist, just like in Cuba, they're communists, just like in Venezuela their communists, just like like Lula in Brazil is an anti American leftist, just like Petro in Colombia is an anti American leftist. Every anti American leftist. This administration gives everything they want and usually they want to give them money. So when actually AMLO's saying lift the Cuban embargo, you know what Biden White House wants
to lift the Cuban in bargo. When AMLO says in the sanctions against Venezuela, you know what Biden wants to end the sanctions against Venezuela. This is they are to use the old communist phrase, they are fellow travelers.
You mentioned the drug aspect of this, and I want you to hear what he had to say, and everybody listening, because there's zero compassion. The number one killer forty nine under this country's fetanol in this nation more than anything else, that's what's killing us. And he was asked about the drugs and he kind of mocked America and laughed at America's demise when it comes to drugs and the deaths that are happening.
Take a listen.
The head of the DEA says cartels are US producing fentanyl and the US State Department has said that most of it is coming out of Mexico.
Are they wrong, see yes, no, or rather they don't have all the information. Because fentanyls is also produced in the United States, the.
State Department says most of it's coming from Mexico.
Fentanyl is produced in the United States, in Canada and in Mexico, and the chemical precursors come from Asia. Do you know why we don't have the drug consumption that you have in the United States Because we have customs, traditions, and we don't have the problem of the disintegration of the family.
But there is drug consumption in Mexico, but.
We put very little.
So why the violence then in Mexico?
Borke, because drug trafficking exists, but not the consumption.
I mean, he's laughing when he gives the last answer there, like he's smiling and smirking when he's like, Aha, this is Hilaire, Like I can't believe you guys are even asking me these questions.
Well, look, that's exactly right, and he's lying when he's suggesting that fentanyl is manufactured in large quantities in the United States. The vast majority of what is killing Americans is being manufactured in Mexico. Now he's right that the precursors are coming from China. It's the Chinese communists who are sending it to Mexico. It's the Mexican drug cartels who are manufacturing it, and they're smuggling it over the border.
There's some fentanyl production in the United States, but it is very minor compared to the volume coming from Mexico.
He knows that.
But this is and by the way, understand the total volume last year, over one hundred thousand Americans died of drug overdoses. Seventy percent of that, over seventy thousand, was from fentanyl, and the vast majority of that was Chinese fentanyl manufactured in Mexico by the Mexican drug cartel. And Amloe is saying, sadly, with Biden's blessing in the Democrats blessing, we're going to keep it flowing as before.
If you want to hear the rest of this conversation on this topic, you can go back and dow the podcast from earlier this week to hear the entire thing. I want to get back to the big story number three of the week.
You may have missed.
You were up for reelection right now, running as a Republican for mayor.
Yes, your policies haven't changed.
The only thing it's changed is they d went to an R.
Correct could you win, I'd win overwhelmingly. I don't have any doubt about it, no doubt about it. I'll tell you why I believe that. I'll tell you why. I'm glad someone finally asked me that on the record, because that's sort of the chatter as well. That's why I asked.
And the other going to say, oh, well, this guy could never win, that's why he waited till the end of his served and then switch parties.
So here's the reality that people have to ignore to even make that argument. But I understand why people need to make it. I mean I told someone, I said, you know, you don't switch parties in a two parties one to the other and think the other part is going to say, well, you know, we wish him the best.
He was great, and it's our loss.
You know, they got to come up with something, and that's kind of These are the kinds of argument they've come up with. But here's the reality I won my last election with. It wasn't ninety three percent. Dallas City, you know, has ordinances about how right in candidates get on the ballot, and if you write in a name other than the actual right in candidate's name, that's there.
You just essentially didn't vote. You threw your vote, your your bollot, and the trash of the cast votes, which were canvassed by the city and are the official records of the city. Ninety eight point seven percent of the vote. That's Democrats and Republicans in that group. That's a that's a pretty hearty endorsement of the incumbent mayor. And I didn't run with a D or an R behind my name. I ran just with you, know, as Eric Johnson. Because you don't run in Texas, in any city with a
D or for folks wh aren't from Texas. We don't actually have partisan elections in Texas for mayor. You just run, and you don't run with a party support. Now, what do I think would have actually happened if I had just come out and said six months before the election, I'm actually a Republican. Here's what would have happened. Some Democrats would have gotten together and said, well, this is an opportunity for us to run an ostensibly just overtly
partisan candidate. We're going to do something that's never been done in now before, which is to just make it partisan, like to say, Okay, we got an R running and now we're gonna run a D against him. The problem is that the R you're talking about for four years well enough to clear the field and went with ninety eight or seven percent of the vote. But that didn't happen yet. So let's just go back and say a Republican has been that effective who happens to also be
African American and supported by the African American community. We think that that person would lose simply by saying I've become a Republican. I think what happens is is I won the first race in a contested nine person field, that it went to a runoff with twelve percent of the vote. I want, you know, fifty six forty four. I think that goes down to the normal, you know, pretty solid win of a you know, fifty four fifty
three percent win. But I still win. There's still question I still win that race because I'm the incumbent at that point. No incumbent mayor, if we've had Republican and Democrat mayors before, by the way, no incumbent mayor seeking re election Dallas has ever lost ever.
All Right, so let me let me ask a final question, which is you have started now a national organization, yes, a Republican Mayor's Association, and you have been out articulating that Republicans need to have an agenda for the cities, that we can't just write off big cities where an awful lot of Americans live.
And I think that's a very important message.
It's something and I want to ask you what's your vision for the message Republicans should have in the cities and how do we end up with a lot more Republican mayors to big cities. What's the path forward there?
I said this in the Wall Street Journale, and I meant it. It's a two way benefit for America and for our party. America needs the leadership that Republicans provide at the local level because of the things we talked about just a few minutes ago. A Republican mayor is going to is going to because it's part of the DNA of the party, is going to be right on law and order issues, going to be right on public safety. People who asked me about that, I've said, let me
just quiz you very quickly. Every bad idea you can think of about public safety came from one side of the aisle. There's not even a mixed bag on this issue. If it's a bad idea when it comes to public safety, you know, defund the police, don't prosecute shopping whatever. Republicans don't propose ideas that undermine law and order. They not every Democrat believes them, but they only emanate from the Democrat.
Ye that's just a fact statement. So a Republican is going to be right on law and order, republic safety. A Republican mayor is going to be right on taxes. A Republican mayor ought to be right on infrastructure spending
and investing prudently. And there's studies that show, I mean, been have proven that you actually have lower debt levels and you issue less debt when you have a Republican mayor versus a Democrat when they've mit professor actually studied this and concluded that it is a statistically significant different level of debt associated with a city when there's a Republican in charge and a Democrat in charge. So we actually need Republicans running our major cities because eighty percent
of Americans live in cities. By twenty fifty, that number is going to be ninety percent. So the country actually needs the leadership. But I'm actually telling you, as a group of partisans, we actually have to pay attention to this. And I think we have to pay attention to it because I, in my heart of hearts, believe that by being competitive in the cities, by basically re engaging. Because we were once engaged. So if there was a Republican Majors Association at one time, it had a similar name,
it was like the Republican Conference. It was during the Ford administration, and at some point we just lost interest in competing at that level and it sort of just faded away. But it was very active at one time, and we were more competitive in our cities at one time.
We need to get more competitive there again, because the margin of victory at the state level in states like Wisconsin, in states like Michigan, states like Pennsylvania, is the difference between performing at the city level in You're ready, Madison, Green Bay, and in Detroit and in Philadelphi and Pittsburgh by just five or ten percent points better. So, in other words, engaging in the cities in a more significant way and having the GOP brand and associated with the
things we're talking about. At the local level, it didn't take that many votes, and now all of a sudden, the whole state is no longer lock stock and barrel going one direction because of the advantage that has been run up in the cities. You've cut into the advantage that the cities have.
You know, Eric, I'll tell you on that point. So, Heidi and I met twenty five years ago when we were both working on the George W. Bush campaign in two thousand, the presidential campaign. And actually in that campaign, you know, I was a young, twenty nine year old staffer, but I wrote a memo urging that the campaign consider at the time Condoleeza Rice as a VP nominee. And in the course of the memo, I laid out all sorts of reasons why I thought this was worth considering carefully.
But one of the things I did is I did an electoral analysis. I looked at the three preceding presidential elections, and I posited a series of hypotheticals. I said, what would have happened if Republicans had gotten five percent more, ten percent more, or fifteen percent more of the African American and Hispanic vote. So I didn't posit, what if
we get fifty percent more? I've did five, ten or fifteen, so goals that were achievable, I believe, And I ran through the numbers, and the one that was most that stood out the most was if Republicans had gotten an additional fifteen percent of the African American and Hispanic vote in nineteen ninety six, Republicans would have won an additional ninety six electoral votes. I mean, itrect clips the election dramatically.
But to do that, we've got to compete.
It's a whole different national conversation about the competitiveness of this party if we are a factor at the city level, yep, because it's just we're so many people are concentrated. It's getting harder and harder to figure out how to win
elections where we're just not even playing there. I mean, it's just not even we ought to be competing in every major city where we're currently just sort of saying, you know, a Democrat hasn't won, I mean, Republican had won there in a long time, so let's not try. We just flipped just in this last cycle, the mayor, the current mayor of I believe it's Charleston, South Carolina is now a Republican. They hadn't elected a Republican mayor in Charleston in like one hundred and seventy five years,
So it can happen. It can be done. You have to run the right candy. He was a former legislator like I was, and he ran a great campaign. Now they've got a Republican mayor. So what's going to happen
next is he's going to do a good job. And when he does a good job, these people who've been voting for Democrat mayors for one hundred and seventy five year are going to say, you know, when Republicans are in charge, the city just seems to be it's safer, we hire more cops, and crime goes down, and you know what, the taxes go down, and you know, things
are just better. The brand means something to them at the local level and not just the brand will always have a federal aspect to it, it will always have a state aspect to it. But right now in this party, we're missing a brand at the local level. It doesn't mean anything out right now at the local level, and we get to decide what it means. And I'm saying we should be running solid conservatives at the local level,
winning elections, running cities well. And then that makes people at the local level go, yeah, I'm actually a Republican. I love my Republican mayor, and so I'm a Republican and that has benefits for people running for US Senate, running for president, running for governor. But we are right now just aren't doing anything. I mean, I was shocked to find that there was no one even in this lane. I wasn't even stepping on anybody's chose by doing this.
Well, let me say, Eric, I appreciate you. I appreciate your friendship, I appreciate your leadership, and I appreciate your joining us from the Verdict podcast.
Appreciate that as always day, thank you for listening to Verdict with Sentner, Ted Cruz Ben Ferguson with you don't forget to deal with my podcast and you can listen to my podcasts every other day you're not listening to Verdict or each day when you listen to Verdict. Afterwards, I'd love to have you as a listener to again the Ben Ferguson podcasts, and we will see you back here on Monday morning.