Jay Weber Show transcript 2-13-25
Two local media figures whom I’ve always liked are-Craig Gilbert-the longtime political reporter for the journal/Sentinel-
He’s always been a straight shooter and a careful analyst who keeps his ‘own biases’ out of things...
And... Charles Franklin...the Marquette professor who leads the Marquette law school polling unit.
Both men are venerable, careful members of our media community- and in a short J/S piece yesterday- they have their ‘take’ on the latest Marquette poll-which focuses on ‘how Trump is doing’ since taking office.
It's a national poll. Not specific to Wisconsin. And I have no qualms with how Gilbert and Franklin choose to present MU’s findings...but I do want to add my own little ‘take’ here, because I think it’s important.
In other words, I think they ‘missed something’ that’s worth pointing out.
The takeaway from the poll-as Gilbert frames it is:
Some are quite popular and draw support from well beyond his political base.
Okay, granted. And the story goes on to quote Charles franklin as saying...the results underscore the uncertainty that the American people have over trump...and what sort of ‘second term’ president he’s going to be.
Okay. I’ll also buy that.
But can I point something out? the list of ‘issues’ that voters are hugely supportive of...versus the list of ‘issues’ that they are hugely ‘not’ supportive of.
The issues that Americans ‘really’ support Trump on are the border, oil and gas production, and protecting women’s sports.
The issues that Americans ‘really do not’ support Trump on are: the Jan 6th pardons, taking over the Panama Canal, and calling the gulf of Mexico ‘the gulf of America’.
Really?
Can you see a little bit of ‘difference’ between the overall ‘heft’ and ‘weight’ and ‘importance’ of these two sets of issues?
Because-it’s so apparent that Gilbert really should have pointed it out.
We like what trump is doing on ‘border’. ‘energy’. Fighting the trans-bullies’. That’s big, weighty stuff.
But...eh...his silliness about what to call the gulf, or the Panama Canal, or pardoning rioters....eh. That stuff we don’t really agree with him on.
There’s a massive gulf in between those two sets of issues, isn’t there?
So much so- that i don’t think you can accurately say that voters are ‘split’ on whether they support trump. Do you?
The more accurate take is Americans are strongly behind Trump on the big stuff and are finding some of his smaller actions silly.
That certainly reflects what I think we’ve been seeing over the last three weeks, sure. But to characterize this as American’s being ‘unsure’ or ‘split’ on whether they support Trump is a little off base.
Border, energy, and protecting women’s sports were all-significant- issues in last fall’s election and motivated voters more heavily. Many people based their votes on those-and they like what trump is doing with the issues now that he’s in charge.
Panama Canal? Gulf of America? What?
Even having a pollster ask you a question about it would catch you a little off guard, wouldn’t it?
Next question: do you approve of President Trump renaming the Gulf of Mexico ‘the Gulf of America’?
What?
We go from ending DEI....to...wanting my thoughts on ‘gulf of America’?, ah...okay. I think that’s a little silly.
There’s no need to be-labor the point, really: i just want to point out that i think gilbert and Franklin sort of ‘miss the target’ if they aren’t going to weight the issues based on ‘importance’. What Franklin’s poll found – validates the CBS poll and other recent polls: 2/3 to ¾ of the American people are solidly with president trump when it comes to the biggest issues that drove the campaign.
Next item: the white house press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, taking two minutes to issue a harsh scolding to the white house press corps for some of their members-intentionally- misrepresenting what’s going on in dc with this new batch of lawfare against president trump’s agenda-and hopping in bed with the left’s constitutional crisis talking point.
This was great.
Bravo to Leavitt for going -so directly-at the people in that room who should know better. I did a segment yesterday on this and won’t dive too deeply back into it today- but this flurry of leftists finding activist judges to block trump in court-is not some ‘crisis’ of trump’s doing.
If anything, it’s the democrats -who the voters just voted out of power- trying to cling to it- and block the will of the American people.
That was a great ‘take down’ by Leavitt- not that I think it will cause any of those left-wing media outlets to change their tune or suddenly be more honest.
Many of those media outlets were just caught taking secret payments of taxpayer money-funneled through the democrat’s USAID scam. It’s now proven that there is nothing more than left-wing propaganda outfits.... who are going to play their role in trying to block Trump’s agenda and put democrats back in power.... any way they can.
In fact, we just got another example of the sort of deep state push back-
The sort of ‘malicious compliance’ to trump’s orders-that i have been talking about this week.
This example comes out of the Biden and Obama holdovers at the international trade commission- issuing a ban on menthol cigarettes just days before Joe Biden left office. Remember that?
Well- as expected-once trump’s people took over, the president immediately blocked that ITC regulators from doing it: nope, the ban on menthol flavoring in cigarettes is reversed. We aren’t doing that.
Trump made his position clear. Right?
And so, having been blocked on that move- the leftists running the ITC quietly banned menthol flavored vape products.
As in-if trump won’t let us do cigs, screw him, we’ll do vape.
Well, the Obama and Biden anti-smoking zealots on the international trade commission were discovered, there, too, and now that trump’s team knows about it- all they need to do is reverse that order, too.
But- see? Malicious compliance: the holdover leftists from the Obama and Biden eras who were appointed to all of these boards and positions of power atop the agencies- are going to do everything they can to keep advancing the left’s regulatory agenda....and blocking Trumps.
Every single appointee to this ITC was appointed by either Biden or Obama. They hate trump...and so they are going to buck him at every turn if they can get away with it.
And it’s why firing the deep state appointees, bureaucrats, and rank-and-file workers who decide they are going to ignore or fight trump...becomes ‘all important’ here.
It must be done-with extreme prejudice-in Trump’s second term, here: fire every single one. People who think it’s’ cute to go rogue and disobey you.
In short-trump and his team have a rare window here to fire as many biased and overly political bureaucrats as they can-within our federal government.
The America first policy institute recently published a report outlining how career federal employees were blocking and screwing over trump during his first term.
This is why Trump’s team ‘came in hot’ and moved to reclassify thousands of civil servants...and fired the watchdogs and agency heads who had bucked them in the first term.
This is why Trump and musk are vowing to shut down entire agencies and fire thousands of people.
And yes, this is why trump and musk have doge employees interviewing federal workers at various departments and asking them about their past practices.
This is why FBI agents and federal prosecutors are being asked to fill out a questionnaire related to whether they were involved in prosecuting Jan sixth protestors-and how deeply.
Yes. Because all these highly biased ‘deep state’ actors need to go.
Firing political appointees is easy. Firing career bureaucrats and protected employees is not. But trump and his team aren’t screwing around this time-
And it’s great to see.
If trump is going to drain the swamp- he needs to fire the ‘worst of the worst’- and since he can only, realistically, fire only ten percent of our 2.4-million federal employees-he’s got to sure that the other 9-in-10 employees get the message: you will do your jobs, or you will lose your jobs.
Period.
Because-as a wash times columnist correctly characterizes this today: the federal workforce has become an integral part of the democrat party machine and power structure. It’s frustrating to acknowledge- but it’s important to acknowledge it. The so-called deep state is ‘at least’ as important to the democrat power structure as the mainstream media and their billionaire donors funding their activist non-profits.
I’ve been saying for years: nearly every federal worker is a democrat....
If you still question whether the dept. of justice and FBI have been corrupted and taken over by today’s left- you’re a fool. They have. In a huge way.
This is the most powerful govt agency out of any of them-given its’ expansive powers to snoop, spy, arrest, incarcerate the American people.
And it’s the agency that launched two criminal investigations into president trump and helped coordinate three others from the states.
And nearly everyone in today’s justice department who donates to political campaigns or causes- donates to democrats and the left. Almost exclusively. By a ratio of 8 to 1.
Is it any surprise that Joe Biden and Merrick Garland’s DOJ was hell-bent on destroying Donald trump?
We cannot have our govt agencies operating this way. Our federal bureaus and agencies-cannot- be allowed to continue to act as members of a criminal organization- which is what today’s democrat party has become.
They’ve been caught-big time-stealing from taxpayers and using that money to rig the game-and rig our own government-against us.
photo credit: Getty Images
story credit: J/S online
audio version of the segment here > The latest MU poll finds Americans are behind Trump on the big issues