The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome, welcome, welcome. Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report.
Hey. Well, it wasn’t the day after the election that I expected. I can say I thought I saw the markings of a big, big wave. And, well, it wasn’t there in a lot of places.
You know, there certainly was a red wave. Florida was extraordinary. Texas was extraordinary. New York State, even though Lee Zeldin didn’t win, there’s a bunch of races that were won. But in lots of other places, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona looks like it might be okay in terms of some good people winning. Kari Lake is in a very close race there. They’ve got votes that are coming in. But it wasn’t a red wave. And why was that? I mean, that’s the question.
Why was there no red wave? Is the fact that it was not a red wave, does that mean people are satisfied with the direction of the country? It’s hard to understand how people voted for Fetterman, when they saw the country in the direction it’s going and the lack of leadership. It’s hard to think that they thought, it’s hard to think about people going, oh, I’ll take Fetterman. Now, Oz may have not been a natural candidate in terms of politics, but he was a good communicator. At least he made a lot of money as a TV star.
But listen, I’m here to give you great comfort and to understand now what you see as opposed to what you wish had happened. Or maybe I should talk about myself.
What you need to know is, when I look at yesterday and now I look at the state of play, I say, what is it that I see? That, what is it that has happened not to what do I wish had happened? And when you look closely, there was an article, and Tom Massey. Thomas Massey, the congressman from Kentucky, was at the celebration. The party for Kevin McCarthy was supposed to be the coronation of the new speaker, I guess. And it was at a ballroom in D.C. And everybody was waiting. And so here they are waiting, and ultimately it gets delayed, and delayed and delayed, And at two in the morning they basically have a brief statement. It looks like they’re going to get the majority, but not by very much. And Thomas Massey’s interviewed by a reporter, and he says, look, as long as we have the majority in the House, we have subpoena authority, and we can get to the bottom of a bunch of stuff he said that’s very powerful. And then he said, and also, if you look at Senator Manchin of West Virginia, and he said this in an interview, Thomas Massey said, if you look at Senator Manchin of West Virginia, he said, he’s basically in charge. And he said, I like to tell people, the Massey caucus, if it’s only one vote, that separates the majority and the minority. Thomas Massey said I’ll be in charge. And there’s a part of you, want to say, I talked to someone who’s very savvy, was in the middle of a lot of this last night and again this morning, last night by text, this morning by phone. And he said it’s like that old song, you can’t always get what you want, but you might just get what you need. You know, you might just get what you need.
And it turns out that maybe what you need is at least to stop the investigatory chaos and have a pushback and have a way to balance. But also in some ways, you may have more conservative voices who will be heard because they’ll have to be heard. And so it won’t be the situation where they can just simply ignore the conservatives because they have 30 extra seats. No. You need the Freedom Caucus. You need the five votes of the most conservative guys because if they walk, you’re in trouble.
So suddenly conservatives have a place at the table. And if they’re smart, they know how to use that. They know how to make that a factor.
What you need to know is, look, I think there’s something about this election that shows that we’re sort of in camps. It doesn’t matter. There’s some teams, and if you get your team excited, they’re going to come out and vote, and you’re going to win in places where your team is strong.
So if you’re a Democrat, you’re going to win in California, although it’s a funny situation in California. They won statewide, but they lost some of the races for Congress. Down low, down bottom. Same thing in New York. They won statewide, so they didn’t lose the big one, the governor, but they did lose three, I think maybe four of the House races, the U.S. Congress, United States House of Representatives. So there’s a part of this that is interesting to think about. Is it true that places where it’s just team. It’s just team Democrats versus Republicans? You’re going to get out your people, I’m going to get out mine and it’s going to be even. Now. I listened all night on a couple of different texting threads and a couple of different phone calls. Kind of conference calls, zoom calls. And what I heard was a lot of chaos.
But what I would say is there was more than I’ve ever seen or known, more people watching and fighting for transparency and things to work right. That doesn’t mean they all did. I have some questions about how the vote tallies in Pennsylvania ended up where they are. I have some questions about Maricopa County, but in general, we had a situation where there were lots of eyes inside and someone said to me, well, maybe this is something that’s being done even more sophisticated, being done in the computer system. It could be. There is something about it that doesn’t sit right with me, but it’s a second election where it doesn’t sit right with me. So maybe it’s just me not tracking it. But back to my point.
If you thought like I did, it would be a bigger wave, then you said, well, this is terrible. But if you stop and you say, what do I need to know about this situation?
What you need to know is as long as there’s control of the House and Senate excuse me, the House for sure, maybe the Senate too, you’re going to have a check and you’re going to create a dynamic where other voices have to be heard.
And the other aspect of this is I think it creates a dynamic too, where people think they’re going to take on Trump in the primary, and that’s going to create a whole other set of challenges. And some of it good, some of it bad, but I don’t think Trump is backing away. And I think that somebody like DeSantis and others are gonna say, you know what, this is our turn, this is my time.
I heard someone say on that insider call, I was on too. Maybe Republicans can’t win national races anymore. Maybe it’s too hard. That’s when you see Michigan, Pennsylvania, we’ll see about Arizona and Nevada, you just wonder if it’s gotten that bad. So there you have it.
All right, so don’t get down, you know, grieve what your hope was. I did. Last night, I stared at the screen and I watched the TV and I said, what is this? And then say, okay, what’s happening here? What do I need to understand? And what you need to know is sometimes you don’t get what you want, but you get what you need. And I think that’s where we are. So we’ll see more over the coming days about exactly what’s going to happen and more details. So we’ll take a break.
When we come back, we’ll catch up with our old friend John Zadrozny. He’s over at America First Legal. He’s an investigator over there and a lawyer, and we’ll see what he knows about some of these things. We’ll also visit with my friend Hal Shurtleff. Hal Shurtleff runs Camp Constitution. He’s a great patriot, sort of of the old school, and he does a great job of being out there educating and fighting. He’s the guy that his organization, they fought to fly the flag over Boston City Hall when they were letting the rainbow flag fly and the atheist flag fly. And he wanted to an American historical flag that had Christianity tied to it and they blocked it. It went all the way the to Supreme Court and he won. He’s a great guy. Hal Shurtleff we’ll talk to him in a moment. All right, so we’re right back. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. We’ll be back in a moment.
