Fishback stays on FL's ballot + How the GOP is polling

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Jenna Ellis: Anthony Fauci testifying on COVID 19 today

Jenna Ellis: I love talking about the things of God. Because of truth and the biblical worldview. The U.S. constitution obligates our government to preserve and protect the rights that our founders recognize come from God our creator, not our government. I believe that scripture in the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raised up each of you and God has allowed us to be brought here to this specific moment in time.

: This is Jenna Ellis in the Morning.

Jenna Ellis: Good morning. It is Wednesday, July 29, and in just about 30 minutes, Anthony Fauci will be testifying in front of the U.S. senate. So Senator Rand Paul posted a link to, senate.gov where you can, listen to that. He also indicated last night on X that if Foushee, commits perjury in today's hearing regarding the origins of Cove 19, that the presidential pardon via the auto pin from Joe Biden would not cover him. So this is very highly anticipated and we'll get to more of that later on in the show.

Judge rules Florida GOP gubernatorial candidate James Fishback eligible for August primary

But first, coming out of Florida, the, some primaries are still yet to come for Republicans and Florida's primary is August 18th. And there has been a case to determine whether one of the candidates, James Fishback, is eligible to stay on the Florida ballot. And a judge has now ruled that he is eligible. So, this coming from the Tallahassee GOP candidate for governor, James Fishback will be on the August statewide primary ballot, a Tallahassee judge ruled on July 27. So the order followed a lawsuit by Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, who's a fellow Republican candidate who challenged whether Fishback qualified to run. The circuit Judge David Frank, who wrote the opinion, described Florida seven year residency requirement to run for governor as, quote, placing great weight on the subjective intent of the person declaring residency. And so in a 25 page order, Frank said that Fishback testified under oath. He always intended to keep his Florida residency and never intended to abandon it for the couple of years that he was in D.C. actually ironically during Cove So for more on this, let's welcome in Anthony Sabatini, who was, James Fishback's attorney for the hearing. And, this is a pretty substantial win, so congratulations.

Anthony Sabatini: Well, thank you very much. Appreciate that.

Jenna Ellis: Absolutely. And so now, in a press conference yesterday, James Fishback is now calling for Lieutenant Governor Collins, to resign, saying that this basically amounts to lawfare. Is that the way that you see it?

Anthony Sabatini: Yeah, absolutely. I think it was law fair. you know, Jake Collins, I don't think ever had a winning strategy to achieve the governorship. And so at this point, very late in the game, three weeks after qualifying, you know, his team decided to spend Lord knows how much, on lawyers to try to, you know, throw a fish back off the ballot. You know, one thing that came out of the trial is they spent $50,000 just on a private investigator to gather some of the publicly accessible documents showing that, James did in fact have secondary and part time ties to Washington D.C. so I couldn't even guess how much they spent on the attorneys. But, you know, that's not a winning strategy when you have a guy at the top of the ticket like Byron Donalds who has a lead on you. If the polls are true, Byron's leading the race. And fighting as a guy who's, you know, also similarly dispositioned to a certain extent doesn't really make a lot of sense. And Florida law is very clear, and I think everybody knew is very clear, subjective intent and sincere, bona fide subjective intent really, is the most important factor when it comes to determining where a person is really resident. If you're a college kid in town for a while, if you're a military member at a base across the country,

Anthony Sabatini: if you're having work temporarily.

Jenna Ellis: And we're losing you a little bit there, Sabatini. So, are you still with us? All right. I'm not sure that he is. Let's try to get him back. But you know, to his point, many Floridians own multiple, homes in multiple states. I mean, many other, outside residents even own vacation homes in Florida. And I'm told we're, we have Sabatini back, but what are the. Yeah, go ahead. Oh, I apologize.

Anthony Sabatini: Yeah. So he never abandoned his, residence. And because he never did abandon his residence, the case was frivolous for that reason. They never had evidence that he actually did abandon Florida. He had Florida driver's license the whole time.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And, and so one of the judges comments was essentially, you know, that while this, obviously this turns on int of the individual and that basically the balance should favor the, the candidate remaining on the ballot and that voters, not judges, should decide the race unless the law clearly requires otherwise. I think that's actually a very important principle overall in election law.

Anthony Sabatini: That's, that's exactly right. I think the judge generally ascribed to what we would call judicial restraint. He was not a heavy handed judge that was going to come in and make a very heavy handed decision unless he truly believed the law compelled him to do so. And the burden was on the plaintiff in this case, Lieutenant Governor Collins, to basically show that can be removed or perhaps should slightly. It's that he has because he, you know, he would have had to prove,

Anthony Sabatini: which I've been able to do. Fish back truly did abandon that Florida residence. And so yeah, it's a very well written opinion. It's I think almost 26 pages, and very, very well reasoned, very somber and you know, even if there was extended discovery, if the Lieutenant Governor had a longer period of time to make his case and go through even more documents, I think it would have just helped James fish back even more. You know we had 70 exhibits at the trial that we introduced. All were admitted showing his very strong continuous ties to the state of Florida. We had more time, we probably would have had even more documents and testimony.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, yeah. And you know, I think there's a real danger that eligibility lawsuits can become political weapons during campaigns and that this type of of lawfare, you know, can appear to the voters as as gatekeeping their ability to choose candidates for themselves. Obviously there is there and there are constitutional requirements for eligibility and those things matter, but it shouldn't be a political weapon. And so how should courts moving forward balance enforcing those qualifications as a just a bare minimum while respecting voters choices?

Anthony Sabatini: Well I do think that if the law is clear and the judge knows the law is clear, they have to enforce law. But in this case the law clearly said the most important element was subjective intent. We proved that they didn't. The judge did a good job finding that element not to be met by the plaintiff and did the right thing. But you know, each qualification is different. You know, obviously you have completely ridiculous decisions like we saw years ago in Colorado where they tried to keep Donald Trump off the ballot by falsely alleging that he was a insurrectionist. And comparing, comparing the United States Civil War and the Insurrection Act, clause which was you know, written after the United States Civil war, to January 6th. So you do have Frivolous judges who obviously are making ballot access decisions based on their own political tastes. and of course that's not what happened here. So it's a balancing act. But really, at the end of the day, you just got to choose the judges that are going to enact the law in a fair and impartial way. And that's what we had.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah. And finally, Anthony Sabatini, do you expect an appeal from, the Collins camp? Because, you know, we only have about three weeks until the primary.

Anthony Sabatini: I don't expect, an appeal for two reasons. Number one, in the last two days they haven't mentioned it. But probably just as importantly, the second reason being the legal standard that's applied in this case. So because, residence is such a fact driven inquiry and because all the totality of facts is what actually will dictate whether the judge finds you to be a resident or not, appellate courts are basically restricted from reweighing those facts even ever so slightly. And so I don't think that they have an avenue to overturn Judge Frank in this decision. They would basically have to prove that there was no evidence that Fischbeck had ties to Florida or subjective intent to remain in Florida, which of course is, I think, impossible to do and would be false. So therefore I think that, you know, it's futile at this point. They're just moving ahead and actually sort of lashing out. Some of the advisers, on the Collins team are attacking, I think almost attacking the judge, post trial, but I don't think that's a wise decision since he's a pretty well respected judge.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah, yeah. And he himself is, it's come out as a, is a Greene Beret, which is one of the, the issues that Collins has kind of put forward and has said, you know, is the main reason he's qualified for governor, which, you know, with all due respect, his military service and you know, we appreciate that, that doesn't mean that necessarily he' the best qualified for governor. But it's hypocritical that, you know, they're, they're attacking this judge while, suggesting online that, you know, no one should, attack the political qualifications of Collins because he's a Greene Beret. So, you know, of course it always goes both ways in politics and it just seems to be that, you know, this particular primary, is very, very contentious on a number of levels. But at least, some of the broader election integrity questions have been resolved. And to your point, you know, the appeal because it's so fact driven. There really doesn't appear to be a legal question that the, that that could really survive an appeal.

Anthony Sabatini: Maybe this case was just about politics

and for listeners to know as well, we did invite Mark Muser, who was Collins attorney onto the show as well. he declined but his statement was that it's disappointing that the court accepted Fischbach's novel legal theory that quote unquote ignorance of the law is now a defense when it comes to Florida's residency. And kind of goes on to say Mr. Fischbach may have been able to convince the court to leave him on the ballot, but in doing so he demonstrated he does not have the mental capacity to govern himself, let alone Florida. And that seems Anthony Sabatini, to be you know, way, way more of a political statement to me than really staying on just the merits of the case. And may itself indicate that you know, this really was just about politics, not about upholding the Florida Constitution.

Anthony Sabatini: I think you're right. You know I try to understand every lawsuit as having been filed in good faith. but you know some individuals and commentators very early pointed to the fact that this could have potentially been used just as a way to litigate their gripes. Lt. Governor Collins gripes and anger just at James Fishback. And so there was a part of

Anthony Sabatini: the trial that did seem to be. And of course as you just pointed out, statements made after the trial that focused just on I guess what you would call mistakes that James Fishback made earlier on when he was a 26 year old person, he bought his first condo in D.C. he was required to sign a mortgage, application statement stating that it was his primary residence. Obviously he doesn't, he wasn't really reading the mortgage application. It's a 55 page document and single space boilerplate, 10 font typeface. Nobody's actually reading that. So of course he apologized, he didn't really live in D.C. probably shouldn't have signed that, etc. So they focused heavily on that. Of course James is, I guess you would call it a defense. I think it's better to understand as an explanation. It's simply that he didn't read it. He's a 26 year old kid trying to get a rocket loan mortgage for a condo in D.C. during Cove has nothing to do with whether he was going to be living there full time,

Anthony Sabatini: making it his permanent residence for the rest of his life. And so they, they focused on these elements I think in a way to just say hey, this guy's not reading every document. So therefore, maybe that's a factor in the governor's race. I don't know if that was the case, technically, that's a violation of the,

Anthony Sabatini: you know, rules of the court.

Anthony Sabatini: You're not really supposed to be using litigation for any reason other than litigate the merit of the claims that you're making. Not, not, not to air out political, grievances. So, you know, hopefully that's not the case, but definitely many people pointing to that.

Jenna Ellis: Yeah.

Anthony Sabatini: It will be interesting to see how Florida primary goes

All right, well, we've got to take a break here, but Anthony Sabatini, really appreciate your time and, it'll be interesting to see, how the primary goes. Of course, Trump endorsed Byron Donald's is, polling highest. However, undecided has still consistently pulled hold even higher than Byron Donald. So exactly how that spread, will weigh in the August 18th primary, will be very interesting. And so, of course, the, the top candidates right now are Byron Donalds, James Fishback, Paul Renner, the former speaker of the House in Florida, and, Jay Collins. And so, there's a lot of contention, here in Florida, and especially because Governor Ron DeSantis has seen, stayed out of the endorsement game. so of course we'll be continuing to cover all of that when the primary happens. But voters, can vote for Fish back. He is eligible. We'll be right back with more.

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After primaries, Americans are turning their attention to the general elections

Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. Well, after primary season is over and even though we're, we still have a few primaries left, mainly Americans are turning their attention to the general, the questions about midterms and where polling is in the United States overall with GOP levels of satisfaction among the base and where the rating of the first two years of Trump's second term are really interesting because, and I've seen a lot of things on social media just some of the questions that have arisen. If you could, if you voted for Trump in 2024, what was kind of the primary reason that you did? your main voting issue and has has that been chiefly fulfilled in terms of campaign promises and the, the lack of enthusiasm among the base, has, is really concerning. And I think that the gop, may have a little bit of work to do. Although on the other side of things, of course their biggest talking point is that the Democrats are putting up a lot of socialist candidates. So by comparison the worst GOP candidate still isn't a communist, you know, so that's always a really great line. But where is polling actually at in the United States?

Mark Mitchell, former CEO of Rasmussen Reports, launches Honest Pollster

Well, let's welcome in Mark Mitchell who is the former CEO of Rasmussen Reports and actually began the Honest Polling company launched the Honest Poll independent polling without agendas or compromise, just recently on July 18th. So Mark Mitchell, congratulations on that and people can follow the Honest Polling company on X as well as you at Honest Pollster. So what have you noticed or observed so far about where the GOP actually sits in terms of the Trump kind of MAGA agenda versus perhaps the establishment Republicans and you know, kind of where everybody, I think collectively the dissatisfaction with Congress.

Anthony Sabatini: well, thanks so much for that great invitation and really happy to be back. you know, I've been silenced for a very long time. That was part of being at Rasmussen Reports. And I had to go out of my own to be independent because believe it or not, even some of the preeminent independent pollsters will you know, they will do whatever it takes to get a Trump aligned political action committee check. And so my criticism of Trump was not helpful to that. But what I've been trying to do is help the Trump movement. I'm looking out for the American people and I don't represent any party. And I think objectively that Trump's 2024 platform had a lot of what America desperately needed. And those top issues were getting everybody out of the country. Right. Fixing the federal government which had been co opted by statists, you know, 70% didn't trust the federal government. People were raging mad about the levels of waste, fraud and abuse. And obviously the affordability crisis was number one. So back before I was silenced, I was very vocal trying to prevent this strike on Iran. And I even couldn't predict that it would take this long. But what I thought is that it would take a significant portion of Trump's peak political capital that he could be spending on a 20, 26 legislative agenda, showing people that Republicans can govern. And that's what I was desperately trying to get him to focus on in November as well, show that the Republicans can govern to fix the domestic issues for America. And what they've done is spend pretty much all of this year on foreign policy. And we've asked voters over and over again, and the numbers increasingly say they're desperate for domestic policy fixes. It's over 60% every time. And in the 20s for foreign policy, people are saying by a plurality, almost half of them, stop this war immediately. I think the number was 36. Only 36% of them want the war to keep going on in order to achieve some kind kind of outcome. So these are not strong numbers. And they've put basically the Republicans in an even worse position than I thought they would be in the fall. Now, looking into midterms, it's really hard to say what's going to happen because there's so much stuff that just could come out of the blue, like maybe Trump pulls off some master stroke 40 chest thing and everybody loves him for the Iran. That could happen, right? Like that could be out there. And everybody says, well, the Republicans have a fundraising advantage and I don't know about that. I'm not sure if that includes all the Democrat dark money. I hear there's a lot of things that the Democrats are going to drop in September and October about corruption within the Trump administration. Just a lot of things that could happen. But if you're looking at the generic ballot, Democrats are up 5 on the, you know, the Ripley Politics industry average. And some good pollsters are showing like, EMERSON, like a Democrat plus 11. So I think the bookends are probably a D plus 4 to D plus 10 ish right now. And that's bad. And people would say, well, with the D plus 4 or 5, maybe Republicans pick up a few seats because of redistricting. I don't know about that because all those redistricting, analysis were done Based on the 2024 House popular vote, which had Trump on the ballot. And what we're seeing time and time again since the 2024 election is Republicans underperforming even the polling. And it's because Democrats are being successful at turning out their 2024 vote to 80 or 90% depending on the district, whereas Republicans are getting 60 and 70%. So another layer to the polling is that there's this just complete mismatch of voter enthusiasm. Harris voters have plus 10, very enthusiastic to vote. So like it's not looking great. And we all know when you look at the Real Clear Politics senate map, it's 50, 50, no, toss up. We all know if Republicans eke out a, ah, one seat majority in the Senate, it really means they're down five or six and the Democrats are going to try and put through bills that seem bipartisan. And then if the Congress does flip, which I'd say is likely, but I'm not ruling the Republicans out, then it's going to be just a steady two year stream of show trials, like that's what we're going to see. And so I'm looking and a lot of people this, you know, this might sound like Blackpooling to people. Again, I'm not out for any particular political team, I'm out for the American people. And I would say like this was always going to happen, there was always going to be a future of maga. What happens when, right now, Trump defines what MAGA is. But people who are interested in Americans being put first are going to have to do some heavy lifting here to create a new big tent grassroots movement. And it's kind of, maybe it has another avatar like Trump did or maybe it doesn't like Tea Party, but it's got to be a little bit more specific than MAGA and it's got to be a little bit more inclusive than current maga. Like that's the problem. It's a big circle circular firing squad on the Internet right now. Like they are not making any friends and people can say, oh look, you know, Trump's endorsement's still great and he's still getting the outcomes he wants in Republican primaries. Like that's a double edged sword. So what that means is that just the traditional Republican vote, who is susceptible to Trump's endorsement, that's who's turning out. Well, that means that this broad coalition of blue collar Democrat workers, of young independents, you're not going to get them, they're just not going to show up. They've checked out, they're upset that they weren't put first and they don't really care about socialism, to be honest with you. These are not ideological people. They wanted to be put first and a lot of them feel like they were not.

Jenna Ellis: And I think that's a very fair assessment that with the promises of the 2024 campaign and with the wide margin that that Trump won and the momentum going into you know, January of, of last year in the first two years.

Only 37% of Americans approve of the planned Iran nuclear strike

It does seem to your earlier point that Trump has prioritized, especially over this last year, foreign policy and not really specific goals. I mean I was with him on stopping Iran from obtaining m nuclear weapons and you know, the whole uranium enrichment and all of that. But it seems like if that was the initial goal that was met. And now for the last few months what really has been the objective? Well, the White House hasn't been that clear. So you know, I've had people on this program who are very pro still staying and completing whatever the, the outcome, you know, may be for the White House and then others who are a lot more skeptical of that for a variety of foreign policy reasons. But over all I think that the assessment is actually, I mean 60% actually surprises me that it's that low. That I would think that even more Americans would be a lot more concerned about the domestic issues that we're all still facing. I mean immigration was such a huge issue and still is. And we really haven't seen you know, these mass deportations. We haven't seen Doge accomplish anything in terms of you know, taxes or anything like that. And, and as far as the economy and returning that back to the Trump first term levels, there really hasn't been any movement on this. So what really can Republicans run on in the general to get more enthusiasm again?

Anthony Sabatini: I don't want to be a black pillar, but that's like the toughest question. And what we're seeing is that they're trying very hard to struggle with that answer. And what they're coming up with is that oh, the other guys are a boogeyman, they're a socialist, they're communists. Why haven't you been taught more about how bad communism is? And it's, it's such a cope like it's just, it just isn't it? I mean it's just not going to work, especially if, and the Democrats can mess this up and Republicans could just like luck out, you know, a majority. But they have so much ammunition from just Trump himself and the things that he said that have just been counter to everything he ran on and yeah, it's like the deportation thing. I mean, it was a massive majority in the 60s. But ultimately, fundamentally, the problem is, is that the American dream is dead. And Trump knew this because he promised a golden age. And, you know, we have polling that was like, only 35% of people think today's children will be better off than their parents.

Anthony Sabatini: That's just sad.

Anthony Sabatini: That's like death of an empire kind of thing. And unfortunately, I think that the Republicans, to win, they need to be the responsible party that acknowledges that and offers a intelligent alternative to other people's stuff, like to raid the treasury. And so the Democrats have this, especially with younger people, they're going to have this edge because it's like, yeah, okay, if I vote for these people, they're going to give me stuff. And the Republican message right now is like, we were going to give you stuff, but we didn't. But the stuff they're going to give you is poisoned in some way. That's very difficult for you to see. And that's just not going to work. And the sad thing is, too, like, I was there in November, like, I presented the right message that Trump needed to hear. And I'm not saying, like, don't do the Iran strike. The message was, you need to sell it better to the American people. If you're going to do it, you should probably have, like, you know, guidelines, like how far, you know, tripwires about how far you're going to go. Because people did not want to see

Anthony Sabatini: any casualties out of this.

Anthony Sabatini: 51% of America wanted 10 or fewer casualties. And the White House had this polling, like, they, only 37% approved the strike going in, if you like. This is the important thing. People were showing Trump manipulated polls. It's very easy to provide context in advance of one of these questions and get whatever you want. So if you say in a question, well, it looks like Iran's about to, like, get a nuclear weapon this month, and do you, approve of Trump blowing the Ayatollah up and, you know, trashing all his nuclear program? People are going to support that in the poll, but they don't have that context in real life. And then they're just going to see the strike. Why is it taking six months? And like, my message was, you can do those things, but they have to be rings number two or three in the three ring circus. And the main ring needs to be focusing on affordability and economic populism and, you know, brutal, visible reform of the federal government. And we've seen neither of those things, people, that's what people want to see. Remember, everybody loved what was coming out of the White House in January and February of 2025. They had the zeitgeist of the youth. People were, like, cheering when narco boats were getting blown up. Like, everybody was loving when Elon came out with these Doge revelations. Everybody's like, look, it's just as bad as I thought it was. It's even worse. This is great. We can save America. We can cut a trillion out of our deficit by just arresting some people. So you are in this weird spot where Trump, this administration, specifically pulled the Overton window very far to the right, but then didn't deliver. And that's tough. That actually increases friction in the United States. It makes people, you know, more frustrated and they're not going to trust Republicans as much now. And, you know, I hate to say it, and again, I don't want to sort of like Monday morning quarterback the entire Trump administration, because a lot of stuff could happen, Right? But it has to be acknowledged that after the midterms, there is going to be a little bit more of a lame duck aspect because he's been on the political stage for so long, and people are going to be looking forward to 2028. They're going to be looking for somebody to carry the baton, and there's going to be a ton of argument over whether it needs to be Rubio or Vance. And there's going to be probably an outsider that comes out with a specific goal of punishing the Republican Party. You know, the main thing we all have to wrestle with is that socialism is currently winning, it is increasing, it is on the rise. And under 50 now support socialism more than capitalism. That's wild. The under 50s and it was down to under 50% total among everybody for the very first time in our pollings. So, that's bleak. And that happened under the Trump administration. And they, they say they're going to run on just trashing socialists and look how dangerous these people are. Like, first off, I don't look at a Mandani and an AOC and think they're going to govern well. I think they'll probably just be just as owned by the oligarchy as everybody else.

Anthony Sabatini: Right.

Anthony Sabatini: But the problem is, is that they're presenting a more viable alternative, especially for the young people that make up the core of what the Republicans need to capture, because the Republican electorate is just going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. Like, you're losing, you're going to lose like, 1 or 2 million boomers a year over the next 10 years and then you're going to gain about 4 million new 18 year old voters. There's just going to be this inexorable decline of the old Republican Party and they're still clinging to these old values. And I don't want to be like one of these. I don't want to sound like too progressive. But people are turning from capitalism because they think it hasn't worked. So if your response to them is to preach to them about how no capitalism is awesome, you're talking about capitalism for 50 years ago that these people have never experienced. It's just not going to work. So there needs to some idea or feeling that the Republican Party can govern. Now. The problem is, is that I think the Republican Party is just so completely captured by corporate interests and foreign lobbyists and, you know, pretty much everybody who pays. And I think we're seeing that they just have no intention.

Jenna Ellis: Right.

Anthony Sabatini: I'm surprised, like I heard soon said that they got the filibuster vote up to 35. It was 25 a year ago. I'm actually surprised that it's that high. But they have no intention of passing the SAVE Act.

Anthony Sabatini: They have.

Anthony Sabatini: And it's because their money to interests don't want that.

American Family Radio celebrates America's 250th birthday with patriotic apparel

And so when you look back at the Trump administration, he didn't change the Republican Party. In fact, it's more neoconservative probably than it's ever been.

Jenna Ellis: Wow. Well, Mark Mitchell, we're going to hold you on through the break. a lot to follow up on when we come right back with more here on Jenna Ellis in the Morning.

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Mark Mitchell says younger voters are more pragmatists than ideologues

Jenna Ellis: Welcome back. And I'm still here with my special guest, Mark Mitchell. you can follow him on X at Honest Pollster. And he's the head pollster of the Honest Polling company. And we're talking about, the future of the GOP in the midterms. And one of the things, That I find fascinating that I think, you know, especially with our American family, radio family and primary audience, that is probably difficult to reconcile is the polling that you've mentioned that suggests that you know, a lot of voters just aren't ideologues. And that's actually true that a lot of people, especially the younger people are more pragmatists. And they're looking at the reality of what they're facing in the economy, what hasn't been done in immigration, all of these issues that we've discussed. And they don't care as much about the rise of, of these socialist candidates as probably we do now. I'm an ideologue for sure. I mean I am a person who strongly believes in, in a specific set of political ideas that are built on a Christian worldview. And I follow them, without compromise. I mean obviously when you have a set of of beliefs that are grounded in the biblical worldview, then how that plays out in the political policy that we advocate for, there is a, an, a definite objective standard. Now of course compromise can come on some things and that's negotiation and that's fine, but you can compromise on policy without compromising your principles. And so a lot of us, I think here, and especially among the leadership of afa, I mean we've been having these conversations back and forth extensively about this rise of socialism. And it's probably one of the key things that alarms us. And so I think it's a little bit difficult for some, and especially those who are ideologues to reconcile the fact that most people just really aren't. And, and, and the people who are not as concerned and they're not going to be voting on the basis of this, this fear of socialism. They're looking at what people like Mamdani and others are doing and saying okay, well you know, capitalism didn't work if they even get that far to articulate it that way. They're basically saying life isn't working right now. So let's see what other people are saying. They're not, they're not forward thinking enough to, to say okay, well these campaign promises that these socialists are advocating for, can they really be implemented? What are the future consequences like? The young people really don't seem to be determining their vote based on that metric. So how problematic is that overall that we really have a lot of pragmatists and the GOP does not seem to be speaking to that voting population really at all.

Mark Mitchell: Well, what's weird Is that they were, they very, very, very much were. Everybody's like, oh yeah, okay, I'm on, I'm on board for cracking down on crime, getting rid of the illegals, returning our society to order, focusing on making things more affordable, and most importantly, like holding the federal government to account with brutal accountability. They were like, yep, yep, sign me up. The young people, I'm sure I mentioned this on your show even In March of 2025, agreed by almost 60% with the Napoleon Bonaparte quote that Trump said that he who saves his country violates no laws. So if you came in and did something like Bukele did, you know, like, people would be impressed. I think under 40, these people want to give control of governance over to an AI. They want to see people arrested, they want to, they just want their society back. And when you say, well, look, they're adopting social, it's like, okay, well this is a trend. It's just a, it's like an anti incumbency bias. That's all. We have a capitalistic system. According to everybody, they don't think it works. They're going to roll the dice until they get something that does work. And you know, everybody's going to do it for different reasons. Some want to brutally punish the Republicans, some want to try out something else. Some, it's about the believability of the individual candidate. But I will say in this particular instance, I think the Republicans have shown that like, even when they, the blind squirrel finds a nut, they're going to fumble it. Right? Like this was kind of fumbled and it was a generational opportunity to really, it was really one of the potentially last opportunities we had to get a, I mean we had a mandate for austerity. If you really think about that, like, that's what's wild, you know, and it's because people want an economic, you know, they want the table knocked over and they want themselves to be put first.

The institutions are all failing, and one of the most important institutions is the church

Now what you're seeing, and we definitely talk about this on your show, is the fourth turning and we don't have to get into all that, but basically the idea is that the institutions are all failing. And one of the most important institutions that's failing in my opinion is the church. And I think we have like a recent pretty good example of why you're seeing like this upheaval that we're going to see coming. And so if you look at the age spectrum, older people have a higher Christian id. They're more likely to say that they identify as some form of Christianity and the younger people less. But then if you ask like some questions about their random Christian worldview, like we asked one question about how important is it for young people to refrain from premarital sex? And believe it or not, there was an age signal the other way. It was closer to 50% of Zoomers who said important. And I think it was high 30s of boomers. And there was a 10 point very important difference with young people saying it was more very important and under 40 men specifically, almost 60% of them saying it's important. And so how does that happen? How do you have a group that's less Christian, have a more Christian worldview? Well, it's like probably because the worldview values in most Christian churches aren't really being preached about because the institutions are decaying. So right now what you have is a whole bunch of young people who are basically being robbed of the fundamental human nature, things that will make them happy, the self actualization of like partnering up with a sane human female and finding a job and buying a house and being comfortable and being able to pursue hobbies. Like this is all they really want. Right. And so what you'll get hopefully is a reversion to the mean. And in order for that to happen in this circumstance, you're going to see I think a massive and very quick leadership shift to people with a new set of values. And that's one of the reasons why the socialism stuff is dangerous. But again, the onus is on the right to present some kind of good looking pragmatic alternative. And I don't think that can really be done without acknowledging that the failures of capitalism, because it has failed in some ways. And I said this sort of in a cheeky manner on Twitter, but basically if you're a person under 50 and you can't, you're never going to be able to buy a house. Legals took your job, you know, the entire tech industry is Indians. Like what are your options? And if you vote for a Democrat it's basically socialism for the poor. But if you vote for a Republican, it's socialism for the rich corporations in Israel. So it's like what are you going to pick?

Mark Mitchell: Right?

Mark Mitchell: Like, and so Republicans have to be, not that they have to be something different. And I don't know if they can, like they are very captured in the legislature, I just really don't know. But that's going to, that's our generational struggle on the right, I think, and

Jenna Ellis: really, really well articulated.

Anthony Fauci is testifying before the U.S. senate on COVID

And you know, one of the things that plays into that, at least in the mindset, hopefully of the younger population, and it should, with the older voters as well, is, with the disintegration of our institutions, comes the lack of accountability. And as we are speaking, on the live program, at least if you're listening to the podcast version later, you know, then obviously this will have already occurred. But, right now, Anthony Fauci is testifying before the U.S. senate, and, Senator Rand Paul is grilling him and clearly wants to press him on, the origins of Cove and all of the things that occurred, just a few years ago. And it's remarkable to see the lack of accountability that at least up until this point, and who knows if there will be any accountability after this hearing. you know, I give that maybe less than a 50%. I don't know what the polls suggest, but. But we'll see. But, that's, that's a real frustration, I think, among a lot of voters as well, is that we were promised kind of this, you know, vengeful Trump and this, you know, I mean, almost to the point that I was a little concerned, frankly. Like, you know, make sure that you're at least within the margins of the Constitution and the law when you exact revenge on your political opponents. But, but we haven't seen any of that, any accountability whatsoever. And, you know, yeah, these Senate hearings are great, but besides some of these clips on, on X, what else can and should happen? And I think that's a, ah, huge issue.

Mark Mitchell: Well, this is going to be, I mean, again, this is a very symbolic way in which people thought they were going to get one thing and they were delivered another. And I think it can, like, I think Senate hearings and congressional investigations could have been powerful. I feel like they really weren't done to the extent that Democrats are probably going to do them, only on very different things. But I mean, like, again, there's this, what I said before, this thing about the Overton window moving right under Trump, but then the actual outcome moving farther left and that creates the pot of water that the frog is in is getting hotter, and everybody sees the dial on the stove and they were begging for Trump to turn it down.

Mark Mitchell: Right?

Mark Mitchell: That's like, the situation. And because if you look at, for instance, Covid, I mean, people saw through this very fast. Our Covid polling in 2023, I mean, on all these issues, we had almost two thirds of America say they were afraid that the outcome of 2024 would be affected by electoral cheating. And two thirds of America, pretty much assumed that Wuhan Lab, like, released this virus back in 2023. I mean, people have known for years, right? So it's like, okay, well, you're reaffirming what everybody believed. And that's the same thing with Trump's, like, election accountability speech that he did. It really didn't have any effect at all, in my opinion, because everybody already knew elections were cooked. It's like, all right, well, like, what are you going to do about it? And what's wild is Trump kind of did have a mandate to break the law. A lot of people were okay, you know, like, they did. I think a lot of them wanted across the Rubicon moment. Like, you had a majority of under 40 voters who were just like, yeah, just ignore the judges. Like, they don't matter. And they. And the under 40s were also off the charts higher than older generations on the, arresting people, you know, for things like the auto penn. And so, like, unfortunately, this kind of fits like, a pattern. Remember when everybody wanted to lock her up back in 2016? And, you know, then he got into office and then it was like, oh, no, I'm not arresting Hillary Clinton. Of course not. Well, it's like we, like, we're kind of seeing that now with everybody. And I know there's limitations, right? I know that it was like, oh, look, we have to get 5,000 new lawyers into the DOJ or something, right? Like, I know the lift was high, but people don't know that. And people were promised one thing and got something else.

Jenna Ellis: And the Democrats seem to be able to do it.

Mark Mitchell: It's like, well, we are continuing down a path that looks like it's going to go to some messy internal upheaval, because you're going to have, like, increasingly young men who feel out of the system, like, cast aside, underemployed, angry at the way everything works. Like, how are they supposed to, you know, like, older people who are more established are like, well, you know, I guess everything's just, like, messed up. But how? Like, new generations being minted. Every. Every year, people are coming into this and saying, wow, it's just all jacked up. Like, what am I being. What am I inheriting here? And they're going to fix it somehow. And, it's gonna get messy. Like. But again, like, it's so obvious to see the writing on the wall that this is coming. And so how can the Republican Party cast aside its lobbying connections and ties to major Corporations, like, look at what happened with Pfizer and Roundup. These are symbolic things, but they actually happened, right? Like, people thought there was gonna be vaccine accountability, and it was like, no Pfizer. Like, no. And, same thing with Fauci's surrounded by so many people that were made wealthy or who want to protect him or just the fact that he's a creature of D.C. and D.C. wants to be immune from accountability. Like, it's. There's just no chance it's going to happen. Now. Who will they probably arrest? Like, maybe potentially lots of people in the Trump administration when they get control of the keys of the congressional car? I don't know. But, that's something that if I were in the Trump administration, I would certainly be afraid of because I heard as far back as a year ago that there were major anti corruption cases being put together by Democrat staffer offices and that they were finding, like, some very real things. Like, it's just like the whole antitrust story, for instance, is weird because antitrust could have been. And Trump, I've heard, literally, specifically Trump say he wants to be on Mount Rushmore. Well, who's on Mount Rushmore? Teddy Roosevelt, who inherited pretty similar America.

Mark Mitchell: Right.

Mark Mitchell: And what he do, he went after the corporations and tried to get people a square deal and was very nationalistic and wanted to protect workers. Right. And, you know, like, that's, that's a really good, you know, archetype to follow. And people hate the corporations. Like, the polling was 75, 80% of people wanted to see big tech reined in. They thought that the use of antitrust legislation, 70, over 70% of them, could bring down prices. And we have an affordability crisis. And then what happened is. Okay, well, we actually had somebody pretty good under Biden who was going after these monopolies to bring down prices. And then we replaced her with somebody who's also very good, Gail Slater. And then what happened is all these companies paid Republican lobbyists to get her entire team fired so they could get all, like, incredibly unpopular, like, mergers through, like, the whole Live Nation thing. Like, this is going to come out.

Jenna Ellis: Oh, and I think we've, we've lost Mark, but we're at the end of the show anyway. So it was actually a good point, to, to end the commentary.

David Frum: I don't think the GOP actually wants to govern

But, you know, there are some really big issues with, with the Trump administration where we're at with the gop, and it's not just, just being critical or anti Maga or anti America First. It's none of that. It's actually taking a realistic view and I think in, in some ways too an ideological view of saying what should America be? Where are we at? And whether or not the GOP can truly resonate with both the ideologues and the pragmatists, in order to actually show us that they can be responsible at governing and they even want to govern. I mean, I've been been saying that for a really long time. I don't think the GOP actually wants to govern. And that's the problem because they keep making excuses for all of the things that they're not doing. So we'll be back tomorrow with more.

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