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Guy Benson: With us now, Carl Rove, senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, a Fox News contributor, a Wall Street Journal columnist. Carl, great to have you here as always.
Karl Rove: Uh, thanks for having me. We were just like, anything’s going on right now.
Guy Benson: It’s a little busy and we’re we’re getting down to crunch time six days to go and we open the show reading extensively from this New York Times expose a That confirms in my mind the obvious that in Alaska the Democrats Colluded to recruit someone with the same exact name first and last as the incumbent senator Dan Sullivan In order to confuse voters and try to pick off a very important Senate seat up there They had denied it. They’ve been lying about this for months. Now the New York Times has just sort of exploded the whole lie. I know that you have a follow-up to that along similar lines in another state. But before we get to that wrinkle, just some of your reaction to the significance of this story coming out of Alaska.
Karl Rove: Well, first of all, it’s sleazy. They lied. They said they didn’t do it, and now it turns out that there’s plenty of evidence, including text messages and an eyewitness who participated in it. And we know the names of the various Asunari parties to this. So they lied. They outright lied to the people, not only of Alaska, but to the People of America. And the other thing is, is it strikes me there are a number of potential violations of federal election law. There’s a super PAC involved. That super PAC is talking to the campaign. That campaign is also talking to the Democratic Senatorial Committee, which is also taking to the outside actors. So who is paying those people? It is a violation to coordinate between a party organization and a super PAC and a campaign. The super PAC has to be out there on its own with no communication. And here we have regular phone calls in which this mysterious guy from Ohio who is showing up in Alaska using phony names to try and coerce, encourage people to get into the primary, the jungle primary they have, in order to do one thing, which is to hurt Dan Sullivan, the senator from Alaska, and he’s doing it in combination with the Democratic campaign, the Democratic Senatorial Committee, and a super PAC. There’s about a half a dozen violations of law there.
Guy Benson: Now there has been some legal action on this front including from the DOJ and what we’ve gotten from a lot of the news media is oh is this an attack on democracy by Trump? I mean this is sort of the one song they always sing. Whatever you think of the DO J movement on this and I saw some people actually trying to justify it calling back to the Ted Stevens debacle which was another unbelievably dirty situation that cost the Republicans not just a seat but the chance to stop Obamacare in 2008. I mean, disgraceful what happened up there. So the dirty tricks in Alaska, the Democrats need them often to win and they have obviously no issue going down that path if that means power for themselves. But the media up until today basically has been all offended that there would be legal challenges to this or maybe undue political influence at the DOJ to challenge what the Democrats are trying to do. I mean, it does seem at least part of the story, Carl, would be, is what the Democrats have done here illegal? Because it seems that there’s a high likelihood.
Karl Rove: I’m not a fan of the DOJ thing. I say that as a huge supporter of Dan Sullivan. I think it’s a distraction. The main focus ought to be these people violated the law in all likelihood and they lied to you about what they were doing. They said, oh, we have no idea how it was done. And it turns out they had regular phone calls where campaign staffers were on the line with democratic senatorial campaign people and then this mysterious Ohioan who’s the actor whom they bring into the state to try and convince any Dan Sullivan. Look, this started with the campaign compiling a list of registered voters in the state of Alaska whose names were Dan Sullivan, I mean, and they lied about it. No, we don’t know anything about this. It just sort of happened on its own. No, they did this and Mary Patola, the Democratic nominee, was aware of this and it was her people who were violating the law and engaging in a sleazy tactic. She ought to be held to account for it by the people of Alaska.
Guy Benson: Meanwhile, there’s other maneuvers afoot, and we see this from both parties, in fairness, or at least attempts at it in terms of getting people on the ballot or kicking people off the ballot, seem to be helpful or unhelpful, depending on what your perspective is. There’s something cooking in your home state of Texas. Tell us about this.
Karl Rove: Well, this, this I just I was in at the Nixon library last night and got on an airplane, came home and went to the mailbox, got the yesterday’s mail and I got a mailer on behalf of Ted Brown. Saying he’ll never vote to raise taxes. He’ll repeal the federal income tax and abolish the IRS for good. No flat tax, no sales tax, just your money back in your pocket. It’s a great little colorful mailer. Ted Brown knows what makes Texas great. Our rights, our liberties, our freedom. Who’s Ted Brown? He’s the libertarian candidate for the United States Senate in Texas. And this mailer has no disclaimer on it. No disclaimer. First of all, second of all Ted Brown has raised a grand total of $14,257.28 for his campaign over the last four years. And as of the 15th of October, he had a grand-total cash on hand of $1,288.35. So how did he get this mailer that apparently went to a bunch of Republican primary voters? Because my wife and I, that’s where we got it, our home address, Republican primary voters. And it’s paid for, excuse me, the postage was paid by WPP LLC and it was mailed from a facility in New Jersey. Now who the heck is WPLLC? If you just Google it, you’ll find that they were involved, this company, wherever it is, whoever it is was involved in an effort to distribute fake newspapers being edited and published by David Brock, the notorious Democratic dirty trickster, to try and influence a referendum in Virginia last year to try to redistrict, you know, get permission to District, the state of Virginia, in the middle of the decade. Yeah, so the WPLLC, whoever these people are, have done an illegal campaign mailer that does not bear a disclaimer saying, Ted Brown knows what makes Texas great, our rights, our liberties, our freedom. And the guy’s got 1300 bucks in his campaign. Now, who paid for this? Why did they have a disclaimer? And what role, if any, did Democratic national entities have? The Democratic Senatorial Committee has demonstrated it’s willing to violate the law by engaging in this stuff in Alaska. Were they behind this? And who is WPLLC? And how much was spent on behalf of Ted Brown illegally by a political group that had no disclaimer on the mailer?
Guy Benson: So the goal here, it would seem, and if it’s tied back to some guy who’s a well known left wing operative, boosting this, you know, libertarian who’s putting out mailers or this company or this entities putting out Mailers, it’s all sort of mysterious to Republican voters to try to make it seem because look, there’s a lot of Republicans who are trying to figure out what to do in the Senate race because a lot of them might have. Agita about the Republican on nominee for Senate because of all of his personal baggage and and all of that We’ve talked about that here on the show They don’t like at all James Tallarico the left-wing Democrat who talks like a youth pastor, but votes like AOC For US Senate, so they’re kind of weighing their options. Do they hold their nose and vote for the Republican nominee? Do they leave that one blank? They’re not gonna vote probably for Tallar Rico. Well, well, here’s a guy who wants low taxes and Texas freedom, and maybe this is like a convenient place for me to land, it seems like that’s the table that these people are trying to set in the minds of just enough Republican voters.
Karl Rove: Yeah, they’re absolutely on target. And not only that, but let’s send out a beautiful mailer that features a barn decorated with the Texas flag. And unfortunately they mailed it from New Jersey. So, you know, raises a little question about it, but yeah, absolutely right. And it’s a sleazy, dirty little trick here right at the end. Let’s, let’s send out the mailer without it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the guys at the democratic senatorial campaign committee who were participating in that scandal in Alaska, didn’t have some role in this as well.
Guy Benson: In Texas, we’ve seen all the odds-makers and all the polls and all that. You and I were talking about the dynamics of not just the Senate race, but also the gubernatorial race. And I think there’s sort of this sense among a lot of Republicans that say, yeah, the Democrats always talk about getting close. This is their white whale. Every two or four or six years, they get all excited and they spend a ton of money. But ultimately… This is still a red state and we’re gonna be fine, right? That’s part of the mentality that you see from some Republicans. Others are saying, nope, we’ve got a problem here in terms of some of the voting patterns so far and where people are turning out and all of that. How do you see it right now six days out?
Karl Rove: I think if the election were to date, Al Rika would win. Now, the momentum is slowly moving towards Paxton. I go get a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks. I’m at the airport. I’m walking down Congress Avenue. People come up to me. A woman confronted me the other day in the grocery store, about five foot tall, probably 80 years old, and she saw me and planted herself in front of my cart and said, I don’t know what to do. She said, oh, I like this guy, Paxton, He’s just sort of, you know, he’s got girlfriends, and his wife’s divorcing him. And I’ve read all this stuff about his aides resigning, and it just is so, so insanely. But you know what, I don’t want the Democrats to have the Senate. And the more I learn about this Mr. Talerico, he, he has got some pretty extreme views, and I don’t know what to do. And you know she was sort of imploring me to help her out. And I said, you’ve got to decide what you’re going to do, and. You know, this is a problem for the Republicans. They’ve now spent over a quarter of a billion dollars of outside money in order to try and get Ken Paxson across the finish line. By the time we get to next week, it’s going to be somewhere north of $300 million being spent. It could be barn burner and it’s going to be damn close either way.
Guy Benson: Yeah, you think this is truly coming all the way down to the wire in Texas and could be like a point, a point or two either way?
Karl Rove: Yeah, he already had a problem. Before the impeachment in 2023 by the Texas House, in which the overwhelming majority of Republicans voted to impeach him. He already had a problem. In the previous election, four years ago, when he was running for election as attorney general, he ran behind the rest of the statewide Republican ticket by an average of 155,000 votes. Four years before that, he run behind the rest of ticket. There were then seven candidates, because we had a Senate race, by 175,000 votes. Now think about that. So we got in a Senate year, we have the Senate race, the governor, the lieutenant governor, then the attorney general and underneath him is the Comptroller Land Commissioner, Railroad Commissioner, Agriculture Commissioner, and he runs behind all the people below him on the ballot both times. So there are already a problem with people say, well, I don’t really like the guy, I’m a Republican, I vote for the rest of the ticket. But that’s been compounded by the impeachment that occurred in 2023. And even though he was let go by the Senate, the Senate refused to follow through with the impeachment. Nonetheless, Tal Reiko has made all of these problems a big central part of the campaign.
Guy Benson: And trying to deflect away from his very left-wing record and all the wild woke stuff he’d said for many years, that’s the Tallarico side of this. And I guess one of the messages for Republicans in Texas is the mentality that it’s just going to be fine because it’s always fine, that level of complacency could indeed result in a Democratic victory. So you’ve got to be very, very careful about that and be motivated because we know the Democrats are very motivated. What do you make Carl- of a new poll today from the New York Times purporting to show the South Carolina Senate race exactly tied. We’ve seen polls in that state showing, for example, Lindsey Graham, when he was still alive, only up by a few points and then he’d win more comfortably. But this is now, you know, his sister. It’s a different person. The wave or the winds are blowing or moving in certain directions. South Carolina, is that a real concern?
Karl Rove: Well, it has to be because, you know, obviously the Republicans are spending money there. The president has gone there. That’s an indication that the White House political operation has done its own polling. And while they may not show her tide, that it was close enough that they felt concerned about it. So yeah, it’s, it’s the Republicans that are fighting on so many fronts. We’ve got this in Kansas. We had it in Nebraska. We’ve got it in Ohio, we’ve got in Texas, we came up short in Georgia, we came short in quality of candidate there. We have a problem in North Carolina where our candidate had to go off television for a couple of weeks because of the lack of money. So yeah, we’re fighting in a lot of places where we should. Mississippi, the President of the United States has to go to Mississippi. I mean, he won it by what, 23 points? So, We’re fighting on a lot of fronts and we got to win on a lot of front. I mean, we have 53 senators today. We’re in all likelihood going to lose North Carolina. That gets us to 52. We have to hold on to Maine. We have to hopefully pick up something in Michigan or maybe, you know, a little bit more complicated North New Hampshire or Minnesota, but we’ve got to save a bunch, you know, Alaska. Nebraska, Kansas, Mississippi, Texas, the Republicans have got to pick up a bunch of seats in order to stay at 50 or above.
Guy Benson: Yep, it’s time to lock in. Because you know, the Democrats can smell blood. And if the Republicans turn out in a lot of these red states, they will win. But that is the big question sort of surrounding some of these races. And we will see in six days how it all shakes out. Carl rove with us on the Guy Benson show The Architect. Karl, thank you so much.
Karl Rove: Thanks for having me on, Guy. All the best.
