Now, on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor and Company. 607, good morning. Thanks for joining us here on the State of the Union Day. Tuesday, the 24th of February in your nation's capital. Coming up at 635, Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform, will give us his preview of the SUTU. It's 735, Katie Gorka, chairwoman of the Republican Party. is an election for the chair position there. And she wants you to be reelected. 8.05, Dr. Matthew Spaulding of Hillsdale, America's 250th. We'll talk about the history of the State of the Union and stuff. And then at 8.35, Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics had a bit of a dust-up with Governor Newsom's comms guy telling her to F off. Wow. I'm so excited for the more genteel, kinder, gentler politics. Bethany Mandel. Good morning, Bethany, is here with us. on this Tuesday morning. Good morning, Bethany. Good morning, Larry O'Connor. I have to say, I, on a personal level, like every single one of our guests today. Oh, you know what? Let me think. Same here. Same here. Yes, that's always fun to know. This whole thing with Gavin Newsom's comms director telling a reporter to F off, whenever we would raise that, or if I raise that and say, look, this is outrageous. This is disgusting. The only response is, oh, but Trump does that sort of thing all the time. First of all, Trump doesn't necessarily do the kind of thing that they think he does. Although, you know, but I'll stipulate the point. He is from Queens. He is obnoxious. All New Yorkers are obnoxious. I get that. That's true. Although he's usually only obnoxious to people who are obnoxious to him. Generally speaking, he's pretty nice and kind. As long as you're not a jerk to him, then he won't be a jerk to you. Set that aside for a moment. Think about the argument they're making. We're just like Trump. I mean, I thought part of the whole thing here for Democrats was, you know, this is awful. This is not normal. None of this is normal. We need to get back to the norms and we got to stop it. And all of them are just acting like they think the worst character characterization of Trump is. And if you call them on and say, well, Trump does it so we can do it. OK, fine. If that's your argument, OK, go with it. But stop criticizing Trump for it. He tries so hard. It's almost it's really honestly it's cringe to watch because he's trying. Yes. Yeah. He's trying so hard. And the thing that frustrates me about this particular blow up is that Trump will often and people in Trump land will really push back very hard on reporters. But it's when reporters are being ridiculous. It's when reporters are looking for a fight. Susan Crabtree is not looking for a fight. She's asking a very basic journalist a question and one that is very infrequently asked. You have asserted X. Can you provide proof? That's it. That's it. And that's not an unreasonable ask here. And this is something that Democrats are so unaccustomed to by the media. Like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're asking me to prove something that I asserted? Right. How dare you? How dare you? We'll talk to Susan Crabtree about all that stuff coming up at 835. All right. Yesterday at the White House, the Trump administration hosted an event for angel families. It's interesting. I was watching Mark Halperin's morning meeting yesterday, and Halperin was pointing out the fact that this is such a perfect example of the right-left divide in this country. Most Republican voters or people who follow conservative content, they know the name Lakin Reilly. They know the name Rachel Morin. They know the name Javier Vega. People on the left, people at CNN, reporters like journalists who cover politics, they might know Lakin Reilly's name because it became such a thing, mostly because Marjorie Taylor Greene forced Joe Biden to say it at one of his State of the Unions. You know, she stood up and said, say her name, Lake and Riley, and then Joe Biden messed up her name. But most people don't. If you said who's Rachel Morin to to Jake Tapper or his producers, I bet most of them wouldn't be able to answer that question. But of course, Rachel Morin is the mother in Maryland who was attacked on a jogging trail, sexually assaulted and murdered by a criminal illegal alien. And same thing that happened to Lake and Riley. A whole lot of women in this country are attacked and assaulted and murdered by men who are not supposed to be in this country. And you would think that women's groups would be out there speaking on their behalf, Bethany. You would think. You would think. And this is my frustration with so much of the concern over ICE is that it's one-sided. And it should not be Republican-coded to care that young women were killed. It shouldn't. That's right. I don't get it, but they have decided that caring about Lake and Riley is problematic. And they put their hands over their ears and put their fingers in, and they say, la, la, la, la, la, whenever anyone says anything about violence perpetrated by people who are already committing a crime. That's right. The best they can muster is, well, there's more violence committed by citizens in this country. That's the best they can do. So speaking of putting your fingers in your ears and saying la la la, that's what CNN and MS Now did yesterday. Fox News covered this live. Here's what it sounded like. We'll start with Allison Phillips, the mother of Lake and Riley. Cut five. I think that a lot of people feel like that President Trump is maybe different than the version I've gotten to know. and I just can't thank you enough. You have said from the beginning, literally the day after this happened, that you would not forget about Lincoln. You weren't president at that time and you have not forgotten. You have fought a fight that most people would not want to have to fight. most people wouldn't they would just say it's just easier not to do this and president trump has you are doing a thankless job that most people just wouldn't do and i just can't thank you enough there are just not enough words to say because if you live the nightmare that we have lived you understand the importance of the job that he's doing and securing our nation and fighting for our families because this could be any family this happened to my family this could be any one of your families yeah it is to listen to Yeah it is Actually let hear a little bit more from Ms Phillips Lakin was the most responsible, hardworking, kind, selfless, beautiful Christian. And she, She wasn't somebody that put herself in bad positions. She didn't make bad choices. She was just a good girl. And she just wanted to go for a run that morning. After she'd gotten up at 4 o'clock the morning before to decorate her roommate's door for her birthday. and she did everything for everyone else. She expected nothing in return. She just wanted to be a good friend and a good sister and a good daughter and a hardworking nurse she was working so hard for. And I'm beyond blessed and thankful that you're honoring not just Lakin because she's one in a ton of people that have suffered at the hands of illegal immigrants. She's not the only one. And so thank you for honoring all of them, not just Lakin. And we're just beyond grateful. Thank you. Thank you so much, Joe. Really strong. All right, a little bit more here in a moment. More of the event yesterday and how the media covered it, if they covered it at all. It's 615. The CJ Pearson Show. Every week, we'll take on the biggest cultural, political, and moral battles in America head on. CJ presents the most passionate voices in the black community. When you're going around and talking to people in actual communities, you get to know what people actually care about. As a black man, why can't I be the first one in my family to graduate from college? Why can't it be me? Yeah. Shift the way that I think about the world. Bold truth, real conviction, zero permission. This is The CJ Pearson Show. The CJ Pearson Show. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Monuments and murals have been erected in memory of Renee Good, a woman who died while protesting against ICE in Minneapolis in January. She dropped off her child at daycare, not so she could go work because she had no other options for daycare or for caring for children. In fact, her same-sex partner was with her when she died. You know, one of the two women raising that child could have actually kept the child at home instead of dropping them off with strangers. But instead, they dropped the child off with strangers in daycare so that they could go protesting, get in the way of ICE. And, of course, we know what happened with Renee Good. Everyone in the media and everyone on the left, Democrat voters, they know Renee Good's name. That's for sure. Alex Preddy was a nurse, as we know. He ended up getting into a physical scuffle and kicked out the taillights of a vehicle used by ICE agents. in one weekend encounter. And then the next weekend, he got into a similar scuffle with ICE agents and ended up getting shot dead. He was a nurse. Lakin Riley was also studying to be a nurse, but Lakin Riley doesn't quite get the same coverage. Alison Phillips, her mother, was just telling her story. And there is a difference in the way these people died. There's a difference with regard to the circumstances of their deaths, and there's definitely a difference in the way the media and the organized left in this country cover those deaths? Yeah, no, I mean, this is, this is a really sick politicization. And people I feel like are being chosen or being forced to choose between like Lake and Riley and Alex Preddy. And people are being told, like, put on your hat and choose your fighter. Yeah. And to me, it's, it's not the same thing. On one end, there's people who chose, who chose to engage in this like sort of wider cultural battle and conversation. And unfortunately, they paid the ultimate price. And I don't think that they should have lost their lives. I think different decisions should have been made that would have kept them safer. But Lake Riley was just a young woman. Yeah, a college student going out for a run. Yeah, she wasn't trying to become a household name. She's just living her life. And that to me is the most disturbing part because she wasn't asking for her name to be synonymous with something. She just was out for a run. And by the way, as I mentioned, CNN and MSNOW did not cover this live, but they did talk about it in a panel discussion later in the afternoon. And take a listen to this. This sort of stuck out to me. Cut nine here. Oh, I think we're actually getting a little preview of kind of the theme of his address later today at the White House when he hosts the so-called Angel Moms, and so really focusing on immigration. Yeah, there it is, there it is. The so-called Angel Moms. Do you ever hear a mainstream reporter, legacy reporter like that? That's Seung Min Kim of the Associated Press and CNN. Do you ever hear them say so-called dreamers? Mm-hmm. Ever? Mm-hmm. Why throw that modifier on with Angel Moms, so-called Angel Moms? It's really gross. These are women whose children were killed. Yeah. You don't have to. And listening in that previous segment, listening to Lake and Riley's mom, what she's thanking President Trump for was caring. She's not asking. She, too, did not want to be synonymous with anything. She did not want to be a political person. She didn't use this as an opportunity to, like, now I can achieve my greatest dream, being the mother of a dead woman who was brutally murdered. She didn't ask for this. All she wants is for someone to care about her little girl. And President Trump is doing that. And for the government to actually enforce existing laws. Again, understand what angel moms are asking for. They're not asking for Congress to get – they're not lobbying for new laws. They just want our existing laws to be enforced so the next Lakin Riley doesn't have to suffer the way Lakin did. Here's Laura Wilkerson. Her son was beaten and then set on fire. Cut seven. Thank you so much for having me today. My name is Laura Wilkerson. And I want to thank everybody for their help in gathering us here, the American Border Story and the White House and all of your helpers. I thank you for that. I met a man about 11 years ago who was running for office. and he sat with us a couple of days and he watched as the tears rolled down my face as I told him the story of how our youngest son Joshua was brutally beaten tortured strangled to death and his body set on fire The man next to me was President Trump. He never, ever looked away from my pain. he looked me straight in the eye and he said i will never forget the story of your sweet son yeah and i will never give up fighting and he hasn't given up fighting despite the attacks that he gets i keep hearing that donald trump is not good at the empathy thing that he doesn't do the i feel your pain thing uh he doesn't fake it that's for sure but um i hear I hear stories from people like that, and it tells me that he's pretty empathetic, actually, on issues that matter. Yeah, and that's, again, like she speaks to exactly what I was just saying. All she wants is for someone to sit with her and feel her pain. And I truly believe that if Gavin Newsom did the same thing, if he sat down with her and showed her the same amount of empathy, she'd be saying this about him too. The fact that Democrats are refusing to engage with this, unfortunately, kind of large constituency of people says something about them. Yeah. Their empathy, their political activity, their advocacy, their passion, their funding and their organizing is all geared toward one part of this story. And it ultimately serves to protect the people who set that young woman's son on fire. It's 623. Now on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor and Company. It is 637 on the State of the Union Day. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. In your nation's capital, it's O'Connor and Company. Coming up at 735, Katie Gorka, who is running for re-election as the chair of the Fairfax County Republican Party. 8.05 brings us Dr. Matthew Spaulding of Hillsdale to talk about America's 250 and the revolution. 8.35 brings us Susan Crabtree, who was told to F off by Gavin Newsom's comms director. There you go. His name's Izzy, by the way. That's a charming name. It's Larry O'Connor alongside Bethany Mandel. Good morning, Bethany. Good morning, Larry O'Connor. What a pleasure to be here with you on this beautiful Tuesday morning. Well, and it's even more of a pleasure to bring in the gentleman Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform. and he is a gentleman and he will give us his very knowledgeable and wise preview of the State of the Union. Good morning, Grover. Good morning. Good to be with you, Bethany. Larry? You've seen a thing or two in your day on these states of the Union and there's always big-time legislative proposals that are meant to make one side of the room leap to their feet and the other side sit on their hands. And from the perspective of a man who would like tax reform, what would you like to hear from the president tonight? Well, I think I would like him to tell a little bit about what he did already, because the establishment press doesn't always repeat very frequently what he has accomplished. The big, beautiful bill kept tax rates down for every single American. There was going to be a $4 trillion tax increase. He stopped that. the the trump uh accounts which i don't get as much attention as they need to where every child under 18 their parents can set up an account for them they can put five thousand dollars in there the company that hires them can put money into it sort of as part of uh their compensation uh in this way that you pay government pays for a pension and the government but their uh employer pays not just your salary, but your benefits. And one of the benefits could be that they put $1,000 or match what you're putting in for your child. The U.S. government, for four years, if you have a child born last year or the next three years, will put $1,000 in to get it started. But this is really an opportunity for an entire generation, everybody under 18 and going out into the future, to begin to save for their future. And I think it'll change the nature of the electorate when 10 and 12 year olds and 15 year olds are talking about having several thousand dollars in their bank account and they watch the stock market every day. That's going to be a different electorate than the ones who think that business doesn't matter and the economy overall doesn't matter. Yeah, absolutely. So I am wondering if the president is I think that you're right. I think that he should take this as a victory lap and talk about all these incredible things that he's accomplished because he has the he has the stage. and he certainly didn't get reported enough. But do you think that he's going to go at the tariffs decision from the Supreme Court that was just announced, or is he going to sort of leave that alone? I think he should leave it alone. I think he'll go after it. It is not in his DNA to let that pass. But it is spilled milk, and that's what it was. he set up some tariffs I'm not a big fan of tariffs but he did negotiate some better deals in the past and that is something he should probably take some credit for speak to what that is but moving forward the most important thing for the economy probably was something he did already which was expensing where the government does not tax a business, your employer when they buy a new computer to make you more efficient and effective or a better truck or build a new factory. All of these things used to be taxable events, which discouraged job creation and discouraged making people more productive and higher wages. And I'd frame it in affordability, since our friends on the left like to talk about that. How about this to start with? A tax cut is a pay increase. Everyone got a pay increase because of the Republican tax cut. What does that mean? I think you walk into a store, everything in that store is more affordable because you have more take-home pay. Now, a tax increase, which is what the nice people of Virginia are going to get hard, and rather roughly, because they elected that somebody is going to raise taxes, tax increases are pay cuts. A tax increase is a pay cut. When you walk into that store, everything in that store is less affordable to you. because fabburger is raising your taxes yeah no listen i get it and i do like the idea i i don't like planting the seed that uh you know we work for the government uh and the government is our employer and that we you know hoping to get a raise from the government by merely having them not take as much of our money That said the way taxes are right now up until May we are working for the government So I think that that's fine language to use. Grover, I think one of the concerns about the president jumping up and doing a bit of a victory lap, as you say, and talk about everything that he's done, is that if the American people still aren't feeling it in any great measure, either when they go to buy things or when they look at their budget at the end of the month, then it'll sound tone deaf. It'll sound like, you know, he's standing up there saying, you know, what are you complaining about? Everything's great. How does he thread that needle? You talk about the fact that we, in the previous four years, inflation went up over 20 percent, and that has not gone away, okay? Sometimes the president likes to say, I did this problem fixed. No, not problem fixed. Somebody cuts your arm off, it doesn't grow back. That 20% is gone. It is damage done. We need to do things to make things better in the future. But that damage has been done to everybody. Are people still feeling it? Yes, they're still feeling it. Should they? Yes, they should know that that's what happened. And one should not argue that because we're doing less damage now that the other problem is fixed. No, we're still living with 20 percent of your income being fake. OK. And short of having deflation, which I don't think anybody wants. But deflation is the only way to bring those prices down. Right. And you don't want to do that. What you want to do is have higher wages going forward so that that becomes less and less of a problem. You grow away from that. All right, Grover, we've got to leave it there. Are you going to be there live, or are you going to be, you know, popping popcorn and doing the drinking game at home like the rest of us? I will be popping popcorn and taking notes and seeing what we have to talk about tomorrow. There it is. Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform. Thank you, sir. Appreciate talking to you. You got it. It is 644. Dan Bongino returns. It's real. You better produce something fast. And he's not holding back. Dan, that's backwards. No, I'm telling you the truth. Hard truths and a bold perspective no one else can offer. You may not hear this anywhere else. I'm always under the assumption that you're being played, we're being played. Man, this show continues to expand its footprint, and I love you guys for it. It's the comeback everyone's been waiting for. If there was ever a time, it is this one. The Dan Bongino Show. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Bethany Mandel, you and I live in a blue state, pretty blue state in this area. That would be Maryland. Not quite as blue as Washington, D.C., but, of course, D.C. isn't a state. Never will be. It's not easy to live in a blue state, is it? It's not. It is testing my nerves very frequently. I've lived in a blue state my whole life. Me too. I grew up in Michigan, which is sort of, I don't know, mostly blue. It's pretty blue, at least where I lived in Maine County. Then I lived in California, although when I lived in California, it was a red state, actually. but then turned into a blue state. Then I moved and lived in New York, and now I live here in the Maryland, D.C. area, Maryland. It's not fun to be surrounded by people who not only disagree with you politically but think you're a monster because of your political beliefs. But also, it's very expensive to live in blue states. Steve Moore, economist, has put together a graph for everyone. Regional price parodies of states for last year, Well, 2024, actually. Nine of the ten most expensive states to live in are blue. And I mean solid blue. Can you guess who wins? California. Yeah. California, then Hawaii. We come in seventh. Yeah, Maryland's right there. District of Columbia is number three. New Jersey is four. New York is five. And then right down at number seven is Maryland. Florida is the only red state. I'm just barely getting into the top 10 there. And it might drop out of the top 10 because there's a couple ballot initiatives in Florida that would slash property taxes there. And DeSantis is pushing them very hard. It wouldn't fully wipe out property taxes, which is what DeSantis has been hinting at. But it would go pretty darn far. I recently ran the numbers just to torture myself because I'm not moving to Florida. So I don't know why I did it. But I ran the numbers on if we made the same amount but moved to Florida between the homeschool perks that you get. I think it's like $7,000 per student or something. Lord knows I have the students. I have six children. And lots of other – the income tax, everything. And it was excruciating. I think it was like $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 more in our pockets if we moved to Florida. But then here's the rub. We live in Florida. That's what's holding a lot of people back. Yeah. I love living in this area. And the good news is, though, even though you're surrounded by Floridians, a lot of those Floridians are actually your former neighbors who used to live here. So there is that. There is that. I worry about overcrowding down there as well. So, by the way, on the other end of the spectrum, this is also by all these numbers are based on the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. And the numbers came out in 2024. So you can't say that Trump corrupted the numbers. Here are the most affordable states because affordability is a big deal. Right. You know, the people who are preaching affordability right now are all the people who are running those very states that are right now unaffordable. If you want affordability, Arkansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Oklahoma, Louisiana, South Dakota, Alabama. I'll stop when I get to a state run by Democrats. North Dakota, West Virginia, Kansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, New Mexico. There it is. That's the first one. And that's what 15 states up. It does. They're pretty solid blue, although it doesn't behave like it. Then you go Wyoming, Ohio, Indiana, South Carolina, Wisconsin. Wisconsin's purple, I guess. North Carolina, Montana, Idaho, Michigan, again, purple. Georgia, Maine. There you go. Maine. and you're right up there with Texas and Pennsylvania. Unbelievable. And I wonder if the president will make that point in his State of the Union tonight. 6.53. Start your day with a morning jolt of Drake Seetold. You've never been a football coach before, so you're not allowed to talk about this. No, I can have burnt mozzarella sticks and say the chef's not working. Then Black and Abdallah. Adam Abdallah. That's what we do. We rank quarterbacks. And Westwood One Sports Night caps it all off. I don't know how they're going to win, but they're going to win. We're open all night here on Westwood. One Westwood one sports talk, follow and listen on your favorite platform.
