Now, on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor and Company. It's 5.07 this February 24th. Thanks for tuning in to our four-hour morning extravaganza. You know, I always tell Bethany Mandel, I always tell the people who are listening later in the program that they should subscribe to our podcast in case they missed anything. But it occurs to me that the people who are listening right now who get quite a show, let's face it, they should subscribe because they may miss things that happen later in the program. That's true. I never thought to make that PSA. I always make the PSA later in the show that you're raunchy in the 5 a.m. hour. But everyone that's listening right now knows that. Well, no, they know better. Raunchy is not the right word. And by the way, a huge portion of our listeners right now are military. So raunchy is a sliding scale, my friend. That's true. That's true. They're the people who actually do their job and work. Exactly. Yeah. Mucho respect for 5 a.m. people. Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform. What are we going to hear about some taxes in the State of the Union tonight? 735, Katie Gorka, Republican Chairwoman of Fairfax. 805, Dr. Matthew Spalding. Our Hillsdale on America 250 continues today. And at 835, Susan Crabtree of Real Car Politics got into a bit of a back and forth with the comms director for Gavin Newsom. And, well, it was real classy there on the side of the governor. So we'll get into the details of that as well because Governor Gavin Newsom now claims that he's dyslexic. He claims he can't read. He claims he's illiterate. And he claims he's really dumb. And he said that to a predominantly black audience saying, I'm just like you. He literally said, I'm just like you. That's what he said. By the way, does he realize that he's displaying his way? If all of that is true about Gavin Newsom, which is remarkable because he's actually on a book tour right now. Think about that. He's selling a book while claiming he can't even read his own book. So that's a book I'm going to buy. And also running for president under the auspices of I'm dumb. Right. Well, apparently only to cater to the black audience and the black vote. But think about this. you're again assuming it's all true that he can only get a 900 on his sat that he is as he put it as he can't read and then he turns to the black audience and he says i'm just like you if you're an african-american in this country how far are you going to get if you've got a 900 sat and you're illiterate um probably not very far but here's gavin newsom standing up there telling them buy my book and vote for me for president i'm governor of california i don't know they talk about white privilege a lot but maybe that's what they're talking about when they say white privilege it's remarkable what he gets to get away with i mean the white the white privilege is that he's still going to run for president and he's not gonna and he won't feel any political repercussions you know what we talked about this a little bit yesterday he he said in a dana bash interview that you know the it'll really be up to his family because his kids don't want him to run he says And I believe that his kids say you're gone too much. I want you to spend time with me. You know, he's got four kids aged nine to 16. He's been back to back mayor of San Francisco, back to back lieutenant governor of California and now back to back governor of California. His kids are right. He should. You know, he can run for president anytime he wants. Spend some time with your children. You're not going to have this time back. I actually part of me believes that there's pressure on him from his kids not to do this. Yeah. And I guess it's nice that they like him enough that they want him around. That's, you know, trying to find the silver lining. As odious as he seems to us, he's somebody's dad, right? By the way, the pushback on Newsom saying, you know, I'm like you. I can't read it. And he claims when he says he can't read it's because of dyslexia. You remember the whole fake outrage over banned books in red states? and then he posted a picture of himself reading Blessed by Toni Morrison. And he's sitting there, you know, contemptively reading it. It's like, wait, I thought you were illiterate. How are you able to read this book that was banned supposedly by DeSantis? It's a strange angle to take for him. I mean, I guess he's leaning into the dyslexia claims because of what he said. He's trying to – Like what's the tactic here? Like Susan Crabtree was asking his comms director for proof that he's dyslexic and they did not provide the proof and perhaps would not provide the proof. Quite the contrary. The response was respectfully F off. That was the response from the comms director to Susan Crabtree. Asking for basic proof that he had dyslexia. um so i don't really understand why like what he seems to be lying about it so sure so why why what what what is the what is the game there oh because well for the same way that he gets in front of a black audience and wants to claim you know some sort of you know i'm just like you i'm dumb which is a remarkable thing to say um and he he puts on um other people's skins basically to Because you've got to relate, man. You have to show some empathy. And no one can show empathy with or relate to a guy who has been so privileged his entire life that in high school his best friends were the brothers of the Getty fortune. That coming out of college, he started a winery. Who does that coming right out of college? He's lived this blessed life and this privileged life. And so he's got to say, no, no, no, no. I was poor growing up, which he wasn't. I, you know, I'm dumb. I'm, and now this is, he gets to check the box of having a disability, see, because I'm dyslexic. And it's working, by the way. His defenders are saying, here, listen to this one. First, MAGA mocked his dyslexia. And now they're calling Gavin Newsom a racist for talking about his low SAT scores. Nobody mocked his dyslexia. We mocked his false claim that he's dyslexic. And we mocked him for not understanding Ted Cruz when he called him culturally illiterate. So this is just him trying to put on a victimhood scan? Yeah. He wants to claim victimhood in every possible way. Trust me, pretty soon he's going to be a lesbian who had a forced abortion. He'll do whatever he needs to do. And he's an illegal immigrant. Well, he does say that he can't find his birth certificate or his passport. So I think we can deport him. So maybe he's claiming illegal immigrant status too. The problem isn't that he said that he had a learning disability, which, again, this is the first we've heard of it. It's like Joe Biden saying that he was a stutterer. And it's not that he got a low SAT score. Please, I never even took the SATs because I didn't want to go to college. I have no idea what I would have scored. It's that he does this. He does all of these things to try to force this relatability issue on whatever crowd he's talking to. I got it. I thought that he was claiming to be dyslexic to explain why he was so dumb that he would be racist openly racist Ah Ah I see Well no now you playing 4D chess on this thing now I know I was, actually. I, if I'm going to choose a victimhood status, it's not dumbness if I'm running for higher office. That's, I think he's being ill-advised. To be fair, I think the victimhood status is having a learning disability a la dyslexia, which should not be equated to being dumb. I think he's using – Right, but he also seems to be playing – like he's using it to explain why he's dumb. Yeah, you're right, saying he's got a 900 SAT. Well, at least uneducated, I suppose. But again, he doesn't recognize that life has been given to him on a silver platter. I mean, in this case, probably literally like a lot of silver platters were handed to him at various points in his life. So by claiming he's dumb, he's actually accentuating the fact that, yes, despite your ignorance and your inability to do the basics that we've all had to do, you still lived a pretty damn charmed life. That said, not the worst thing that came out of the state of California Democrat Party yesterday. in a moment Kamala Harris has a brand new excuse for why she failed miserably in the 2024 presidential election we'll give that to you in a moment first though it's 5 15. Hi I'm Joe Salci hi host of the stacking benjamins podcast every week we talk personal finance trends I think it's tough finding like a stock certificate from 1987 in grandpa's drawer wait until you need the face id to unlock cash app it's so sad what money does to people it happens that's why you don't tell anybody what you got that guy had the brilliant idea I don't want my relatives to know how much money I have. So every time I go to Thanksgiving, I ask them if I can borrow more. Stealth wealth. Stacking Benjamins. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. So the Democratic National Committee, the DNC, the kids like to call it, they did an autopsy. They always call this an autopsy, but they never actually call it an autopsy. I remember when Ryan Sprebus and the RNC after the Mitt Romney lost in 2012, they basically reassessed. Because when you run any professional organization, if you have a failure, you should go back and sort of reassess and be frank and figure out what went wrong. And then for some reason, people call it an autopsy, which is a little, you know, a little cold considering, you know, autopsies. They point fingers. That's what they do. Yeah, but it's like it's not really literally a dead body here, right? You just lost a campaign. These people take politics so seriously. But they did the same thing on the 2024 election. Now, off the top of your head, Bethany Mendo, and I know you already know the punchline, but let's just pretend like we don't already know the punchline. If you had to assess why the Democrats did so poorly in 2024, I bet you could come up with a list of 20 reasons before you ever reached what the DNC now is claiming is the big excuse why they lost. I mean, I mean, look. No, just one reason. Really? Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris. Yeah, but it's not just Kamala Harris. But yes, that's a big part of it. But it's also how Kamala Harris got the nomination where they claimed that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy and they literally just gave her a coronation and handed it to her. What about lying about Joe Biden's condition? And every single Democrat who was running for office was, well, if they ever actually talked to a real reporter, would have to answer to that, which they never did. You're right. Actually, I would throw Tim Walz in there, although you can blame Kamala Harris for Tim Walz since he was her choice. What about their inability to say anything sane and rational on the transgender issue when parents were trying to fight to protect their children from that insanity and they pretended like it didn't happen? They pretended like it wasn't a real thing and that you were a bigot for raising the issue. What about the crime? What about the border? What about immigration? What about inflation? You're naming all 20 things. All these 20 things. But no, no, no. We have a leak now. By the way, Democrats don't want to release their report, which I find fascinating. What's the point of doing this thing? They'll leak it. They'll leak it only to damage a certain contingent. So they're blaming it on President Biden not being hard enough on Israel about how it responded to a war that began with a massacre, the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Apparently, Biden wasn't mean enough to the Jews. Right. That's the he wasn't mean enough to the Jews and didn't support the terrorists enough. Yes. So I think it's the leak. Yeah, for real. It's not even a joke. But what's funny is they've learned no lessons. Oh. Which, by the way, is the whole point of the autopsy. You know, after the RNC autopsy, after 2012, a lot of the conclusions were, you know, we stopped listening to our base. We, you know, we nominated someone who comes across as aloof and elite and can't really, you know, speak the language of the working man and the common man. And, you know, ironically, they nominated another billionaire, but it was Donald Trump, very different than Mitt Romney. but uh but they did learn some lessons it appears yeah yeah i mean the the lesson that they're not learning here is what ultimately i think did kamala in and what was actually a massive strength of biden's is that he ignored this progressive internet shattering class these the podcast idiots who um who wanted extremist stuff on everything on transgender stuff everything And Biden was kind of like a working man. He really was a populist Democrat and could speak to normal people who don't live on the Internet in their parents' basements. And this autopsy is just feeding into the Internet echo chamber that Democrats have created of influencers without ever actually talking to a social worker in Montgomery County. That's your base. Yeah, yeah. You're right, right. So here's what I'm not understanding about this, though. First of all, show me the voter who voted for Donald Trump instead of Kamala Harris because the Biden administration was not hard enough on Israel. I really want to talk to that person. OK, because on paper and in reality, Trump has been more supportive of the government in Israel and the state of Israel and Israel's defense than Biden-Harris was, even though Biden wasn't too bad on it. You know, but I think Trump's been more supportive, number one. Number two, somebody explained to me how Kamala Harris lost because they didn't support the Palestinian cause. I'm being generous in my language. So then Trump wins? Yes. So are they saying that their base stayed home? Because I don't think the base stayed home in that election because all you heard was Trump is Satan. You can't tell me the base was like, well, I hate Trump and he's Hitler, but Kamala is tied to Biden, who wasn't mean enough to Israel, so I'm going to stay home. It makes no sense. So it interesting I followed the so because of the Montgomery County LGBT stuff I became more plugged in than I ever was into sort of the Muslim vote And I was following pretty closely what was happening in Michigan because there is a huge Muslim vote in Michigan And there was a lot of mixed feelings, because they did feel they did feel this way. They did feel like Kamala wasn't hard enough on Gaza and all of those things. But what was interesting was they felt very listened to and seen on social issues by Trump. And so a lot of them voted for Trump because of the social issues. They kind of basically said, we're choosing between apples and oranges when it comes to Gaza. But on social issues, we are actually being catered to by the Trump campaign. And the Trump campaign created very specific tailored mailers to the Muslim voters in Michigan. They got endorsements from the imams. And they were putting the quotes from the imams, whereas Kamala was just sending very generic emails and messages to them saying, like, vote for us. We love the Muslims. And Trump hates brown people. Trump's campaign did it very well. So what you're saying is the Muslim vote, like any other, most other groups in this country are nuanced, textured and deep people who evaluate multiple issues and not just say, you know, we're put on their pink hat and vote for one thing and one thing only. Right, right. which is, by the way, why I find Randy Fine so obnoxious right now because he is – I wrote like a column basically on Twitter because I didn't know where to write this for. So I put it on Twitter a couple days ago. But the Muslim vote can be had as long as you don't spit in their face, and that's what Randy Fine is doing right now. All right. We'll have to take it up later. Not everybody knows what Randy Fine has done, and it's 524. But we will get to that a little bit later. Thank you for raising it. No, it's okay. So this is why I tend to be a little, you know, outside the box on the 5 o'clock hour because, you know, everything goes. It's 524. Now on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor & Company. It's 537. Good morning. Thanks for joining us on O'Connor & Company. Coming up at 635, Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform. 735, Katie Gorka, Fairfax Republican Party. 805, Dr. Matthew Spalding from Hillsdale. And 835, Susan Grabtree, RealClearPolitics, author of a book that isn't too kind to Gavin Newsom or the Democrats in California. Larry O'Connor here with Bethany Mandel. Everything good, Bethany? How are you doing? You know, I think I'm okay. All right. I care deeply. I sneezed. So the problem is when I mute my phone. You sneezed on the air. When I mute my microphone, I don't sneeze. Right. So now I guess if I don't mute my microphone, I do sneeze. Huh. I mean, I do. I know what's worse. I think sneezing in your microphone is worse. I do. Sorry. What's the worst thing that's going to happen if you mute and then you don't sneeze? Then I don't sneeze and then I have a sneeze lingering inside my nose for hours. It drives me nuts. But if you, we'll have to work this out. I'm trying to have mindless banter with Bethany Mandel because I hate this story. Because it involves a murder, involves a dead young lady. It involves a cruise ship when a family is out having fun and enjoying each other's company. Which is something I do all the time with my family. We go on cruises. Meredith and I go on at least two cruises a year with family members. And it's just an awful story. that we heard about in the holidays. In November, the Kepner family went on a cruise to Mexico out of Florida on a Carnival Horizon ship. And during the cruise, the 18-year-old daughter, Anna Kepner, was found dead under her bed. And now we have an arrest in this story. I'm sure that you've followed it. I'm sure that you've heard about this story. We now have an arrest, and the suspect is the 16-year-old stepbrother of Anna Kepner. Apparently, Ms. Kepner, who was a high school senior, a cheerleader, planned on joining the military after graduation. She was found, and it appeared as though she was killed with a bar chokehold. That's what they're describing. A barhold choke, I'm sorry. It's a chokehold. The choker's arm goes across the neck of the person applied from behind, like a headlock, we used to call it when I was a kid, wrestling. Apparently, the two of them were sharing a room together, which is just odd. They were stepbrother and stepsister. He's 16. She's 18. There's a lot of questions to be had here about this story. But apparently all the parents involved, Step and otherwise, have taken to social media saying that, yes, the boy is now the suspect. I said an arrest was made, and I'm sorry. I don't believe there has been an arrest made. He is the suspect, and he's at large now. I think that I'm on some sort of watch list because I just Googled murder in international waters because it does complicate things a great deal when this happens in international waters. I think it depends on where the ship's registry is. It depends on the closer proximity. I know the FBI is involved in this because it ends up being an international case involving an American citizen. Yes, and the coverage indicates that the FBI is involved. But it seems like this took a while to get to this point, three months. And to me, from what I heard, this was always the suspicion that it was him. He was always the prime suspect because they shared the room together. There's an ongoing case against him under seal, though, because he's 16 years old. And it's overseen by a Miami federal judge. So it's a federal judge because the FBI and because it was international waters, not necessarily one state or the other. but yeah she was planning on joining the Navy as I said when she graduated high school she was last seen alive with the family at dinner on November 6th and then went back to her room because she wasn't feeling well and that was the last they saw her the next day her body was found by the by the maids also there were stories that immediately after the cruise in November the the mother of the suspect, kicked him out of the house and hasn't seen him since. So it seems like the parents sort of knew what happened here, too. Why they didn't, you know, turn him over or what have you and instead just, you know, what do you mean kick him out of the house? You hand him over to authorities and I'm not saying they haven't cooperated. It's just all of it is very odd. Yeah, I mean, perhaps they couldn't turn him over because there was, they hadn't he hadn't been charged I I have a I have a theory that someone at Netflix had a very bad experience on a cruise because I am I am cruise hesitant because of the amount of anti cruise coverage there is especially on Netflix well the woman the woman who went missing the poop cruise yeah and this story was really big at the same time I got into those two other documentaries I'm cruise hesitant. Dancing right up to the line of being sued by a major publicly traded corporation. It's not cruises in general. It appears to be one cruise line specifically that the Netflix executive may have had a bad experience with. Interesting. I don't want to name names, but I'm just saying we're only a week after Mardi Gras, which a lot of people refer to as Carnival. It's 543. 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. As you know, the Commonwealth of Virginia is going to be having a special statewide referendum in April having to do with the Democrats' scheme to gerrymander Virginia out of existence, or at least Republicans out of existence. They would be going from a six to five Democrat majority in their districts to 11 to one with five different congressional districts drawn in such a way that they terminate in northern Virginia right inside the Beltway. One of those districts, seven, winding its way around all the way down in the shape of a lobster to the Shenandoah Valley. It's one of the most egregious gerrymanderings we've seen in American history. And it only happens, Bethany, if the people of Virginia approve this ballot measure. By the way, a ballot measure whose language is so atrocious, it suggests that this map would restore fairness. Those are the words used in the language of the ballot measure, to restore fairness to the system, suggesting that if you vote against this, you're voting for, you know, an unfair situation. Here's the good news. We've got our first major poll right now of the Virginia populace, and it does not look good for Abigail Spanberger and the Democrats in Richmond. Here's Fox reporting on the latest poll. Take a listen. ...order to, quote-unquote, restore fairness to Virginia's maps. That is about as Orwellian as it could get. Look, Virginia's current congressional map has been bipartisanly rated as one of the most fair maps in the entire country. Turning this into a 10 to 1 for Democrats congressional map is the very definition of unfairness. You're essentially disenfranchising half of the state that consistently votes for Republicans. And the Roanoke College poll shows at the moment the no's outweigh the yes's 52 percent to 44 percent. That's an eight point margin right now for Virginians rejecting this outrageous gerrymander scheme. Yeah. And Virginia as a whole is is a purple slash pretty blue state. And so for for this measure to be down by eight says something about fairness, actually. But I think that I think that this is this is what Democrats do. They engage in Orwellian language to cover up, you know, the the games that they play. I have been staring at the map since you used the word lobster, and I feel like it's one of those inkblot tests. Oh, you don't see it? What do you see here? No, no, no. I see it, but there's so many other things that you could see. Because the original map is just a clear cut. It's just this is the area, whereas the other, it's an inkblot. It's just this random, jagged line that was so clearly drawn in order to disenfranchise. That's the whole purpose. But I invite everyone to go look at that map because – and I'll put it on Twitter. It really is an inkblot test. Oh, it's absolutely outrageous. Absolutely outrageous. But my frustration – sorry, go ahead. Real fast, if you look at that lobster in terms of the way the people in that district vote, the very, very tail of it is blue. The rest of it is all pink to red. Right. But but but as long as you get that little wedge in Fairfax County and make sure that you get enough people in that district, I would love for this to come back and bite them all in the behind. I think it's fantastic if it always does. Eight point eight point swing right now. Yeah. What's frustrating to me is I feel like the national GOP with all of these issues is just it's they're out to lunch here in Maryland. it's the same thing. We're about to get rid of Andy Harris because of gerrymandering, too. Where is the national GOP? What are they doing? To me, there should be there should be a legal fund. There should be a war room. They are take Democrats are taking advantage, I think, of distraction. I'm not sure what. But this this to me is the textbook definition of what the national GOP should be here for. And I think they're out to lunch. Well, they often are when it comes to issues involving Virginia. And you're absolutely right about that. The fact of the matter is, and let's be completely honest about this, Texas began the mid-decade redistricting plan. They redistricted Texas. That motivated Democrats. And since then, they have done what they did in California. They're now trying to do what they're doing in Virginia. They're trying to do what they're doing in Maryland. And Republicans have sort of sat on their hands saying, oh, what are they doing? This is terrible. You don't engage in this. Listen, this is a political thing. Gerrymandering happens all the time. And if the Republicans wanted to play this game, they needed to. Well, it's the old thing. You don't bring a knife to a gunfight. Democrats know how to do this. They've done it forever. You want to engage in a gerrymander fight with Democrats, the people who invented Tammany Hall and Chicago politics? You're fools if you're not ready to do this and really do it right. This poll out of Virginia, though, does give one hope. More than a quarter of Democrats are voting no on the redistricting. Seventy one percent are in favor. Twenty seven percent oppose. Independence oppose it by a near landslide, which is fantastic. So, listen, I think. If Republicans can get the message out and by the way, Glenn Youngkin can go a long way if he loves Virginia, which I know he does. He could actually utilize some of the money that he may have in his war chest from his political action committee and maybe move this message along. If he could win this on behalf of Virginians and behalf of the Republicans in Virginia, it could go a long way for his next act in his political career. It's 553. This isn't your average podcast. This is one of the most, if not the most controversial podcast. This is full send. Do you like party ever? I think Post Malone told me once he went to like one of your parties. What was the biggest after party you guys ever did? We have one with you guys. Unfiltered conversations. I'm not going to say any names, but. We got Dr. Phil pulling up. Jake Paul's coming in today. Benjamin Netanyahu. He's about to walk into the podcast right now. I feel like he'd leave. Yeah, maybe. The Full Send Podcast. This is so crazy. 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