Now, on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor & Company. 607 on O'Connor & Company as we give you a full review of last night's epic marathon. Titanic meets Gone With The Wind meets The Brothers Karamazov. It was lengthy, is what I'm trying to say. State of the Union. From President Trump, it's Larry O'Connor with Kerry Lucas here. Kerry Lucas, of course, president of Independent Women's Forum and bestie of our beloved Julie Gunlock. Having you here forces me to remember to mention Julie every day. It's one of those things where I forget sometimes on the days that she's supposed to be here. I don't forget her in my heart, but I forget to mention it on the air. But Julie is still recovering. And in fact, Carrie, you just visited her last week, right? Yeah, she's doing great. Yep, getting much better every day. She's doing great. She is getting there, and she's almost up to, you know, up to game time performance. This is the thing about WMAL. You've got to be, you know, you've got to be gold medal caliber. She's always there. Keep her in your prayers. Go to GiveSendGo.com slash Julie Gunlock. GiveSendGo.com slash Julie Gunlock. 635, we'll talk to Cal Thomas. 705, Virginia Senator Bryce Reeves about Abigail Spanberger's performance last night and how Democrats are punishing him right now for criticizing our fair governor. 8.05, Jim Jordan, congressman from Ohio, was in the House last night. And at 8.35, Nick Freitas, former Virginia delegate podcaster. That's all coming up. All right, let's get to Abigail Spanberger. Somebody took a screenshot of Ms. Spanberger. It still baffles me as to why the national media are so intoxicated with Abigail Spanberger. I think because unlike most liberal Democrat women, she's really good at playing pretend. And she sort of puts on this facade of, you know, Talbot's pantsuit and I'm just a mom. Yep. I'm so normal. Right, right. And of course, her politics and her policies and everything that she's actually done and voted on and far from it. But but because she is able to sort of dazzle them and mesmerize them, they love her. They love her because, you know, here's the thing what I've learned about the media. as far as Democrats, the highest praise goes to the best liars. It's why they loved Bill Clinton. No, no, no. I mean, I know that seems sort of jaundiced, but if you can BS your way through interviews, they even say it's like, wow, he just BS'd me and he's so good at it. You know, it's like, excuse me, you're a reporter. You're supposed to actually call them on their BS. But they marvel at how good they are. And Abigail Spenberger is very good at pretending to be something that she's not. Yep. Although, you know, it's really a hard job doing the after State of the Union, you know, follow up for the opposing party. So she started from a deficit almost from the assignment. And I don't know that she beat expectations there. It's funny. So Blue Sky, I think it was Tim Carney over at the Examiner, took a screenshot of the debate going on at Blue Sky. That's the little liberal bastion echo chamber social media platform. They all have the sads because she chose to deliver the speech not at the Capitol in Richmond and not at the governor's mansion or not some – no. She went to the old colonial Capitol building in Williamsburg. Well, that's problematic. That colony was all about the slave trade. Yep. 1619 project, don't you know? And then somebody chimed in and said, yeah, it would have been better if she went to College of William and Mary. And then someone replied and said, but College of William and Mary was all about the slave trade, too. It's like, hate to tell you this, but if you go to any historic location in Virginia, there's got to be some slavery history. Yeah, I'm sorry. Honestly, I think the only place that Democrats would be happy that wasn't intoxicated by stolen land or colonialism is if they gave their response in the library where Karl Marx wrote his manifesto. There's nothing complicated about that, right? That's right. Yeah, exactly. This is who we are. Yeah. Or maybe Red Square. That might be, you know. Anyway, Abigail Spanberger gave the remarks. And somebody took a screenshot. Mary Rook, a commentator for Daily Caller, took a screenshot of her and posted it and said, We went from optimistic and fun to gray-faced wine mom lecturing the nation. And uncharitable but true. Here's a couple of highlights from your governor, Virginia. Telling it like it is. Here's Cut 60. Tonight, as we watched our nation's lawmakers gather for a joint session of Congress, we did not hear the truth from our president. So let's speak plainly and honestly. And let me ask you, the American people watching at home, three questions. Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you? As I campaigned for governor last year, I traveled to every corner of Virginia, and I heard the same pressing concern everywhere. Costs are too high in housing, health care, energy, and child care. And I know these same conversations are being had all across this country. So a couple things. First of all, my answer to all three questions is yes. Absolutely. OK. Of course. Number two, her campaign for Virginia actually started when Biden was still president. And when she was going from corner to corner of Virginia and people were saying things are too high and too expensive, who do you think caused that? See, anytime a government official claims that they can make life more affordable for you, the only way they can do that is if they remove either taxes or regulations that are making things more unaffordable for you. In other words, if things are more expensive and the government can make it less expensive, that means the government made it more expensive in the first place. Yep, exactly. You know, it's funny because obviously the person who wrote this speech for the governor did so before the State of the Union. They didn't. But here we are as you're watching this. You've just seen two hours of President Trump kind of relentlessly talking about honoring people who worked for the country, honoring veterans and soldiers and great leaders and talking about trying his efforts, very tangible efforts to make life more affordable. So I felt like the whole rhetoric, the whole line that Spanberg was trying to go with this constant, you know, is he working for you? When even if you don think that the president you may disagree with some of what the president is proposing But man if he was nothing if not working hard for the American people Yeah Listen the one data point that everyone should take away from President Trump speech is that the violent crime rates the murder rate is at a hundred and twenty five year low. You didn't hear me wrong. It's not since 1900 that America has had as low a murder rate. Talk about making our country safer. Nothing makes our country safer than making it less likely that you're going to get murdered and you can draw a direct line to closing the border on that on that statistic. CBS News, by the way, tried to fact check that. It was very funny. We fact checked it and it turns out he's right. Yes, it's true. You know, that hurt. You know, that fact checker was just, oh, man. Horrible moment for them. We also had a moment where Abigail Spanberg appeared to either have a misstep on her prompter or not know what she was talking about, perhaps both. But as the president spoke of his perceived successes tonight, he continues to cede economic power and technological strength to Russia, bow down to China, bow down to a Russian dictator, and make plans for war with Iran. There you go. What she meant to say was seed economic power and technology technology to China, but instead said Russia, because, you know, Russia, Russia, Russia. She was part of the CIA's Russian hoax, so she just can't help herself when it comes to Russia. Stay with us a little bit more from Abiel Spanberger and the Democrat response, which included a man dressed as a giraffe dancing and prancing on the stage and other unnamed staffers who probably have a pretty good H.R. case on their hands who were forced to dress up in inflatable frog costumes. I wish I was kidding. 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Other companies might just sell credit monitoring or just a VPN. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at aura.com slash secure. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash secure. Hi, I'm Joe Salci. I 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 of a stealth wealth. Stacking Benjamins. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Aaron would do it. Aaron would do it with me with the Speedo. There you go. That's perfect. Aaron has spent, he spent some time in Europe. he's got to have a speedo, right? You got to blend in over there. I don't know, Larry. This is probably getting too personal. I don't want to dime out my husband here. I just did. All right. Abigail Spanberger. Yes, she lost her place in the teleprompter. She tried to talk about lowering costs. She tried to talk about tariffs and how it's... Honestly, it's... All right. A little bit more if you're Governor Abigail Spanberger in a very, very sad and low energy. That's what I would call it. Low energy, Abigail. Cut 61. Because since this president took office last year, his reckless trade policies have forced American families to pay more than $1,700 each in tariff costs. Small businesses have suffered. Farmers have suffered. Some losing. Actually, there are plenty of statistics and analyses that blow that out of the water and say that that's not the case and the businesses have not passed on the cost of tariffs. But they're speculating that costs could have gone down and things were more expensive because of tariffs, but there's no actual data to support that. Cut 62, though, she talks about what her priority is. Now, Virginia, you've lived through the first month and a half of Abigail Spanberger. You tell me if what she says her priority has been meshes with your lived reality. Cut 62. But here in Virginia, I am working with our state legislature to lower costs and make the Commonwealth more affordable. Hold on a minute, because our pal Katie Pavlich, who lives in Virginia, like you, Carrie Lucas, she reminds us there is a dog walking tax, a dog grooming tax, a gun and ammunition tax, new income tax brackets, a storage facility tax, a dry cleaning tax, a home repair tax, a new personal property tax on electric leaf blowers and other electric landscaping equipment, and an outright ban on non-electric landscaping equipment and on and on. How is that making sense? And the one thing they said, the one tax she ran on that she would cut is the car tax, and they still haven't put together one bill that would cut the car tax. Of course not. There's nobody, I feel like even the most hardened partisan Democrat, really thinks that the Democratic Party is for reducing costs on Americans. I mean, who are we kidding? This is the party of more and more taxes and more and more regulations which push us in one direction. It's ridiculous. It is ridiculous and a lie and easily fact-checked. And yet, of course, it went unabated. Thankfully, though, no one was watching because it was like midnight. Of course. It was on. All right. So let's go to our 5 o'clock cut sheet here, Michael, because I want to hear from Cut 9. Because as Abigail Spamberger was acting like the Democrat response, we saw the real Democrat response. This is a congresswoman from Portland standing on stage surrounded by staffers wearing inflatable frog costumes. Yes, you heard that right. And tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland Frog Brigade. i think there's some breaking glass somewhere from that one that was that was rough the portland frog brigade yep this is the party of normal right yeah this is the party of well it actually got even better uh when the portland frog brigade was done on stage which by the way i i thought the You know how Pepe the Frog, which is like a meme out there? I was told that was like Nazi white supremacy stuff. You not supposed to use frogs for your political stance I lost track Then out came a man dressed in a well giraffe onesie sort of furry pajama costume bragging about the fact that he got arrested by ICE Here, take a listen. I'm fresh out of an ICE prison in Minneapolis. I've been arrested three times by ICE over absurdity, over us being ourselves, over me singing songs like, Hey, Mr. Tangerine, man, get rid of brown people for me. I'm Ary and white. There ain't no place I'm going to. And then all of a sudden he's not ready for me. I'm in the business of building our audience and retaining listeners, so I think that's enough of that. But that's I wish I were making this up. But those were the official endorsed Democrat. There were congressmen and senators all participating in those things. Yeah, it's really mind boggling. It's truly it's it's hard to know what to say. I mean, what are they thinking? There was you know, there was a lot of opportunities on how to respond. And this is just such a bizarre direction, especially with the animal thing. You know, the president didn't go too much and down the culture war, men and women sports type of thing this time. But this brings up some bad memories, you know, of what the Democrats have become known for. By the way, real fast, I did appreciate this. Daily Wire had some coverage of all the counter protests. They had a reporter on the mall. That's where Chris Murphy was there. And a heckler jumped in, actually, as Senator Murphy was speaking, grabbed the mic and said, go, Trump, go close the border. It was great. Great moment. But then the anchor for Daily Wire asked their reporter on the scene. So who exactly goes to these things? And the answer was brilliant. So when you say who goes to these types of things, not many. There's probably 75 people in this crowd, and I would say 35 of them are reporters. Wow. So there you go. So that's it's it's the beginning of the midterm elections and everyone needs to pick their fighter, I guess, and who they're going to line up with. It's a long way until November. But if we're grading on day one from Trump's performance and what happened there and what the Democrat response was, I think Republicans have the slight edge. Yeah, feeling pretty good this morning. So far. It's 624. for. Now on 105.9 FM and streaming worldwide on the WMAL app, O'Connor and Company. It's 637. Good morning. A late night last night for the State of the Union and an early morning today. But that's the gig, my friends. And we're having a blast reviewing everything that happened last night in your nation's capital. Coming up at 705, Virginia Senator Bryce Reeves will join us talk about Spanberger's State of the Union response. At 8.05, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio was in the chamber. We'll get a taste of him, what the feeling was. And at 8.35, Nick Freitas, podcaster, former Virginia delegate. This is Larry O'Connor alongside Carrie Lucas, president of Independent Women's Forum, hanging out with us this morning. Thanks for being here, Carrie. Thanks for having me. And thank you to Cal Thomas, syndicated columnist extraordinaire, who joins us every weekday, or excuse me, every Wednesday at this time. and well, Cal, people predicted it would be the longest ever and it was the longest ever. What did you think of last night's speech? Well, I thought it was a combination of politics and show business. I mean, here we have a man who helped make his career in television who just had several dramatic moments. I mean, we knew the American hockey team was going to come in, but then he surprised everybody by bringing in the helicopter pilot and told his story, who had captured Nicolas Maduro in Caracas, and told the story of his being shot in the legs and gave him the Congressional Medal of Honor, along with a World War II guy who would get one too. I mean, it was terrific. What I love is the press reaction. Of course, the New York Times is negative. Of course, the Washington Post is negative and full of columns attacking him. But here's the New York Post headline. Trump wins gold, plays economic cheerleader in chief at State of Union, using hockey champs to show USA winning. Now, my favorite, though, of the whole night, an irony extraordinaire, was Governor Spanberger's unbelievable speech where she talked about affordability. Now, here's someone who campaigned as a moderate, who really is a liberal, and who wants to raise taxes on everything, including dog walking and dry cleaning. and she's for affordability. Give me a break. But I think he really did the Democrats in last night with his one line. He said, stand if you agree. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. None of them stood. He called him crazy. And I think that may have been accurate. You know, I want to let Kerry in here. But it's so funny that you said, you know, that he put out that line and he really did it to the Democrats. He didn't do anything. All they had to do was stand. All they had to do was actually affirm the fact that they're there to work for the American citizens instead of illegal aliens. But they couldn't even do that. All right, Kerry. I can't wait for the campaign commercial on that one. Yes. You know, Cal, if this is kind of considered one of the launching points of the rest of the kind of campaign season going into midterms, do you think this has any impact? Because I thought that the president really did do a great job reframing this, reminding people that he that Republicans and he are on the side of law and order and the American people and even anti fraud. And the Democrats had to sit there on their on their hands and really position themselves in a way that I think could could set up a rough, rough couple of months. What do you think? Well, first of all, the soundbites are going to go on for some time. There will be political ads. The president will tour the country. He's already said he's going to run as if he were on the ballot. He called out by name Nancy Pelosi, which was just amazing when he was talking about insider trading information. Pelosi, along with several other Democrats, were wearing these little labels on their lapels that said, released the Epstein files and they had a black mark over Epstein to make it look like the redactions in some of the files that have been released to protect innocent people. But I thought he took them on. I mean, they've been slamming him for weeks and months and he just went right at them. And that's the way to do it. If you're going to play politics, you got, he said, if it wasn't for me, the border would be open. There'd be millions of people pouring into this country again he they had close-up shots of of omar from minnesota when he was talking about the fraud and the pillaging as he called it of 19 billion dollars of taxpayer money uh who knows a lot of it probably went back to somalia that to terrorist groups but i i thought he was very specific yes the speech was long but it was loaded with solid content Yeah and Cal I know you weren a huge fan of the tariffs and you been critical of them Many conservative commentators have been, and of course the Supreme Court struck it down. But he had that moment where he mentioned it, and he stated that he disagreed with it. But to me, and again, I'm a partisan here, but it didn't seem quite as direct and as sort of in your face as when Obama called out the Supreme Court over Citizens United. Yeah, that's right. But he said he's going to get around it. He's found a way to get around it. My favorite line was if we get these tariffs in, we'll be able to balance the budget and eliminate the income tax. Well, he's got my vote on that one. I mean, that was one of the worst amendments ever, the Constitution. But yeah, I thought it was, well, the one thing he didn't address, though, that I wish he had, and I know why he didn't, because the Democrats were making an issue, was spending. I mean, he did promise Social Security and Medicare would not be touched. But everybody knows, including the Democrats, they're going to run out of money in six or seven years. It's got to be confronted. But the Democrats use this issue to pound Republicans all the time. You're going to starve the elderly. They're going to be homeless and all this other rot where they know it needs to be reformed. So I wish he would have addressed spending. That is the real movement behind the $38 trillion debt. I hear you, but it just would have made the speech longer. So yeah, it was almost like a telephone. I know I was I was waiting for Ed McMahon to come out and show us the latest totals. Yeah, Jerry Lewis reference there. Thank you, Cal. Always good to talk with you. All right, guys. Thank you. By the way, real fast, if you're just joining us, cut one here on the 5 o'clock AM cut sheet, if you don't mind, Michael. Here's that moment that actually will probably be the most played viral moment of the entire speech. So tonight I'm inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. Yeah. And guess who as a party wouldn't stand for that? It's 643. The C.J. Pearson Show. Every week, we'll take on the biggest cultural, political and moral battles in America head on. C.J. 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? Shift the way that I think about the world. Bold truth, real conviction, zero permission. This is The C.J. Pearson Show. The C.J. Pearson Show. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. Oh my gosh. Carrie. Carrie Lucas. Yes. There are other things in the news beyond the State of the Union. How can that be? I know, it's shocking. Actually, people are going to love this story. I love this story more than life itself. We told you a couple of weeks ago that in Washington County, the same part of Maryland, there has been unanimous, nearly unanimous support for a proposed ICE detention facility right near Hagerstown. The county council is on board. The neighbors are on board. Everything's great. They want to support ICE. They want this ICE detention facility near Hagerstown in their neighborhood, which is actually ironically near Camp David. I think it's hilarious. Trump could go in and check on the illegal immigrants that are being detained at any given time. So that's all going to happen, right? Right? Well, it's hit a snag. Are you ready? Maryland, the Democrats in Annapolis, are not going to allow the detention center, the ICE detention center. But guess the reason why? Because, you know, the attorney general can't quite figure out. It's like, can we stop them? I mean, how can we stop them? Oh, they figured out a way to stop the ICE detention center in Washington County. They need to do an environmental study. Hold on. It gets better. There's a lawsuit right now blocking the proposed ICE detention facility because it could harm the environment, including a waterway that flows to the Potomac River serving as a habitat to protected species. They want to stop the construction because they need an environmental review on how it might negatively impact the Potomac. The pristine. Yes. Yes. Because, you know, there's a whole ecosystem now brewing in the Potomac. All that E. coli might be damaged by the impact of the ice detention facility. You know, Larry, it is kind of just amusing. The answer in government is always red tape, right? You can always say you've got to do this study or that. And it also shows you exactly – there are no real environmental concerns ever from the left's perspective. They use it as a tool, a weapon to stop things they don't like. They don't like the automotive industry. They don't like development. They don't like urban sprawl. They don't like subdivisions. They don't like an ice detention facility. Environmental impact. So they're literally standing up there with a straight face saying, yeah, no, no, no. We got to protect the Potomac. Meanwhile, the governor standing right behind the attorney general, allowing sewage to pour in unabated, doing nothing to clean up Maryland shores as raw sewage floods into the Chesapeake Bay. He's just tweeting at Trump. But they're going to try to stop this ice detention facility because they care about the Potomac. You know, it's one of those things when you look at all of the talk about housing and affordability. This isn't a perfect example. There used to be a time when America could build stuff and we would build stuff and make big, huge, you know, new creations. The environmental impact of Hoover Dam would stop it when it hit the drawing board, when it hit the paper. Oh, you're absolutely right. And by the way, last time I checked from the state of Maryland, from Governor Westmore, his official position was the Potomac is the responsibility of the federal government. Right. Yeah. Is that that's federal? That's federal. That's federal property that Trump's in charge of that. OK, then get out of the way and let the ICE detention facility go in. You have no business commenting on how it might impact the Potomac. You can't have it both ways. Oh, that's right. You can. You're a Democrat. It's $6.52. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.
