In this episode of IHIP News, host Jennifer Welch and a co-host react to Republican losses in the recent midterm elections and the fallout for figures such as Florida's governor. They discuss Trump's falling media company stock, the role of super PAC money in politics, and whether corporate donations shape Democratic leadership.
The conversation also turns to the Ohio governor race concession call, the religious views of voters, and Christian nationalism. Listeners hear the hosts' opinions, which they present as their own, along with clips from political commentators.
In this episode Angie Sullivan, Jennifer Welch
This episode's transcript on Republican midterm losses and Christian nationalism was made with HappyScribe technology, using Google Meet transcription.
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Ab jetzt wird's günstig, und zwar richtig. Flaschenpost ist jetzt größer, günstiger und liefert wie gewohnt bis an deine Haustür. Mit über 4.000 neuen Produkten bekommst du Lebensmittel, Getränke und noch viel mehr für deinen kompletten Wocheneinkauf. Alles so günstig wie nie zuvor. Und noch besser: Spare jetzt mit dem Code SPAR15 ganze 15 € auf deine erste Bestellung. Jetzt App öffnen, riesiges Sortiment entdecken und deinen Einkauf günstig liefern lassen. Flaschenpost.
All right, it's just fine to take a moment to remember that Susan Collins got her ass beat after 30 years of being an absolute failure and an utter disgrace. One of the worst senators ever. She's gone. She got her ass beat. Love it. But we can enjoy all of this, and it's great, but we are the New Dems, and we are going to enjoy this and gloat, and we're also going to start targeting 2028 Republican presidential hopefuls. And one that I want us to really laser-focus on is somebody who face-planted in the 2024 primaries.
Everybody thought, "Oh, he's going to be the new Trump," and then he face-planted spectacularly, and then he's been quiet ever since. I refer to this man as Governor Kittenhills. He is the governor of Florida because he wears a little lift in his shoe to make him a little taller. And Governor Kittenhills is coming out swinging. Let's play the clip.
Be clear about what happened last night. This is close to an extinction-level event for Republicans in many parts of the country, as we have seen probably in the last 100 years. In January, when everyone in office leaves who were either term-limited or got voted out, of the 10 largest states in this union, only one state will have Republican control of their state, the state of Florida.
Okay, so. Here he is, Monday morning quarterbacking. He's had a lot of time, two years, to be critical of Trump. And that's just one clip. In other clips, he's talking about that Republicans have been gaslighting people and all of this stuff. Not on our watch, Governor Kittenhills. You need to put on your little white rain boots, Kylie, if you'll find those on the internet and pop those up while Josh talks. We need to start hammering immediately because this is what the Republicans do, and this man is completely disqualified. He endorsed Trump. He is a Trump thumper.
He is a part of the problem.
And somehow he's miraculously able to use this ass-whipping that the Republicans got last night and try to credit himself that his state somehow.
There he is.
Yeah. Is that the picture?
That's Governor Kittenhills, yeah.
Wow. Yeah. He's clearly not missing any mails either, is he, down there in Florida? But he makes it all about him, like he's doing something great. And I don't know if he's right about that, though. There is an extinction going on with the Republican Party, but I would let him know that it equally applies to the state of Florida. You barely, barely snuck out a victory with your Republicans, and a lot of that, I would put on the blame of Chuck Schumer for not funding Angie Nixon.
Completely agree.
A huge part of it. Otherwise, she would have won that race, and you couldn't make that claim today. And so just be grateful because we're coming for you next. Don't get satisfied that you're going to be there for long because we're targeting Florida next, and it's going to happen.
And Governor Kittenhills oversees a huge, huge immigrant population in Florida. Beautiful, beautiful Latino and Hispanic population in Florida. And he was pretty silent on all the ICE raids and pretty cooperative and allowed his citizens and his green card holders and documented and undocumented people to be treated inhumanely. And that should be his legacy. And we need to remind Floridians all of the time, he didn't give a shit about any of that.
He was a fascist collaborator to his core with this regime because he's a fascist. And here's some more good news. Trump lost money in last night's elections. Pop this up. Trump's media stock plummeted today following cataclysmic Republican losses in the midterm elections. The company's stock, which trades under the name DJT, was trading at around $5.08 on Wednesday morning, down 14% from the prior trading session and trending downward.
And I can only say that I hope that these losses continue when oversight figures out how much illegal money he has taken, in my opinion, from taxpayers. And there really needs to be a large investigation into this super PAC that he controls called MAGA, Inc., where all of this money comes in from these tech oligarchs that Donald Trump controls himself. And once you pay MAGA, Inc., 5 million, 10 million, 25 million, guess what you get in return? Taxpayer-funded government projects.
They buy in, Trump keeps the money, and then Trump gives our taxpayer funders to fascist collaborators that are trying to destroy the planet and our civilization.
Everything with him is a grift. And it's just like this MAGA, Inc., and the more you learn about these super PACs, in theory, Citizens United meant that a super PAC could not be connected to a candidate directly. But we all know that in application, super PACs are all controlled by the candidates. Nobody enforces that. The FEC doesn't. Nobody does. It's just like everybody turns a blind eye. But Trump, he's got this miraculous way. He grifts off of everything. Now, he's grifting off of two wars right now.
The war.
Yeah.
Just think about that. And he's got an envoy that somehow uses that fancy term, envoy, with Witthoff and Kushner that he sends all across the world to negotiate things. The reason why those two guys go, number one, they're both cons. They're both complete criminals, corrupt, but they're negotiating side deals. It's like this thing in Alaska where to sell this natural gas or oil or rights to the energy in Alaska, somebody's getting paid like $50 billion.
There's all these side deals where people are making money off this. And I couldn't believe the reporting about Kushner going over there, and he's got an ownership in companies that sell weapons in the war with Israel and Iran. And so he's got a vested interest in that, and he's also someone that goes over there and negotiates the war for the president. All of this stuff, like everybody's grifting. They're all corrupt.
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All right, and then we have in Ohio, Amy Acton, who was completely her past child sexual abuse, a horrific thing that happened to her, was exploited by Vivek Ramaswamy, and she snubs him. Pop this up. Democrat Amy Acton lets Republican Vivek Ramaswamy's Ohio governor concession call go to voicemail. Ramaswamy tells supporters he called to congratulate her and left a message wishing her well.
And I say, I do not blame her one bit. This is how we feel about these Republicans, and there are degrees of how bad they are. But even anybody, in my opinion, who has co-signed, voted for, is still voting for, still identifies as MAGA, hit the bricks, go pound sand. It's not a political difference that I have with you. It is a moral difference. I think you're a moral degenerate, and Vivek Ramaswamy is exactly that.
And let me just say this. Had that been Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries, they would have, number one, taken the call, and then number two, asked if they wanted to be in his cabinet in a position. They would have said, "Hey, we can work this out. Even though we were foes, we can work this out. Don't worry about it. I got a spot for you." But these new guards like Amy Acton, it's like, "Fuck that guy. He ran a campaign about me. I'm not talking to him." That's the way we all feel that Schumer and Jeffries don't get. We're all that mad.
All right, and then the Democrats beat Republicans who had dropped out of their races. Pop this up. An Iowa Democrat who dropped out of his race in September over health issues still won his statehouse seat comfortably in a district that leans Republican. I'm going to do my best to represent, Eric Armstrong told The New York Times, but I still have health issues.
Yeah, we'd rather have a half-dead Democrat than we would a Republican. Hopefully, Mr. Armstrong is okay. I know nothing about his medical condition, but that's what they're saying. We don't know his status. We don't know if he's conscious or not, but by God, we'd rather have him than one of those goddamn corrupt Republicans.
Okay, and then this is something that's really exciting for me. Everybody knows I am not religious. Josh and I are atheists. And really, really, a secular society, separation of church and state, is just so incredibly important to me. I think it's healthy in any healthy democracy. We don't need religion. We don't need theocracies. We don't need Christian nationalists, etc. This is stunning. Pop this up. So the largest religious group to show up at the polls yesterday and vote blue was no religion at all, the nuns.
And so you can see there, and the Muslims showed up and voted too. But the people who were questioned, 77%, 77% of the nuns voted for democracy, for decency, for accountability, for affordability, for all of the things. And this is something that's important to me to always contrast. When I meet religious people that wear their religion and it's in your face and they start recruiting you, not the people who listen to this show who see Jesus as a radical impath and a person that preaches social justice.
I'm not talking about you all. I'm talking about the evangelicals that vote for Trump. They're mean. They have a religion of cruelty, and then they vote for a politics of cruelty. And when you have atheists out here all the time schooling them on the fact that Jesus actually had brown skin, this white Republican capitalist that you envision, that's not who he was. And Jesus would have welcomed refugees. Jesus would have said Black lives matter. Jesus wouldn't be mean to trans people.
Jesus wouldn't have an opinion about gay marriage. He would just want to lift people up. But most importantly, Jesus spoke out exclusively against the accumulation of wealth. So I think if you are not religious and you have a fierce moral compass, it's important to always draw that distinction because our fight against MAGA extends to a much longer fight that MAGA jumped on the train of or that this bigger fight co-opted MAGA for, which is the Christian nationalist fight.
These people are well-funded, they are organized, and they are relentless, and they are batshit crazy.
And I would say that that nun figure represents a lot of the 20-year-old, 30-year-olds of this generation. And we're going to see more and more of that in the next 5, 10, 15 years as they get older and these 60, 70-year-olds fade out. And I'm kind of included in that group, but it's just a different generation. They care about different things. They don't care if you're gay. They don't care if you're trans. They don't care about anything like that. They're not full of hate like that. And they're not these religious zealots.
And just like you, I respect people that have religion in their life, that use that as their guiding template, that makes them a better person. But I don't respect the people that use it in a way and weaponize it and try to condemn people and tell people or preach to people how they should be. But I respect everybody's right to be whatever it is they want to be. But I do think this younger generation is more in line with the way you and I think. They just don't care about stuff like this.
All right, and let's do a little check-in with Benny Johnson in his show. Play the clip.
We're going to have Al Syed in the United States Senate. We've opened up our doors to folks that embrace Sharia law. And we don't even want to talk about the horrors of Sharia law for women, for members of the gay community. And yet it's being embraced by the left.
Well, that's interesting. They mentioned the gay community in front of Benny Johnson. Whoa, I did not have that on my bingo card. But here's the thing. Is that Ron Johnson? Is that who that was?
Is he still around, I guess?
I guess, unfortunately. But here's the thing with this. So this notion that Christian nationalists say about women, you're a member of the political party whose pastors keep popping up all over the place, Pete Hegseth's pastor and all these other people who say there should be a household vote, that want to strip women of their right to vote. And then as it comes to gays, y'all are the ones that completely spent $300 million on transphobia, who are wound up like cheap clocks, that gay people are getting married, that want to prevent gay people from having children.
So maybe sit this out because the biggest problem in the United States that I've ever faced as an atheist, it's not radical Muslims. It is radical Christians. The Muslims that I have encountered in the United States that have come over here, that have run for office, are further left than I am, and I'm pretty left. And so they include women, they include trans people, they include gay people, they include everybody. They fight for universal human rights. And if there were a group of radical, conservative, fundamentalist Muslims, I would be like, come on, we got to fight these crazy Muslims.
But that's not the fight in America. The fight in America are the crazy Christians.
Yeah, and I've shared with you my racism toward older white Christian men. I think I've shared that with you. And so I say that because Ron Johnson depicts the type of person that I exhibit racism towards. If I'm around three or four or five guys that look like Ron Johnson, I get nervous. I'm thinking, I got to get the fuck out of here. It's guys like that that to me are the craziest or the biggest threat to our country. They're so full of hate.
They weaponize religion. It's just that whole sect of guys like him. He's one of the ones that we're talking about that's so out of touch. He's got no business going on some rant talking about trans people. He didn't know the fuck he's talking about. These guys that have been in Congress for 20, 30 years, I'm going to throw Chuck Schumer in there too. They need to get the fuck out. Just get out. You see the difference in energy in these new candidates versus what we have? I mean, the reason why it's on full display here is because we've covered these candidates over two, three, four, five, six weeks.
And then you follow them, and then you go to Chuck Schumer holding a press conference, and you're like, are these the guys that are still in office? Because you see the breath of fresh air that Talarico has or Abdul Al-Sayed or even Hamilton in Kansas, I'm really taken back by. And then you go to these slick-talking Hakeem Jeffries and Cory Booker talk out of both sides of their mouth. You can see the difference, the contrast in that. And that says everything to me, everything about when we sit down, when the caucuses sit down and elect leaders, think about these things.
Think hard, because you and I are going to raise hell if they think they're going to maintain the status quo with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, and we're all just going to sit back while they peddle this bullshit about Israel and stuff like that, and we know why they're doing it or not doing it. We're going to raise hell.
Absolutely. And I think that if the electorate has shown that if a politician doesn't take a lot of corporate money, they win. And then all the corporate money spent against them. I think almost $100 million was spent against Abdul Al-Sayed. And he still won by seven points. And same with Zoran Mamdani. Those politicians have more credibility with the people. And so if you're taking a lot of PAC money and you're like, well, this is just the way it is, and this is the seniority, we're done with that.
That's your problem. The American people came to save us because y'all weren't doing enough. The Senate was voting for this cabinet that Trump has. A lot of Democrats voted for them to get confirmed.
Oh, I know.
And so it's just we're done with all of that. We are going to usher out the era of prostitution politics. And the new Dems have arrived, and we are here for it. And we will prop each of them up. But until then, we will be building a consensus that we deserve better leadership in the Democratic Party. We did not endure these two years of hell and 11 years of MAGA to fucking win potentially Mississippi and Kansas and Iowa and South Carolina and kick Susan Collins to the curb to have the two strongly worded-letter leaders.
We didn't do that. We're not. No. No, thank you. Immediately no. Immediately no. All right, get my book. Not Today Fascist. That name really worked out well, didn't it? It's a great read. It talked about Christian nationalists and a lot about corporate Democrats. So subscribe to our channel, and we'll see you guys later.
Ab jetzt wird's günstig, und zwar richtig. Flaschenpost ist jetzt größer, günstiger und liefert wie gewohnt bis an deine Haustür. Mit über 4.000 neuen Produkten bekommst du Lebensmittel, Getränke und noch viel mehr für deinen kompletten Wocheneinkauf. Alles so günstig wie nie zuvor. Und noch besser, spare jetzt mit dem Code SPAR15 ganze 15 Euro auf deine erste Bestellung. Jetzt App öffnen, riesiges Sortiment entdecken und deinen Einkauf günstig liefern lassen. Flaschenpost.
The MAGA fallout continues.
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