Kamala Harris’ Collapsing House of Cards | Ed Martin

Full Episode Transcript:

Ed Martin: Donald Trump honed in on and fine tuned his message. He said, here’s what I see that’s happening in the country. Here’s what we need. A good pollster actually does it

differently

in the sense that you pick your strategy, your numbers, and then you poll over and over again. And you look for the momentum.

You don’t look for the raw numbers cause you can’t tell. And I think RFK Jr is a kind of signal that people can say, I can go there with this guy, Trump and vote on that. I think it’s a big deal. they came. to believe they couldn’t skip the black Indian woman VP. And so she stepped right in there, give her credit.

She grabbed it and now they’re stuck with her and they know it. They know they’ve got someone who’s not strong on the stump, not strong in interviews, far too liberal on a bunch of stuff, and they’re just hoping and praying that they can, make it all about hating Trump.

Matt Kane: Joining me today is Ed Martin. He is an author and the president of the Phyllis Schlafly Eagles. Ed, thanks for joining me. Welcome. Great to be with you. Thank you. Let’s begin with Project 2025 and Agenda 47. President Trump’s Agenda 47 lays out a wide range of America First initiatives that Honestly, or just pure common sense, it’s hard for anyone to disagree with them.

It’s a 20 step plan that aims to end the border crisis, keep jobs from being outsourced, lower inflation, drill for oil, and even prevent another world war, among many other things. This is all very visible on the official campaign website right at the top, yet there is this Democrat obsession with tying Trump to Project 2025, which is really just a policy proposal suggestion formed by a collection of conservative think tanks.

So as someone who’s very well versed in what President Trump actually intends to implement as opposed to what the media says he will. What are some of the key points you would like to note about the difference between project 2025 versus agenda 47?

Ed Martin: let me start by pulling back a little bit and going back in time.

when I was, in 2012, I was elected

chairman of the Missouri Republican party. And, that was, I had been a candidate for office. I was the Missouri Republican party nominee for attorney general in 12. run for Congress in 10. I had served as chief of staff to the governor of Missouri. So I knew Missouri politics and policy really well.

And then I won for chairman of the party in Missouri. And I went off to also serve on the RNC. So when you’re chairman of a party, you’re automatically on the RNC. So I was suddenly on the RNC. I’ll never forget the first meeting I went to. It was after 2012. So it was now early in 2013. And there was an autopsy on the 2012 election that was published.

It cost almost 10 million. It was produced by four consultants. It was described. As the position, the autopsy of the Republican National Committee. And I was one of the 168 members. I had never seen it. I didn’t get a chance to review it. And I remember saying I was on the ballot in Missouri. I was the chairman of the Romney Ryan get out the vote in Missouri, in addition to being the attorney general, a candidate.

So I knew what happened in Missouri and why we lost and what happened. And I read the autopsy and I thought. These people are writing like a wish list of what they think the problems are and the solutions. Now, I say that to say, after the 2020 election, a lot of people that had anticipated a second term of Donald Trump were suddenly out.

And as you pointed out, they went to, Think tanks, they started, groups. They went to talk about the issues they cared about. And a lot of them, I think, have lots of ideas and lots of good ideas. I don’t know. but one thing I will tell you is Donald Trump moved the Republican party in a way that.

Myself, Phyllis Schlafly, my old boss, the late Phyllis Schlafly, and others believe we needed to do. He went away from, free trade agreements, multilateral free trade agreements where effectively we end up being the ones that pay for everything and the four or five other partners in that free trade agreement are freeloading.

he went away from amnesty conversations for illegals. He went away from a whole bunch of policy positions that had been the, Republican party. Including, by the way, one of the disastrous positions was Paul Ryan, who said we should change social security. We should even change Medicare.

Donald Trump came in as a candidate. He said, I’ll never touch social security. I’ll never touch Medicare. And I think many of us thought, finally, somebody that understands the reality. You can’t make a deal with seniors and workers and then renege on the deal. It doesn’t make sense and it doesn’t, bode well.

All that’s a warm up to say that in the period of time from January of 2021 till today, there’s lots of great ideas, lots of, bad ideas, lots of speculative ideas. What happened in the last year was Donald Trump. Honed in on and fine tuned his message. He said, here’s what I see that’s happening in the country.

Here’s what we need. And when you talk about the agenda at 47, I have a different perspective. I was a part of the team that put together the platform. I was on the leadership team in, prepared for Milwaukee and then put them together. And I can tell you that Donald Trump himself, up until the last day of the preparation of this document, he was.

Writing and rewriting it. He was looking at it. He was saying, Wait a second. And at one point to be candid with you, we had 10 promises and he said himself, he said, that’s not enough because you’re missing things. You’re not capturing everything. And we reworked it and he reworked it and got to these 20 promises you alluded to.

If you look at it, the number one is the border. The number two, or maybe two in the first two or three is energy independence. He knows that at the heart of what’s going on in this country, is a crisis about our border and our assimilation in America and also inflation. And the number one driver of inflation is the insane policies of the last few years of Biden.

When I look at all the other stuff that people have prepared, right? Articles for newspapers, project 2025, other stuff. I say to myself, that’s all people making a living talking. What you have is a candidate who says, here’s what I’m going to do. That’s the 20 promises. And then that document that I point people to, in 2016 and 2020, the platform was 35, 000 words.

This one is 5, 000. So a lot of people mourn the loss of words. they, they, lost some of the phrasing and then I’ll tell you to be honest, special interest groups were the ones that really lost cause they love putting junk into the platform. This is what Donald Trump wants to do. This is what I think he will do.

what he’ll certainly strive to do and starting on day one.

Matt Kane: I guess agenda 47 is so inarguably pro American and common sense that the people trying to hurt Trump’s chances. need to tie him to some other platform that has some perceived vulnerabilities. And what I find most disturbing about the Project 2025 narrative is that the main topic that Democrats have cherry picked and exaggerated Is the law fair and weaponization.

They’re literally releasing ads, suggesting that Trump would do all of the things that they’re already doing to him and continue to do to him. So to me, there’s simply no way they aren’t aware of this. And to be honest, I think most people, even non Trump lovers also see the hypocrisy in it. So it makes me wonder what their angle is.

It can’t be a numbers game because for every person who falls for it, there are certainly others that are turned off by it. So in your opinion, What is their goal when they partake in this extreme gaslighting regarding Project 2025 and future weaponization by Trump?

Ed Martin: yeah, as to the lawfare, I’m a lawyer among other things, and one of the things I do is I keep my law practice, and I generally take public interest type cases, and in the last few years I’ve taken, Four or five, January 6th defendants, and I’ve worked on some cases.

And so I know very well what they did with the January 6th narrative. the Congress lied, Liz Cheney and the Congress lied, destroyed documents, and they want to point to that and say, look at this report. it’s a lie. they’ve admitted now that they deleted documents. They deleted videos.

They only told one piece of the story. And what, you see when you look closer is. The Democrats, since Biden got in, have used the government to push these kinds of narratives. Now we see that they want to censor, even more explicitly free speech and speech in general. So when I see, look, it’s all politics, in the sense that when they point to 2020, 2025, they want to say, be afraid.

In politics, fear is a great motivator. So if you say to seniors, like Kamala Harris wants to add, all the illegals to Medicaid and Medicare that will gut Medicare. So if I want to scare a senior, I say Kamala Harris’s stated policy is to expand Medicare in a way that will take away your benefits.

That scares a voter, especially a senior voter. And that motivates him. I think with 2025 and other stuff, They’re trying to cherry pick the things to say, scare people and get them nervous. The problem with the example you give the real threat to this country right now is the lawfare, by the Democrats.

It’s not just Donald Trump, although that’s incredibly obvious. There are 23 pro life protesters sitting in federal prison for protesting. not for violence. They, these are not alleged that they hit a cop or security guard. Just prayerfully protesting in federal prison, you go across this country.

There’s a real fear about how the government is used against the people, whether it’s Catholics who are being told, if you go to traditional mass, you’re going to be targeted. The little sisters of the poor, you’re going to be told that you’re going to have to pay for health insurance products that include things that are go against your conscience and on.

I’ve been, I’ve had a theory, Matt, for a long time that the Democrats say what they’re doing to you to try to like misdirect, they’re doing that to us, then they’re saying, Oh, Trump might do that to you. I look, I don’t buy it. I don’t think most voters buy it at all. At the end of the day, when you look at Trump’s 20 promises, again, the things that are central in our lives.

Crime, education, inflation, the economy, they’re not sitting around saying, tell me if I can pack the U. S. Supreme Court, which is what Kamala is saying this week. that’s not where voters are.

Matt Kane: And I agree. And obviously all actions are made with November 5th in mind. And that brings me to polling in some states.

especially even before November 5th. Early voting starts, I believe, this week in some states, so it’s basically already here. Now, I listened in on your Pro America report just yesterday, and it was so refreshing to hear someone expose The real honest truth about how unreliable and intentionally misleading polls are, and I think our listeners would benefit greatly from hearing your take on it.

could you explain why polls are not only not to be trusted, but actually controlled to generate the outcome our news media desires?

Ed Martin: Yeah, thank you. I did an interview on this earlier today, before we were talking today with a station out of Illinois. and they had the same reaction. I think people want to hear an explanation.

First of all, let me say as a candidate, I ran for office twice. I ran the party for a few years. You do internal polls. You pay for your own poll because you want to actually try to get the most honest answer. You can and you cannot trust the public polls. Now, why can’t you trust the public polls on one level?

It’s simply because when you do a poll, you have to make choices about how you judge the electorate. So you vote for. If I’m running for Congress in South St. Louis, which I did 15 years ago, I’d run a poll and I’d say, I’m seeing in this kind of election cycle, the turnout amongst registered Republicans will be 40 percent amongst registered Democrats.

It’ll be 42%. And then the rest are independents, and you figure out how you’re going to judge it to get the best read. Now, a good poll, a good pollster, actually does it differently in the sense that you pick your strategy, your numbers, and then you poll over and over again. And you look for the momentum.

You don’t look for the raw numbers because you can’t tell. But what you see when you look at the New York Times Siena poll, and, James Blair, who’s the political director for, the Trump campaign, did a really good breakout on this on his Twitter feed, his X feed. You look and Sienna College, New York Times does a poll where they’re sampling, they, the numbers they’re using for Democrats, likely voters or Republican likely voters independents.

it, nobody thinks that’s gonna be the turnout. It’s, skewed in favor of Democrats so that you get a narrative that says, ah, Kamala Harris is up by two. What you know, if polls is look at the momentum, look at the snapshot. If someone’s doing a snapshot with the same or very similar numbers over time, you get a sense and you start to get a sense on momentum.

Now, here’s a couple of details. The polls, with very similar breakouts from 2016 and 2020 at this time, at this moment in the race had, Biden and, Hillary, Up by a lot more than they say Kamala’s up. In other words, Trump closes strong for lots of reasons, I think, but including by the way, shy Trump voters who don’t like to talk to pollsters, when you’re closing strong, Trump get out the vote, his energy and all that.

You’re going to, and, Kamala is already behind that marker. By their own admission. and then you take this fact. We had the most unpopular vice president in the history. the in so far as she was known, she was disliked. And then somehow, magically, because she’s on the top of the ticket, everyone is going to turn and say, Oh, yeah, it’s great.

That those polls feel like a lie. Now, one last thing, if you can’t get a snapshot in time that gives you momentum, look at specific groups. And if New York times had to write it this weekend, men, white men are going to, to Donald Trump by much bigger numbers. I think it went up by eight or 10 points.

Here’s the one that they’re not talking about. black men are sick of being yelled at. By white liberal women who look and sound a lot like Kamala Harris. I’m sure I’m right. The question is if Donald Trump gets 15 to 20 to 30 percent of black men, he wins everywhere. So that’s the kind of thing you can look at.

And I think what people need to know is the interest in lying about Kamala, Is because they’re leftists, but also because they want a horse race because they want us to pay attention because they make money on us caring about the election. Donald Trump was up by 10 now, which is where he was going with Biden.

People would stop paying attention completely. So I’d be very cynical about polls. I’d be very careful and look for those snapshots in time, over time, and then specific groups.

Matt Kane: Yeah, I agree. An actual voter sentiment is so much more important than polls alone. And with that, there are really some new and historic dynamics unfolding throughout both parties right now.

So let’s begin with the Democrats. And they’re unfolding civil war. That’s what I refer to it as. At least you tweeted something that’s very interesting to me in terms of their internal power struggle. You tweeted that Barack Obama and Pelosi never wanted Kamala as Biden’s replacement, but that Biden forced them to pick her.

So that dynamic is interesting to me because Biden wasn’t powerful enough to retain the nomination for himself, but he still had enough influence to force Kamala on the party as opposed to an open convention. It’s all pretty crazy. Can you just tell us what you know about the dynamic and what really is going on over there?

Ed Martin: Yeah, a couple of things. First of all, I agree with you on the civil war in the parties, in the, parties in America, the two major parties in America, there’s only one party that actually has a civil war where half of the party is lunatic left and the other half is lunatic center left.

That’s the Democrat party. Republican party is now. 95 percent Trump on positions on the kind of military we want, the kind of way we want to be in the world, the way we want to put America first for jobs, the way we want to run government, the 5 percent that are complaining are people that, we’re running campaigns for other candidates that want to run for president.

So there is a civil war on the democrat side. Look, what I know it’s from what I’ve seen in public reporting, what I picked up in some places here in the swamp where I live and work, is that when no one thought Kamala was the strongest candidate, if you’re going to get rid of Biden, you look at it and say, who can win?

The reason that they ran Joe Biden in 2020 was they wanted to run someone who would not alienate a lot of the old school, A Democrat base, a party, the people, you look up if you’re, from New Jersey, where I grew up and you, have lived in St. Louis for 25 years, lots of people that are Democrat, they’re more conservative than many Republicans, but they relate to that party.

And when they look up. They don’t relate to Elizabeth Warren. They don’t relate to Bernie Sanders. They don’t relate to Kamala Harris, but Joe Biden, oh, Uncle Joe, he’s a little bit dumb. he’s a little bit silly. He’s, probably, but they related to that. And they ran him in 2020 to hold those folks who were, needed to be there.

And then, and they could grab the liberal women and the liberal far left who just said, we got to have somebody other than Trump. When Kamala, when Joe Biden was stepping away, there was a real desire, Gavin Newsom, Rahm Emanuel, the ambassador to Japan, who has successfully, voted, received votes and garnered, gathered votes as the head of the, the, Democrat congressional committee as a congressman, chief of staff to Obama, mayor of Chicago.

He wanted Pritzker, the Illinois governor wanted to run, you had Shapiro. And there were a lot of people, Democrats I know who were saying, Hey, We could get somebody younger and energetic, fresh face that will look solid in this spot. What happened was Biden forced out. They knew they couldn’t skip. they came to believe they couldn’t skip the black Indian woman VP.

And so she stepped right in there, give her credit. She grabbed it and now they’re stuck with her and they know it. They know they’ve got someone who’s not strong on the stump, not strong in interviews, far too liberal on a bunch of stuff. And they’re just hoping and praying. That they can make it all about hating Trump and somehow get to the finish line.

I think we’re at 60 days or so out. You’re going to see the house of cards. That’s Kamala Harris start to tumble. And you’re going to see dramatically, that this is going to be like Dukakis, in 88, where. There’s not a real race, even though they’ll still talk about it. and she’s, she’s not going to be able to win in any of the, she’ll still win the blue States, but she’s not going to win, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and Michigan, and Georgia and other places where, voters are not going to, they’re not going to go for, her, what she’s selling

Matt Kane: and on the Republican side, for all the chaos that we just talked about from the Democrat side, a lot of unity is really unfolding with the Republicans, including the new RFK, as well as Tulsi Gabbard.

Endorsement of President Trump, but the question everyone wants to know is how impactful will that be? Do you see that new coalition being? significant in delivering Trump a win, or do you believe that support really wasn’t that big to begin with? what do you make of this new old school Democrat coalition?

Ed Martin: to be candid, you have to be, I think you have to be straight and talk about the things you worry about. the National, the NRA was one of the greatest get out the vote, organizations in the history of American politics, extraordinarily talent, focused, talented people. And for the last five or seven years, they’ve been in a fight for their survival because of lawfare by the attorney general of New York, who said, Hey, the NRA was founded in New York, 120 years ago, let’s go after them.

And they’ve caused some problems, some of the problems self inflicted, but I can tell you, the There’s not a get out the vote on the gun issue with the same oomph and talent, campaigns are not just about winning the groups that get you to 51%. They’re about getting them out to vote. As you point out now, Trump has a great ability to turn out the vote.

He’s a master at it when he’s on the ballot. People come from all over. But I would say that’s a factor, right? You’ve got to be aware of that. I’d say that the, the press is desperate to have a problem amongst the pro life community. It’s not real. it’s a fake problem generated by a few people who want that attention and that some of them are purists.

There’s some of them are not political, but generally the voters are there. I don’t see any problem. You bring up RFK, Jr. and, and others. I think what RFK Jr. does is gives people, I mentioned earlier, When Biden’s on the ticket, I was looking at polling among Catholics, and I was looking with our mutual friend, Tony Dolan, we’re looking at Catholics and Catholics.

You’re saying, Hey, there’s a bunch of Polish American Catholics in Pennsylvania and Michigan. There’s a bunch of Irish Catholics in New Jersey and in Philadelphia area. How do you move these people? when Biden was on the ticket, The, one of the pollsters said, don’t even try with the Irish Catholics because they just, they associate him as an old fashioned JFK type Republican.

a Democrat. And so they’re not going to be easy to target on issues. Here’s what I think RFK Jr. does. He sends a signal to a whole lot of Catholics that, hey, you’re not going to be for that Kamala lady. You’re not going to be for that guy from Minnesota who watched his city burn, right?

You’re living in places like Jersey City and Camden and Detroit. And you’re saying, I’m a working guy. I’m a working family. I, care about my future. And I think RFK Jr. is a kind of signal that people can say, I can go there with this guy, Trump and vote on that. I think it’s a big, deal. and again, all you have to do is look at what the Democrats response is.

The Democrats response to Donald Trump’s platform, the agenda 47, was to find something to attack because they realized Oh, a guy that knows how to talk common sense and the forgotten man and forgotten woman, we got a problem. And so they attack when you see what happened with RFK jr, they’re fighting now to keep him on the ballot because they’re afraid of what RFK jr voters are doing for Trump.

So I think, I think it’s a big factor, but it’s more a broader factor than just say RFK. It’s more of a sort of cultural, look, if you’re a Catholic man, it doesn’t matter, black, white, whatever. You’re not sticking with Kamala Harris screeching at you. And if you see RFK Jr with his shirt off and his jeans on doing bench presses on Venice beach, and he says, Hey, let’s make our people safe.

Our kids are getting screwed up by big, big food. You’re like, yeah, I recognize that guy. I’m, and they attack him for having a girlfriend or having a wild time in college. Most. Catholic men are like, either I know someone like that or I am that, and they’re, they see something that they like.

And do you

Matt Kane: also think that it makes old school Democrats who were already feeling that the Democrat Party was leaving them, and they were going that way, do you think it signals to them that it’s officially acceptable for, considering a man from the most prominent Democrat family in American history is now endorsing a Republican, do you think that plays a big role as well?

Ed Martin: yeah, and someone used the phrase, I don’t know who originated it, they called it a fake because people wanted a reason to say I’m for that, and this is going to be the reason, oh, RFK did it, but they were already there, they were already looking up and they were saying, wait a second, the number one priority of the Democrat party is to have an abortion truck outside of the convention, there’s a lot of things that are priority, My kid’s school, right? Inflation, jobs, so whatever. And your number one thing is going to be worrying about, abortion and abortion access, they’re not feeling that. And I think that’s a factor. Look, I think it’s also a factor that we have, these, the reason why they’re trying to attack Trump over Arlington Cemetery is because.

It’s working for Trump is because they know there’s a problem. Military veterans are not saying, Oh, I got a real leader in Biden. I think they probably were willing to give Biden a look as a veteran. they were looking, veterans were doing that. They’re looking up and they’re going Kamala Harris.

And here’s the last one. You show me a Jewish American who feels good about the Democrat administration, and I’ll show you someone that’s not really Jewish. That’s not paying attention to their faith. I’m not even saying you have to be Orthodox or that you have to go to synagogue every week. I’m saying, if you identify yourself as someone who thinks, Hey, I have something special in my life, my, my, heritage, I’m Jewish American.

You can’t vote for this administration. They, literally, we’re being held hostage by a terrorist and we’re being told if we just cease fire with terrorists, it’s going to turn out well. So I think, again, that’s a group you pull moderate Jews and say, Jewish Americans and say, you’re going to vote for Trump.

They can’t answer that question. Honestly, they’re not going to say it out loud, but they’re going to go vote it. I guarantee you, you’re going to see something very, interesting when it comes to Jewish voters.

Matt Kane: The Democrats are really doing, in my view, absolutely nothing to appeal to anybody.

That’s why I love your mention of a 1988 sort of election and Dukakis Bush type of map. Obviously, it all depends on fraud. And I guess we’ll pretty much have an answer to that sometime within the next 60, 65 days. Ed, I want to thank you for joining me today. Thank you to all of our listeners out there.

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