Shake-Ups, Texas, and Fair Hearings

Well, I have multiple items to discuss with you today.

The Shake Up

Brad Parscale is out of the Trump campaign. Well, technically, he is demoted and there, but this is a political firing. Parscale didn’t even know until a few hours before it would happen.

Bill Stepien, the former White House Political Director, is going to run the campaign. I’m told a few things on this.

First, the President has been aggravated for a while by suggestions that people on his campaign were getting rich off his voters. I know the media impression of the President and you all know my views on the President, but the President is very, very protective of his base and does now want them seen as a piggy bank. He has been bothered, for some time, by reports about lavish income being made off his campaign.

Second, campaign fundamentals have had serious issues. For example, the President should not have to be spending money in Georgia, but he is. There’s a failure to execute at the grassroots level in the campaign.

Third, for a supposed data mining genius, that Tulsa rally was a disaster and did not have to be and it exposed Parscale. The campaign should have known what was coming and seemed caught off guard. It has left the President furious. If a million progressives really did RSVP, as some claimed, the campaign should have known through their data metrics. They should also have known not to brag about massive crowds coming at a time of a global pandemic. But they did anyway and then no one showed up.

Fourth, the President is now aware he does have serious problems with the suburbs. Stepien ran Chris Christie’s campaign in 2009 and knows how to win suburbs for Republicans when those suburbs lean left. Some conservatives might grumble moving forward, but Stepien is competent, capable, and able to chart a course forward. The President also respects him.

One prominent Republican I talked to late last night told me in her view Stepien may not be able to get the President across the victory line, but he can certainly mitigate what some Republicans see as a downballot bloodbath starting to take shape. Stepien can mitigate damage.

Texas

Former Secretary of Energy and Governor of Texas Rick Perry was on Fox talking about Texas. Joe Biden is running ads in Texas. The media is as excited as Republicans were when Karl Rove decided to devote last minute resources to California in 2000 instead of Florida.

Perry said on Fox that Texas will stay Republican. He is right and Joe Biden knows it. You know how I know? The money.

The Biden team will not disclose how much money they are running in Texas. This is for free media. It is designed to make the GOP panic (some of them are). It is designed to get buzz without costing a lot. Biden’s team says it is part of a six figure ad buy across multiple states, which actually means it is a small buy designed to get headlines, not votes.

In addition to wanting the headlines, they are trying to get Trump to spend money there. Just follow the money. You don’t have to believe the polls. Believe the money.

Georgia

If we are believing the money, the President’s team thinks he has a problem in Georgia. He did what amounted to a campaign visit there yesterday and also is spending money across the state on an ad buy. This is the first time since the nineties that a Republican candidate for President has spent summer money on TV in Georgia. That is not a good sign.

But notice that the Biden team is spending money across the country, but not Georgia. Biden is not yet convinced Georgia is winnable. My suspicion is that it is more winnable than Texas, but it would not generate the national headlines like an ad buy in Texas. That being said, I still think Trump ultimately wins Georgia. Much of the Democratic grievance about Georgia has to do with Stacey Abrams, not Joe Biden. They want Biden money now to help build a foundation for Abrams 2022. The Biden team has soured completely on Abrams and is not inclined to help.

Mary Trump

She hates her uncle, wrote a tell all book, has not been a meaningful part of the family for a long time, and the media has given her more attention than they ever did Barack Obama’s half-brother.

There’s just no there, there with this lady. I have strongly held views on the President and even I think this is unseemly. What is more unseemly and more telling is the media willing to run with it.

I absolutely know it ruffles the feathers of Democrats to point it out, but objectively Barack Obama’s mentor as a kid was a communist; he got his start in Illinois politics in the living room of a terrorist; and he was the only person in the Illinois Senate to speak in favor of letting doctors kill children after they survived an abortion.

The media overwhelmingly gave Obama a pass on all that, never really dug into it, and wanted to describe anyone who brought that up as fringe. But suggest that Donald Trump is actually an alien from Planet Kraptoo and Brian Stelter is going to give you a full hour on Reliable Sources to make your case.

Trump has broken a lot of things, including much of the media.

Roads

Back to Georgia, President Trump decided he is getting rid of a 51-year-old environmental regulation that has hindered infrastructure development. We’ve been promised “Infrastructure Week” since 2009 and we finally got it at a UPS distribution facility in Georgia yesterday. That’s where the President made his announcement.

The New York Times, naturally, claimed that this regulatory rollback would destroy the planet, increase pollution, and be detrimental to the future. It was ridiculous.

Let me explain this one to you in the real world.

I live half a mile from I-75 in Macon, Georgia. For the last several years, the volume of 18-wheeler traffic has gone up so much that traffic, even during the pandemic, has been affected. The Georgia Department of Transportation has a novel project it wants to build — a designated, separate and segregated lane of traffic for 18-wheelers that would run from Macon, GA to Atlanta, GA, which is one of the most congested bits of interstate now in the Southeast.

That area is important because it combined the regional distribution hubs in Middle Georgia with Two Dead Mayors International Airport in Atlanta. It would free up massive capacity on I-75, keep cars from idling on the roads, and overall help the environment by keeping traffic moving instead of stagnant and burning fuel on the road all day.

But environmentalists have used this 51-year-old regulation based on the National Environmental Policy Act to stymie the effort. Environmental reviews, red tape, and more have driven up the cost and delayed a project that actually will benefit commerce and the environment.

The President made the right call. The hysterics are wrong on this. But again, it is hard to get a fair hearing on this stuff these days when everyone is so tribal.