Dissecting Trump’s Speech with Pat and Trygve (Hour 1)

Live from the Civic Media World Headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, it's the Todd Alba Show.

And now, pursuing truth wherever it may lead, here's your host, Todd Alba.

Across

Wisconsin on the Civic Media Radio Network.

and streaming worldwide on the Civic Media app.

Good afternoon, everybody.

I'm Todd Alba, along with our fantastic producer and engineer, Mr. Aaron Zommers.

On the board, it is six past the hour of 12 noon on this Wednesday, March 5th, 2025.

It is a great day to be a Wisconsinite, and it is.

The camel is in a cavern, apparently.

Um, that's the only person left in, uh, in statutory hall in the U S capital, a camel.

Uh, that's why we have the reverberation.

Great to have you along with us.

Uh, big show today coming up an hour to a timely, timely, what's worse indeed dealing with slippery roads or slippery people.

We'll talk about that in hour number two and as well as preview the Wisconsin Badgerman's basketball game.

They're back in action tonight against the Minnesota Golden Goats up in the barn in Minneapolis and big game for the Badgers as they continue to try to get that quest.

A first round game in Milwaukee that was helped last night as Iowa State lost to BYU in double overtime down to Iowa last night.

That helps the Badgers.

We'll explain a little bit more later.

Trigby Olson from the Lincoln Project is going to graces with his presence when he is off a call But always on time like a Rolex clock you could count on him the host of Up North News radio every morning from six until eight Patrick Jay Kratlow Patrick are you?

I'm sorry.

I have to take an important call over here

No, I'm, I'm, I'm sure he's saving another country from, you know,

our own, our own is

just might be, you know, who knew that all that overseas experience in helping establish and preserve democracies would someday come in handy here.

But here we are.

But here we are.

Is it snowing

up?

But it's a downtown Madison.

We have a little, uh, I'll call it a more slightly more than a skiff of snow, certainly enough to track a cat.

No, it has moved on from here in beautiful Chippewauffles.

Oh, look at that.

Look at those wet streets there in Madison on the live feed right now.

And no, it has moved out of us.

And I guess talking to my wife who's working up in Rice Lake, she estimated about 10 inches of snow

there.

with only about two inches here in Chippewa Falls, apparently somebody was showing off, you know, how sometimes with storms, there's what's called a dry slot, you know, or dry space on the radar.

Apparently we were the donut hole for that.

So I'm very thankful not to have to go out and push this stuff because, well, mostly it's blowing away.

It's super windy out there.

And

You know, the temperatures the next few days will take care of the rest.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, it's a snowy day in some parts of Wisconsin.

I know some school districts have called off classes of precautionary.

I think part of the problem problem, but part of the challenge for these school districts is.

In some places, most places this started as a rain event or are less than all snow and then that freezes and you get snow and then it turns into ice.

So, you know, better just to hold off a little bit and have people work from home or teach from home.

I know many school districts now doing that.

Be careful out there.

If you're on the roadways, you can check out WI, or pardon me, 511wi.gov.

If you want to see the road conditions around where you are at.

Pat, you know.

I think we have to at least spend a couple of minutes on this.

The big speech last night by the Trumpster was not technically a state of the state event.

It was just a presidential address.

It went on for around two hours with applause last night.

I managed to stay up for the entire thing.

I was very proud of myself after having a couple of beverages to help get through it.

Were you tucked away in bed last night by the time I got

over it?

Long gone, long gone by that time.

caught just the first little bit of it just to make sure that nothing much happened in the early going other than the one congressman, you know, raising a ruckus and being escorted out.

But other than that, it was, it was a campaign speech.

And the thing that I said this morning is that I feel like it's just like this new tradition.

that the winning team gets to deliver their campaign address one more time and the losing team has to sit there and listen to it.

And that's it.

It was a campaign speech.

It's done.

We move on.

You know, there's other things in the real world.

But what concerned me about this speech, young Mr. Alba?

is

your

reaction is your reaction

my

reaction your reaction because again it may have been uh you know perhaps placated by the uh aforementioned beverages that you were enjoying but what i'm not hearing from you

is what I heard after the state of the state, which I'm going to back away from the microphone just a little bit here to capture the way that Mr. Alba reacted to the state of the state address.

That was just a terrible speech.

Does Tony Evers need me?

I will go work for the governor.

How can you call that a speech?

It's pretty much like that, I believe.

Pretty

much verbatim.

Yeah, and I'm not hearing anything like that from Donald Trump.

So I guess I know what you prefer in public speaking.

I wanted to give you the first

kick at the

cat.

I mean, um, I thought that, I thought that, uh, as far as like factual, where you have a couple of cuts here to talk about that, as far as factuality and far as factuality and truth.

That's adorable that you're even talking about that.

Okay.

It's it just goes without saying it's just one lie after another but sure let's go ahead and talk about What would it take less time to cover what was actually fact-based

the reason I think we should should talk about this is because as Zombers has pointed out before so many of these speeches now it's all about getting cut up and put on tiktok and socials and all these things and people only hear snippets and then the end then this goes on to Social media and then this becomes people's truth

And that's how people develop there.

Well, that's what it is.

And so I think it's good to point out some of these things and bring truth to it.

So hopefully people will be like, well, OK, I guess that part at least wasn't true.

But no, I thought obviously as far as facts and far as truth that it was severely lacking, if there was any truth at all, not much of it.

But I will say this, I will say this just purely from.

The goal of what I said, getting things on TikTok, social media, getting a message out there, I would say the Trump speech was much better than the

Evers speech that way.

Yeah, I don't, I don't think Governor Evers had social media in mind.

when

he

was

delivering his

speech.

Well, it's a speech that deals with policy and what does he want to get done?

And he did that and he did it without, you know, necessarily thinking of TikTok.

Yes, I will grant you.

I'm not here to beat up on Tony Evers.

I'm just saying I don't think the people around him think about that.

I know I'm here to bait

you into beating up

on Tony.

I know.

I know

I can do that

with you sometimes.

You like it when I get riled up.

It's so little.

No, I mean,

I thought it was effective having the people in the gallery and telling stories about people.

You know, again, maybe some of those stories were not quite true.

But but but the but the optics, you know, were there.

Can I just say about going up to the gallery for people?

I was I was there, not there physically, but I was alive and cognizant.

The first time that Ronald Reagan did something like this and people going, oh, that was different rather than just delivering a speech.

He actually.

called out somebody that he had in the gallery as a guest.

Well, that's a very novel thing for this actor turned president to do.

Little did we know.

All these decades later.

If you were to ever give a speech and not do that.

People would consider you an absolute failure.

So now it's like, how many do you do?

Do you do two?

Do you do five?

Do you do seven?

How

many did Trump

do?

He did a lot

in

there.

All he's looking for the gratuitous applause lines and hoping to bait the other side of the chamber into going, how do you not stand up for a kid?

How do you not stand up for a kid in the gallery?

Well, the same way the Republicans in Madison didn't stand up for Mrs. Evers.

I agree with that part.

that I mean

now thanks to you hate this why I say this but now thanks to both sides now decorum is dead and it doesn't matter and you know I think it was a mistake last night for for the guy from Texas to to stand up and throw the fit and I

I support Johnson for throwing him out because he gave him a warning.

And I mean, when my former boss Dale Schultz was Senate Majority Leader, you were a former state senator.

I mean, he sat down with Judy Robson, the Democratic leader before these types of things and said, here's how it's going to run.

He brought Rob Barshant, the Senate Chief Clerk, in and said, Rob, is this the rule of the body?

Yes, it is.

We're going to enforce that.

And I'm not a Mike Johnson fan.

But if you were given a warning,

and you don't follow the rules of the chamber, that's it.

And I think it was a mistake last night for that guy to do that.

I think it was a mistake for Democrats to bring in the signs, but I also think it was a terrible mistake for what Republicans and Robin Voss did, not standing up for the First Lady of Wisconsin, and for not standing up and supporting a family who lost a kid to cancer or whatever, what is in Wisconsin?

So I think your point is just that's dead now.

And I would say that for the Congressman who stood up and was escorted out, he knew what he was doing.

That was going

to be his form of protest.

And he has done, shall we say, stunts like that in the past to which other Democrats go, see, now you're just making Mike Johnson look tough.

Trust me, this is the Will Rogers side of the Democratic Party, where people go, I do not.

belong to an organized party.

I'm a Democrat, which means there's always going to be somebody that's going to want to go, you know, Maverick.

And that's exactly what this guy did.

And, you know, if nothing else, yeah, it helped Mike Johnson look strong as speaker.

But it also frankly showed when you saw that shot looking down the aisle of, you know, of the of the Sergeant of Arms, the couple of guys, I mean,

They looked like thugs, you know, just these goons going down the aisle, getting set to pummel this older gentleman.

So the optics weren't.

fantastic either for a side that gets accused of looking a little authoritarian, shall we say.

So all around everything that we've talked about for the past 11 minutes has been performative.

If we get to the substance of it all, again, we've got a campaign speech and a whole lot of stuff happening in the real world that, thank God, Trig Vilsen is out there saving us from.

who joins us because we are now from Washington's capitol.

Sorry I'm late, boys.

I was on a call about all of this.

I know you were.

I appreciate it.

Hang

on, time

out.

Do we have time to play the cut on the mice yet?

Or are we, we're out of that?

No, not yet, not really.

Okay, go ahead, drink me.

I would just say, you know, I have my seven rules of dealing with autocrats to the point that you guys were talking about.

Rule number four, don't hand the other side battering rams with which to beat you.

The unfortunate thing about him doing what he did is he created, he gave little Johnson an opportunity to have a battering ram with which to beat them.

Yes.

Yeah.

That was true.

That was the problem.

I said to my kids who were watching the speech with me, I'm like, that's not going to go over how he thinks it's going to go over.

Correct.

Yeah, that's 100% other than other than the base who wanted to see that.

And I get it.

I mean, I as much as I can not being a Democrat, I try to have empathy and compassion for for very progressive left Democrats who are very angry and don't feel they have a voice and want their party to speak up and do something.

And I think for those folks, that's fine.

I'm not sure that's the market you wanted to hit last night if you're the Democratic Party.

We'll come

back.

No,

but that's that that that that's the congressman's algorithm from Texas and he's done and he'll do it again, I guarantee.

We'll come back and do a little fact

checking more with Pat and Trigby, Zombers and Todd.

It's the all ball show in Civic Media.

outhouses from one room school houses in Chippewa Valley and putting them on Lake Wissota just to see when it'll fall through.

That's entertainment every morning on Up North News Radio from six until eight, Patrick Krightlow along with us from beautiful Lake Wissota, Trevy Olson, Senior Advisor at Lincoln Project, joining us from our nation's capital.

Do you guys, I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run-

I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a run- I've been a

Am I, I firmly believe in Murphy's law that I never go out on the ice and the one time I would go out there would be the time I go through.

So, right?

So

I, I have to plead innocent to any charges.

I've been to.

Calling outhouses out on the lake.

I've been to Eagle

River where every year I think it's the Lions Club takes, they, they take all the engine and all the oil out, but they take it like the.

Yes.

The, the, the.

the, what am I trying to say,

shell of an old car.

Thank

you.

And they put that on the ice and then they, they raise a lot of money and you, and you pick what day that's going to fall through the ice.

And it's attached to a, a rope or a, or a change.

They pull it out right away, but

yeah.

Do they still do that?

I,

I thought he remembered

that.

I thought even that was being, shall we say poo poo'd by the authorities.

But no, if they, if they're doing it all right and it's not causing any damage, I'm all for it.

Just some fun.

Just

some fun.

Honestly, just letting it in the bottom of the lake isn't the worst thing.

It provides a place.

No, fish crib.

Is it Russell Fish Crib?

Exactly.

There you go.

It's a protective place for little fish.

They become big fish.

Let's do that.

Can we do like Pat pull out of the water?

You know, eventually that is going to have cyber trucks.

All these cyber trucks that can't stand getting hit by a nerf football are eventually all going to become fish cribs.

As long as you take out the battery first.

Yes, please.

I don't want to get into a big long conversation about this.

We've had some texts on here, not liking my take on.

on some of this stuff from the presidential address last night.

One caller, Steve Milwaukee says, why didn't they kick out Marjorie Taylor Greene?

She was even worse for Biden.

And yes, I don't agree with anything that they did to Biden either.

You have the Congressman, Republican guy who yelled out Liar to Barack Obama.

I don't agree with any of it.

I'm an institution guy.

I like decorum.

I like respect.

But the difference is, if you really want to get down to it, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Bobar yelled out something like,

10 seconds, and they stopped and they sat down.

This guy last night continued on, Johnson gave him a warning, he continued on, and you don't respect the rules of the institution and that's it.

So that's the difference.

Anyway, I don't want to get too far into that.

Last night, lots of misinformation, I want to point out a couple of these things because they're all over the internet, all over Fox News, one of the lines was on transgender mice.

Here's the fact, check on that one.

$8 million for making mice transgender.

This is real.

All right, so this was another one of those if Trump said it it has to be true moments But Trump actually misspoke here big time because what Trump should have said is scientists were making mice Transgenic not transgender and as you can see here Transgenic mouse technology has revolutionized virtually all fields of biology and provided new genetic approaches to model many human diseases

in a whole animal context.

So as you can see here in the transgenic mouse model, scientists add human cells to mice so that when they introduce diseases and study them, these mice and their tissue react more like human tissue.

And that's how we end up at a University of Cincinnati website where they're talking about their $8 million study

to continue gene environment interaction research.

So yeah, Dunny, instead of stopping research where you say it was transgender mice, you actually stopped research that might help us figure out how diseases affect the human body.

There you go.

I have

nothing to add to that.

But I think it's good to play this because there's one example that was repeated tens if not dozens of times last night probably.

bordering 100, where you take something, I don't even want to say it's based in fact, it's based in wording, I guess, and then you bastardize the word and make up something that's completely

different.

And along those lines, and now it's time for me to get in trouble with Wisconsin Democrats everywhere.

All right.

There is a lot of good things to say about Bill Proxmire.

A lot.

But I will also contend that the Golden Fleece Award for wasteful spending oftentimes missed the mark.

for that very reason, that there are things that sound silly on their face because you're not the scientist who has figured out that, hey, if you study this thing through mice, this is going to improve human health.

But when you only look at part of the story, of course, it looks like wasteful spending.

It's why the critics of federal spending always have a leg up.

because it's always easy to pick something and go, how ridiculous is this?

Because they're not going to sit through that report you just played about how that's actually valuable use of my tax dollar so that I, or maybe my kids or grandkids, will be healthier than I am someday.

And it had nothing to do to be clear with making mice transgender

in any way, shape, or form.

That's just

icing on the cake.

Right.

Icing on the misinformation cake, basically.

Trick me.

Well, what it's doing is it's playing on the fact that you know people Are addressing their politics through habit through through they're not really consciously thinking about what he's saying They're just like yeah, I can see the government doing that right so it becomes a reinforcing mechanism if you actually think about like his riff on Social Security and You consciously think about it.

You're like okay.

This is ridiculous, but there has to be more of the story

Right?

Like maybe they never got the death certificate or whatever.

But that's not the point of it.

The point of what he's doing with this, which is what he's been doing for a long time, war on Christmas or whatever.

find something that seems so outrageous, say it, even though it's not grounded in truth, and understand that it's just one thing that people, they aren't gonna think about the fact that he said transgender mice, and it's not transgender mice.

What they're gonna think about is, yeah, that's pretty much what the government does, waste my money.

And they may not even be able to cite that specific, so.

And what that does.

It really was a psychological attack.

It takes away then what people could have been talking about over these past few minutes is the AP obtaining an internal memo this morning showing that the Trump administration is planning to cut 80,000 jobs from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Got

it in my

hot little hands.

That that is a hot little hand there.

Look at the steam coming off that thing.

That is the thing that really is going to impact people more than any little bit of rodentia research that we could be talking about.

And that's all intentional, like you said, Trig, if you're from Trump to distract

from real world matters like this.

And here's the thing that people have to keep in mind who are listening for these guys, you know, and this is what they're missing.

One person's veteran husband who has PTSD and needs help is apparently another man's waste fraud and abuse, right?

And that if you're not thinking about it and and part of what Democrats have to do is they need to personalize this far more and be appealing to the fact that most Americans are gonna stand with the vet

Come back for

Trigme.

Thank you Patrick every morning six to eight up

north

news radio have a good week more Trigme social security Whatever else we can talk about and democracy and civic media is ready now

She said her name was Navy.

The only thing that can stop him from the blue line to the net is a Zamboni.

Trigby Olson, senior advisor to Lincoln Project at River Falls Native joins us from his home in suburban Washington, DC.

A great hockey player, a great winter guy.

That was on there.

When you put that on your playlist, there's nothing that can

stop you.

I got in a tilly the other night.

I was going to the net and I got lassoed.

I was not happy.

No, right around the right up high.

Oh, man.

And I got up and I was, I was miffed.

I bet you were.

You didn't want to bite, though.

All right.

That's the problem with men's league hockey.

Everybody's so nice.

He's like, I'm so sorry, dude.

I didn't mean to do that.

And I wanted to knock his head off.

You were you were looking for some aggression.

Right.

Yeah, I was ready to go at that.

He's like, I'm sorry, man.

I didn't mean to do that.

I'm like, it's OK.

That's

fantastic.

We're

friends now.

All right.

So talking just a little bit more about this speech by Trump last night, joint session of Congress.

And look, I know we're getting some stuff on the text line or whatever.

I.

I know and to quite those point, yes, this big story just broke about an hour ago that the Trump administration now saying that they plan to cut 80,000 employees from veterans affairs.

And that's 100 percent important.

We're going to talk about it.

But I also believe that from traveling around the state and I know people get fed up with Facebook.

I am 55 years old.

I'm a Gen Xer.

People my age are all over.

Facebook and this kind of stuff, this disinformation that Trump put out last night, it amplifies on Facebook.

And when you don't correct it, when you don't hit back, that's when you lose.

And that's why it's a whole nother kettle of fish, bottle of wine, cup of coffee.

That's why you can talk ad nauseam and give people the facts on, on shimmel on the supreme, on the supreme court race.

And people look at you, glazed eyes, they look at Facebook and they say, he's the one running against that catch or release Crawford, right?

Because that's the stuff that sticks.

And if you don't correct it, it sticks.

Is that is that I haven't seen the catch of it.

I haven't been on Facebook.

I hate to tell you Oh, I'm trying to take a break.

But no, it's a TV and is it catch it catch and release Crawford.

It's over.

We are

our friend our friend and colleague Jane McNair did a great job on Matt Nair and air she had Judge Crawford on the program like last week, right and and and Jane teed it up and said Judge Crawford There's a lot of different this information out there about you right now.

Isn't there and she whiffed

She didn't really even address this stuff.

And now, and there was a woman, calm down, Todd.

There was a woman from my hometown Richland Center who listens to us on WRCE.

I don't know who the person is.

And she called up and she said, look, I am a liberal voter.

I have a row, row, row t-shirt like ROE.

But she said, when are these guys going to address these catch or release Crawford TV ads?

Because that's all we're seeing out here.

And that is from a rural progressive voter.

And people want to get down and nuanced about Brad Shibble's legal record.

It doesn't work.

Trayvye, you've won a lot more races than I have, am I wrong?

No, you're 100%.

Right, the reality is at a foundational level, which is what I've been, you know, catch and release Crawford.

she's with us, no, they, them or whatever.

It's all the same attack at a basic psychological level.

It's all the same attack and it's about culture.

But what it's really saying is it's really saying she's not one of us, right?

And the only way that you can respond, and I think when we had Judge Crawford on, I tried to get at this, the only way you respond to that,

in a place like Wisconsin, is you look directly at the camera and you say, like Tammy Baldwin did, Eric Havde is lying.

You know who I am.

Right.

Here's the facts.

And she says, because people don't like to be, people in places like Wisconsin don't like to be played for fools.

And, and.

Assuming that there is a far greater story, she's going to have to go on camera, look to the camera, and speak directly to the people of the state of Wisconsin.

It's the point I tried to make

to

her.

And she did, to her credit, she has a response ad like that now out there, although I've always seen it in the wild once.

But then she muddies it at the end by saying something about personal responsibility.

And it just like...

It feels like it's trying, like the first half of it.

is great, where it does the same thing Tammy Baldwin did.

It has her addressing the audience and saying, look, you've seen these ads, they're lies.

But then she doesn't actually give the reason they're lies.

Right.

And so it kind of feels like a diluted message instead of directly addressing the problem.

Anyway, I didn't mean to go off on the whole Supreme Court race, but I guess it gets back to why I wanted to spend some time talking about the lies from Trump last night on the dais or at the dais in the House chamber.

Another one of these is, and I promise I'm sorry, LA Tom, when Mark, hang on, we're going to get to your calls in a second, but I want to make sure we get this out.

I want to play a little bit of this.

This is addressing the Trump lies last night on social security.

Here's a fact check from CNN.

The president talked at length about millions of people being listed as alive in a social security database, even though they're obviously dead.

Listen.

3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139.

3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149.

And money is being paid to many of them because it just keeps getting paid and paid and nobody does and it really hurts.

Social security and hurts our country.

And one person is listed at 360 years of age, more than 100 years older than our country.

I've spoken to conservative experts about this claim, and they've noted, Jake, that the president is leaving out something absolutely critical to understanding this issue.

Here's what he failed to explain.

These numbers are not the numbers of dead people who are actually getting paid social security checks.

Trump was referring to a legitimate problem with some deaths not being marked in the social security database, but that doesn't mean people at listed as being 150, 200, 300 are actually getting money.

And that's because social security already has a system in place to automatically cut off people who are listed as

as being 115 or older.

Now, two years ago, an inspector general looked into this.

She found there were about 19 million people 100 or older who were not marked as deceased.

But critically, she also found that only 44,000 of these people were actually receiving payments.

And one conservative expert told me even those 44K are likely legit payments since at the time there were about 86,000 living Americans age 100 or older.

Now, let's listen to something the president said about the war in

Ukraine.

Nobody's getting checks.

I mean, there are systems in place.

It just has to do some of the some of the I guess the writing, I guess, and the code or whatever this stuff is still listed.

But nobody nobody's getting checks who are are long since dead.

But Trump spins this trig V in a way to gin people up.

And if we don't put out the truth, then it goes untested or unchecked.

Well, yes, there's that.

But what it really is.

I mean, it's a classic play of throw it out there, reinforce people's habit or preconceived narratives.

This is government's out of control.

There's all kinds of ways for an abuse.

This is Joe Biden's fault, Democrats.

They or them or the others don't care about this.

We do, right?

And move on.

It's the war on Christmas, one Christmas tree.

Let's get to calls

quickly, 855-752-4842.

Mark, I'm proud to sack you.

I've been hanging on.

I appreciate your patience, Mark.

What say you?

Yeah, it's just ridiculous you had to confront these lies.

What really got me, you just talked about the 80,000 people that are going to cut out of the VA.

I see all these commercials on television, raising money for, you know, the wounded warriors project and all that.

And I'm thinking to myself, why the heck aren't we supporting these guys through the VA anyway?

Explain this to these services.

which they have earned through their service to the United States, the interest they have sustained, is we the taxpayers should be footing that bill through the VA.

And for them to be cutting 80,000 workers out of this, that's cutting services directly away from our veterans and dam them for doing that kind of thing.

It just disgusts me.

It

disgusts me.

And we got to call it out as disgusting as it is because they are betraying our service people that have given their health to our country.

and we're doing this kind of thing and that's got to be called off for what it is because it's just we see Donald Trump, you know, corporal bone spurs who never served, you know, for anybody but himself, and Elon Musk trotting around out there who has never served anybody but himself, it is just disgusting.

up against the clock.

Thanks, Mark.

I appreciate it.

Want to get to a caller in our text rather in in Chippewa Falls, like it was and talking back again about the Schimmel Crawford Supreme Court races that are going to be a debate.

Couldn't she say something then like Tammy Baldwin did?

Yes.

And you're absolutely right.

Listen, WCFW of Chippewa Falls coming up here in a couple of weeks.

I believe the 12th Wednesday, the 12th of March, there is a Supreme Court debate that will be a big one as right now and is the only debate between the two.

before the April 1st election.

Let's go quickly to, where we going?

L.A.

Tom, L.A.

Tom is back on the line.

L.A., thanks for your patience, we'll see.

Yeah, I would just like to say that first everyone needs to go look at Bernie Sanders response last night to the speech because he really hits back and he tells the truth and he doesn't focus so much on what Trump is doing, but he focuses on what we should be doing as a

almost a shadow government, which I know TrigD and I have talked about before.

It's very, very important that the Democrats show what it is that they are actually wanting to do for the country.

We all know Sump is a liar.

So I don't know why we need to go through point by point, because what he does, if he goes and throws out TrigD, maybe you can answer why this is in the human brain.

But why is it that you throw the most outrageous thing out there that you can possibly think of?

People repeat the most outrageous thing all day long, whether it's a joke or serious.

They say it's a lie, but by then it's already made its way around the whole country.

And, you know, he probably meant to say transgender just so he can get his little word in transgender somewhere in there as well.

So,

Again, I'm repeating that even and it's bad.

So why is it that human beings go and repeat these stupid outrageous things over and over again before repeating things like Medicare for all, taxing the billionaire?

I would just like to know why you think that might be and I also would like for everyone to really check out Bernie's response because

He is nothing more than an FDR Democrat and FDR got elected by more people You know in terms of land-side elections than anybody appreciate the call time I appreciate that Trigley got one minute.

Yeah, I mean, it's a reinforcement mechanism, right?

It really isn't about whatever it is that's the specific it's about the bigger narrative and reinforcing that narrative as an example and part of us as humans every time we

we say that or repeat it, and that's what they know, it's reinforcing in our own mind that narrative, okay, there's all kinds of ways of fraud and abuse.

And the truth of the matter is, it's not like Elon and the Doge people are the first people to take a look at it, and it's not like there probably are things that could be caught.

But the reality is...

There are lots of smart people, Samson Bowles, the inspector generals.

There's all kinds of mechanisms that have been set up to try and weed these things out.

And what you have to ask yourself is, is it, is it those examples?

Are they true or

is

there, is it probably, if something's so foolish that it seems like it's probably not the full story, it's probably not the full

story.

Okay, thanks for taking my call.

I send a tribute on.

I want to say something about the Supreme Court race.

You should never, never lose the shimmel with all its ties to Walker.

I don't know if the same people are running her campaign as Mandela Barnes' campaign.

That was a disaster.

Look what Johnson did to him.

And it's the same playbook over and over and over again.

But the time the election was over with Mandela, you thought it was the guy driving the car in the parade.

Get on board here.

Let's get going with this campaign because you can't lose to that.

Shimmel for goodness sake.

So I want a rant on that one today because I want fair map and thanks

for having me on live.

Trippie is always popular.

The phone lines are lit up.

Come back.

We'll take your calls and order.

They will receive Trippie Olson, senior advisor to the Lincoln Project.

Come on back.

It's the All Balls Show in Civic

Media.

the Taliban showing the civic media ready to work nine before the hour of one o'clock CBS ABC News coming up what's worse in hour two as well.

Drake, what do you do when you stay around and there's like 15 minutes?

I might

I might hang around for

once.

All right.

All right.

Oh, cool.

You know what?

Well, if

somebody could text or call in and tell us what's unique about that song that we just heard Sister Christian by Night Ranger, I would be amazed to see if all right if someone can tell me what's unique about that song.

Call in, call in, or text him.

Is there something unique about it?

Really?

All right, fantastic.

Well, that's great.

We'll look forward to nervous anticipation of that.

Talking kind of simultaneous current events right now, either the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin between Crawford and Schimmel, also some of the Trump's comments last night.

Jim, listening in to brand new texture, we appreciate that.

Jim, from beautiful Campbell's Port.

Campbell's Port had a

great

wrestling team at one time.

Jim in Campbell's Port says, Todd, I agree with you.

is trying to brand Crawford like Trump and Havde.

It plays to the lowest denominator.

She needs to be direct with the voter.

I will always say it needs to be non-political.

Thanks, Jim and Campbell Sport listening on WAUK.

We appreciate you very much for listening and being a new caller here.

Also, Sean in Richland Center on WRCE saying, Trigley told Judge Crawford exactly how the campaign would be run against her.

She glossed over what he said.

And here we are.

Makes me think maybe she isn't qualified.

Well, I don't agree with that.

I think she's very qualified.

No, I don't agree with that either.

She's qualified.

She's very qualified.

Mary in Mount Horn, listening on WMDX says, where has Ben Wickler with the Supreme Court race?

Has he given up since he lost the DNC chair?

No, I don't think so, Mary.

I think maybe he was distracted, but he certainly has not given

up.

I know for a fact, Ben is working his,

again, his

posterior off to get him her through.

Yeah, absolutely.

In the annals of problems, Ben is the...

He's doing great.

I mean, he's actually won races.

He's not

a problem.

He might be the best asset that the Democrats in Wisconsin have.

Yeah, absolutely.

100%.

Let's go quickly to phone lines 855-752-4842.

Let's go to Cam in Appleton.

Cam, thanks for calling.

We'll see you.

Hey guys, thanks for taking my call.

Okay, so, Trevi, I remember when I first tuned in, I guess, to the election night in 2024, I sat and watched for like

pretty close to the majority of it.

I watched your face grow, I don't know if Gaunt is the right word, but you to me from when I hear you have a very analytical brain.

I would say, I'm not trying to psychoanalyze you or anything.

I'm just saying from the glimpse I've seen of you, you have a very analytical brain.

And I remember seeing like a scared, surprised look on your face.

and the numbers weren't matching up.

I really like the Lincoln Project.

I like their ads, but I feel like the resources are better put towards groups like the Election Truth Alliance right now.

I'm not saying take away money from a Lincoln Project.

No, it's not what I'm trying to say.

It's just that groups like Election Truth Alliance need support right now because they have lawyers lined up that need to be paid, but they're ready

to challenge the data that they've collected that need forensic audits for states like Nevada and

Wisconsin.

You know, the numbers added up in this sense.

First of all, let me say this.

I think, and we work with a lot of those groups, like Mark Elias, for example, who's heavily involved in trying to protect elections.

We have to try and protect elections.

I think

that people need to support those organizations.

There's plenty of room for both.

The reason, and I am fairly analytical about this stuff, the reason that election night was troubling to me was I could see the erosion not, Harrison lose Wisconsin because, you know,

the kind of voters that we targeted at Lincoln Project, which would be sort of disaffected Republicans right of center voters who Trump was a bridge too far.

Both she and Baldwin did well enough with them.

What I saw was this erosion amongst younger men, even younger women to a degree.

And it is true that the way that we beat Trump is going to require a broad coalition of voters.

And there were voters within the Democratic base who didn't show up.

And there were voters that the Democratic base, quite frankly, took for granted.

And I actually have some research, Todd, coming out in the next few days about voters who invest in crypto.

From Wisconsin is one of the four states.

And I think you'll find we can share that

via social

media for people like Chad.

And they need to take a look at it because those were voters who Donald Trump.

courted and one

there's a there's a little tease for you trivia is going to stick around for a couple of minutes to hour two and talk about that let's go quickly to Troy in Mount Horrible listening to WMDX Troy if you can get it in in 45 seconds please go ahead

all right real quick first of all sister Christian the guy that wrote it wrote about another bandmate sister and my question was going to be

No, that's true, and I know it is true.

I know

that was

my factoid about it There you go Jack Blades wrote it about the singer the drummer singer sister

The

question we can say

I was gonna say

So the Democrats have just skipped the speech completely.

All right.

15 seconds, Trigby.

No, they needed

to be there.

They need to be there.

I agree.

I absolutely agree.

OK, very good.

Come on back.

Trigby is going to stick around for hour two.

Talk a little bit about some new research in Wisconsin on voters and also he wants to play along with what's worse.

So come on back for that.

Zabers, Trigby, all ball on the all ball show on the Civic Media Ready Network.

Live from the Civic Media World headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, it's the Todd Alba show.

And now, pursuing truth wherever it may lead, here's your host, Todd Alba.

Across Wisconsin on the Civic Media Radio Network.

and streaming worldwide on the Civic Media app.

Good afternoon, everybody.

Tyler Baldwin, engineer and producer, Mr. Aaron Zommers on the board.

It is six past the hour of one o'clock.

Welcome into hour number two of the big program here.

It is Wednesday, March 5th, 2025.

It is a great day to be a Wisconsinite, and it is...

Pump Day!

There you go, the old camel.

got in on the snow.

Snow across much of Wisconsin today.

Some school districts decided to either have classes remotely or call them off altogether because of the mixture of precipitation, rain, ice, snow.

Some places have it all.

Places like Rice Lake, Amory perhaps, as much as eight inches, lesser amounts.

Other places in Wisconsin here in Madison.

downtown at the world headquarters.

We take a look outside on the streets on State Street right now, some snow.

It's still kind of flurries right now, but a little bit of wetness on the pavement.

We've probably got an inch or so here in Madison, but check out 511wi.gov to all the road conditions across the state of Wisconsin.

This is going to continue for some parts of the state, the moisture that is through today.

So just be aware of that.

We need the rain.

for farmers and ag producers, but certainly makes it to slippery out there on the roadways.

Seven minutes past the hour of one o'clock.

Trigley Olson, senior advisor at the Lincoln Project, a River Falls native.

Great hockey player has stuck.

Also a Green Bay Packer owner

has

stuck around for the for the second half, the hour number two here of the program.

And we appreciate that because we're going to play what's worse a little bit later on here this half hour, timely indeed, having to do with roads and people.

They can both be slippery.

What's worse?

We'll talk about that in a little while.

But right now, Terri, you came back and I appreciate this because this is really great.

We talk about the Lincoln Project a lot, but there's an offshoot called the Lincoln Democracy Institute.

And I want you to explain a little bit your involvement with that.

And you have some new research and you're so very kind as to debut this on our show.

And I think it's really important stuff

for us to understand one another and understand how we talk to each other as Wisconsinites.

Yeah, so the Lincoln Democracy Institute is our 501c4, which means it's less political.

They don't do ads.

What we do with Lincoln Democracy Institute is really focus on what are the things that we can do to protect and defend democracy?

And we do a lot of research.

And in the course of doing our research, we came to an understanding that, quite frankly, we need to not just do political research, but we really need to look into what's happening at the individual level and why people are making choices that are antithetical to democracy and maybe antithetical to who they are in their daily lives.

And so what we did is we put together panel research and what panel research is in the states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona across all of them.

We've recruited 4,000 people, 1,000 of them are in Wisconsin.

And we have for the last year been having conversations with them, giving them surveys, having them

having them take different tests so we know what their personality traits are, what their values are, what roles they play, do they have kids, trying to understand and work with these people who have all volunteered to be a part of this and receive some compensation when they're helping us out, really understand who they are.

It's a great project and one of the things that we just released today is a PowerPoint.

And Todd, we can push it out via social media, I think.

People can go and look at it.

It's on the fears.

We asked people about 40 fears.

And I would say, we would say to the respondents, Todd, on a scale of zero, not afraid at all to 100, how afraid are you of an economic depression in your lifetime?

And you would answer.

And then we'd say, Todd, how afraid are you of a nuclear war happening in your lifetime?

How afraid are you of...

traditional American values being replaced or climate change or whatever.

We've gone through and looked at all of those fears and we work with a lot of academics on this and there are five kinds of fears that when you encounter people they're going to be one of five kinds of people in terms of their fears.

They may be institutionally skeptical, i.e.

they're worried about government, you know, wasting their money or

you know, institutions failing, high anxiety generalists who tend to be afraid of lots of different things, political chaos warriors, people who are worried about democracy and it failing, economic security seekers, and the future shocked.

And that's people who are worried about what the future looks like, things like AI.

And so when we think about each of these groups, when you're talking to somebody, if you meet somebody who talks a lot about being afraid of America's future, immigration, traditional values being replaced, you're probably talking to an institutional skeptic.

Now, they are far more likely to be Trump voters, about 70%, right?

The kinds of things that you need to, when you're talking to them,

And the kinds of questions that you need to be asking them need to focus on the fact that you know that they have a high level of distrust and suspicion about others.

So you need to make it about individuals that they know that might be different, right?

And

why they might be different.

If you're talking to a high anxiety generalist, people who are afraid of things like.

affording necessities, economic depression, their kids growing up in a worse America, so they kind of cross over with the other group.

You need to be asking questions about our tariffs, for example, benefiting you.

Oh, you work in agriculture.

Have you seen that USAID being suspended is going to cost Wisconsin farmers upwards of $150 million in cheese that won't be bought?

Right?

You need to focus, if you're talking to a political chaos warrior, people who would be far more likely to vote for Harris, almost 70% of them, about things like corrupt or incompetent government officials or billionaires controlling government, because that's their fears.

Right?

So you're not gonna sit here and talk about this all day.

And this is, when Trigley and I go across the state, oftentimes, I just sit there as fascinated because

because you really do know this stuff, and you dive down deep on it, and you're obsessed in a good way, and I find it so fascinating.

Let's step back for a second for people who aren't as obsessed as you and I are, and kind of put this in more, you know, common English terms.

In all this research trivia, give us, you know, one or two or three things the most that you, the big takeaway is from this, particularly in Wisconsin,

What are people really afraid of?

And how can we talk and have thoughtful discussions with those folks?

So when you, when what are people afraid of is going to, and this is where people need to look at the, at the data, the, that's going to vary depending on which of these five kinds of fears that people hold.

Are there any through lines or

other things that are common or no?

No, they're, they're.

Each of us comes at looking at the world differently, right?

A little bit.

And so the things we fear are going to be shaped by the events that we think that matter and our personal experiences.

So if you're a guy who's our age and you remember the Cold War, you might be more shaped by those experiences than you would be by the pandemic.

If you're a younger person and you never experienced 9-11 or the financial crisis, you're probably going to be more shaped by...

you know, the pandemic, right, and what you went through.

So the first rule of having conversations with people is understanding it's not about you and what you think, it's about how they see the world.

And thinking in your mind when you're having a discussion with them that may not be going well, what is it that they really fear and what are the things that shaped their understanding of the world?

Because and how do I ask questions about that that that will help them see?

The second thing that we we are missing is you don't shame people out of their values.

Right.

So trying to present people with all kinds of facts isn't going to get them to change their opinions.

In fact, it's going to make them more hold on deeper to their.

Well, the government is spending eight million dollars of my money on transgender mice.

The way that you get to that is you ask them questions about things.

None of us want waste, and you may want to admit that.

I don't want waste.

But doesn't that seem a little far-fetched?

You have to make it, it's all about coming back to them.

And the things that we're releasing are about trying to get people to understand how to look at those that they're having conversations with and come at it from their perspective, not from their own perspective.

I've got a column coming out, I think, this week on Civic Media.

It's based on not this great research that you've done, but just on what you and I did the last year and a half, and I start out with the Yogi Berra quote, you know, you can observe a lot just by looking around.

And it's so true.

And that's what you and I found.

And I think you're so right spot on in this.

Now you have the quantitative data to prove it is.

you have to not you but but folks myself included we have to remember to look at things through the eyes of the people that were in front of whether that's at a bars duel or at our kids cross country event or at a band concert or or hiking you know in a state park how do other people see things and then as you said look i'm somebody who left the republican party in 2011 i didn't leave because i was shamed into it i left because i was witness to something that was untrue to the things that i believe

And I said, I can't be a part of that.

Right.

I mean, you recall we were in the bar, I think it's Steven's point at one point.

I was having a conversation with the bartender who was trying to figure out how he wanted to vote.

And if you remember when he was saying what he was thinking, I wasn't I wasn't giving him facts or counter arguments to his decision that he was trying to make between

Harris and Trump and his concerns about prices and what it meant for the bar and all of that.

Remember, I was asking him questions that were about trying to get at what is the underlying concern.

that he's really articulating because remember people are going to talk in sound bites and things that they've heard but what you have to do is you have to understand what is the real fear what is the real what is the real thing that and then be asking them questions well does that really make sense is that how you apply in your own life to you know if it if they're concerned about immigration but you know that they know somebody who's an immigrant who you know.

works for them and they like them.

You have to ask the questions about that.

You need to make it personal.

Because it's very easy for those to make it about others.

You have to make it about specifics.

We're going to put all this courtesy of Trigby and the Lincoln Democracy Institute on our socials so you can connect to it and read it for yourself.

Come on back.

We'll play a little What's Worse with Trigby after this.

It's the All Ball Show on the Civic Media Radio Network.

you

Welcome back to the Tahoe Ball Show on the Civic Media Radio Network.

21 now, past the hour.

1 o'clock on a Wednesday hump day.

Zommer's on the board.

Trig V. Olsen sticking around for a little hour too.

We appreciate that.

Trigme, thank you so much again for sharing with us this latest information, this quantitative data.

Again, 4,000 folks, 1,000 of them in Wisconsin following these folks for a long time and really putting it down there where the chickens could get at it and how we talk to one another or maybe better put, how we listen to one another and learn from one another.

And so all this information from the Lincoln Institute on Democracy will be on our website.

listening on WMDX, a brand new listener, a brand new texture.

We appreciate that, Jordan.

Jordan says, excellent point about needing to meet people where they are, not where we are.

Seven habits author, Stephen Covey, or Covey said it well, quote, first seek to understand, then to be understood, unquote.

Great comment.

Oh, I'm stealing that for some of my presentations.

There you go.

That's really good stuff.

Thank you.

Jordan.

Yeah.

Thank you, Jordan.

That was that was great.

We appreciate your listenership and

I forgot Stephen Covey.

I read that years ago.

Look, that's a fantastic book.

But yeah, I that is that's really good.

Yeah.

That's

great.

He's

right.

First seek where first seek to understand then to be understood.

Really, really great stuff.

All right.

Twenty two been in his past.

Anything else you want to add on that, Trigby?

No, okay, that's

all I got for now.

Here we go at 22 past hour one o'clock time once again to play what's worse.

Let's go

Time once again

to play what's worse no prize money involved nothing to give away But your chance to have your voice heard on 11 stations across the news talk sports network

all around Wisconsin, largest independently private owned radio network in Wisconsin, no better place to get your message out than right here on the Civic Media Radio Network.

All right, Trigby, here we go.

This is good, timely, timely indeed, as Mike Lucas likes to say, because we do have several slippery roads.

In Wisconsin right now, as this storm system is working its way across the state and out, be careful out there on the roads.

So we have lots of slippery roads.

Trigvie and I, both been in politics quite a while.

Trigvie has probably known more people like this than I have.

But here's the question.

What's worse, slippery roads or slippery people?

Slippery roads or slippery people 8 5 5 7 5 2 4 8 4 2 8 5 5 7 5 2 4 8 4 2 You can also text us on the civic media app download it at your Apple or Android device simply go to the search bar type in civic CIVIC media It'll pop up click on it takes less than a minute.

It's free.

It's what gale king at CBS calls a deal

Make sure you have the Civic Media app because I have inside knowledge that coming soon, another text to win contest is on its way.

And it's going to be spectacular.

It is.

We know what the prizes are, but we can't tell you

yet.

I cannot tell you, but I'm very, very excited about it.

So make sure you download the Civic Media app.

All right, what's worse, slippery roads or slippery people.

855-752-4842.

Let's go to the North Woods.

Ollie, listening up there in the North Woods.

Ollie, slippery roads, slippery people, what's worse?

Well, hands down, it's got to be slippery people because the ice on the slippery roads will always melt and the fallout from slippery people can last for years.

That is a great point.

I absolutely love that.

Have you known some slippery people up there in the Northwoods?

Well, I can mention one or two right now.

Not by name.

One starts with a T and one starts with an

E. We don't want to get sued, but I appreciate that.

All right.

All right.

Thank you very much.

I like that, Holly.

I'm guessing Trump and Alon, but maybe not.

Perhaps.

All right.

Very good.

Let's see.

A text or Dave in New Berlin.

Dave says slippery roads, Todd.

Slippery people are easier to see.

All right.

Well, there you go.

That can be true.

That can be very true.

What's worse, slippery roads or slippery people?

855-752-4842.

855-752-4842.

two, you could also text us on the civic media app.

Trigvy.

Any thoughts?

Slippery roads or slippery people?

I always have four wheel drive cars, Todd, even though I live where they don't usually have slippery roads.

So slippery people.

Slippery.

I

didn't like it when she was saying one begins with a T that could be Trigvy or Todd.

That made me a little nervous at first.

I think I think

she was talking about some, some folks out in DC, not you, not you amongst them.

Well, yeah, let's hope the Chuckster and Racine checking in always appreciate your listenership.

Chuckster talking heads have a great song called slippery people.

So I'll go with the slippery people or words.

Very good.

That's fantastic.

Talking heads have more.

That is a good song.

Talking heads have lots of good songs.

All right.

Well, there you go.

There you go.

Um, Zombers, any thoughts?

Slippery roads, slippery people.

I think I got to agree with Ali that, you know, slippery road and trippy, where if you have a vehicle that's equipped for slippery roads and you understand how to deal with them, that's a lot easier to deal with than slippery people.

And also, I agree, the ramifications, like Ali said, the ramifications, I mean, you get through a slippery road, put some salt on it, it's over, it's done.

Now, people can die from that, but people can also die from the impact of slippery people.

I mean, and I hesitate to bring this up with 90 seconds left, but one of our favorite pinatas on this show, Trigby and I, our old buddy, former Governor Scott Walker.

Now, there was a guy that was slippery because he'd go out and he'd talk about being the son of a Baptist preacher and all that.

And then you'd get behind closed doors with he and Mike Kipp, so they turned into just very slippery people.

They wanted something different.

And I've been in a few of those meetings on Trigby, very slippery.

Yeah, that slippery is a good word for it.

Because because it's a slippery slope because they start one way and then behind you get a behind closed doors.

Very, very different people.

I agree with that.

I would actually say that

would be a good example.

Like, for instance, Glenn Grossman.

I don't I wouldn't consider him slippery because he's he shows you the roads, pavement all the time, whether it's on, you know, behind the closed door or not.

Not so slippery.

But it's the people that appear one way and then actually do stuff the different way behind closed doors.

I consider that.

Yeah, I agree.

That is the definition of slippery.

So I think I think the big and having to deal with people who are slippery is a slippery slope.

God.

It is so there you go.

There's a consensus of the day Scott Walker is a slippery person and that is worse than a slippery road Trigby always appreciate you coming on my friend.

Have a great week.

Thanks.

Don't slip anywhere.

It was good being on.

I will try not to.

We appreciate

you guys.

See you later.

Trigby Olson, Senior Advisor

at Lincoln Project.

Thank you.

Come on back for fun in the all ball show on the Civic Media Ready Network.

you

show on the Civic Media Ready Network, 34 minutes past the hour of one o'clock on Wednesday, March 5th, 2025, Zommerers dialing up some slippery people, some slippery roads.

As the Chuckster recommended, talking heads, slippery people.

Nicely done, Chuckster.

Nicely done, Zommerers.

Appreciate it.

Welcome back, everybody.

Appreciate Trinvie Olson sticking around for an extra half an hour here.

really interesting stuff from that Lincoln Democracy Institute report.

We will share that publicly so everybody can take a look at that.

And again, I think the big takeaway for me on this, and it's great to have quantified data to support what Trivia and I just kind of found out in the wild.

And it wasn't just me, by the way.

It wasn't just me.

We traveled around our friend, Jane Mattener, a Mattener on Air for a week, Richland Center, and Amory, and O'Claire.

Chippewa Valley area.

We went with our friend Earl Ingram up to Baraboo in Southwest Wisconsin at Devils Lake.

And then we traveled with Trigvie multiple occasions.

Our friend and colleague, Pat Critello, did a couple of shows with him at the Northern Wisconsin State Fair and the Pablo Center.

And I think what Trigvie has found in this quantified data of 1,000 people in Wisconsin and 4,000 people in these key states is

to really think about the people that we talk to every day, our friends, our neighbors, our loved ones, our coworkers.

Pause and reflect a minute, as I say so often to quote my former algebra teacher, Andy Spees.

Pause, reflect, and think, how does that person see the world?

How do they view it?

And then number two,

That we simply can't shame someone into changing their beliefs or other thinking these things make sense

Like you might hear this and go well duh But then but think back on your life and think back on how many times you're talking with somebody whether you agree with them or not And you're not really speaking the same language Like you you aren't actually connecting like it's easy to think.

Oh, well, of course, you're gonna think about their opinion.

It's

not as easy to put it into practice.

So these kind of reminders are very important, I think.

And I think that was one of the big takeaways for me.

It doesn't matter whether, you know, when we were down, well, Crite Low came with us down to South Milwaukee last year.

We did a great show for the, in the South Milwaukee high school down there, the Milwaukee public school system, which so often gets maligned.

But when you actually go there,

and take some time to look at the facilities, talk to the faculty, the educators, talk to the students, the parents.

They're doing some wonderful, wonderful things there in South Milwaukee.

And then you go up to, we were in Superior.

We were up there when Joe Biden, President Joe Biden, former president, was there to announce this funding to replace the Blatnik Bridge or AMRE or Hayward for the Birkenbeiner.

The similarities are that all these folks it doesn't matter which end of the state urban rural We're all tremendously proud of our communities our families and our friends Those are some similarities, but we also have to recognize that all those places We grow up slightly differently we might have slightly different religious values and how we see the world is different So we're talking to each other

rather than saying, well, you don't know anything.

Stop for a second and think, what's the viewpoint?

Where does that other person come from?

And as Trigley pointed out, how can we ask questions to one another to get us to think and find that common ground?

855-752-4842, 855-752-4842.

Back to Los Angeles, California.

L.A.

Tom, back of the line.

L.A., what do you got?

I think people have to understand the power of media because there's some people that actually will believe the propaganda and they'll actually think that someone like Sean Hannity is their is their personal friend or even a Rush Limbaugh was their personal friend and for some reason they hold more credence and they hold more

believability than maybe even the family member or a friend that they respect.

And I don't know why that is.

I don't know if it's because they spend so much more time with them, you know, on a regular basis or what, but one thing I find about conservative media is that one, they don't apologize when they do tell a lie or a mistake.

Do they tell lies?

uh quite often and any type of alternative media actually seems to come up with um you know like we'll actually say yeah I made a mistake on that or hey you know they'll actually admit that there was an error and when you got one side of the media landscape that's constantly saying lies and doesn't correct them then for some reason

someone hearing the alternative media saying oh yeah I made a mistake on that or oh yeah Democrats are not you know they screwed up in this way.

It's all going one way in terms of conservatives just sticking to the point that yeah theirs is great or that theirs is right and for some reason I think that's what maybe sways some people that are in the middle or some really really thoughtful good people.

to actually go along with the lies that the conservatives tell them, rather than looking at it like we're talking about, like a sensible person and saying, okay, what are my fears?

Well, one, I agree with you in terms of the fears.

My problem is that there are so many lies that happen through the media reinforced by commercials that they'll see on TV, which of course all goes back to money and

politics.