Washington Wednesday: Top political stories of 2022

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s the 21st of December, 2022. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Just a week and a half, that’s all that’s left of our December Grassroots Giving Drive. We’re more than three-quarters of the way there—closing in, getting so close—but if you haven’t taken the time to give yet, I hope you’ll do it today.

EICHER: WNG.org/donate is the place to go. Before you do, take a moment and think about what it means to have this program available to you each weekday. Then put a dollar value on that. That’s what we’re doing in this December Grassroots Giving Drive.

You rely on us, and we rely on you. That’s how it works.

REICHARD: Alright. It’s time now for Washington Wednesday. Today, a look back at some of the top political stories of the year from the “Twitter files” to the midterm elections and more.

But we’ll start with the most recent news.

The Jan. 6th House committee this week recommended to the Justice Department criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.

EICHER: But in truth, the Justice Department doesn’t need any help from Congress. It conducts its own investigations. And as committee chairman Bennie Thompson admitted, there isn’t really much lawmakers can do here.

So this really has been a trial in the court of public opinion, with televised proceedings, some of them strategically scheduled during primetime viewing hours.

Here to talk about that and much more is Matt Klink. He is a political strategist and president of Klink Campaigns.

REICHARD: Matt, good morning!

MATT KLINK, GUEST: Hi Mary. Good morning.

REICHARD: Well, Donald Trump just responded to the Jan. 6th committee’s criminal referral and said he thinks this will help him for 2024, that his supporters will rally around him.

Some have suggested that Democrats are okay with that if Trump is right because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that Trump would be the easiest Republican to beat in 2024. What are your thoughts on the effect of the committee’s announcement and what is the Democrats’ political strategy in all of this?

KLINK: Chairman Thompson’s comments are spot on. This whole charade that the Democratic House with two Republicans to give it the patina of bipartisanship of the January 6 committee has been a singular assault on Donald Trump and those surrounding him on January 6. It was a foregone conclusion that they were going to recommend some type of criminal charges against him. There was no pretense of balance to it. That being said, look, the people that support Donald Trump will continue to rally to his side, although I will say after 2022, that number appears to be smaller, and those that don't like Donald Trump, Republicans, Democrats, and particularly independents alike, they're going to continue to use this as another reason to vote against him. Donald Trump is unquestionably the most polarizing figure in American politics.

REICHARD: Another major political event was Donald Trump’s presidential campaign announcement right after the midterms. Why do you think he chose to announce so early and was that a smart move in your view?

KLINK: I don't think it was a smart move. I mean, what his early declaration does is it scares people out of the race. And the only conceivable way that Donald Trump could get the Republican nomination for president is by getting as many people to enter the presidential contest as possible, because Donald Trump knows that he brings a set group of people to the table. And by entering early, he scares off some of those people and he makes a smaller field. And head-to-head or Donald Trump running against two or three other Republicans, it creates some real problems for Donald Trump. Again, I have questioned his political decision making for quite some time. And he has been right sometimes and he has been catastrophically wrong others. I just don't see the logic behind him declaring early other than the fact that he missed being in the news and wanted to get some press coverage about himself after the disaster that was the 2022 elections.

REICHARD: Well, we’re not trying to make the whole conversation about Trump. But in truth, Democrats really tried to make the midterm elections about two things: Donald Trump and abortion.

Several Trump-endorsed candidates lost, particularly in big Senate races. Do you think that the midterm outcome damaged Trump’s standing within the party?

KLINK: The midterms unquestionably damaged Donald Trump. I mean, if you look at exit polling from across the United States, people voted in the midterms and they voted to cast the vote in opposition to Donald Trump. Meaning that they looked at Trump-endorsed candidates, particularly in three states that were infinitely winnable for Republicans—Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona—and Republicans lost all three. And it was directly related to poor candidate quality. And I know the Trump supporters said oh, he won more seats than he lost. Trump won seats where Republicans were going to win whether or not Trump got involved. The places where Trump was vocal and played a significant role in selecting the candidate, we lost. And that bodes very, very poorly for Donald Trump. I mean, look, the reality is, Donald Trump got more Republican votes than any Republican presidential candidate in history. But he also helped the Democratic candidate get more votes ever in history. And again, he's so polarizing that people will vote against the Republicans simply because they think that Donald Trump is close to them. And that is not a recipe for success for a political party.

REICHARD: But in practicalities of life, quality of life- under Trump, the economy was humming along, food prices were good, gas prices were good. It seems we allow media narratives that we know are biased, case in point the Twitter files. What happened?

KLINK: You’re right. I mean, look, you have history, the Republicans had history working on their side, that the party in power, particularly with an unpopular president, they tend to lose seats in the midterm elections. The Republican gains in the House were proportionately smaller than normal and the Senate, they actually lost ground, they lost a seat. And from the research that I've done, just from obviously reading, but then talking to friends that were actively involved in races across the United States, that people, they didn't particularly care for Joe Biden's "solution" or lack thereof. In fact, they're deeply troubled by it. But they were also worried and they just couldn't pull the lever or fill in the bubble for some Republican candidates that were considered outside of the mainstream. And, look, candidate quality is hugely important. And Republicans will not vote just because someone has an R behind their name. And they have now demonstrated that. And they prove that again in 2022. I mean, we should have picked up a seat in Arizona. We should have picked up a seat in Georgia. And we should have picked up a seat in Pennsylvania. And we were 0-for-three in those seats, largely because we had bad candidates. And that goes directly into how our candidates are selected. In this case, that rests with Donald Trump. So, look, the media narrative is always powerful. But there's always been a counter-narrative that Republican and advertising executives and gurus have been able to get across to the electorate. The voters just couldn't get past the fact that these candidates were not of the quality that one would expect.

REICHARD: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. His profile had been growing for some time, but it really took off after the elections. The “red wave” did in fact happen, but just in Florida.

Recent polls now suggest that he might be the new frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. What does Matt Klink think?

KLINK: Ron DeSantis's stock rose considerably after 2022. I mean, even prior to election day, Governor DeSantis, and to a lesser extent Governor Abbott in Texas, they lead the counter programming to the extreme left on any number of issues, whether it's the response to COVID, wokeness in the public school systems, immigration, et cetera. And look, Ron DeSantis comes out of this stronger. He comes out with a forceful message. I know that he's feared by Democrats across the board because he doesn't carry the baggage that Donald Trump has. He's much quicker on his feet. And he obviously won in an very, very large, large state that was a swing state. Although Florida at this point, I think you can pretty safely say that it's in the red column. But no, Ron DeSantis looks very, very strong heading into 2024. But there's a lot of time between now and the actual official campaigning, so he needs to govern his state and continue to differentiate himself from states like California and New York and Washington state and Oregon and Massachusetts.

REICHARD: Another big political story this year was Elon Musk’s release of the so-called “Twitter files.” They revealed political bias within big tech and that shadow banning of conservatives on Twitter really was real. Matt, your reaction to those revelations?

KLINK: It was highly, highly disturbing and a number of us had suspected that the government was putting its finger on the scale. And the reality I think is even worse than what we suspected. There's direct links from the FBI to Twitter. And mind you, that's only Twitter we haven't even gotten to look at Meta, formerly known as Facebook, or Google. But you know, they had millions of dollars devoted to pulling down content that they found just tasteful. I mean, look, the classic example of the New York Post, the nation's oldest newspaper, getting pulled down for weeks for trying to publicize an article about Hunter Biden's laptop that 50 intelligence representative said was classic Russian disinformation, that now they've also come out, you know, the newspapers have all come out to say, well, the stories were actually accurate. I mean, it's undoubted that they influenced the 2020 election. And I do think that, look, the fact of one party rule in Washington DC means that the Democrats have been focused on one thing and one thing only, and that's January 6 and Donald Trump. I think that you're going to see the House be much more aggressive, and really needling down on the COVID-19 issue, as well as some of this big tech stuff. Because they're just too close. The former chief legal counsel for the FBI is the same person that then is at Twitter, and his screening emails that are being made public, even with Elon Musk in control until he's finally fired. I mean, that's how third world puppet dictatorships operate. It's not how the greatest democracy in the world is supposed to work. So we clearly need a housecleaning at FBI. And no government entity should be able to put its finger on the scale and influence a presidential election, much less news coverage.

REICHARD: Lastly, let’s talk about the border. This is a humanitarian crisis and a huge political fight, too. We saw Republican governors take a new approach this year, busing or flying a relatively small number of migrants from the border to sanctuary cities. What do you think of the Republican messaging on this issue?

KLINK: The Republican messaging on this issue needs to get more crisp. It's, you know, I think that they've done what they can to highlight the fact that it is a massive problem. I mean, humanitarian, obviously, but national security. I mean, look, the Democrat plan is working. What they want to do is flood as many people into this country as possible. And then the solution will be akin to what happened in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act. They'll say, oh, we need to grant people amnesty, and it will stop people from coming across in the future. Nothing could be further from the truth. They've been saying we have 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country for the last 20 years. It's probably closer to 25 or 30 million people. And okay, that's only 10% of the US population. But we've let massive amounts of fentanyl come across. We've let convicted terrorists come across or named terrorists, convicted sex offenders, human trafficking is skyrocketing. So Republicans and border states have ramped up this rhetoric. We need the leadership to make this more of an issue and get it off of one news station and onto other more mainstream news stations. Amnesty should never be discussed until the border is secure. And I think that Republicans need to drive that point home. Because if we're a welfare state with open borders like California is, where we're giving education benefits and health benefits and housing benefits. Guess what? These people are desperate. They want what we have. And as much as we would like to help everybody, we can't be the we cannot be the only country doing our part. We do more than enough. We're already the most generous. And we have to do for the American citizen first before we do for people who want to enter this country illegally. And it should never be acceptable for people to come to this country illegally. There are legal ways of doing it. Stand in line, wait your time unless you're a refugee, but again, the people that are flocking at our border right now, they do not meet the criteria of refugees, and the Republican messaging needs to get much much more aggressive on this.

REICHARD: Matt Klink with Klink Campaigns has been our guest. Matt, thanks so much!

KLINK: Thank you very much.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s the 21st of December, 2022. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Just a week and a half, that’s all that’s left of our December Grassroots Giving Drive. We’re more than three-quarters of the way there—closing in, getting so close—but if you haven’t taken the time to give yet, I hope you’ll do it today.

EICHER: WNG.org/donate is the place to go. Before you do, take a moment and think about what it means to have this program available to you each weekday. Then put a dollar value on that. That’s what we’re doing in this December Grassroots Giving Drive.

You rely on us, and we rely on you. That’s how it works.

REICHARD: Alright. It’s time now for Washington Wednesday. Today, a look back at some of the top political stories of the year from the “Twitter files” to the midterm elections and more.

But we’ll start with the most recent news.

The Jan. 6th House committee this week recommended to the Justice Department criminal charges against former President Donald Trump.

EICHER: But in truth, the Justice Department doesn’t need any help from Congress. It conducts its own investigations. And as committee chairman Bennie Thompson admitted, there isn’t really much lawmakers can do here.

So this really has been a trial in the court of public opinion, with televised proceedings, some of them strategically scheduled during primetime viewing hours.

Here to talk about that and much more is Matt Klink. He is a political strategist and president of Klink Campaigns.

REICHARD: Matt, good morning!

MATT KLINK, GUEST: Hi Mary. Good morning.

REICHARD: Well, Donald Trump just responded to the Jan. 6th committee’s criminal referral and said he thinks this will help him for 2024, that his supporters will rally around him.

Some have suggested that Democrats are okay with that if Trump is right because they believe, rightly or wrongly, that Trump would be the easiest Republican to beat in 2024. What are your thoughts on the effect of the committee’s announcement and what is the Democrats’ political strategy in all of this?

KLINK: Chairman Thompson’s comments are spot on. This whole charade that the Democratic House with two Republicans to give it the patina of bipartisanship of the January 6 committee has been a singular assault on Donald Trump and those surrounding him on January 6. It was a foregone conclusion that they were going to recommend some type of criminal charges against him. There was no pretense of balance to it. That being said, look, the people that support Donald Trump will continue to rally to his side, although I will say after 2022, that number appears to be smaller, and those that don't like Donald Trump, Republicans, Democrats, and particularly independents alike, they're going to continue to use this as another reason to vote against him. Donald Trump is unquestionably the most polarizing figure in American politics.

REICHARD: Another major political event was Donald Trump’s presidential campaign announcement right after the midterms. Why do you think he chose to announce so early and was that a smart move in your view?

KLINK: I don't think it was a smart move. I mean, what his early declaration does is it scares people out of the race. And the only conceivable way that Donald Trump could get the Republican nomination for president is by getting as many people to enter the presidential contest as possible, because Donald Trump knows that he brings a set group of people to the table. And by entering early, he scares off some of those people and he makes a smaller field. And head-to-head or Donald Trump running against two or three other Republicans, it creates some real problems for Donald Trump. Again, I have questioned his political decision making for quite some time. And he has been right sometimes and he has been catastrophically wrong others. I just don't see the logic behind him declaring early other than the fact that he missed being in the news and wanted to get some press coverage about himself after the disaster that was the 2022 elections.

REICHARD: Well, we’re not trying to make the whole conversation about Trump. But in truth, Democrats really tried to make the midterm elections about two things: Donald Trump and abortion.

Several Trump-endorsed candidates lost, particularly in big Senate races. Do you think that the midterm outcome damaged Trump’s standing within the party?

KLINK: The midterms unquestionably damaged Donald Trump. I mean, if you look at exit polling from across the United States, people voted in the midterms and they voted to cast the vote in opposition to Donald Trump. Meaning that they looked at Trump-endorsed candidates, particularly in three states that were infinitely winnable for Republicans—Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Arizona—and Republicans lost all three. And it was directly related to poor candidate quality. And I know the Trump supporters said oh, he won more seats than he lost. Trump won seats where Republicans were going to win whether or not Trump got involved. The places where Trump was vocal and played a significant role in selecting the candidate, we lost. And that bodes very, very poorly for Donald Trump. I mean, look, the reality is, Donald Trump got more Republican votes than any Republican presidential candidate in history. But he also helped the Democratic candidate get more votes ever in history. And again, he's so polarizing that people will vote against the Republicans simply because they think that Donald Trump is close to them. And that is not a recipe for success for a political party.

REICHARD: But in practicalities of life, quality of life- under Trump, the economy was humming along, food prices were good, gas prices were good. It seems we allow media narratives that we know are biased, case in point the Twitter files. What happened?

KLINK: You’re right. I mean, look, you have history, the Republicans had history working on their side, that the party in power, particularly with an unpopular president, they tend to lose seats in the midterm elections. The Republican gains in the House were proportionately smaller than normal and the Senate, they actually lost ground, they lost a seat. And from the research that I've done, just from obviously reading, but then talking to friends that were actively involved in races across the United States, that people, they didn't particularly care for Joe Biden's "solution" or lack thereof. In fact, they're deeply troubled by it. But they were also worried and they just couldn't pull the lever or fill in the bubble for some Republican candidates that were considered outside of the mainstream. And, look, candidate quality is hugely important. And Republicans will not vote just because someone has an R behind their name. And they have now demonstrated that. And they prove that again in 2022. I mean, we should have picked up a seat in Arizona. We should have picked up a seat in Georgia. And we should have picked up a seat in Pennsylvania. And we were 0-for-three in those seats, largely because we had bad candidates. And that goes directly into how our candidates are selected. In this case, that rests with Donald Trump. So, look, the media narrative is always powerful. But there's always been a counter-narrative that Republican and advertising executives and gurus have been able to get across to the electorate. The voters just couldn't get past the fact that these candidates were not of the quality that one would expect.

REICHARD: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. His profile had been growing for some time, but it really took off after the elections. The “red wave” did in fact happen, but just in Florida.

Recent polls now suggest that he might be the new frontrunner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. What does Matt Klink think?

KLINK: Ron DeSantis's stock rose considerably after 2022. I mean, even prior to election day, Governor DeSantis, and to a lesser extent Governor Abbott in Texas, they lead the counter programming to the extreme left on any number of issues, whether it's the response to COVID, wokeness in the public school systems, immigration, et cetera. And look, Ron DeSantis comes out of this stronger. He comes out with a forceful message. I know that he's feared by Democrats across the board because he doesn't carry the baggage that Donald Trump has. He's much quicker on his feet. And he obviously won in an very, very large, large state that was a swing state. Although Florida at this point, I think you can pretty safely say that it's in the red column. But no, Ron DeSantis looks very, very strong heading into 2024. But there's a lot of time between now and the actual official campaigning, so he needs to govern his state and continue to differentiate himself from states like California and New York and Washington state and Oregon and Massachusetts.

REICHARD: Another big political story this year was Elon Musk’s release of the so-called “Twitter files.” They revealed political bias within big tech and that shadow banning of conservatives on Twitter really was real. Matt, your reaction to those revelations?

KLINK: It was highly, highly disturbing and a number of us had suspected that the government was putting its finger on the scale. And the reality I think is even worse than what we suspected. There's direct links from the FBI to Twitter. And mind you, that's only Twitter we haven't even gotten to look at Meta, formerly known as Facebook, or Google. But you know, they had millions of dollars devoted to pulling down content that they found just tasteful. I mean, look, the classic example of the New York Post, the nation's oldest newspaper, getting pulled down for weeks for trying to publicize an article about Hunter Biden's laptop that 50 intelligence representative said was classic Russian disinformation, that now they've also come out, you know, the newspapers have all come out to say, well, the stories were actually accurate. I mean, it's undoubted that they influenced the 2020 election. And I do think that, look, the fact of one party rule in Washington DC means that the Democrats have been focused on one thing and one thing only, and that's January 6 and Donald Trump. I think that you're going to see the House be much more aggressive, and really needling down on the COVID-19 issue, as well as some of this big tech stuff. Because they're just too close. The former chief legal counsel for the FBI is the same person that then is at Twitter, and his screening emails that are being made public, even with Elon Musk in control until he's finally fired. I mean, that's how third world puppet dictatorships operate. It's not how the greatest democracy in the world is supposed to work. So we clearly need a housecleaning at FBI. And no government entity should be able to put its finger on the scale and influence a presidential election, much less news coverage.

REICHARD: Lastly, let’s talk about the border. This is a humanitarian crisis and a huge political fight, too. We saw Republican governors take a new approach this year, busing or flying a relatively small number of migrants from the border to sanctuary cities. What do you think of the Republican messaging on this issue?

KLINK: The Republican messaging on this issue needs to get more crisp. It's, you know, I think that they've done what they can to highlight the fact that it is a massive problem. I mean, humanitarian, obviously, but national security. I mean, look, the Democrat plan is working. What they want to do is flood as many people into this country as possible. And then the solution will be akin to what happened in 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act. They'll say, oh, we need to grant people amnesty, and it will stop people from coming across in the future. Nothing could be further from the truth. They've been saying we have 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country for the last 20 years. It's probably closer to 25 or 30 million people. And okay, that's only 10% of the US population. But we've let massive amounts of fentanyl come across. We've let convicted terrorists come across or named terrorists, convicted sex offenders, human trafficking is skyrocketing. So Republicans and border states have ramped up this rhetoric. We need the leadership to make this more of an issue and get it off of one news station and onto other more mainstream news stations. Amnesty should never be discussed until the border is secure. And I think that Republicans need to drive that point home. Because if we're a welfare state with open borders like California is, where we're giving education benefits and health benefits and housing benefits. Guess what? These people are desperate. They want what we have. And as much as we would like to help everybody, we can't be the we cannot be the only country doing our part. We do more than enough. We're already the most generous. And we have to do for the American citizen first before we do for people who want to enter this country illegally. And it should never be acceptable for people to come to this country illegally. There are legal ways of doing it. Stand in line, wait your time unless you're a refugee, but again, the people that are flocking at our border right now, they do not meet the criteria of refugees, and the Republican messaging needs to get much much more aggressive on this.

REICHARD: Matt Klink with Klink Campaigns has been our guest. Matt, thanks so much!

KLINK: Thank you very much.

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