MON MAR 30 8 AM CPAC straw polls and weekend political news

The internet is an amazing, but risky place.

Hey, Mark Davis for Incogni, I-N-C-O-G-N-I-N-Cogni.com.

Look it out for your privacy, reducing spam calls,

junk email, giving you peace of mind.

It's easy, sign up at incogni.com.

They search the web to find you in databases

and people search sites.

Then they go to bat for you to remove

your personal information.

You can track progress through your dashboard.

They'll give you personal privacy reports.

So much of our lives are online with our information

just out there.

Take control.

It's too easy for the world to get

your personal information.

Not just addresses and phone numbers,

but purchase histories, even your political beliefs,

to target you for nuisance ads and even cybercrime.

With the custom removal feature,

your dedicated privacy expert can take down

almost everything about you online.

So be smart in your online world.

Get protected with Incogni, I-N-C-O-G-N-I-N-Cogni.

60% discount on a family plan with a promo code, Mark Davis.

So get protected today.

Incogni, I-N-C-O-G-N-I-N-Cogni.com.

Every morning is a new opportunity

to take in the news of the day and the challenges of life.

Try to make sense of it all.

Right now, we've got a show that tackles the topics

and asks what you think.

So get ready to start your day with a bold look

at history as it happens.

Let's learn to live and sometimes laugh together.

It's the Mark Davis show.

1-660-A-R.

Be happy.

Welcome.

Welcome.

It is Monday, the 30th day of March, 2026.

Glad you are here.

Glad I am here.

And I'll be here with five-hour energy

for the next two days, filling in first a gall doing.

And it's funny.

I know it's a weird air quotes filling in first a gall

because all the show elements are still there.

We're going to have X number of weeks.

I don't know how many that is of interim period

until they tap somebody, some lucky soul,

to be Chris Stigall's successors

so that that person can then precede me

and then we start our show normally at seven o'clock.

For the next couple of mornings,

our local window is eight to 10

because from five to eight will be me filling in

for Stigall sort of kind of because Chris is headed off

to go run for Congress.

So it'll be Jennifer Horn and me and Bob France

and Cleveland, the only thing that is riveted in place

is I think everybody else's days may vary

but Tuesday, Wednesday is what I'm doing.

And again, you will get an M&M experience, Mike.

We'll join us on the national platform

as I'm filling in for the departing Chris Stigall

each day, Tuesday and Wednesdays

for the next few weeks there, five to eight.

Okay, there you go.

Just want to make sure you got that drilled into your head.

So here we are and here are the things

that are on our minds topically

and you may add to the mix at 866, 660, 5759.

I asked you, there are a couple of things I'm seeing

in the online world and if there's anything

that is so, so true, you have to differentiate

between the online world and the real world.

The online world is filled with hyper focus.

It is filled with people drilling down

with slavish devotion to their pet issues

which by the way is lovely

and it gives you an opportunity to really take

some deep dives with people

or follow them down the rabbit holes of their choice

as long as you realize that Twitter ain't life

and that Instagram ain't life.

It's a segment of it, a sliver of it,

a representation of a corner of it, no doubt.

But real people are out there living lives,

doing things, having impact, thinking things,

saying things and not all of them

have social media accounts.

So when you bring that to what the opinion is

about the ongoing war operation with Iran,

if you wanna call it that, seems like a war to me.

But you remember the, I'd say the reason I'm okay

calling it a war.

Remember the six day war?

Yeah, that was Israel making sure their borders

were where they needed to be in 1967.

It took six days, was it a war?

Yes it was, is this a war?

Yes it is.

I understand we are the words mean things.

Talk show that if somebody wants to distance from that,

even if the Trump administration wants to kind of

call it an operation, call it a, just whatever they want

to call it a limited action, all of which is true.

Because I guess when you do drop the double you word,

you think about the last one that filled our headlines

for years and years and years.

And it's without a word of disfavor

to the magnificent men and women who fought in it,

our entire post 911 war on terror.

God bless those folks.

But that one has not stood the test of time very well.

Was it because it was ill-conceived?

Was it because we just didn't know

what we were trying to do?

Was it because we went in thinking dog on it will show them,

but then nobody showed us what the path to success was.

Any one of a number of things is possible.

But the fact of the matter is as the odds,

you know became 2010 and as we, you know,

then got into the Trump era, there he was.

Their president, well wasn't president.

Yeah, their Donald Trump was in 2011.

He was on this show in 2011.

It was blowing through town, it was on the phone.

I don't know if he had appearances.

He, Lord knows the man has appeared everywhere in every realm.

Sometimes it's the latest book he's written.

Sometimes it was the plug, the apprentice.

I don't even remember what the circumstance was.

It was right before I took the move from BAP

to come over here to Salem land at 660 AM.

The answer that was June of 2012.

This was late 2011.

And we were talking about stuff.

And whenever you talked to Donald Trump in,

well, let's say that year of 2011,

as well as some prior years, are you enjoying it?

You'll see a clip of him on Oprah in like 1999,

saying things that are just so totally sensible.

Oprah says, are you going to run for president someday?

And he says, well, I don't think so.

But if I did, I'd win.

I'd win.

It was always a common man sensibility

that came out of this lofty billionaire.

And on this occasion, when we were talking about things,

he was just laying down logic after logic after logic.

America's getting rolled around the world.

Countries are taking advantage of us.

We don't pay enough attention to the American worker.

We don't pay enough attention to who gets into the country.

I mean, he's like giving us a foretaste

of the kind of logic that would bring him

to the presidency just five short years later.

And being 2011, with the war on terror still dragging on,

I asked him about that,

because there was some speculation that he might enter

the 2012 Republican primaries.

And he then said, it's being Trump,

he cranked it up to 11,

said the whole Iraq thing was a mistake.

Just a total mistake.

My eyebrow went up, it's not like because it was surprised,

but because somebody was thinking about running for president

would save that because it's funny.

This is what Trump will do in things he says and things he does.

He'll be ahead of the curve sometimes,

say things that others don't have the guts to say,

either because they don't want to crank it up as much as he does,

rhetorically speaking, or because, for example,

2010, 2011, if those of us who do this for a living,

because I was sitting here every day talking to people,

I'm talking to actual soldiers going to and coming back

from the war and Commander-in-Chief says,

jump, they say, how high the chain of command

tells them what to do, they do it.

That is duty, that is honor, that is devotion to country.

But I was talking to the occasional military person

who kind of wondered where we were going,

what we were doing, how long this would last,

what victory even looked like.

So I'm chronicling that, sharing those thoughts.

And then along comes Trump, 2011,

whole thing's been a mistake.

Wow, is that a little overstated?

Has it the whole thing has been a mistake?

Well, you can shade that or nuance that, however you want.

But I told him at the time, I said,

well, sir, you can get a variety of opinions

on how the war is going and where it ought to go.

But with that view that we like never should have done it,

there's no chance you'll be elected president in 2012.

And he told me, maybe not,

but I think history will show that I'm right.

So we can talk today, we could have talked in 2016 when he won

and we can talk today, 10 years later,

about whether the whole thing was ill advised from the start.

I will always be appreciative of the idea that President Bush had

of taking a war effort into the part of the world

that wanted to kill us.

I don't know what the ultimate goal should have been.

I don't know, could we have done that?

And then brought ISIS and Al Qaeda,

kicked them out of the headlines as fast as Donald Trump did

in like short order after his first victory

in 2016, I don't know,

he can't have a time machine and go back and live life twice.

But as it so happened,

the history of how we talk about this is forever changed.

And the Trump definition of how we involve ourselves

around the world, what we do, what we don't do,

what we're gonna try, what we're not gonna try.

Now informs what the definition of modern conservatism

and modern Republican thought is.

And it doesn't mean that it's without debate.

And that's where we get to some of the online pockets

of contrarianism where there are people saying,

I don't know what's going on,

with real life and Twitter and the online world,

because all the people I'm talking to

are really mad at Trump, they're angry at Trump.

They can't believe that they've dragged us in.

Well, who are you talking to, Rand Paul

and three other libertarian dorks?

That is not, it is not the lion's share of conservative opinion.

It is not the majority of Republican thought.

Does that mean everybody's,

woohoo, this is great, we know this is gonna work great.

We don't, we pray that it does, we hope that it does.

But up against a media culture that is rooting

for America to fail, so that Trump can fail

in the presence of a Democrat party, actively rooting

for America to fail, so that Trump can fail.

There is an instinct that says, you know what, dog on it,

we're gonna give this thing a chance.

We're gonna see how this goes, pray that it's successful,

support it for what the president has defined it as.

If one more person says, I don't know what he went in for,

he has not told us what his goal is.

My dog knows what his goal is.

It is to defang the Iranian nuclear threat

to destroy their ability to militarily threaten Israel

and the region to stabilize the oil market

that runs the engines of the Western world.

Those are the obvious goals.

And we are working toward those,

and we're working toward them with great alacrity.

The Iranian military is a shell of its former self.

Have they been vanquished completely?

No.

Do we still have work to do?

Yes.

Will that work be hard?

Yes.

Will there be additional American loss of life?

Almost certainly.

Is it worth it?

I believe it is.

I believe a majority of people who voted for the president.

Believe that it is.

Are there, as I said, pockets of contrarianism.

People who, when they voted for Trump,

thought that they were voting for Rand Paul.

It's not to beat up on Rand Paul.

Oh, Rand Paul says 50, 50 chance I'm running for president.

Go for it, sir.

Only the complete collapse of the Trump Vance Administration

will make that, will give that even a ghost of a chance.

I'll tell you what happened.

A bunch of pointyhead libertarians and wannabes and sycophants and fanboys.

Pigeon hold Rand Paul.

And as I've been talking about, inflated the degree of war opposition in the Republican party.

Exaggerated the degree to which there is discontent with the Magga agenda

and said, you got to run, sir, you got to run, you got to run.

Again, do you foresee a complete collapse of the Trump Vance Administration,

a complete caving, a complete, just heaping failure of everything they're trying to do?

I don't.

And that's the only thing.

I'd be beyond, listen, the only thing that seems to be suspense right now

is Vance or Rubio.

And if all of a sudden people peel away from that, there's a, there's a guy named Ron

DeSantis going, hey, there's me. Hi, I'm still here. I'm still awesome. And he is.

So and Senator Rand Paul is so smart and so right on so many issues.

But he's got that, that isolationist libertarian thing going,

which by the way, shared by some, I don't, you know, sneeze at the existence of that point of

view, but the notion that it informs any significant part of conservatism is simply provably false.

Now, speaking of opinions and what people think about things, let's take our break. Did you,

did you pay attention to what came out of CPAC right here in DFW this past weekend? People,

I don't know, Trump didn't, didn't come. Ken Paxton had a big night over the weekend.

John Corning didn't come. Let me talk a little bit about some of the straw pulls they took at CPAC.

They're meaningful up to a point. So we'll tell you what those were and talk to you about some

things from the war to politics, to current things, to TSA lines, to DHS standoff, to Congress being

going to recess. Ain't that great? 8666605759, Mark Davis, 822.

After Derek and the Domino's and cream, Eric Clapton puts out a solo album in 1970.

The rain is falling through the mist of the sun, oh, that's the route.

After midnight is on there, the sun can never fall away. So is let it rain. Eric Clapton's 81 today.

8666605759. So what is CPAC? It's conservative political action conference and they hold it all

over the country in this time. It was at the gay lord and some years it seems to burst with

significance. This was not one of those years. CPAC will always be filled with

your particularly plugged in grassrootsy. And by the way, there's not to take anything away from

anybody who went or anybody who appeared on any panel or did anything. It was kind of a niche

gathering this time. And that's how you get poll results like this. They did a Paxton Corning

well, first of all, they did they did president and it was Trump and Vance up there in like the 40s

and DeSantis got two. So it was a very mega flavored event, which means it is. It is almost

unanimously a very Trump friendly, the vast majority of republicanism conservatism is a CPAC

flavor, but it was like only those folks in the house, which is how you get a Paxton Corning

poll result. Right now, what does Ken aggregately have like a six or seven point lead in the polls

when it's mono a mono just one guy binary choice one guy's going to win one guy's going to lose

on May 26th. We still have two months of ads and back and forth between these guys.

So if it's seven, if it's six, I mean, if you take it six, that'd be 5347. Okay, that would

if that were to happen, that wouldn't be a shock. The CPAC poll 6721. That was a Paxton gathering

at CPAC, which is what you're going to get. I don't think Ken will be winning by 46 points,

but it was indicative of the degree to which he is the grassroots flavored guy. The

Corning has fallen from favor in many corners of the deepest, reddest, trumpiest,

mega flavored grassroots conservatism. Does this spell a certain defeat in two months? I wouldn't

call anything two months out, but it's one wonders. I tell you what it's to let me take the pause,

hop into the newsroom with Nicky Waley. Come back out because it seems like at the beginning of each

week, I always get fresh texts and fresh thoughts from people say, how's the Paxton versus Corning

thing? How does it look right now? Well, I'll tell you how it looks right now. Tell you how some

other things look right now. It will take your calls right now at 866 660 5759 on anything from the

weekend. You grab a line while we hop in, say hi to Nicky Waley.

Well, all right.

Take a trip of me.

It's 1973.

This was a record. It was a big record.

It was Black Oak Park and saw it out front.

Jim Dandy Mangrum.

And it's his birthday.

Jim Dandy Mangrum is 78 and you know what he is. Just take a look. Just go Google him from 1973

and five years later, there he is again, except he's called David Lee Roth, the Spandex, the hair,

the material was better. One could argue.

That Black Oak Park and saw a debut album, what high on the hog, it was called, was not bad.

Gotta say. Also, by the way, was that like song written for him? No, he had the Jim Dandy

nickname. Jim Dandy, the song was like from 1955, it was a blues record. So anyway, happy birthday,

Jim Dandy Mangrum. All right, 866 660 5759, where does the Paxton versus Cornon race stand

right now? Paxton has the upper hand. He undeniably has the upper hand.

The Cornon claims of 99% solid harmony with Trump are things that have resonated.

That it is, it is why Paxton didn't, you know, have more than him on March 3rd.

Cornon by a sliver had a bit more like 44, 43, and then Wesley Hunt was running for some reason.

So now as we take a look at a runoff season, where on May 26th, what tends to happen is the more

mega-friendly, more grassrootsy, more, you know, solid red, more conservative base,

kind of voters tend to show up. That would seem to be an additional benefit to Paxton.

What have I said forever, ever, ever, ever, ever, that it's the Mark Davis rule of primaries.

You cannot win. You cannot win. Until and unless you create a desire to fire the incumbent,

has Ken Paxton done that. It's not him unilaterally doing that. Sometimes people just get tired

of people. Has the Cornon train run its course forever, forever? I mean, I've, listen,

we've been doing talk shows together over the weekend on March 28th. I mentioned it on Friday.

Was our 30-second anniversary of hanging out together doing talk shows back here at my native

Texas. That's crazy. Thank you very much. By the way, as we enter year number 33.

For most of that, John Gordon has been a senator. And every six years, it's like, we're going to

primary Gordon. He's not conservative enough. We're going to have any, and all he does is win

bigly. All he does is just steamroll the opposition. Closest anybody came Steve Stockman.

40 points. 40. This year is different. Part of it is because none of these people was named

Ken Paxton. Trump wasn't president during any of these prior Cornon reelection attempts.

And there's just something unique right now about the urgency of what kind of fighters,

yes, fighters, we install an important elected office. There is an appetite for the Trump

style of fighting. And fairly or not, the perception is that Senator Cornon is more of a bush,

Karl Rove, you know, Mitch McConnell type that had its day, but that day is over.

Now, am I proclaiming this like I totally know this, nope, it'll take real people voting on

May 26th. And I'm going to tell you, it remains really hard to to beat an incumbent with with

that kind of staying power, that kind of resiliency. So I'll kind of believe it when I see it.

But on May 26th, might well see it unless something comes along to change the dynamic. Now,

what might that be? What might that be? Senator Cornon's best argument has been, I'm here,

I've been here. I know where the bodies are buried. I know how the system works.

I voted with Trump a bunch of times and less than that 99%. A lot of that is judges and

confirmations and tax cuts. But has Cornon really been with Trump on guns? Has he really been with

Trump on borders? I mean, consistently, this is what creates the doubt that is poisoning the

well for Senator Cornon now. And that is that once he wins again and is safe for six more years,

four of which Trump's not going to be president. Yeah, what do we get then?

Meanwhile, Ken Paxton's over there saying, hi, you know what you get with me?

You know what you get? Not a shred of doubt about my loyalty to the Trump agenda, not a shred of

doubt about my steadfast conservatism, not a shred of doubt about the degree to which I will be with

a president on guns, on borders, on everything. So, um, as Senator Cornon asks for a leap of faith,

asks for, you know, believe me that I, Allah Marco Rubio, Allah Lindsey Graham, Allah Rick Perry,

before Rick Perry, backslid back into being an establishment creature, which he has done.

And it's okay, free country. That's that's Senator Cornon's pitch. Now, in that, and that's,

by the way, Senator Cornon's best pitch is you don't have to vote for somebody else to have a loyal

Trump supporter in our Senate seat. You don't have to. I will be that guy. If there is anything,

anything that has been proven to have little, if any impact, it's the personal attacks on Ken.

It's the cutesy videos of love, shack, and the various other things. Yeah, there's one in which

the, there's a cornered ad where it seems like the voice of God is telling you not to vote for

action. If you see that one, it's one about the 10 commandments. Okay, you got a point there.

Thou shalt not commit adultery. It's like God speaking those words, like like the actual movie,

10 commandments which are out in nest in 1956. One of them is Thou shalt not bear false witness.

And it talks about Nate Paul or some other deal. And then at the end, that again, that is an actor

supposedly doing the voice of God. And then it goes, don't vote for the crook. It's like, whoa,

hello, I'm God. And I approve this message. It's like that. So it's just not working, man.

It's not working. It's not moving the needle one bit. Is it a needle that is movable anymore?

I don't know. Well, I'll find out on May 26th. Well, be the calendar date when the government

shutdown ends. This, this is the weirdest of all shutdowns. We find ourselves looking at TSA

guys getting paid. That's, that's good. But Congress on a recess. As, and look, it's, here comes

Easter, blessed Holy Week, by the way, who Paul Sunday was great for all you guys yesterday.

Uh, anyway, Alice Bar NBC with a little, what's, what's going on at the moment?

And lawmakers are now out of Washington for a two week recess, despite not reaching a deal

on Homeland Security funding. And though some airports saw some improvements yesterday,

the security snarl overall is far from over.

This morning, lingering delays at airports throughout the day. I could see it probably,

you know, getting longer and more stressful for people mirroring the holdup on Capitol Hill,

where lawmakers left town on Friday without a deal to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

Now, on day 45, the longest partial government shutdown on record that despite the Senate unanimously

passing funding for all of DHS except ice and border patrol. Let's fund everybody else and

let's deal with this thorny issue about ice. Uh, and then you had the Republican House say,

hell, no, we're not doing that House Republicans chose not to vote on the Senate past bill instead

passing a short term measure that includes immigration enforcement, adamant that must be funded now.

This is a dangerous time and we need full Homeland Security. That House bill, a no go in the Senate.

But despite the impasse, TSA agents who called out Friday and record numbers may start receiving

back pay as soon as today or tomorrow, through an order signed by President Trump.

Well, within a pay and price, long as we have to.

While the president's borders are suggested ice agents may stay on to move airport security lines,

even after TSA pay resumes. Depends on how many TSA agents come back to work. How many TSA agents

have actually quit and have no plan coming back to work?

The Senate's top Republican told members he is working with Democrats to search for a solution.

Yeah, surprised that John Finn is working with Democrats.

According to a source familiar with negotiations, though he emphasized ice and border patrol

remain the sticking point without the reforms Democrats are demanding.

So, uh, so there we are. Uh, nobody's budging. Democrats are the reason, the reason

and it's all about ice funding. It's all about customs and border patrol funding because the

Republicans believe firmly in actually obeying our immigration laws and enforcing our immigration

laws and taking steps to do something about those who have violated our immigration laws.

And the Republican Party will not, it seems, and should not budge on this.

Meanwhile, the Democrats aren't budging either because they do not want those laws enforced.

They do not want illegals return to the, the nation for which they came. They don't want

our borders firmed up. They didn't want it. They don't want it now. They don't want it

in the future. So it's all the TSA stuff, all the various other things, all the, any other parts

of the government are all peripheral, as they say in Maryland, peripheral, and that's where we are.

And it just, it just, and why is, is Congress on recess right now? That was always in the books.

Around Passover Easter, it tends to be when that goes. A lot of lawmakers are left by the end of

that week. And the House doesn't appear inclined to cut the break short. The Senate has considered

or may have options to stay in some sort of pro forma session or return on short notice if needed.

So recesses are routine for holidays, district work periods, etc. But the optics on this

are not good, not good at all. All right, 849. Mark Davis, 660 AM, the answer.

Bob Billens, boy, Jacob and his band wall flowers. One, the headlight.

866, 665, 755.

Coming up right out of the nine o'clock news, it is primary season, as you may have noticed,

and there has been some success built by candidates who hit you with a really broad concept of

what they stand for, even well beyond the purview of what the job is. I think one of the reasons

that Don Huffine's won the the primary for controller was that he spent a lot of time talking about

dozing everything and just the broad conservatism that he brought to his service and the Senate,

etc., etc. So and it's funny, it's like, well, can a can a can a controller do those things

single handedly, but you know, but the fact that he wants to and has those instincts in his head

kind of defines who you are, right? And so coming up 905, where you talk to both French

former chair and county GOP chair, who's running for railroad commission, which is about oil and gas

and regulation of that. And he's had a whole lot of boy has he. He's had a whole lot of things to

say about a whole lot of things. Some of them immigration related, wait a minute, what is railroad

commission? Have to do with immigration. We are in a season where everything has to do with

everything. Where if you're voting for railroad commission or comptroller or dog catcher or president

or senator or congressman, don't you want to sort of know the whole heart of the guys and gals

who you're voting for, their whole brain, their whole agenda, the kinds of things that animate

them, the kinds of things that energize them. I think that has helped a lot of candidacies. So

anyway, both French join just coming out right out of this top of the hour break here at 905.

And also in the nine o'clock hour, we'll take a look at where things are going this week

on the war footing on the standoff with TSA. And you know what? We'll also talk about

undeniable success for ice at the airport. Undeniable success. The imagery, they look,

did Democrats want somebody to get shot at the Atlanta airport so they could go, I told you so

I'm uncomfortable crossing that bridge, but that's what they told you would happen.

You know, there, there was, you know, Cory Booker, Hakeem Jeffries, I think was the Hakeem Jeffries

quote, now we have ice agents going to the airport where they could be dragging people away

from their families and where they might get shot shot. What's happened at the airports with

the ice agents is lines are moving more smoothly. There's goodwill all around gratitude being

expressed to these wonderful law enforcement officers. It is a Democrats worst nightmare.

Alrighty, two hours down one to go, nine o'clock hour to unfold, make it a part of your day,

and come join us 866-660-5759, Mark Davis, 858.