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And we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
I'm Matt Kiddell, Senior Elections Correspondent at the Federalist and your Experienced Sherpa.
Today's Quest for Knowledge. As always, you can email the show at RadioAtTheFederalist.com,
follow us on X at FDR LST, make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast,
and of course to the premium version of our website as well. Our guest today is Parker Thayer,
Investigative Researcher at Capital Research Center, the folks that bring you influence watch,
the trackers of the nonprofit organizations across the country, across the globe, and what they do,
and who funds them on that line, who's behind the political theater of no kings, and isn't working.
Parker, thank you so much for joining us in this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Oh, it's good to be back, Matt.
Always glad to have you along with us here as we break down where the money is coming from,
where it's going, and so many places involved. Oh, yeah, so many places indeed. Before we get started,
though, on today's Quest for Knowledge, I did want to recognize an individual. I had an opportunity
to talk to over the weekend in Phoenix, Arizona, late last week, I should say a very nice gentleman,
if he's listening in today, he said he and his son tune in, dutifully, to the Federalist Radio Hour,
and they always consider themselves to be Sherpas, Experienced Sherpas as well. It's always good
to have an Experienced Sherpa along with us. And I think Parker Thayer is that Experienced Sherpa,
when it comes to tracking these non-profits, so let's begin with what we saw over the weekend,
of course, what the accomplice media pandered to, the big crowds of no kings, the Democrat politicians
across the country who turned out for this political theater. Who is really behind this, Parker?
Let's begin there. That is a great question. I like to number them as if they're movies. I think
we're on like no kings five, six. There seem to be as many of them as they're our fast and furious
movies. That's right. So no kings is a complicated question. When you're talking about funding flows,
traditionally, when you see protests happening, it's usually in one place, maybe some group
wants the university that they're at to divest from fossil fuels or something like that. And so they
go and they march around one location with one clear goal. No kings has no clear goal. They don't
like kings, and they all protest about it. Except ironically, one of the things that they protest
mainly over, especially this past weekend, was the removal of kings. They have kind of morphed
into this anti-war movement. There's not even necessarily an indication that the US is involved
in a war right now, but that point is neither here nor there. One of the things that they don't
like is that we have removed Maduro, who was essentially the king of Venezuela, and that we
blew up Kamani, who was essentially the king of Iran. They don't like that we blew up these kings.
They're against kings, except when we remove them. But the goal of no kings is very vague. It is
mostly a protest movement of being non-conservative and against Donald Trump. Those are about the two
most clear goals of no kings. And since it's so wide in scope and wide in location, no kings
protests happen all over the country, there's not a very clear, you know, this group was behind the
protest. But in the case of no kings, I think the most clear group behind it is a group called
Indivisible. Indivisible is a kind of a professional organizing group. It's one of the members of what
you might call the protest industrial complex. I've seen some people call it. I usually call it
megaphone philanthropy, which is there are it's a nonprofit group has 501c3 status. Indivisible civics
is the official legal name of it, although they also have a dark money quote dark money 501c4
that they operate alongside. And I think they also have PAC divisions, which is political action
committee. So it's a network, but it is essentially one nonprofit. It's run by a lady by the name
of Leah Greenberg. I think there's also they have a decent side staff, but these are all
professional organizers as relevant as another name you might remember or recognize who is running
Indivisible. And what Indivisible is doing is they're not really running the protests. They are in
that they're setting you know they're they are working with people on the ground to set up
you know locations and times and maybe conduct trainings with one or two people to actually run
these protests and you know kind of shepherd the protesters around. But in a lot of ways no kings is
kind of an amalgamation of all of the left leaning activism groups in the country kind of all
screaming and rage all at the same time. No kings works with a coalition of I think hundreds of
different nonprofit and some for-profit and some PAC organizations that are have you know combined
I think Fox News just reported the other day, Asura Nomani reported that there's a coalition of
500 groups behind this with something like billions in revenues. Now is all of that revenue
going to no kings? Definitely not. But the scope of that of the network of groups that's behind
no kings makes it very hard to actually trace what is and isn't funding for no kings. It can be
confusing for the person who's not you know plugged into money and politics in this way.
So it is run by indivisible but there's dozens hundreds of groups involved with it and essentially
there are the professional organizers who work for these groups who make a living in megaphone 3D
or the protest industrial complex whatever you want to call it. And then as we saw from this weekend
and as we've seen it no kings protest repeatedly. There's not exactly a lot of enthusiasm.
Most of the people showing up to this protest are how to put this delicately.
Well let's not put it delicately. They're old. They're really old.
Right. Most of them are most of them are baby boomers and who don't seem to have like to
quote from an officer in a gentleman. They have no place else to go and this seems to be it.
Let's delve into to that a little bit more. But to me I would define this movement and these
protest as a gathering of the profoundly mentally ill. A lot of these folks, most of these folks
some are just really truly are paid to be there in protest. They don't really have a dog in the
fight other than they're caching a check at the end of the day. But that said this is just a mass
concentration of Trump derangement syndrome. A group of people that really don't understand
what a constitutional republic is. And as you mentioned before, they're people who really don't
understand what a king is. Yes. They're opposed to it but they don't really understand it and
when we removed two actual, as close to actual kings as you can get, they didn't like it at all.
As you mentioned, the average age of these protests is like 60. For example, everyone remembers
the summer of love quote in 2020, horrible time to be in America. Things were not safe.
There were protests that seemed like every other day and these protests were mostly populated
by young people, angry young people. That was who was at these protests. The angry young people
aren't angry anymore. They seem to be actually relatively content. They're not showing up to these
demonstrations in nearly the same way or the same numbers. There's no, these no kings protests
aren't evolving into riots. For the most part, I think there are a few rare exceptions in these
cases, which is good. Not to get me wrong. That's good. But I think the left probably would
prefer that there were more riots. They seem to historically, they like the tactic of the riot.
They don't seem to be able to marshal those forces into the field anymore. It's because they have,
as I mentioned, there's no enthusiasm for these protests. It is very much astroturf and they
rely upon, essentially, people who don't have anything better to do. You and I, we don't really
understand and lots of people in the conservative movement see these large protests and they say,
clearly these protesters must be being paid and some of them are. I don't want to give any,
mostly there is a massive industry for paying people to organize and show up the protests. That's
a huge industry. But most of the people at the no kings protest simply have nothing better to do
and people in the conservative movement often have jobs to go to. They have important things to do.
They have families to raise. The people at the no kings protest visually you can see. They don't
have any of those things going on. There's a lot of mental illness among the young people who are
showing up and there's a lot of nothing better to do among the older people who are showing up and
indivisible civics and the nonprofit networks that are kind of orchestrating the whole thing and
providing the small amounts of funding here and there around the country that are needed to
make these things happen. They're more than willing to cash in on whatever amount of enthusiasm they
can as small as it is. You end up with this huge, for lack of a better word for maybe Star Trek
fans will get the reference, but you end up with a board. It's a giant hive mind organization.
That's what no kings is. It's hard to point to one leader aside from indivisible. It's hard to
point to one leader or one mastermind. It's kind of the collective outrage of a professional class
of left-leaning activists who have been totally shot out from the control rooms of power in America
for several years now. They're very angry about it. Very angry indeed. That's what marks this
movement in general. As you mentioned, there's not a lot of violence that we've seen
although we saw some of that once again in Los Angeles. Perhaps a different crowd, different string
string of this group. There are a lot of the hard left. The hard left is kind of people for
socialism and liberation, which is organization types. Those groups, they love the summer of love.
They love 2020. They are desperately hoping that that sort of thing happens again, but the younger
people that they relied on to make those things happen just aren't here. They're not there. These
protests are very boring. Most people probably didn't even realize that the no kings protests
were happening this weekend. It is interesting to see that the hard left groups are starting to
try and do make something happen as their favorite dictators all get either kidnapped or blown up.
Yes. I guess that's the question then ultimately as I asked before. Is this stuff working?
Clearly, the usual suspects in corporate media are all on board. Look at these huge crowds.
I guess that's another question too. I don't know if you've tracked that. You certainly
do track the people behind it in the money, but are these crowds that they're showing? I have seen
some indication that in some places, AI manipulation is involved. Are these getting through these
no kings demonstrations really getting through to actual Americans with jobs?
I don't think so. I'm a very plugged in person. You and I both are. I'm also doing a trying to stay
away from social media for lent this year, but even with those things going on, I don't think I
heard about these. I knew that they were happening. I didn't hear any details about them. I saw a
few photos. That was about the extent of it. These crowds are they big relative to other political
crowds that pass potentially? But even if they are, it doesn't seem like anyone's particularly
excited about them. It's frankly, it's a little disappointing. It would give me more to write about.
I do think there's a huge interest in inflating these numbers and it would not be the first time
that left-leaning groups have tried to inflate the appearance of public support when they don't
really have it. Yeah, amazing. Sorrow's money? There's a lot of Sorrow's money involved in this.
So we at Capital Research Center, we have a saying that we like to say. We do love talking about
George Soros. I'm probably one of the leading experts on George Soros in the world.
The left has many Soros'. They have many people who are funding all of the same stuff as him,
who have just as much money as him, probably more, who are also funding these things.
For example, with Indivisible Civics, you have one of their biggest donors is what's called
the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, which has given them something like $10 million
over the years. These are anonymous donors. Usually, extremely high net worth people. This is
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund is what's called a donor-advised fund. Some of
your listeners might be familiar with it. It's essentially just a bank account that you can
direct your charitable giving through. So you deposit your charitable donation in a DAF,
which is a charity. You get your charitable deduction for that contribution. And then whenever you
like, you tell the DAF to administer that money to whoever you want. So a lot of the money behind
Indivisible is coming from donor-advised funds like this. So it's really hard to trace
who the money is coming from. This goes back to those many Soros' as I was talking about.
There's a lot of donors, but Soros is also involved in this deeply, lots of money to
Indivisible, specifically in the past. But then we talk about the Borg and the network of
organizations surrounding No Kings and surrounding Indivisible that was already there and is being
used because the left has a professional organizing infrastructure already in place,
something that the right really doesn't have, not nearly at the scale at least.
The left kind of just used the existing infrastructure and kind of stapled No Kings on to that
and said, hey, look, this is No Kings now. This nationwide network, this is No Kings, even though
two years ago it was a vast network of very disparate organizations that had many different goals.
Now, they all have one goal, which is No Kings, which isn't really a goal. That's just something
you say. But yes, Soros money, people who have heard of the AirBell Advisors Network before,
that is all over the No Kings protests. The people who are doing the local organizing,
they all have various state affiliate organizations, which are all funded by a large network,
all of the usual suspects. So basically, everyone is funding No Kings in some way or another,
which makes it very hard to trace what actually is being spent on this protest. But I would guess
it is not an insubstantial amount of money, something like tens of millions of dollars.
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I'm curious too. How many of the very wealthy oligarchs in the phraseology of the Bernie Sanders
of the world? I'm talking about the JB Pritzker's people who have a lot of money on the left who also
have very big aspirations about higher political office. Is there any money coming from the Pritzker's
and crews out there? I don't know about the Pritzkers. Let's see. I have a short list of
organizations here. We have money from the Sandler Foundation, which is the money of the late
Erb Sandler. I think his wife may also have now passed, but the Herb Sandler gave them lots of
money in past years. Essentially, he made his money off of the made-off scam.
Really? Wow. I believe it was the made-off scam. I'd been one of the other scams, but I know
that they had a fairly confident it was them. Well, we do know Bernie made-off with a lot of
Americans money, of course. Yes. Let's see. In recent years, though, we've got some of the top
donors, Schmidt Family Foundation, which I believe, and I should verify here real quick, but I believe
is the family of foundation of Ron Schmidt or Rob Schmidt. Let me see. I can confirm this really
quick, but he is one of the investors in Google, so we've got the Schmidt Family Foundation behind
this. We also have the Merl Chambers Fund, another kind of a more famous big money pocket. Also,
everyone has heard of the Tides Foundation before. They're giving Indivisible Civics $20,000
in 2024, which is an enormous amount of money, but they are funding it. Again, the way that
non-profit financing works, you often not hear about the story until after it has already happened.
You might notice this trend with, for example, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation,
which bought all the mansions. We didn't find out they were buying the mansions until after,
because Form 990s or IRS disclosures for non-profits are backdated by two years.
What's happening now in 2026, we won't actually see the finances of those organizations unless
they voluntarily disclose it until 2028. Indivisible could be getting $100 million right now as
opposed to the $5 million they received last year or not last year in 2024, and we just wouldn't
we wouldn't know about it. It's a little bit hard to trace funding flows in non-profits because of
that. In 2024, let's see some other big donors. Obviously, Fidelity Charitable Investments
gift fund, which I mentioned, a donor-advised fund. They also have a decent amount of money
coming to them from the Freedom Together Foundation, which I don't know the donor behind that one,
actually. But they got $600,000 from the Freedom Together Foundation, which is based in New York and
seems to be, oh, it's Barbara Pickauer is on the board, who is a more famous donor on the left,
and lots of other people who, I think, Deepak Pergarva, who used to be in the Biden administration
if I remember incorrectly, but I could be wrong about that. No, I think you're right. Yeah. He's on
the board of the Freedom Together Foundation. It was formerly known as the JPB Foundation, which so
that it is the Barbara Pickauer Foundation, essentially. JPB stood for, I think, was John Paul
Barbara or Pickauer or something like that, so that is the donor behind the foundation. But there
is a lot, there are a lot of donors giving various amounts of money, and a lot of them are also
just doing it anonymously, so it's impossible to tell who is funding. No counts. Yeah, that's,
has been the difficult part about tracking that, and it takes time out out about that. As you
mentioned, we don't have this in real time, and so it becomes extremely difficult. But we do know
about a lot of these groups in their past and where their commitments have been, and it is safe
to assume that they are back again in many of these cases. Our guest today is Parker Thayer,
investigative researcher at Capitol Research Center. The great group behind my go to
in tracking the nonprofit Charity Sector, and that is called Influence Watch, whatever you're
looking for online. You can follow the money there, and the connections, the associations,
and you'll find that a lot of these groups have ties on the left to the Obama administration,
which is the Biden administration. The Biden administration, of course, took in a lot of the folks
from the Obama administration, because some would say that it was really just Barack Obama's
third term, and in the auto pen presidency era, I don't think that is a conspiracy theory
by any means. How much of this really is astroturfing? And again, I know it's impossible to track
the money, but there are indeed the left keeps saying, no, this is not the case at all. And
and then of course you get the fact checkers from the media. But we do know you have tracked some of
this money going to wages for people to protest. No, yeah. I mean, there is a whole industry. They
like to call it community organizing, that essentially they exist to a big portion of what they
their work is doing, get out the vote work. But in order to get people to get out the vote,
they have to get them to show up to a protest where they can be registered to vote. They can
go. They can give their information, their phone number, their emails to people who can then use
put that information into databases where all these people can be tracked. And and make, you know,
they can make sure that that person votes. They can bombard them with text messages and calls
until they do. You know, this is a big part of what the No Kings protest is doing. I'm actually
signed up for just for research purposes. I'm suffering. So all of you don't have to. Yes,
that's I am signed up for the No Kings protest text messages. And so I have been invited numerous
times to come out to the No Kings protest in my area. I did not decide to go believe it or not.
But yeah, they're these the community organizers, the protest, industrial complex, the megaphone
philanthropy industry. It's a very real thing. People do get paid to show up to protest. Now
it's not always at the scale that some people assume that it must be because, you know,
us being productive members of society, we have jobs and things to do and families to raise.
We don't understand how people could just take a whole day and go in protest and not think
about it twice. But, you know, with these people, it for them protesting is a free source of
entertainment. You know, this is it. I mean, we're we've already commented about the you know,
the average age of these protests this past weekend and and of the No Kings movement as a whole
for for them. I said, I mean, this is essentially just a retirement home outing.
Like bowling. Yeah, this is this is free bowling night, except instead of bowling, you go and
you stand around and wave signs at things. So, you know, it's it is there is there is the truth
is always kind of in between what the left and the right will say about things often.
And, you know, kind of some more conspiratorially minded people assume that all of the No Kings
protestors are getting paid and they're all getting, you know, everyone's handing out $50 checks.
It's not quite that, but it's also not anything near what the media insisted is that this is all
some organic, you know, organic protest movement that just emerged from the ashes of people's tears
and spoiled hopes because, you know, Trump is so evil. That's not what's happening here. This is
a professional organization led by professional people who make their living's organizing protests
or organizing, you know, get out the vote groups organizing demonstrations. That is a that is an
industry for the left. That is a there is a group of people who exist and then that is they,
you know, they study the tactics of this. They have there are think tanks that come up with
strategies for them. These are not just people, you know, out on a limb. There's a support system.
There's a funding funding channels. And they are, you know, kind of the shepherds of the left's
mobs. That's about the closest analogy you can come up with. I think that's a good way of saying
that. And for those who remember their recent history, the 44th president of the United States
started out in this business. Barack Obama was a community organizer and he worked in project vote.
He certainly did. And and that leads us to the other point when we talk about the efficacy of this
or or not. My colleague this week, Rihanna Lyman wrote a piece and the headline is the only midterm
strategy. Lamer than no kings is GOP's plan to do literally nothing. So she goes into the,
but one of the things that is is noted is this, you know, is looks preposterous to a lot of
Americans, you know, a lot of common sense rational human beings. Like are you kidding? All for all
the things we talked about, they look at, you know, what has gone on in Iran over the last nearly
50 years. And these people are talking about no kings. What has gone on in Venezuela with
Maduro and these people are talking about no kings, you know, we have a a leftist elite in this
country that live like kings and they're saying no kings. But this is a pretty good way to get people
to register, to vote, to tap into their anger. And that's really what this is at the end of the day
isn't it? Maybe they'd like a few more riots. But ultimately, this is about November,
2026. And the desperate move from the left to do anything they can to weaken Donald Trump
in the mega movement in this country. Sure. Yeah. The no kings movement seems heavily focused
on, shall we say, data collection. When you sign up for your no kings protests, you hand in
your phone number and you tell them, you know, your address and et cetera. And all of this information,
you know, they don't, they're collecting that information to make sure that you're registered
to vote. And if you're not, they're going to harass you until you do. And once you're registered,
they're going to harass you until you vote. You know, data collection is a huge part of all of the,
you know, the reason that this one of the reasons that this protest industrial complex
exists is just data collection because the left relies upon kind of lower propensity voters
when it comes to election cycles. And so they have a vast network logistically to kind of
wrangle their voter herders or their voter wranglers. They have low propensity voters, you know,
people who are younger often really don't vote at the same rates. But the no kings movement,
as we've seen, it's not reaching those same people. So I think they're really,
I think they're very much interested in getting out the vote with these protests.
And obviously, you know, they're starting to appeal to kind of older liberal voters and trying
to, you know, which is a very hyperpensity base and trying to reach them with these non-profits,
which, you know, makes an interesting question about the purpose of the non-profit sector,
which is supposed to be non-partisan, but that's a whole nother discussion.
But without the ability to, you know, you just mentioned the rights. Without the ability to get
that enthusiasm and to get the, you know, the violent agitators that we saw in the summer of love
out and mobilized, you know, no kings ends up being basically a PR operation. And this is why
they're so insistent on the size of the crowds. They're so insistent that this is the biggest
protests ever to happen, even though it's just kind of a whole bunch of very small protests
happening at a thousand different locations for the most part. You know, no kings seems to be a
PR operation and that's, you know, they have a catchy slogan, no kings is catchy, but it doesn't
mean anything. They really, they really don't have much of a goal. One of their main goals seems to
be opposing the removal of kings like Maduro and the Ayatola, as you just mentioned.
So it's confusing and they're doing their best to do their data collection and their usual,
you know, kind of get out the vote-minded activities. But the problem is they're not reaching the
people that they want to. And so I think that we're going to see soon in the near future. I think
no kings is going to jump the shark. I think they're going to start reaching a level of
unauthenticness, if that's a word. I don't think that's actually a word, but I'm going to use it.
I authentically think it is a word, yes. I think it would be inauthentic.
Well, here we are debating grammar. Anyway, but inauthenticness, the astroturf aspect of it is going
to shine through more and more the closer and closer we get to midterms. And they're going to be
trying to reclaim some of that momentum that they feel they had back in 2020. And it's not going
to be there. And so the tactics are going to get more and more preposterous. You know, the rhetoric
is going to get more and more over the top if that's even possible. So it's going to be interesting
to see what happens with no kings in the near future. But my guess is they get more shrill. They get
more more obviously astroturf. They get more obviously artificial. How is that possible? How can
how can they be more shrill? Oh, and how many cats were left at home during the past weekend for
these poor people? But you know, maybe that's what this is. Maybe no kings is just an operation
by the cat sitter's union of America to try and and beef up their own business.
Follow the money. That's right. You know, one thing I've learned studying the left,
you know, I read what they write every day. I read, I follow their social media. I sign up for
all their email campaigns. I read their tax forms. The thing that I've learned is to never underestimate
how insane they can be. Every time I think I have found the most ridiculous thing that I will read
that day, I usually find something even more insane. And no kings is going to be no exception to that.
Yeah, no doubt about that. Well, you had me at Fancy in a leather jacket. You talked about jumping
the shark. That's where that phrase comes from. Actually, though, to set the record straight,
when Fancy in Happy Days jumped the shark in his leather jacket and briefs,
that was at the height of the show's popularity. And it stayed popular for a while.
This, really though, is I can see this. I think we're in the way down. Yeah, I think this is
definitely descending. But so is it just a matter of time before the left and the scientists,
the experts were supposed to follow religiously faithfully. They're going to release
some sort of virus again. I mean, this 2026, of course, smacks of 2020. And I mean that by
the desperation, maybe there's not the cover of COVID to act under. But the leftist movement in
America is doing whatever it can by any means to make sure that they a cripple the Trump
administration and ultimately put it in prison and thereby taking out the mega movement so that
they can regain power again. Do you see this movement becoming increasingly desperate,
increasingly theatrical, of course, as we get closer and closer to the November midterms?
Yeah, definitely, definitely increasingly theatrical. That is one of the, I've been shocked since
2024, the nonprofit industry has frankly been a little disappointing. I mean, these are the people
we saw that materialized the summer of love out of thin air in 2020. Right. You know, they were
leading media and PR operations, like we've never seen before. Now, you know, partially because
there are one of the main news, social media platforms, and of course, Twitter or X formally
Twitter is now not owned by someone who will censor everyone. That seems to have kind of
stymied their efforts to replicate that. But yeah, the nonprofits, they got desperate in 2024.
One of the things that I write about a lot is the get out the vote operations and, you know,
capital research center. We have a forthcoming report on what happened with nonprofits and elections
and just with, you know, election-related advocacy in general in 2024. And one of the things I
found was that from 2020 to 2024, the get out the vote industry, the nonprofit get out the
vote industry got bigger. It got much bigger, even while traditional packs spending actually
declined during those years. So the left, they have not given up on the tactics that worked for
them in the past. The problem is just that people aren't buying it anymore. You know, the enthusiasm
is not there. People saw what happened in 2020. They lived through the fervor of it all. Some people
were taken up by it, you know, and kind of consumed by the rage campaign that kind of dominated the
country for months on end. And then afterwards, nothing changed. And then there was a democratic
administration and the problems that they wanted fixed weren't really fixed. It turns out that they
were being lied to. And now they know this. So the left is still poor. The left's donors
are still convinced that the same tactics they used in the past will continue to work.
And they're pouring in 2024, they poured money into the same old tactics. And then Donald Trump won
the popular vote. So there, we haven't seen their tax forms from post-2024 yet. 2025 will be the next
year. And then the year after that will be 2026. We'll finally see their tax forms from that year.
So it's hard to say what's going on in those board meetings and in those, you know, in those
Zoom calls. But you have to imagine that they're trying to rewrite the playbook, but they just
don't know how. Because they've been relying on the same playbooks since the 1960s. So it's going
to be really interesting to see what happens with no kings. And, you know, they will get more
theatrical. And even more, you'll see that they really don't have any, they're so rattled by
their loss in 2024 that they just, I don't think they really know what to do yet. And no kings is
kind of their first step back into being the machine that they once were. They're still trying
to reclaim their former glory as it were. Or, you know, I would say design. But let me play
consultant for a moment for the list. Let's advise them. Let's tell them what they can do better.
Exactly. Here you go. And I'm really serious. They won't listen to me, of course, because I'm
a conservative. And I believe in making America great again. So they don't want anything to do with
that. But here's the thing that they ought to do. They ought to shut the hell up and stop this
nonsense of no kings. Because I think that hurts their cause ultimately with the average person
because they're looking at these nuts out in the street going, oh my god, I don't want to go back
to that again. That's why 2024 happened. What they should talk about, keep concentrating on is
affordability, which is a huge lie because they're Marxist. And they're never going to make any
affordable. They're going to make it at least lie about it. And they have. And that part is
effective. And really what they need to do is just rely on the Rhino Republicans that control
Congress right now, particularly in the Senate to not do a damn thing. And then what you would have
is you would have what you have right now, a growing number of conservatives who say, listen,
I was all in on 2024. I saw the vision. I saw the change. I saw the possibilities. And once again,
we have bought and paid for rhinos who won't do anything, just like the left found out in 2000
with a far radical left found out in 2020. So you lose engagement. And that's where you win
at the polls. And that's what happens oftentimes in midterms, the disillusionment.
But they won't do that, will they? Because they're just so tied into this chaos. And you can only
keep an anarchy going a really good anarchy going for so long, can't you? Exactly. You raise a
great point here, which about the confusion of the No Kings movement and the discord in their message.
You know, on the one hand, you would think that it would be an enormously,
electorally beneficial strategy to focus on. You know, there is gridlock in Washington, DC.
The current administration isn't getting things done that they said they were going to.
You know, and there are, they could try and tell all kinds of lies and spin a big story about that.
But they can't because they're also simultaneously trying to present the idea that Donald Trump
is acting as a king and a dictator and is unilaterally declaring things into being and,
you know, is a one-man show running the country and we must oppose kings. So, you know, they kind of,
you know, they've walked themselves into a corner that they really don't know how to get out of.
And they have, you know, this No Kings message, which is not really, I don't think, going to be
a very compelling for many people, especially when it comes to actually voting.
But it does get the older, you know, the older liberal demographic out. They seem to like it for
whatever reason. So, they could be focusing on all these things, but the No Kings
has soaked up so much of their attention and their messaging and their focus
that they're kind of stuck with one path, one, you know, one central point of their message now,
which is that they don't like kings, but again, I don't think the average person actually thinks
that Donald Trump thinks that he's a king. I don't think anyone really thinks that,
but they like saying it, and so they're going to keep saying it.
Yeah, and, you know, the consistency of message is very, very important, obviously, but, you know,
as we have found out over the last several years in this country once again, as conservatives,
you've got to thank God for the unhinged left because without the unhinged left and what they
are doing to turn off voters, Republicans may never have a chance to win electorally. It's just
the sad state of affairs going on in America today. Thanks to my guest today, Parker Thayer,
investigative research, excellent investigative researcher at Capital Research Center.
You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Out. I'm Matt Kiddell,
senior elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more,
until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.
Federalist Radio Hour


