Richard Arnold: US Correspondent on the special elections in Wisconsin, Florida

Two special elections in the US are racking up quite the price tag.  

Voters are heading to the polls in two special elections in Florida and Wisconsin. 

Florida's holding special elections for Matt Gaetz and Mike Waltz's congressional seats, and both seats are critical races for Republicans, given their slim majority in the House. 

The battleground state of Wisconsin is also voting on a new judge for the state's top court. 

It's become the most expensive judicial contest in US history, with more than $90 million being spent on campaigning, including $21 million by Elon Musk. 

US Correspondent Richard Arnold told Mike Hosking that Musk has been accused of trying to buy the election. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dayside Richard Arnold, good morning, Good morning, mikel. Sort of
this time tomorrow Rose Garden should be fun.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Yeah, it is the eve of the announcement of the
Trump tariff plan. Liberation know is what Trump is calling it,
but it remains unclear just what will be done, who
will be liberated, and what will they be liberated from.
Wall Street is down a bit right now after what
is the worst start to the US stock market for
several years. Present. Trump will announce his plans at a
Rose Garden event, says his press rep today. In relation

(00:31):
to this.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
The President will be addressing the decades of unfair trade
practices that have ripped our country off and American workers off.
It has hollowed out our middle class.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Many other Trump aids indicating they have little idea of
what's going to be happening. So the Trump tarifts are
expected to take effect immediately. And what we have heard
of the twenty five percent tariff that is expected to
be imposed on imported cars and car parts is that
those tariffs could increase car prices here by thousands and
thousands of dollars. Trump has said he doesn't care if

(00:59):
those cars go up, but in Detroit in the area
of Stiling Heights, which is part of the city northern
side of the city. Mayor Michael Taylor says he is
very concerned about what might happen with all of this.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
He says, it would be devastating. We're gracing for the worst,
hoping that there's some change in his plan. But if
these tariffs go into a fact and if they stay
in effact for any period beyond a couple weeks, it's
going to have a devastating impact on the local economy
and Sterling Heights, where we have four large automotive manufacturing
plants and dozens, if not hundreds of auto suppliers. About

(01:35):
forty percent of our jobs are directly related to the auto.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Industry, and that's a lot of work.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
As you said, any new plant that might be intended
for his area would take he Reckons about five years
to stout operations. So will consumers carry the load for
years ahead? That is the issue.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, Indeed, there we have these vites today, a couple
in Florida, one in Wisconsin. How does that unfold you, reckon?

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, Well, it is election day for a court seat
in Wisconsin. Who cares, right, except maybe a handful of
people wearing cheeseheads at a Packers football game, but wrong.
This nothing voter has become the first big test of
Trump and Musk since they moved into the White House.
It's also a race where a Trump win could flip
the balance in the state Supreme Court and allow for
redrawing the federal election maps. So pretty significant on a

(02:18):
national front. Same also for Florida, where we have a
couple of special elections by elections. One is to replace
Mike Waltsey, national security advisor of course as the one
who set up the signal gate chat including a reporter,
and if the Dems win that it would likely be
good night, Mike. But back to Wisconsin. This is a
race where Elon Monk. Musk has pumped in some thirty

(02:39):
five million dollars New Zealand for the contest among two
contenders people almost no one had ever heard of, Susan
Crawford the LIB and Brad Shimmel the Trumpster. So Musk
is accused of trying to buy this election, and the
campaign advertising has been insane. We're talking one hundred and
thirty million dollars New Zealand for a court seat, and

(03:01):
the commercials are slamming Crawford and Shimmel as being pro crime,
both of them pro crime, pro rapist, pro pedophile. Here's
a little sample of what's been on TV. This streets
like any other in Wisconsin, but the new neighbor is
a pedophile thanks to Judge Susan Crawford's sweetheart sentence.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Oh corrupt is Brad Schimmel Shimmell give a plea deal
to a man caught with child porn?

Speaker 3 (03:24):
Crawford let the predator out in just four years.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Brad Schimmel let a sex predator loose on our kids,
creating the weakest walk free, well rapist walk free.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Called Crawford's negligence utterly disgusting. What the hell is going
on in Wisconsin? Yeah, instead of building a wall with Mexico,
some are suggesting maybe they should put a wall up
around Wisconsin if there was so many pedophiles and rapists.
Then Elon Musk flew in this week for a kind
of political rally. He put on a cheese he'd hat,
spoke to a crowd of two thousand people who had
to sign up a document saying they were Musk supporters. However,

(03:57):
some protesters got into this fake town Hall and Bood
Musk as he took to the stage, Welcome to politics, Elon.
He then handed out a couple of million dollar checks
he said he would give to random voters. That led
to a lawsuit Mike claiming Musk was trying to buy votes,

(04:18):
but the Wisconsin court said the election lotto could proceed
without saying why. Musk then began his big million dollar giveaway,
announcing the first check goes to Nicholas Jacobs. So this
dude jumps on stage wearing a pack of sweatshirt. But
now we find he wasn't even from Wisconsin and he

(04:39):
wasn't chosen by chance. In court Elon Musk, a lawyer
told the judge that when the MAGA billionaire said the
voting sweepstakes was random, he didn't mean there was an
element of chance. The opposing lawyer called that crazy, absurd.
You know Elon would give everyone in this country, say
a billion dollars. Mic, we could all stay home and
set this out. Until then, it appears you cannot trust
some politicos even with a million dollar votes.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
It is too much fun. Richard, appreciate it. Richard donold
on the States.

Speaker 2 (05:04):
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