April 30, 2024 • 25 mins
The unsettling saga of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and her dog Cricket is more than a controversy; it's a reflection of character that reveals volumes about our political climate. Wrestling with the emotional burden of having to say goodbye to my own pets, I can't help but draw a line in the sand between what's humane and Governor Noem's harrowing actions, as divulged in her upcoming book. This episode is a clarion call to the Democrats—it's time to harness these moments, turning them into indelible marks upon the moral canvas of our political battlefield. Here, not only do I castigate the missed chances in political maneuvering, but I also lay bare the necessity for narratives that strike a chord with the electorate, much like Republicans have mastered with their deceptively simple yet impactful messages.
Navigating the murky waters of political scandals, I illustrate the stark disparity in accountability that skews along party lines, imagining how the media would react if the roles were reversed. A personal reflection amplifies the urgency of changing tack, imploring the Democratic Party to wield narrative power and emotional resonance, just as perceptions of the economy often eclipse the factual landscape. I connect the dots between how we treat our animals and our core human values, cautioning against the callousness that culminated in the Capitol riot. It's not just about winning elections; it's about preventing those with a penchant for violence and dehumanization from steering our country's course. This episode isn't merely a recount of events; it's a strategic playbook and a heartfelt plea for political engagement at its most critical.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kristi Noem is a monster.
The Democrats are about to lether and the Republican Party off
the hook for it.
Good morning, welcome to theKeystone Reckoning podcast.
I'm your host, jesse White.
It is Tuesday, april 30th 2024.
And I am coming in hot todayfor several reasons.
Obviously, we're talking aboutSouth Dakota Governor Kristi
(00:22):
Noem and the widely circulatedstory from her upcoming book
about how she put her dogCricket in a pit and shot it,
and we're not going to gothrough all the details of that.
They're everywhere.
You can look at it on your own,or I'm sure, if you're
listening to this podcast,you've certainly seen the story
by now.
So let's get into this.
First of all, there's nodenying Kristi Noem is an
(00:44):
absolute monster.
That is just a horrific thing.
As someone who has owned andhad to put down two dogs, one as
recently as a few months ago, Ican say that, other than the
day my grandmother died, the dayI had to put my two dogs down
were maybe two of the very worstdays of my entire life because
(01:05):
of what it did to me, what itdid to my family, because the
dogs were members of our familyand no, I'm not trying to make
them out to be like they were mychildren or anything like that.
We're not those people, butthey were an indelible part of
our lives.
I just realized I just saidindelible.
My one dog's name was Delano.
(01:31):
I was a Freudian slip there.
So as a dog owner, as a humanbeing, it's just abhorrent.
Okay, we've all got that out ofthe way.
So now the question is whatcomes next, and this is where
the Democrats absolutely mustmake sure that there is a price
to be paid for this politically,and let me explain what I mean.
And then let's look at why itisn't happening.
So we're now seeing, because ofwhat Noem has done has been so
(01:54):
universally criticized, which Idon't know what she was possibly
thinking.
Apparently, the story has beengoing around South Dakota for
quite a while.
She was in the running to bevetted as one of Trump's VP
candidates.
I think she was probably in thetop couple of choices and maybe
she knew that this was going tocome out and wanted to get out
ahead of it.
Even still, that is, I don'tknow my thought.
(02:17):
If I had to choose betweenbeing Trump's VP and having this
hanging around my neck publiclyand not being Trump's VP and no
one knowing about it.
I think I'd take the latter formany reasons, but it goes to
the point.
This wasn't so much of a storyof a bad person making a bad
(02:40):
decision.
This is a story of character,of personal character.
What kind of person this is?
Because this is that is, asociopath, someone that feels no
empathy, right?
There's also another storyabout her killing goats.
But the fact that she could doit and then talk about it and
(03:01):
then put it in print and thennow go on social media and try
to defend it.
And she actually said that oneof the quotes was that cricket
was the picture of pure joy.
Well, if he was the picture ofpure joy, you know what I do to
something in my life that's nota picture of pure joy.
I don't put it in a gravel pitand put a bullet in it.
Maybe that's just me, but thatis the mark of a sociopath.
(03:22):
And it is a telling indicatorthat this person, who has been
the same person, right, justbecause no one knew this story
publicly doesn't mean she was,you know, she wasn't this person
.
This didn't happen yesterday.
That she was the sexy and Imean that not in a physical,
because she's a female way,because she was this kind of you
(03:42):
know, sarah Palin-esque.
You know Sarah Palin for the,you know, for the new era, for
the MAGA era or whatever youwant to say.
But she was this, you know thisfront runner that was going to
put some energy into it and helppropel the ticket for Trump,
help, obviously, with womenvoters, which they see to be a
huge you know, women voters arethe election in this November.
(04:06):
So she was a front runner, shewas the next big thing.
This is who she had been allalong.
The Democrats must capitalizeon that, and by capitalize on it
, I mean from a messaging pointof view.
And here's the thing you don'tneed to sensationalize this one.
You don't need to stretch it.
(04:27):
You don't need to go above andbeyond to try to make it out to
something that it's not.
It's her own damn words.
It is her own words.
This is as simple as it gets.
This story came out over theweekend or the end of last week.
How in the world we did notwake up Monday morning to ads
(04:47):
from every progressive group onthe planet using this incident,
talking about it, using her ownwords, juxtaposed against quotes
that Trump has said about herbeing wonderful, of which
there's a million of them, andusing it to make the very clear
point that there is the valuesof these people cannot be
(05:14):
reconciled.
How in the world did that nothappen?
I don't know.
I don't know, because here'swhat I do know, and I've said it
before.
I'll be saying it nonstop,forever until it becomes not
true.
Republicans are so good at thesesimple short messages.
(05:36):
They're bumper stickercampaigning and in a lot of ways
, they take non sequiturs andthen find a way to tie them back
to the candidate or thecampaign or not.
Sometimes it's about changingthe narrative right.
Look at what they're doingright now Trump, first president
ever to be sitting through acriminal trial, the everything
(05:57):
that goes with it, the way he'sconducted himself falling asleep
, acting like an idiot outsidethe courthouse, probably
committing contempt of the gagorder left, right and center Bad
narrative right.
In any other era that would bea disqualifying narrative for a
presidential candidate, for anycandidate.
But now the Republicans andtheir operation have managed to.
(06:19):
First of all, because part ofthe problem is it's become
normalized with Trump right.
That's a problem that it's justreally hard to deal with.
It's been a problem for years,but they've been able.
Now.
I turned on.
I was at the gym this morning.
I turned on.
I look at the news.
All it is campus protesters.
That's a whole other issue fora whole other day.
I'm not saying it's the campusprotester bad thing.
I want to be very clear aboutthat.
But they are taking somethingout there.
They're taking something outthere, twisting it to their own
(06:42):
narrative and it's it's theOccupy argument all over again,
right?
A bunch of dirty kids living intheir parents' basements or
living in dorms at these liberalarts colleges, being
destructive and doing whatever,cherry picking the narrative.
They're forming a narrative.
They're forming a narrative.
They're making it out to besomething that will stick with
(07:03):
voters because they're going tosee it again between now and
November.
I just read an article thismorning that there's a Trump
aligned group that is runningwildly bigoted ads in black
markets, including here inPennsylvania, to try to convince
black voters that Joe Biden isresponsible for M13, bringing
fentanyl across the border andeverything under the planet.
(07:25):
They're crafting a narrative.
It doesn't have to be accurateIn this case.
It's wildly inaccurate.
It's totally wrong.
But this is where the furyreally rises.
This is the thing that makes mesick to my stomach is that as
Democrats, nationally,organizationally, individually
(07:49):
this is where our own arroganceand our own hubris and our own,
quite frankly, disconnect allowsthe Republicans to be able to
do this.
We look at them and it was inall the articles this morning
and everything I read as I'meating breakfast in the morning.
I read all the things and it'sa lot of tongue in cheek, right?
(08:11):
Not that anybody is makinglight of the Kristi Noem thing I
want to be clear about that butthey're making these kind of
sideways comments.
They're taking the quick andeasy little dig, right.
There's a thing now there's alot of our state reps and people
like that are like you know,post a picture of your dog, not
in a gravel pit.
I'll start.
That's adorable, right?
Okay?
Ha ha ha.
Congratulations.
(08:32):
You posted on Twitter.
You've done your bit fordemocracy for the day.
Get real.
Get real, because the peoplethat you need to talk to, that
we need to talk to, they're notfollowing you on Twitter.
They're at the gym where FoxNews is playing in the
background.
They're at work.
They're at well, I guess not inschool.
I would hope school age kidsaren't voting, but you know what
(08:52):
I mean.
They're out in the world and weget into this echo chamber
where we get self-righteous.
We get self-righteous and wethink that by making a little
sideways comment or taking thelowest hanging fruit and just
assuming that the voters aregoing to get it right.
That's one of the biggestcriticisms I have of Democrats
(09:13):
from a messaging point of viewis we assume that everybody's
paying attention, everybodyshares our worldview and that
they're going to be able to readthe context of what we're
trying to say, whereasRepublicans literally beat you
over the head with it.
And then Democrats get allfrustrated about why our message
doesn't stick compared totheirs, because they're better
(09:33):
at telling it, they're better atreinforcing it, because we
often are so obsessed with beingright that we forget that we
have to win.
You can't govern if you don'twin.
This election should not evenbe remotely close.
How, how is this election close?
I have a degree in politicalscience.
(09:54):
If you would have told me whenI was in college here's a case
study of a random electionknowledge.
Here's a case study of a randomelection and you, in a random
United States election 25 yearsfrom now, analyze it and tell me
what's going to happen.
My response my little blue book.
I don't even know if they stilluse blue books.
My little blue book would bedramatically different than the
reality we're living right now,and we can be as mad as we want
(10:17):
and frustrated andself-righteous as we want at the
Republicans, but at the end ofthe day, they want to win.
We want to be right.
Well, what has that gotten us?
Yes, we got Joe Biden elected.
Yes, we got a slim majority inthe US Senate.
Not enough to break thefilibuster, to actually get some
things done for people Right,not enough to really get
(10:39):
anything done.
Not to do anything.
But we can go out and raisemoney because we're in the
majority.
That's where we're at right now.
We do just enough.
And it is brutal, as someonewho's been out there in the
trenches in a variety of ways.
It is brutal, it is grueling,it will break you.
It shouldn't be this hard.
We don't have to make it thishard.
(11:00):
We make it harder than it needsto be, to our own detriment.
And then we act like we're allgeniuses because we're so smart
that we've been able to figureout how to craft these clever
narratives.
Why?
Why, we are letting them offthe hook here, and here's the
proof.
Here's all I need.
Article Yahoo News Mondaymorning.
Yesterday morning, donald Trumphas reportedly expressed
(11:36):
disappointment in South DakotaGovernor Kristi Noem after she
revealed she killed her puppy.
That's it right.
An insider said, quote she wasalready unlikely to be picked as
VP, which I don't buy, but wasvery disappointed quote to hear
the story about her dog.
See what they did there.
See what they did there.
It was the New York Post, bythe way, where they got this
information.
So obviously Trump friendlypublication they did.
They carried his water for him.
They allowed the Trump who isthe Republican Party right by
Trump saying oh no, she's, she'sa bad person.
(11:58):
Well, I don't really agree withthat.
He didn't really come out andcondemn her, right, he didn't
even say anything directly.
But you know he's going todistance himself from her and
that'll be it.
She'll be on an island, she'sdone.
But we allow them to cut theirlosses and move on.
That's insanity.
That's insanity and here's howI know it's insanity because if
the roles were reversed, can youimagine, can you imagine for
(12:24):
one second, if that story wasabout Kamala Harris shooting the
family dog?
Think about that for a second.
Go back four years.
She's not the same vicepresident.
She's on the short list.
She's clearly a rising star.
A lot has been said about her'sin the eye sitting elected
official of high stature and astory comes out that she shot
(12:45):
her family dog.
Would the republicans have everlet go of that story?
Ever?
No, no way.
No way they would have.
They would have, aside fromdestroying her, they would have
been able to paint democrats ina light that is, again, not
accurate.
It's a broad, sweepinggeneralization.
Do I believe that theoverwhelming majority, the
(13:07):
almost 99.5% of Republicans,even the MAGA Republicans, would
shoot the family dog?
Of course not.
But what we have to understandis that we are carrying a I
don't know what's the leasteffective weapon I can think of.
We're carrying a piece ofstring to a nuclear war.
Right, these people don't playfair and you know I hear a lot
(13:35):
of oh well, we have to be betterthan them.
We have to be better, we haveto do better, we have to show we
can win.
You know what?
We don't have that luxury.
Find a woman in Texas who'strying to get an abortion and
ask her if she gives a damnabout our messaging strategy.
Look at what happened onJanuary 6th Court are going out
(13:57):
of their way to try to make thisthe biggest loophole, hack, job
getaway and dangerous for ourrepublic in American history.
Does anybody care?
Should anybody care when it'sthe truth?
To me, that's the guiding star,right, that's the North Star.
If it's the truth, I don't carehow unpalatable it is.
(14:19):
It needs to be out there and itneeds to be out there in a way
that is so overwhelming.
It needs to be shock and aweand make sure the voters don't
forget.
Screw the press releases.
Screw the little tweets, screwthe.
I'm disappointed.
You need to tether Donald Trumpand the Republicans to what
Christine Noem did and you needto make them pay for it
(14:42):
politically.
And if that sounds callous, Idon't care.
I do not care.
I want to win the damn election.
I want to win Congress.
I want to win the presidency.
I want to win statelegislatures.
I want to be in a positionwhere I don't have to get up
every morning, look at my kidsacross the breakfast table and
(15:03):
wonder what the hell kind ofcountry they are about to
inherit.
That's it.
It's that simple.
Set a narrative.
When an opportunity arises froma narrative point of view, you
must capitalize on it.
But instead we're going to letthem get away with it because it
is the humane thing to do,right?
That's crazy.
(15:24):
That is hubris at its absoluteheight.
It is a values message.
It's not even a disingenuousmessage.
If this story hadn't come out,this woman could be vice
president.
She'd be next in line to thepresidency, and she's clearly a
sociopath that she can be nextin line to the presidency and
she's clearly a sociopath.
This needs to be out there,that these are the kind of
people that are being put onpedestals and treated like moral
(15:49):
leaders.
Shame on us for not doing this.
Shame on us.
I get political fundraisingemails from everybody on the
planet, including acongressional candidate where
I'm keeping track, I think sincethe primary, I've gotten about
11.
It's a whole other podcast.
You need to weaponize this, I'msorry.
You need to weaponize thisInstead of the.
I'm desperately trying to dowhatever I need.
(16:11):
I'm democracies on the ballot.
Give me $3.
That message, I'm sorry, hasgotten stale.
We need to throw a disruptor inthere to get people to pay
attention because use theeconomy.
Let's compare it to the economy.
The economy, by all indicators,is fantastic, but people feel
(16:32):
like the economy is bad.
They feel it Because votersvote and make decisions and form
their opinions based on emotion, not fact, as much as Democrats
would love for it to be theopposite, and so would I.
Look at COVID If that didn'tteach us that emotion can trump
fact.
With voters.
What else do we need to know?
(16:53):
People go vote and form theiropinions, especially in a
situation where no one knowswhat's real anymore Fake news,
everybody, there's so muchhappening.
They want to grab ontosomething simple that they can
feel.
This is something simple thatthey can feel.
It defines who she is and thendefines the people around her by
(17:14):
association, especially whenthey will not brazenly speak out
against her.
And there are so many quotesand clips of everybody talking
about how wonderful this womanis.
You could drown people in them,you could, no pun intended.
You could fill a gravel pitwith all of it, but we're not
doing it.
We're not doing it.
We're not doing it.
One quick story to wrap this up, because I know I'm furious
(17:36):
today, and this is how I know.
You don't mess with people'sdogs, and I'm not just saying
this as a dog owner.
In 2010, I had my first realre-election in the state house.
They targeted my seat.
It was the tea party year,southwestern Pennsylvania.
We ended up getting crusheddown there.
We lost the majority because wefailed to build it in 08 when
(17:59):
Obama got elected Another storyfor another day.
Everybody was in trouble and myopponent who ironically ended
up endorsing me in 2012, myRepublican opponent was a
50-some-year-old business guyNot a bad person, certainly not
like a MAGA crazy or anythinglike that but he was my opponent
and it was one of those thingswhere they told him stay home,
(18:21):
stay out of trouble.
We're just going to throw a tonof money against this guy and
try to take him out.
So it was a real race and I hadto take it seriously.
So the mail consultants werelike you need to do 15 pieces of
direct mail about issues andall the things that you normally
get.
There was a lot going on thatyear.
I don't know if there was a USSenate race, but I know there
(18:42):
was a gubernatorial race.
There was a lot.
There was a lot happening in2010.
And so people were getting tonsof mail and all that stuff.
Lot.
There's a lot happened in 2010,and so people were getting tons
of mail and all that stuff.
And when we did our mail plan,which cost like an absolute
fortune that I didn't have.
I wanted to add a piece.
I was single at the time.
I actually was divorced andhadn't met my or been with my
(19:05):
current wife yet, and I wasliving with my two dogs, abby
and Delano, and I would takethem places and as part of my
social media, I would have themfeature.
They actually had their ownpage.
They still have it, actually, Ithink.
So they were everywhere and Imade them part of who I was,
because they were part of who Iwas.
(19:25):
It's who I was spending my timewith.
So I had this idea.
That was the year, that term, wehad banned puppy mills in the
legislature and we've done someother things and I was working
with, like the Humane Society.
I was doing some animallegislation and it was an area
that I was.
I'm on the House JudiciaryCommittee.
They were dealing with a lot ofthis stuff.
It was kind of a little bit ofyou know, compared to all the
(19:46):
environmental stuff I was doing,which was just brutally hard.
This was stuff where peoplekind of it worked for all time
zones right, like you could dothings.
That people were like, yeah,that's common sense.
So I had this idea that I wasgoing to do a piece of direct
mail from my dogs.
Right, I wanted to do somethingdifferent, something kind of
fun, but still talk about somethings that would just kind of
(20:07):
break up the monotony.
The House Democratic CampaignCommittee flatly refused to pay
for it.
Right, they were like nope,we're doing 15 pieces of mail.
They're all like four of themwere duplicates of one another,
but they're like we'reabsolutely not doing this.
Okay, fine, I felt so stronglyabout it and I was so convinced
(20:27):
that the cookie-cutter approachthat was being taken in
Harrisburg was going to resultin massive losses for Democrats
which, by the way, is exactlywhat happened.
I said I'm going to do it myself, I designed it myself, paid for
it myself.
It was only like a four by sixpostcard and on the front and I
picture my dogs and it saidwe're Abby and Delano, we're
(20:48):
Jesse White's dogs and we cannotwait for this election to be
over.
Had my logo on it, turned itover on the back.
We had like a fun font and itwas written from them in like
the first person, and it waslike.
You know, this election stinks.
Like Jesse's not home, as much,you know, we're not getting to
go on his May walks.
He's tired when he comes home.
But we get it because he passed, you know, he banned puppy
(21:10):
meals.
He did this.
So then I flipped it into somepolicy stuff, right, and then it
ends with for God's sakes, weneed to just elect this guy so
we can get back.
We can get our owner back andhe can go back to and doing
things to help dog owners ordogs like us.
Fun Little paw print at thebottom.
Then, to keep costs down, I wentto the county sheriff's offices
, got the list of dog owners,the dog licenses,
(21:34):
cross-referenced it against mysuper voter list like by hand,
and sent it out to that group.
So it was maybe like 5,000people in a voting universe of I
don't know 30,000, 25,000.
It was by far the mosteffective piece of political
mail I've ever done.
The feedback was instant anduniversally positive.
(21:56):
People loved it because it wasdifferent and it showed
something they could connect to.
They were dog owners.
They got it.
I wasn't just some politicianasking for a vote.
I was relating to them in a waythey understood on it and
touching a nerve, not in a badway, but touching a nerve that
they cared about deeply, and itworked.
(22:18):
Oh, and, by the way, the nextcampaign cycle.
Some of the very same peoplewho I had to go to war with
inside the party to try to getthat piece done and they still
wouldn't pay for it inside theparty to try to get that piece
done and they still wouldn't payfor it started putting out that
exact same piece and weresuddenly praised as geniuses and
(22:38):
won a bunch of awards for it.
My thoughts on some of thatstuff can wait for another day.
Let's stay focused here.
The point being, people careabout their dogs, and how people
treat a dog is a valuestatement of the highest
magnitude, and the Republicanshave just failed a value
statement of the highestmagnitude and the Republicans
have just failed that valuestatement.
That values test in a horrificway, but it will only mean
(23:01):
anything politically if we makethem pay for it, and it is not
callous political messaging thatyou could turn your nose up at.
It is the kind of thing thatpeople care about, and it is
important because it is keepingpeople who would do that sort of
thing out of office, because ifthat's what they'll do to a dog
, think of what they'll do to aperson, specifically someone
(23:23):
that they devalue as a humanbeing, which is what the
Republicans under Trump havemade an art form.
We are no longer opponents, weare enemies.
It doesn't matter what happensto us.
If they could, they wouldgladly take some Democrats and
put them in a gravel pit andshoot them.
Do you know how?
I know, because they basicallycome out and say it, they attack
(23:46):
our Capitol, they causeviolence, they incite violence,
and that's at the top.
So wake up, seize the moment,seize the narrative.
For the love of God, just forone time, play the game the way
that we are being forced to playit, so we can win.
This has been the KeystoneReckoning Podcast.
(24:08):
I'm Jesse White and, yeah, I'mstill hot.
Have a great day.
Kristi Noem is a monster.
The Democrats are about to lether and the Republican Party off
the hook for it.
Good morning, welcome to theKeystone Reckoning podcast.
I'm your host, jesse White.
It is Tuesday, april 30th 2024.
And I am coming in hot todayfor several reasons.
Obviously, we're talking aboutSouth Dakota Governor Kristi
(00:22):
Noem and the widely circulatedstory from her upcoming book
about how she put her dogCricket in a pit and shot it,
and we're not going to gothrough all the details of that.
They're everywhere.
You can look at it on your own,or I'm sure, if you're
listening to this podcast,you've certainly seen the story
by now.
So let's get into this.
First of all, there's nodenying Kristi Noem is an
(00:44):
absolute monster.
That is just a horrific thing.
As someone who has owned andhad to put down two dogs, one as
recently as a few months ago, Ican say that, other than the
day my grandmother died, the dayI had to put my two dogs down
were maybe two of the very worstdays of my entire life because
(01:05):
of what it did to me, what itdid to my family, because the
dogs were members of our familyand no, I'm not trying to make
them out to be like they were mychildren or anything like that.
We're not those people, butthey were an indelible part of
our lives.
I just realized I just saidindelible.
My one dog's name was Delano.
(01:31):
I was a Freudian slip there.
So as a dog owner, as a humanbeing, it's just abhorrent.
Okay, we've all got that out ofthe way.
So now the question is whatcomes next, and this is where
the Democrats absolutely mustmake sure that there is a price
to be paid for this politically,and let me explain what I mean.
And then let's look at why itisn't happening.
So we're now seeing, because ofwhat Noem has done has been so
(01:54):
universally criticized, which Idon't know what she was possibly
thinking.
Apparently, the story has beengoing around South Dakota for
quite a while.
She was in the running to bevetted as one of Trump's VP
candidates.
I think she was probably in thetop couple of choices and maybe
she knew that this was going tocome out and wanted to get out
ahead of it.
Even still, that is, I don'tknow my thought.
(02:17):
If I had to choose betweenbeing Trump's VP and having this
hanging around my neck publiclyand not being Trump's VP and no
one knowing about it.
I think I'd take the latter formany reasons, but it goes to
the point.
This wasn't so much of a storyof a bad person making a bad
(02:40):
decision.
This is a story of character,of personal character.
What kind of person this is?
Because this is that is, asociopath, someone that feels no
empathy, right?
There's also another storyabout her killing goats.
But the fact that she could doit and then talk about it and
(03:01):
then put it in print and thennow go on social media and try
to defend it.
And she actually said that oneof the quotes was that cricket
was the picture of pure joy.
Well, if he was the picture ofpure joy, you know what I do to
something in my life that's nota picture of pure joy.
I don't put it in a gravel pitand put a bullet in it.
Maybe that's just me, but thatis the mark of a sociopath.
(03:22):
And it is a telling indicatorthat this person, who has been
the same person, right, justbecause no one knew this story
publicly doesn't mean she was,you know, she wasn't this person
.
This didn't happen yesterday.
That she was the sexy and Imean that not in a physical,
because she's a female way,because she was this kind of you
(03:42):
know, sarah Palin-esque.
You know Sarah Palin for the,you know, for the new era, for
the MAGA era or whatever youwant to say.
But she was this, you know thisfront runner that was going to
put some energy into it and helppropel the ticket for Trump,
help, obviously, with womenvoters, which they see to be a
huge you know, women voters arethe election in this November.
(04:06):
So she was a front runner, shewas the next big thing.
This is who she had been allalong.
The Democrats must capitalizeon that, and by capitalize on it
, I mean from a messaging pointof view.
And here's the thing you don'tneed to sensationalize this one.
You don't need to stretch it.
(04:27):
You don't need to go above andbeyond to try to make it out to
something that it's not.
It's her own damn words.
It is her own words.
This is as simple as it gets.
This story came out over theweekend or the end of last week.
How in the world we did notwake up Monday morning to ads
(04:47):
from every progressive group onthe planet using this incident,
talking about it, using her ownwords, juxtaposed against quotes
that Trump has said about herbeing wonderful, of which
there's a million of them, andusing it to make the very clear
point that there is the valuesof these people cannot be
(05:14):
reconciled.
How in the world did that nothappen?
I don't know.
I don't know, because here'swhat I do know, and I've said it
before.
I'll be saying it nonstop,forever until it becomes not
true.
Republicans are so good at thesesimple short messages.
(05:36):
They're bumper stickercampaigning and in a lot of ways
, they take non sequiturs andthen find a way to tie them back
to the candidate or thecampaign or not.
Sometimes it's about changingthe narrative right.
Look at what they're doingright now Trump, first president
ever to be sitting through acriminal trial, the everything
(05:57):
that goes with it, the way he'sconducted himself falling asleep
, acting like an idiot outsidethe courthouse, probably
committing contempt of the gagorder left, right and center Bad
narrative right.
In any other era that would bea disqualifying narrative for a
presidential candidate, for anycandidate.
But now the Republicans andtheir operation have managed to.
(06:19):
First of all, because part ofthe problem is it's become
normalized with Trump right.
That's a problem that it's justreally hard to deal with.
It's been a problem for years,but they've been able.
Now.
I turned on.
I was at the gym this morning.
I turned on.
I look at the news.
All it is campus protesters.
That's a whole other issue fora whole other day.
I'm not saying it's the campusprotester bad thing.
I want to be very clear aboutthat.
But they are taking somethingout there.
They're taking something outthere, twisting it to their own
(06:42):
narrative and it's it's theOccupy argument all over again,
right?
A bunch of dirty kids living intheir parents' basements or
living in dorms at these liberalarts colleges, being
destructive and doing whatever,cherry picking the narrative.
They're forming a narrative.
They're forming a narrative.
They're making it out to besomething that will stick with
(07:03):
voters because they're going tosee it again between now and
November.
I just read an article thismorning that there's a Trump
aligned group that is runningwildly bigoted ads in black
markets, including here inPennsylvania, to try to convince
black voters that Joe Biden isresponsible for M13, bringing
fentanyl across the border andeverything under the planet.
(07:25):
They're crafting a narrative.
It doesn't have to be accurateIn this case.
It's wildly inaccurate.
It's totally wrong.
But this is where the furyreally rises.
This is the thing that makes mesick to my stomach is that as
Democrats, nationally,organizationally, individually
(07:49):
this is where our own arroganceand our own hubris and our own,
quite frankly, disconnect allowsthe Republicans to be able to
do this.
We look at them and it was inall the articles this morning
and everything I read as I'meating breakfast in the morning.
I read all the things and it'sa lot of tongue in cheek, right?
(08:11):
Not that anybody is makinglight of the Kristi Noem thing I
want to be clear about that butthey're making these kind of
sideways comments.
They're taking the quick andeasy little dig, right.
There's a thing now there's alot of our state reps and people
like that are like you know,post a picture of your dog, not
in a gravel pit.
I'll start.
That's adorable, right?
Okay?
Ha ha ha.
Congratulations.
(08:32):
You posted on Twitter.
You've done your bit fordemocracy for the day.
Get real.
Get real, because the peoplethat you need to talk to, that
we need to talk to, they're notfollowing you on Twitter.
They're at the gym where FoxNews is playing in the
background.
They're at work.
They're at well, I guess not inschool.
I would hope school age kidsaren't voting, but you know what
(08:52):
I mean.
They're out in the world and weget into this echo chamber
where we get self-righteous.
We get self-righteous and wethink that by making a little
sideways comment or taking thelowest hanging fruit and just
assuming that the voters aregoing to get it right.
That's one of the biggestcriticisms I have of Democrats
(09:13):
from a messaging point of viewis we assume that everybody's
paying attention, everybodyshares our worldview and that
they're going to be able to readthe context of what we're
trying to say, whereasRepublicans literally beat you
over the head with it.
And then Democrats get allfrustrated about why our message
doesn't stick compared totheirs, because they're better
(09:33):
at telling it, they're better atreinforcing it, because we
often are so obsessed with beingright that we forget that we
have to win.
You can't govern if you don'twin.
This election should not evenbe remotely close.
How, how is this election close?
I have a degree in politicalscience.
(09:54):
If you would have told me whenI was in college here's a case
study of a random electionknowledge.
Here's a case study of a randomelection and you, in a random
United States election 25 yearsfrom now, analyze it and tell me
what's going to happen.
My response my little blue book.
I don't even know if they stilluse blue books.
My little blue book would bedramatically different than the
reality we're living right now,and we can be as mad as we want
(10:17):
and frustrated andself-righteous as we want at the
Republicans, but at the end ofthe day, they want to win.
We want to be right.
Well, what has that gotten us?
Yes, we got Joe Biden elected.
Yes, we got a slim majority inthe US Senate.
Not enough to break thefilibuster, to actually get some
things done for people Right,not enough to really get
(10:39):
anything done.
Not to do anything.
But we can go out and raisemoney because we're in the
majority.
That's where we're at right now.
We do just enough.
And it is brutal, as someonewho's been out there in the
trenches in a variety of ways.
It is brutal, it is grueling,it will break you.
It shouldn't be this hard.
We don't have to make it thishard.
(11:00):
We make it harder than it needsto be, to our own detriment.
And then we act like we're allgeniuses because we're so smart
that we've been able to figureout how to craft these clever
narratives.
Why?
Why, we are letting them offthe hook here, and here's the
proof.
Here's all I need.
Article Yahoo News Mondaymorning.
Yesterday morning, donald Trumphas reportedly expressed
(11:36):
disappointment in South DakotaGovernor Kristi Noem after she
revealed she killed her puppy.
That's it right.
An insider said, quote she wasalready unlikely to be picked as
VP, which I don't buy, but wasvery disappointed quote to hear
the story about her dog.
See what they did there.
See what they did there.
It was the New York Post, bythe way, where they got this
information.
So obviously Trump friendlypublication they did.
They carried his water for him.
They allowed the Trump who isthe Republican Party right by
Trump saying oh no, she's, she'sa bad person.
(11:58):
Well, I don't really agree withthat.
He didn't really come out andcondemn her, right, he didn't
even say anything directly.
But you know he's going todistance himself from her and
that'll be it.
She'll be on an island, she'sdone.
But we allow them to cut theirlosses and move on.
That's insanity.
That's insanity and here's howI know it's insanity because if
the roles were reversed, can youimagine, can you imagine for
(12:24):
one second, if that story wasabout Kamala Harris shooting the
family dog?
Think about that for a second.
Go back four years.
She's not the same vicepresident.
She's on the short list.
She's clearly a rising star.
A lot has been said about her'sin the eye sitting elected
official of high stature and astory comes out that she shot
(12:45):
her family dog.
Would the republicans have everlet go of that story?
Ever?
No, no way.
No way they would have.
They would have, aside fromdestroying her, they would have
been able to paint democrats ina light that is, again, not
accurate.
It's a broad, sweepinggeneralization.
Do I believe that theoverwhelming majority, the
(13:07):
almost 99.5% of Republicans,even the MAGA Republicans, would
shoot the family dog?
Of course not.
But what we have to understandis that we are carrying a I
don't know what's the leasteffective weapon I can think of.
We're carrying a piece ofstring to a nuclear war.
Right, these people don't playfair and you know I hear a lot
(13:35):
of oh well, we have to be betterthan them.
We have to be better, we haveto do better, we have to show we
can win.
You know what?
We don't have that luxury.
Find a woman in Texas who'strying to get an abortion and
ask her if she gives a damnabout our messaging strategy.
Look at what happened onJanuary 6th Court are going out
(13:57):
of their way to try to make thisthe biggest loophole, hack, job
getaway and dangerous for ourrepublic in American history.
Does anybody care?
Should anybody care when it'sthe truth?
To me, that's the guiding star,right, that's the North Star.
If it's the truth, I don't carehow unpalatable it is.
(14:19):
It needs to be out there and itneeds to be out there in a way
that is so overwhelming.
It needs to be shock and aweand make sure the voters don't
forget.
Screw the press releases.
Screw the little tweets, screwthe.
I'm disappointed.
You need to tether Donald Trumpand the Republicans to what
Christine Noem did and you needto make them pay for it
(14:42):
politically.
And if that sounds callous, Idon't care.
I do not care.
I want to win the damn election.
I want to win Congress.
I want to win the presidency.
I want to win statelegislatures.
I want to be in a positionwhere I don't have to get up
every morning, look at my kidsacross the breakfast table and
(15:03):
wonder what the hell kind ofcountry they are about to
inherit.
That's it.
It's that simple.
Set a narrative.
When an opportunity arises froma narrative point of view, you
must capitalize on it.
But instead we're going to letthem get away with it because it
is the humane thing to do,right?
That's crazy.
(15:24):
That is hubris at its absoluteheight.
It is a values message.
It's not even a disingenuousmessage.
If this story hadn't come out,this woman could be vice
president.
She'd be next in line to thepresidency, and she's clearly a
sociopath that she can be nextin line to the presidency and
she's clearly a sociopath.
This needs to be out there,that these are the kind of
people that are being put onpedestals and treated like moral
(15:49):
leaders.
Shame on us for not doing this.
Shame on us.
I get political fundraisingemails from everybody on the
planet, including acongressional candidate where
I'm keeping track, I think sincethe primary, I've gotten about
11.
It's a whole other podcast.
You need to weaponize this, I'msorry.
You need to weaponize thisInstead of the.
I'm desperately trying to dowhatever I need.
(16:11):
I'm democracies on the ballot.
Give me $3.
That message, I'm sorry, hasgotten stale.
We need to throw a disruptor inthere to get people to pay
attention because use theeconomy.
Let's compare it to the economy.
The economy, by all indicators,is fantastic, but people feel
(16:32):
like the economy is bad.
They feel it Because votersvote and make decisions and form
their opinions based on emotion, not fact, as much as Democrats
would love for it to be theopposite, and so would I.
Look at COVID If that didn'tteach us that emotion can trump
fact.
With voters.
What else do we need to know?
(16:53):
People go vote and form theiropinions, especially in a
situation where no one knowswhat's real anymore Fake news,
everybody, there's so muchhappening.
They want to grab ontosomething simple that they can
feel.
This is something simple thatthey can feel.
It defines who she is and thendefines the people around her by
(17:14):
association, especially whenthey will not brazenly speak out
against her.
And there are so many quotesand clips of everybody talking
about how wonderful this womanis.
You could drown people in them,you could, no pun intended.
You could fill a gravel pitwith all of it, but we're not
doing it.
We're not doing it.
We're not doing it.
One quick story to wrap this up, because I know I'm furious
(17:36):
today, and this is how I know.
You don't mess with people'sdogs, and I'm not just saying
this as a dog owner.
In 2010, I had my first realre-election in the state house.
They targeted my seat.
It was the tea party year,southwestern Pennsylvania.
We ended up getting crusheddown there.
We lost the majority because wefailed to build it in 08 when
(17:59):
Obama got elected Another storyfor another day.
Everybody was in trouble and myopponent who ironically ended
up endorsing me in 2012, myRepublican opponent was a
50-some-year-old business guyNot a bad person, certainly not
like a MAGA crazy or anythinglike that but he was my opponent
and it was one of those thingswhere they told him stay home,
(18:21):
stay out of trouble.
We're just going to throw a tonof money against this guy and
try to take him out.
So it was a real race and I hadto take it seriously.
So the mail consultants werelike you need to do 15 pieces of
direct mail about issues andall the things that you normally
get.
There was a lot going on thatyear.
I don't know if there was a USSenate race, but I know there
(18:42):
was a gubernatorial race.
There was a lot.
There was a lot happening in2010.
And so people were getting tonsof mail and all that stuff.
Lot.
There's a lot happened in 2010,and so people were getting tons
of mail and all that stuff.
And when we did our mail plan,which cost like an absolute
fortune that I didn't have.
I wanted to add a piece.
I was single at the time.
I actually was divorced andhadn't met my or been with my
(19:05):
current wife yet, and I wasliving with my two dogs, abby
and Delano, and I would takethem places and as part of my
social media, I would have themfeature.
They actually had their ownpage.
They still have it, actually, Ithink.
So they were everywhere and Imade them part of who I was,
because they were part of who Iwas.
(19:25):
It's who I was spending my timewith.
So I had this idea.
That was the year, that term, wehad banned puppy mills in the
legislature and we've done someother things and I was working
with, like the Humane Society.
I was doing some animallegislation and it was an area
that I was.
I'm on the House JudiciaryCommittee.
They were dealing with a lot ofthis stuff.
It was kind of a little bit ofyou know, compared to all the
(19:46):
environmental stuff I was doing,which was just brutally hard.
This was stuff where peoplekind of it worked for all time
zones right, like you could dothings.
That people were like, yeah,that's common sense.
So I had this idea that I wasgoing to do a piece of direct
mail from my dogs.
Right, I wanted to do somethingdifferent, something kind of
fun, but still talk about somethings that would just kind of
(20:07):
break up the monotony.
The House Democratic CampaignCommittee flatly refused to pay
for it.
Right, they were like nope,we're doing 15 pieces of mail.
They're all like four of themwere duplicates of one another,
but they're like we'reabsolutely not doing this.
Okay, fine, I felt so stronglyabout it and I was so convinced
(20:27):
that the cookie-cutter approachthat was being taken in
Harrisburg was going to resultin massive losses for Democrats
which, by the way, is exactlywhat happened.
I said I'm going to do it myself, I designed it myself, paid for
it myself.
It was only like a four by sixpostcard and on the front and I
picture my dogs and it saidwe're Abby and Delano, we're
(20:48):
Jesse White's dogs and we cannotwait for this election to be
over.
Had my logo on it, turned itover on the back.
We had like a fun font and itwas written from them in like
the first person, and it waslike.
You know, this election stinks.
Like Jesse's not home, as much,you know, we're not getting to
go on his May walks.
He's tired when he comes home.
But we get it because he passed, you know, he banned puppy
(21:10):
meals.
He did this.
So then I flipped it into somepolicy stuff, right, and then it
ends with for God's sakes, weneed to just elect this guy so
we can get back.
We can get our owner back andhe can go back to and doing
things to help dog owners ordogs like us.
Fun Little paw print at thebottom.
Then, to keep costs down, I wentto the county sheriff's offices
, got the list of dog owners,the dog licenses,
(21:34):
cross-referenced it against mysuper voter list like by hand,
and sent it out to that group.
So it was maybe like 5,000people in a voting universe of I
don't know 30,000, 25,000.
It was by far the mosteffective piece of political
mail I've ever done.
The feedback was instant anduniversally positive.
(21:56):
People loved it because it wasdifferent and it showed
something they could connect to.
They were dog owners.
They got it.
I wasn't just some politicianasking for a vote.
I was relating to them in a waythey understood on it and
touching a nerve, not in a badway, but touching a nerve that
they cared about deeply, and itworked.
(22:18):
Oh, and, by the way, the nextcampaign cycle.
Some of the very same peoplewho I had to go to war with
inside the party to try to getthat piece done and they still
wouldn't pay for it inside theparty to try to get that piece
done and they still wouldn't payfor it started putting out that
exact same piece and weresuddenly praised as geniuses and
(22:38):
won a bunch of awards for it.
My thoughts on some of thatstuff can wait for another day.
Let's stay focused here.
The point being, people careabout their dogs, and how people
treat a dog is a valuestatement of the highest
magnitude, and the Republicanshave just failed a value
statement of the highestmagnitude and the Republicans
have just failed that valuestatement.
That values test in a horrificway, but it will only mean
(23:01):
anything politically if we makethem pay for it, and it is not
callous political messaging thatyou could turn your nose up at.
It is the kind of thing thatpeople care about, and it is
important because it is keepingpeople who would do that sort of
thing out of office, because ifthat's what they'll do to a dog
, think of what they'll do to aperson, specifically someone
(23:23):
that they devalue as a humanbeing, which is what the
Republicans under Trump havemade an art form.
We are no longer opponents, weare enemies.
It doesn't matter what happensto us.
If they could, they wouldgladly take some Democrats and
put them in a gravel pit andshoot them.
Do you know how?
I know, because they basicallycome out and say it, they attack
(23:46):
our Capitol, they causeviolence, they incite violence,
and that's at the top.
So wake up, seize the moment,seize the narrative.
For the love of God, just forone time, play the game the way
that we are being forced to playit, so we can win.
This has been the KeystoneReckoning Podcast.
(24:08):
I'm Jesse White and, yeah, I'mstill hot.
Have a great day.
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