December 10, 2025 • 33 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So after our morning show finished today at eleven o'clock,
our routine is then we cut production for our stations
around the country. And that's where we say, you know,
if you listen to the station you're listening to during
the afternoon before our show, you'll hear me say, Jasmine
(01:03):
Crockett is a campaign launch? Is a product launch not
a campaign kickoff? Coming up next on My Michael Berry Show. Well,
we do those sorts of things for you know, we
do one that goes out to all the stations because
we're doing the same show that's going out to everybody.
But we do custom spots. So if we do a
(01:26):
custom spot for Lovebook, and we do a custom spot
for Nashville that says, you know, this is the times
we're on the air and listen to the show, and
these sorts of things, and we cut all sorts of
things that make bonus podcasts, weekend podcasts. We do a
lot of things outside the radio show. I record video
(01:46):
podcast now, just little clips of me talking about this
or that, and we started posting those to YouTube, and
I post them to Facebook, and to Twitter and to Instagram,
and what it really is is just an opportunity to Look.
What I do is share my thoughts. Whether people like
it or not, I share my thoughts and that starts
conversations between other people and sometimes in.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Reaction to me. And that's what I get to do
for a living.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I don't ever lose track of the fact that that's
a really cool way to get to do, to get
a really cool thing to get to do for a living,
because most people do.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It without getting paid.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Most talk radio listeners do what I do just to
a smaller audience at a cocktail party, at dinner. In
the workplace, you share your opinions and engage with people.
It's fun to do so during that time, I have
a personal assistant. She's also the personal assistant for our
entire office, and she will come in and she will
(02:45):
bring the mail and we will go over outstanding items
that need to be taken care of. And we were
talking today. I keep TV stations on in the background
that I'll glance up at what headlines are there to
see if there's anything that I need to be paid
attention to. And there was somebody on TV and I said,
my goodness. She it wasn't on Fox. It was on
(03:05):
Uh must have been seeing it and I don't remember.
It doesn't matter. And I said, my goodness, she looks
like Tammy fay Baker. And do you know what Emily said?
Our resistant Are you ready for this?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
She said?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
The most painful thing you could say, she said, who
is that? I felt so old at that moment. Everybody,
every parent, when your child gets to be a teenager,
will have a moment where you will mention something and
(03:39):
not even think twice about it. You will mention something
and your child will say who is that? And you
will realize that was a massive news story and this
person's life, in this person's life, there is zero awareness
of it. You know, when Brendan Sullivan represented Oliver North
(04:03):
is being berated by the senators and he says, I
am not and they keep telling him he can't answer
that that Oliver North needs to answer during Iran Contra
and he says, I am not a potted plant. It's
a great line. Maybe I kind of geeked out on that,
and that might not have been in the zeit. Guy's
quite quite like the others. The fall of the Berlin Wall.
You know, remembering where it was, the moments that were there.
(04:27):
Like my mother would tell me she was in a
senior in high school when John F. Kennedy passed and
she remembered the teacher coming in and saying that and
telling that, and it was coach Ronnie Anderson and he
was her I think history or English teacher, and she
remembered that moment. Well, imagine if if she said, you know,
(04:51):
that's like when John F. Kennedy passed and I said
who is that? Of course I didn't because I knew
even though it happened before me. And it's just always
kind of a humbling moment when a young person. Now
Emily is probably thirty. People don't believe that because she
weighs about eighty pounds and she looks about twenty. My
(05:15):
wife laughs because says, I don't want to be out
in public with her because she'll look like our kid.
Well we're old enough that she could be our kid,
but she's our assistant. In any case. It kind of
bothered me that she didn't know who who Tammy fay
Baker was. And if you want to email me with
the story with your kids of something you referenced and
(05:37):
your kids said who is that? And you felt extremely
old from the experience, I'm open to reading all of those.
You can do that through our website at Michael Berryshow
dot com Michael Berryshow dot com. While you're there, sign
up for our daily blast. You can buy our merch
And I'm very active on Facebook. I'm somewhat less active
(05:58):
on Twitter, but I'm on there, and then I've started
posting more on Instagram, And if I'm being completely honest,
full disclosure, it is because I found that some of
the younger listeners, especially younger women listeners, are on Instagram,
and I started posting more on Twitter because I found
that some of the younger listeners, especially younger men, are
(06:20):
on Twitter. So I have found that posting my material
on there connects with a different audience on a different level,
in different ways, with different experiences and perspectives, which will
bring us to the discussion at hand, and that is
the midterm elections. They're eleven months away. However, there are
(06:45):
certain troubling There is a certain tempest in the sea
that I am witnessing beginning to whip up, and it
concerns me terribly. To start with, we don't have anything
to show for an entire year of having the House majority,
which means we get the speaker, committee chairmanships, the Senate majority,
(07:10):
and the White House. We don't have anything to show
for it. The only thing we have to show for
the last year is what President Trump did by executive order. Now,
it helps that the House can't hold investigative hearings all
day every day because Nancy Pelosi are now Hakeem Jeffries
(07:30):
is a speaker. But what happens in the last two
years of the Trump administration if the Democrats get control
of the House and or the Senate. If they get
control of the Senate, we can't put anybody on the
Supreme Court. If they get control of the House, they
can hold investigative hearings all day every day, they can
(07:50):
hold up the budget, they can do nine kinds of hell,
and believe me they will. They will absolutely torment him
and torpedo his agenda.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yuh hell, We've got the majority.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
And the President was caught on open mic, not caught,
but heard on open mic yesterday saying he can't get
any of his judicial nominees approved because the Republicans are
allowing the Democrats to blue slip it it's a backdoor deal.
The Republicans are in on the sabotage of our party
and our mission.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
You understand that, right I had the time Mastive Dogs
name Michael Berry right there. That is.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
As Americana as any song that Irving Berlin wrote. That
is as Americana as Forever in Blue Jeans, Babe, John Cougar, Mellencamp,
small Town. That song right there. First of all, you
(09:01):
got the beautiful vocals of Ronnie Mills out. You got
the reference to a Dove commercial in the middle of
a song ninety ninety four one hundreds percent pure love.
How clever is that? I know you knew that already.
I'm just reminding you that's where it comes from. Milk
and Honey and Captain Crunch and you in the morning.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Man.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Let me tell you something. That song came out in
nineteen seventy four, but it was still being played on
the radio in Little Orange, Texas, where I lived for
years when I was six or seven years old. I
can remember the menfolk would be off at work during
the day during the summer that song would come on.
(09:46):
You'd be with staying at your grandmother's house or one
of your aunt's house, that song would come on, and
you felt as much a part of America as any
rich New Yorker, any rich Dallas banker, because the stuff
on the radio spoke to you. Milk and honey and
Captain Crunch and you in the morning. Now, that's a
(10:08):
love song. That's a working class love song. That is
a connection to Americans, that is celebrating the simple joys
in life, your soap, your cereal. Sure they're mass produced
(10:30):
national conglomerates, but let's leave that aside for a moment.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
You were part of it.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
You were living as much America as anything else. And
that's what Urban Cowboy would end up doing.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The guy who.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Worked at the plant and then at night he went
to Urban Cowboy and rode the bull. They're making movies
about you. That's what the Trucker movies did. They democratized
pop culture. One of the great travesties of our day
is it rap music celebrates having a bunch of money.
(11:06):
Nobody knows how you have it talking about how much
money you had. We got Lamborghinis, we got Ferrari's, we
stay in here, we wearing this, were doing this, and
it's basically just some dude that looks like Biggie and
a bunch of hoochies all over him, and he's got
so much money. That is just they're just making it
rain everywhere, and it's just fancy brands and expensive stuff.
(11:31):
And I really don't know what you take away from
that as you listen to that on your way to
Burger King to work behind the cash register. I don't
know how you react to that sort of thing if
you're a young black man out of work and you're
looking for role models and a cultural beacon, and what
(11:54):
you see is dudes with machine guns, sunglasses, ice on
their teeth, in mansions, and you don't really can't really
tell how anybody's making money, but you want you some
of that. It makes me wonder, I mean, but not
Ronnie millsap By goodness, he could see that.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
That wasn't a good idea for you, Ramon, he could
see it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Jasmine Crockett was our news story of the day yesterday,
and we will get back to her. But there's something
that I'm noticing that is brewing, and that is a
discussion about Republicans losing the midterms. Republic the party in
power usually loses about would use round numbers two dozen
(12:48):
members of Congress. Of the four hundred and thirty five
members of the lower House of Congress, which we refer
to as the House or Congress. Generally, they usually lose
a couple of Senators well as well. Typically you have
about a third of the Senate that's up for reelection
every two years, because as you know, senators served six
(13:09):
year terms on staggered terms, so the entirety of the
Senate is not up at any given time. So that's
meant to create a degree of stability. So you don't
have the entire Senate wiped out in one election, but
you could conceivably have the entire House wiped out. Hasn't
happened or anything close to it. In fact, the biggest
(13:32):
blood bath in the modern era was in twenty ten
as a reaction to Barack Obama. In fact, in twenty ten,
that was the biggest Republican gain.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I believe I should have checked this.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I believe since nineteen ninety four when you had the
Republican the Contract with America, and nineteen ninety four was
the first time in I believe forty years that the
Republicans had taken control of the House, which was a
big thing today.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That has changed.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
In fact, with Republicans taking control of the House in
ninety four and again in twenty ten, there has been
a move by the Democrats. They realized they were losing
working class voters, so they had to replace those working
class voters, and so they went hard for the American left, students, blacks, gays,
(14:27):
and they went hard at illegal aliens. And you can
see how the numbers changed, and in fact, including in
twenty one when you had the census, actually it's twenty twenty,
when you had the census, make the decision that illegal
aliens would be counted in the census. When you're only
(14:48):
supposed to count citizens for representation, illegal aliens don't get
to count in the number for representation because they don't
get representation because they're not citizens. And everyone knows this,
but they did it and they got away with it,
and it affected the number of congressmen. You've got redistricting
in Texas, which should pick up five Republican seats, a
(15:11):
five seat swing. You've got California trying to thwart that.
That's all right, we're still treading water. I'll take that.
You've got Indiana that has enacted the redistricting. That's a
good thing. You've got states that said they would and
didn't because Republicans never have the killer instinct that Democrats do.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But when we talk about why.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Republicans are going to lose seats in the midterms, whether
it's going to happen, and why, it's important not to
do what the media is doing and assume that that
is a referendum on Trump.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
It is not. And I'm gonna explain to you why.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Because Trump is still more popular than the rest of
the Republican Party.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That is what.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
And in fact, Trump is very popular personally. But Trump
has not had coattails until now, and we will see
if he has. Trump has not been able to push
people over the line who were not already able to
win on their own. You could look at doctor Oz
for instance, you could look at herschel Walker for instance.
(16:17):
But that doesn't mean Trump and his agenda are any
less popular. It means the rest of the Republican Party
doesn't have the chops to win.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And that's what we're going talking about conte acquisitions after acquisitions.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So when we consider whether Republicans are going to hold
the House and send it or not, the people anchoring.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
News stations.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
National news stations are not experts in understanding political trends.
They're mostly just reading a teleprompter and doing that for
year after year after year does not make you an
expert on You are around knowledge, you are introducing people
(17:05):
who are laying down knowledge, but it doesn't give you
a good gut for what's going on. Reminds me of
the story of Lyndon Johnson. When he was president. He
had a guy who had worked for him for two decades,
and that guy thought he was going to get the
promotion to the next big job, and in fact LBJ
(17:25):
gave the job to his underling, who'd only worked there
a couple of years. And the seasoned veteran came in,
grizzled as he was, and said to the president, mister President,
how come you gave him this job. He's only got
two years experience and I've got twenty years experience. And
(17:46):
he said, no, you got one year's experience twenty times.
When you see a Jake Tapper, or for that matter,
of some folks on Fox doing it, who these pieces
is These questions that they're asking their guests are written
by some producer that doesn't understand anything about politics, much
(18:09):
less the regional Paccadillo's look, a Republican in Texas is
very different than a Republican in Massachusetts. When you look
at the red and blue states of how the parties break,
how the states break during the electoral college, almost every
state is winner take all. But when you look at
(18:30):
those states and you see those that go blue, if
you look up at the Northeast, it doesn't look very big.
In fact, the size map of America if you measure
by land mass, I don't know. I'd have to look
at the map again, but I'll bet you Trump won
seventy percent of the land mass. So if you consider
(18:52):
state of Texas as land mass, and he won all
the electoral votes as opposed to much smaller states that
don't have much land mass but do have high density.
And that's what those Northeast states represent. But those voters
are very different than a Texas Republican. A California Republican
(19:12):
is very different than a Florida Republican. So what they're
saying now is that Trump is not popular because in
the polls of party preference, people are reducing them number
of times they say Republican and increase in the number
of times they say Democrat, but that's not necessarily a
(19:36):
referendum on Trump. A lot of people, particularly the more
maga end of the spectrum, think Trump's doing just fine,
but we're very disappointed in the Republicans. So when you
see a leak yesterday where the President is frustrated and says,
(19:59):
I can't get anybody, I can't get my people past
they're expiring because Grassley won't let him out because he's
given into the Democrats and their Blue Slip, appropriately named.
That makes people who support the president angry at Republicans,
so they're mad at the Republican brand. Trump's great superpower
(20:27):
is his ability to get people who do not call
themselves Republicans to.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Vote for him.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
But most Republicans don't have that superpower. They can only
get the party loyalist to vote for them, and that's
been the problem for years. That was the problem with Romney,
that was the problem with McCain, that was the problem
with Bob Dolan ninety six, that was the problem with
George H. W. Bush in ninety two, and in fact,
(20:55):
in ninety two you had the unique phenomenon of h
Ross Pero running so Pero managed to siphon off people
who were independent that would have gone Republican. That Clinton
didn't win. If memory serves, Clinton only won forty three
percent of the vote popular vote, and I think a
(21:16):
Truss Perreau had close to twenty percent, which leaves about
thirty seven percent for George H. W.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Bush.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I hadn't looked at that numbered a long time, but
if memory serves, that's.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
About what happened. Well, that's because George HW.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Bush did not appeal to anything other than establishment Republicans,
and that's what he was. He'd been the CIA director,
he'd been the Ambassador to China, He'd hung around the process.
He'd been vice president under Reagan. But remember he'd called
Reagan economics voodoo economics. He was not part of the
Reagan Revolution. The Reagan Revolution is a precursor to the
(21:51):
Trump Revolution. Those voters remain the same. Some of the
Trump voters are the children of the Reagan voters. But
whereas Trump can still hold on to most of the
party loyalists, he brings in a whole new demographic to
the party that partisans can't bring in. And that is
(22:16):
a degree of populism, that is a degree of patriotism
that the party doesn't manage to and the party is
seen as a do nothing party. People know that Republicans
had the opportunity to seal the border going back to
Reagan and chose not to do it. People know that
(22:37):
whereas Trump proved you could do it. People know that
Republicans could have stopped the Narco terrorists and chose not to.
They see Trump doing it. People understand that what he
has done with the executive orders Republicans could have done
before Republicans dragged us into Afghanistan and wouldn't get us
(22:59):
out he did.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
People are tired of the forever Wars.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
So you have a lot of people who will identify
when they're called at home as a Republican. But when
you look at what the Republican Party is doing and
not doing, which is a big part because it's a
do nothing party to most people, then you see people
who identify as Republican and identify as Trump voters, but
(23:24):
don't show up and vote for their local congressman or senator.
Let's take the state of Texas for instance. You had
a guy like John Cornyn was his four terms and
this guy's despised, well, he finally has a real challenge
in the primary. Two of them Ken Paxton, who's leading
(23:45):
the race the attorney general, and Wesley Hunt, a congressman
who hasn't served that long but is running in second.
And you got Corning in third place. National Republican Senate
Committee has already spent the rumor is forty million dollars
and they're committed to spend one hundred and so a
(24:08):
lot of people are looking at this and going, why
is John Cornyan so important? And by the way, why
don't you ask yourselves if John Cornyn requires one hundred
million dollars in his own primary, isn't that a problem?
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Aren't you just a little bit worried.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
That the people of Texas don't want the guy that
you want so badly? Do you think there's some asset
he has some great knowledge he brings to the Senate.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
The people of Texas don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Why are you insisting on putting someone in the Senate
from that state that the people.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Here don't want. We're gonna take you, and that's why
people are pissed at the party.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Oh bab oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, so just so
I wrap all this up, my wife says, I'm an
over communicator, by which she means that I am repeating
myself too many times with my sons now eighteen and nineteen,
soon to be nineteen and twenty. When I make a
(25:10):
point as to why they can't go to that party,
or why they can't do this or that, or why
I don't want them to make this decision, I will
always explain the reason. I never say because I said so,
I have no problem if you do that. I think
a parent has that authority and it is to be respected.
(25:30):
But part of my role as a parent, I believe
is teaching and explaining things, is teaching them how I
make decisions in hopes that they will learn to internalize
that decision making process and it will become their own.
It should be the case that as your children grow
and develop, they don't need to ask.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
You if they can do something stupid.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
They will first think to themselves, that's a stupid thing
that I should do, So I'm not gonna do it.
So I don't need to ask for a permission to
do it. Because I'm not gonna do it. That means
you've done your job as a parent. Sometimes I over communicate,
and I understand that but the reason for that is
(26:15):
you're busy, you're driving, you're distracted, somebody cut in front
of you. You came in the middle of a segment.
So let me wrap this up and put a bow
on it so that my point has made it absolutely clear.
The Republican Party brand.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Is in a crisis right now.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Not to say that this ship can't be saved, but
it's in a crisis right now. But the reason it's
in a crisis is not because of the rise of
the Democrat Party. It's not because the Democrat Party is
doing a great thing. It's because part of the Republican
Party does not want to vote for establishment Republicans because
(26:55):
they're sabotaging Trump, because they feel that Trump's agenda is
America's agenda and their agenda, and they don't want I
should say we, because I'm part of that. We don't
want the Republican Party sabotaging what we want to get done,
and we don't want them continuing to sit on their
hands and do nothing and then campaign on what they're
(27:17):
going to do if we can get.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Back in power. We're in power now.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
We should not need to have Congressmen and senators campaigning
on what they're going to do if they're re elected.
Just do it now. You're in power right now. Just
do what you claim you'll do if you're re elected now.
(27:42):
But of course you know that they don't intend to
do it, because they did they do it now, But
they don't do it now, do they?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So what does that tell you?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
It tells you that they promise to do things that
they have no intention of ever doing. It'd be one
thing if they promised to do things that the Democrats
were thwarting them from doing. But they're not. They could
do it now. However, they have to keep going back
(28:14):
to these voters. And for most of these Republicans, not all,
there are some districts that are not big Trump districts,
but for most of these voters, for most of these politicians,
they're going back to an electorate now. It's the primary
base right now, and definitely in the primaries, they're going
back to a primary base, and they're having to promise
(28:37):
that they love Trump and everything Trump stands for, knowing
good and well, that they will fly back to DC
tomorrow and work to undercut everything he does.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
In fact, they.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Are asking for an opportunity to go back to the
House and Senate and sabotage him and backstab him for
two more years.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
But they don't run on that base. They run on
the basis that.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
They're going to go back up there and work hand
in hand with Trump, and we're going to fight them.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Damn Democrats. It's not the Democrats that are our problem
right now.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
To quote Dennis Green, Denny Green, the Democrats are who
we thought they were, who it knew they were. We're
the ones bungling this, We're the ones that had to
fix this. We got the same problem in the state
of Texas. We've got the governor, we've got the lieutenant governor,
we've got the state Senate, we got the State House,
(29:36):
and yet we get nothing done, nothing of note. And
so now we've got our lieutenant governor, our governor out campaigning.
They're each offering competing campaigns that they're going to cut
property taxes. We have a big property tax. We don't
have an income tax. We have a massive property tax,
(29:57):
and people are mad about it. And so we're paying
more in property taxes. And they're watching their schools build
these big stadiums and these big buildings and keep taking
taking on these bonds and they're seeing teachers getting pay raises.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Oh, we have to pay the teachers more.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
And school we're built, building new schools and having more
programs and doing all these things in the cost of
education is increasing, but the quality isn't. And the people
of Texas are angry. And the Lieutenant governor and the
governor have been there for a while and the problems
gotten worse on their schedule, on their on their watch,
and so they're now rolling out. They're they're testing out
(30:31):
their themes. We're gonna cut property taxes. And all I
hear people say is, but why didn't you cut Why
didn't you do that already? You were already you already
could have done that. Well, why do you need to
be re elected to do that? And you've got state
reps and state centers. We're gonna go out there and
(30:53):
we're gonna do what we about to tell you we're
gonna do.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
But what didn't do it before? When your teenage kid says, hey,
can I have a car? Can I have an iPhone?
Can i'm an iPad and I have a computer? Can
I go on this trip?
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Can I go this w If I can do that,
then I'll keep my room clean, But why didn't you
keep your room clean before.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
I'll do the laundry, I'll watch the cars, I'll mow
the grass. But why did you do it before? Why
do you do it when I asked you to?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Then you'd have some capital built up, some political capital,
some parental capital. So it's not the case that, well,
we don't got a sandbag this deal. We don't want
to get everything done this term, then we won't have
the reason to elect us. Voters would reward you for accomplishment,
but you don't have accomplishment. Where are the accomplishments? You
(31:50):
keep telling us the Democrats are so evil and we
have to send you back to office to accomplish things.
And we did again and again and again and again,
and at some point Charlie Brown doesn't kick that damn
football because he knows Lucy's lyon. Our biggest problem and
(32:11):
why we're at the greatest risk of losing the House
and the Senate come November is because Trump voters don't
believe the rest of the Republicans are committed to doing anything,
so they don't see a reason to go out and
work hard and get them elected. Say what you will
(32:33):
about Trump if you're not his biggest fan. He did
more on the first day of his second administration with
the executive orders than Bush did the entirety of his
last term. And he managed at the end of his
first term to get us out of the Afghan War,
(32:54):
which Bush dragged us into and we should not have
been in after all those years. So I want to
be clear, it's not that Trump has a problem. The
failure of the Republicans is not a reflection of unpopularity
of Donald Trump. It's a reflection of the fact that
(33:15):
the Republican Party is not enacting his agenda, which is
a popular agenda that the American people want. That's not
kissing Donald Trump's ass. That's calling balls and strikes.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
That's how they are
It's that time, time, time, time, luck and load. So
Michael Verie Show is on the air.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
So after our morning show finished today at eleven o'clock,
our routine is then we cut production for our stations
around the country. And that's where we say, you know,
if you listen to the station you're listening to during
the afternoon before our show, you'll hear me say, Jasmine
(01:03):
Crockett is a campaign launch? Is a product launch not
a campaign kickoff? Coming up next on My Michael Berry Show. Well,
we do those sorts of things for you know, we
do one that goes out to all the stations because
we're doing the same show that's going out to everybody.
But we do custom spots. So if we do a
(01:26):
custom spot for Lovebook, and we do a custom spot
for Nashville that says, you know, this is the times
we're on the air and listen to the show, and
these sorts of things, and we cut all sorts of
things that make bonus podcasts, weekend podcasts. We do a
lot of things outside the radio show. I record video
(01:46):
podcast now, just little clips of me talking about this
or that, and we started posting those to YouTube, and
I post them to Facebook, and to Twitter and to Instagram,
and what it really is is just an opportunity to Look.
What I do is share my thoughts. Whether people like
it or not, I share my thoughts and that starts
conversations between other people and sometimes in.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Reaction to me. And that's what I get to do
for a living.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
I don't ever lose track of the fact that that's
a really cool way to get to do, to get
a really cool thing to get to do for a living,
because most people do.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
It without getting paid.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Most talk radio listeners do what I do just to
a smaller audience at a cocktail party, at dinner. In
the workplace, you share your opinions and engage with people.
It's fun to do so during that time, I have
a personal assistant. She's also the personal assistant for our
entire office, and she will come in and she will
(02:45):
bring the mail and we will go over outstanding items
that need to be taken care of. And we were
talking today. I keep TV stations on in the background
that I'll glance up at what headlines are there to
see if there's anything that I need to be paid
attention to. And there was somebody on TV and I said,
my goodness. She it wasn't on Fox. It was on
(03:05):
Uh must have been seeing it and I don't remember.
It doesn't matter. And I said, my goodness, she looks
like Tammy fay Baker. And do you know what Emily said?
Our resistant Are you ready for this?
Speaker 1 (03:17):
She said?
Speaker 2 (03:17):
The most painful thing you could say, she said, who
is that? I felt so old at that moment. Everybody,
every parent, when your child gets to be a teenager,
will have a moment where you will mention something and
(03:39):
not even think twice about it. You will mention something
and your child will say who is that? And you
will realize that was a massive news story and this
person's life, in this person's life, there is zero awareness
of it. You know, when Brendan Sullivan represented Oliver North
(04:03):
is being berated by the senators and he says, I
am not and they keep telling him he can't answer
that that Oliver North needs to answer during Iran Contra
and he says, I am not a potted plant. It's
a great line. Maybe I kind of geeked out on that,
and that might not have been in the zeit. Guy's
quite quite like the others. The fall of the Berlin Wall.
You know, remembering where it was, the moments that were there.
(04:27):
Like my mother would tell me she was in a
senior in high school when John F. Kennedy passed and
she remembered the teacher coming in and saying that and
telling that, and it was coach Ronnie Anderson and he
was her I think history or English teacher, and she
remembered that moment. Well, imagine if if she said, you know,
(04:51):
that's like when John F. Kennedy passed and I said
who is that? Of course I didn't because I knew
even though it happened before me. And it's just always
kind of a humbling moment when a young person. Now
Emily is probably thirty. People don't believe that because she
weighs about eighty pounds and she looks about twenty. My
(05:15):
wife laughs because says, I don't want to be out
in public with her because she'll look like our kid.
Well we're old enough that she could be our kid,
but she's our assistant. In any case. It kind of
bothered me that she didn't know who who Tammy fay
Baker was. And if you want to email me with
the story with your kids of something you referenced and
(05:37):
your kids said who is that? And you felt extremely
old from the experience, I'm open to reading all of those.
You can do that through our website at Michael Berryshow
dot com Michael Berryshow dot com. While you're there, sign
up for our daily blast. You can buy our merch
And I'm very active on Facebook. I'm somewhat less active
(05:58):
on Twitter, but I'm on there, and then I've started
posting more on Instagram, And if I'm being completely honest,
full disclosure, it is because I found that some of
the younger listeners, especially younger women listeners, are on Instagram,
and I started posting more on Twitter because I found
that some of the younger listeners, especially younger men, are
(06:20):
on Twitter. So I have found that posting my material
on there connects with a different audience on a different level,
in different ways, with different experiences and perspectives, which will
bring us to the discussion at hand, and that is
the midterm elections. They're eleven months away. However, there are
(06:45):
certain troubling There is a certain tempest in the sea
that I am witnessing beginning to whip up, and it
concerns me terribly. To start with, we don't have anything
to show for an entire year of having the House majority,
which means we get the speaker, committee chairmanships, the Senate majority,
(07:10):
and the White House. We don't have anything to show
for it. The only thing we have to show for
the last year is what President Trump did by executive order. Now,
it helps that the House can't hold investigative hearings all
day every day because Nancy Pelosi are now Hakeem Jeffries
(07:30):
is a speaker. But what happens in the last two
years of the Trump administration if the Democrats get control
of the House and or the Senate. If they get
control of the Senate, we can't put anybody on the
Supreme Court. If they get control of the House, they
can hold investigative hearings all day every day, they can
(07:50):
hold up the budget, they can do nine kinds of hell,
and believe me they will. They will absolutely torment him
and torpedo his agenda.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Yuh hell, We've got the majority.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
And the President was caught on open mic, not caught,
but heard on open mic yesterday saying he can't get
any of his judicial nominees approved because the Republicans are
allowing the Democrats to blue slip it it's a backdoor deal.
The Republicans are in on the sabotage of our party
and our mission.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
You understand that, right I had the time Mastive Dogs
name Michael Berry right there. That is.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
As Americana as any song that Irving Berlin wrote. That
is as Americana as Forever in Blue Jeans, Babe, John Cougar, Mellencamp,
small Town. That song right there. First of all, you
(09:01):
got the beautiful vocals of Ronnie Mills out. You got
the reference to a Dove commercial in the middle of
a song ninety ninety four one hundreds percent pure love.
How clever is that? I know you knew that already.
I'm just reminding you that's where it comes from. Milk
and Honey and Captain Crunch and you in the morning.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Man.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Let me tell you something. That song came out in
nineteen seventy four, but it was still being played on
the radio in Little Orange, Texas, where I lived for
years when I was six or seven years old. I
can remember the menfolk would be off at work during
the day during the summer that song would come on.
(09:46):
You'd be with staying at your grandmother's house or one
of your aunt's house, that song would come on, and
you felt as much a part of America as any
rich New Yorker, any rich Dallas banker, because the stuff
on the radio spoke to you. Milk and honey and
Captain Crunch and you in the morning. Now, that's a
(10:08):
love song. That's a working class love song. That is
a connection to Americans, that is celebrating the simple joys
in life, your soap, your cereal. Sure they're mass produced
(10:30):
national conglomerates, but let's leave that aside for a moment.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
You were part of it.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
You were living as much America as anything else. And
that's what Urban Cowboy would end up doing.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The guy who.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Worked at the plant and then at night he went
to Urban Cowboy and rode the bull. They're making movies
about you. That's what the Trucker movies did. They democratized
pop culture. One of the great travesties of our day
is it rap music celebrates having a bunch of money.
(11:06):
Nobody knows how you have it talking about how much
money you had. We got Lamborghinis, we got Ferrari's, we
stay in here, we wearing this, were doing this, and
it's basically just some dude that looks like Biggie and
a bunch of hoochies all over him, and he's got
so much money. That is just they're just making it
rain everywhere, and it's just fancy brands and expensive stuff.
(11:31):
And I really don't know what you take away from
that as you listen to that on your way to
Burger King to work behind the cash register. I don't
know how you react to that sort of thing if
you're a young black man out of work and you're
looking for role models and a cultural beacon, and what
(11:54):
you see is dudes with machine guns, sunglasses, ice on
their teeth, in mansions, and you don't really can't really
tell how anybody's making money, but you want you some
of that. It makes me wonder, I mean, but not
Ronnie millsap By goodness, he could see that.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
That wasn't a good idea for you, Ramon, he could
see it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Jasmine Crockett was our news story of the day yesterday,
and we will get back to her. But there's something
that I'm noticing that is brewing, and that is a
discussion about Republicans losing the midterms. Republic the party in
power usually loses about would use round numbers two dozen
(12:48):
members of Congress. Of the four hundred and thirty five
members of the lower House of Congress, which we refer
to as the House or Congress. Generally, they usually lose
a couple of Senators well as well. Typically you have
about a third of the Senate that's up for reelection
every two years, because as you know, senators served six
(13:09):
year terms on staggered terms, so the entirety of the
Senate is not up at any given time. So that's
meant to create a degree of stability. So you don't
have the entire Senate wiped out in one election, but
you could conceivably have the entire House wiped out. Hasn't
happened or anything close to it. In fact, the biggest
(13:32):
blood bath in the modern era was in twenty ten
as a reaction to Barack Obama. In fact, in twenty ten,
that was the biggest Republican gain.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I believe I should have checked this.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
I believe since nineteen ninety four when you had the
Republican the Contract with America, and nineteen ninety four was
the first time in I believe forty years that the
Republicans had taken control of the House, which was a
big thing today.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
That has changed.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
In fact, with Republicans taking control of the House in
ninety four and again in twenty ten, there has been
a move by the Democrats. They realized they were losing
working class voters, so they had to replace those working
class voters, and so they went hard for the American left, students, blacks, gays,
(14:27):
and they went hard at illegal aliens. And you can
see how the numbers changed, and in fact, including in
twenty one when you had the census, actually it's twenty twenty,
when you had the census, make the decision that illegal
aliens would be counted in the census. When you're only
(14:48):
supposed to count citizens for representation, illegal aliens don't get
to count in the number for representation because they don't
get representation because they're not citizens. And everyone knows this,
but they did it and they got away with it,
and it affected the number of congressmen. You've got redistricting
in Texas, which should pick up five Republican seats, a
(15:11):
five seat swing. You've got California trying to thwart that.
That's all right, we're still treading water. I'll take that.
You've got Indiana that has enacted the redistricting. That's a
good thing. You've got states that said they would and
didn't because Republicans never have the killer instinct that Democrats do.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But when we talk about why.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Republicans are going to lose seats in the midterms, whether
it's going to happen, and why, it's important not to
do what the media is doing and assume that that
is a referendum on Trump.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
It is not. And I'm gonna explain to you why.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Because Trump is still more popular than the rest of
the Republican Party.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
That is what.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
And in fact, Trump is very popular personally. But Trump
has not had coattails until now, and we will see
if he has. Trump has not been able to push
people over the line who were not already able to
win on their own. You could look at doctor Oz
for instance, you could look at herschel Walker for instance.
(16:17):
But that doesn't mean Trump and his agenda are any
less popular. It means the rest of the Republican Party
doesn't have the chops to win.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
And that's what we're going talking about conte acquisitions after acquisitions.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
So when we consider whether Republicans are going to hold
the House and send it or not, the people anchoring.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
News stations.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
National news stations are not experts in understanding political trends.
They're mostly just reading a teleprompter and doing that for
year after year after year does not make you an
expert on You are around knowledge, you are introducing people
(17:05):
who are laying down knowledge, but it doesn't give you
a good gut for what's going on. Reminds me of
the story of Lyndon Johnson. When he was president. He
had a guy who had worked for him for two decades,
and that guy thought he was going to get the
promotion to the next big job, and in fact LBJ
(17:25):
gave the job to his underling, who'd only worked there
a couple of years. And the seasoned veteran came in,
grizzled as he was, and said to the president, mister President,
how come you gave him this job. He's only got
two years experience and I've got twenty years experience. And
(17:46):
he said, no, you got one year's experience twenty times.
When you see a Jake Tapper, or for that matter,
of some folks on Fox doing it, who these pieces
is These questions that they're asking their guests are written
by some producer that doesn't understand anything about politics, much
(18:09):
less the regional Paccadillo's look, a Republican in Texas is
very different than a Republican in Massachusetts. When you look
at the red and blue states of how the parties break,
how the states break during the electoral college, almost every
state is winner take all. But when you look at
(18:30):
those states and you see those that go blue, if
you look up at the Northeast, it doesn't look very big.
In fact, the size map of America if you measure
by land mass, I don't know. I'd have to look
at the map again, but I'll bet you Trump won
seventy percent of the land mass. So if you consider
(18:52):
state of Texas as land mass, and he won all
the electoral votes as opposed to much smaller states that
don't have much land mass but do have high density.
And that's what those Northeast states represent. But those voters
are very different than a Texas Republican. A California Republican
(19:12):
is very different than a Florida Republican. So what they're
saying now is that Trump is not popular because in
the polls of party preference, people are reducing them number
of times they say Republican and increase in the number
of times they say Democrat, but that's not necessarily a
(19:36):
referendum on Trump. A lot of people, particularly the more
maga end of the spectrum, think Trump's doing just fine,
but we're very disappointed in the Republicans. So when you
see a leak yesterday where the President is frustrated and says,
(19:59):
I can't get anybody, I can't get my people past
they're expiring because Grassley won't let him out because he's
given into the Democrats and their Blue Slip, appropriately named.
That makes people who support the president angry at Republicans,
so they're mad at the Republican brand. Trump's great superpower
(20:27):
is his ability to get people who do not call
themselves Republicans to.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Vote for him.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
But most Republicans don't have that superpower. They can only
get the party loyalist to vote for them, and that's
been the problem for years. That was the problem with Romney,
that was the problem with McCain, that was the problem
with Bob Dolan ninety six, that was the problem with
George H. W. Bush in ninety two, and in fact,
(20:55):
in ninety two you had the unique phenomenon of h
Ross Pero running so Pero managed to siphon off people
who were independent that would have gone Republican. That Clinton
didn't win. If memory serves, Clinton only won forty three
percent of the vote popular vote, and I think a
(21:16):
Truss Perreau had close to twenty percent, which leaves about
thirty seven percent for George H. W.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Bush.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
I hadn't looked at that numbered a long time, but
if memory serves, that's.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
About what happened. Well, that's because George HW.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Bush did not appeal to anything other than establishment Republicans,
and that's what he was. He'd been the CIA director,
he'd been the Ambassador to China, He'd hung around the process.
He'd been vice president under Reagan. But remember he'd called
Reagan economics voodoo economics. He was not part of the
Reagan Revolution. The Reagan Revolution is a precursor to the
(21:51):
Trump Revolution. Those voters remain the same. Some of the
Trump voters are the children of the Reagan voters. But
whereas Trump can still hold on to most of the
party loyalists, he brings in a whole new demographic to
the party that partisans can't bring in. And that is
(22:16):
a degree of populism, that is a degree of patriotism
that the party doesn't manage to and the party is
seen as a do nothing party. People know that Republicans
had the opportunity to seal the border going back to
Reagan and chose not to do it. People know that
(22:37):
whereas Trump proved you could do it. People know that
Republicans could have stopped the Narco terrorists and chose not to.
They see Trump doing it. People understand that what he
has done with the executive orders Republicans could have done
before Republicans dragged us into Afghanistan and wouldn't get us
(22:59):
out he did.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
People are tired of the forever Wars.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
So you have a lot of people who will identify
when they're called at home as a Republican. But when
you look at what the Republican Party is doing and
not doing, which is a big part because it's a
do nothing party to most people, then you see people
who identify as Republican and identify as Trump voters, but
(23:24):
don't show up and vote for their local congressman or senator.
Let's take the state of Texas for instance. You had
a guy like John Cornyn was his four terms and
this guy's despised, well, he finally has a real challenge
in the primary. Two of them Ken Paxton, who's leading
(23:45):
the race the attorney general, and Wesley Hunt, a congressman
who hasn't served that long but is running in second.
And you got Corning in third place. National Republican Senate
Committee has already spent the rumor is forty million dollars
and they're committed to spend one hundred and so a
(24:08):
lot of people are looking at this and going, why
is John Cornyan so important? And by the way, why
don't you ask yourselves if John Cornyn requires one hundred
million dollars in his own primary, isn't that a problem?
Speaker 1 (24:26):
Aren't you just a little bit worried.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
That the people of Texas don't want the guy that
you want so badly? Do you think there's some asset
he has some great knowledge he brings to the Senate.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
The people of Texas don't know.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Why are you insisting on putting someone in the Senate
from that state that the people.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Here don't want. We're gonna take you, and that's why
people are pissed at the party.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Oh bab oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, so just so
I wrap all this up, my wife says, I'm an
over communicator, by which she means that I am repeating
myself too many times with my sons now eighteen and nineteen,
soon to be nineteen and twenty. When I make a
(25:10):
point as to why they can't go to that party,
or why they can't do this or that, or why
I don't want them to make this decision, I will
always explain the reason. I never say because I said so,
I have no problem if you do that. I think
a parent has that authority and it is to be respected.
(25:30):
But part of my role as a parent, I believe
is teaching and explaining things, is teaching them how I
make decisions in hopes that they will learn to internalize
that decision making process and it will become their own.
It should be the case that as your children grow
and develop, they don't need to ask.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
You if they can do something stupid.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
They will first think to themselves, that's a stupid thing
that I should do, So I'm not gonna do it.
So I don't need to ask for a permission to
do it. Because I'm not gonna do it. That means
you've done your job as a parent. Sometimes I over communicate,
and I understand that but the reason for that is
(26:15):
you're busy, you're driving, you're distracted, somebody cut in front
of you. You came in the middle of a segment.
So let me wrap this up and put a bow
on it so that my point has made it absolutely clear.
The Republican Party brand.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Is in a crisis right now.
Speaker 2 (26:33):
Not to say that this ship can't be saved, but
it's in a crisis right now. But the reason it's
in a crisis is not because of the rise of
the Democrat Party. It's not because the Democrat Party is
doing a great thing. It's because part of the Republican
Party does not want to vote for establishment Republicans because
(26:55):
they're sabotaging Trump, because they feel that Trump's agenda is
America's agenda and their agenda, and they don't want I
should say we, because I'm part of that. We don't
want the Republican Party sabotaging what we want to get done,
and we don't want them continuing to sit on their
hands and do nothing and then campaign on what they're
(27:17):
going to do if we can get.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
Back in power. We're in power now.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
We should not need to have Congressmen and senators campaigning
on what they're going to do if they're re elected.
Just do it now. You're in power right now. Just
do what you claim you'll do if you're re elected now.
(27:42):
But of course you know that they don't intend to
do it, because they did they do it now, But
they don't do it now, do they?
Speaker 1 (27:51):
So what does that tell you?
Speaker 2 (27:53):
It tells you that they promise to do things that
they have no intention of ever doing. It'd be one
thing if they promised to do things that the Democrats
were thwarting them from doing. But they're not. They could
do it now. However, they have to keep going back
(28:14):
to these voters. And for most of these Republicans, not all,
there are some districts that are not big Trump districts,
but for most of these voters, for most of these politicians,
they're going back to an electorate now. It's the primary
base right now, and definitely in the primaries, they're going
back to a primary base, and they're having to promise
(28:37):
that they love Trump and everything Trump stands for, knowing
good and well, that they will fly back to DC
tomorrow and work to undercut everything he does.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
In fact, they.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
Are asking for an opportunity to go back to the
House and Senate and sabotage him and backstab him for
two more years.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
But they don't run on that base. They run on
the basis that.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
They're going to go back up there and work hand
in hand with Trump, and we're going to fight them.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Damn Democrats. It's not the Democrats that are our problem
right now.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
To quote Dennis Green, Denny Green, the Democrats are who
we thought they were, who it knew they were. We're
the ones bungling this, We're the ones that had to
fix this. We got the same problem in the state
of Texas. We've got the governor, we've got the lieutenant governor,
we've got the state Senate, we got the State House,
(29:36):
and yet we get nothing done, nothing of note. And
so now we've got our lieutenant governor, our governor out campaigning.
They're each offering competing campaigns that they're going to cut
property taxes. We have a big property tax. We don't
have an income tax. We have a massive property tax,
(29:57):
and people are mad about it. And so we're paying
more in property taxes. And they're watching their schools build
these big stadiums and these big buildings and keep taking
taking on these bonds and they're seeing teachers getting pay raises.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Oh, we have to pay the teachers more.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
And school we're built, building new schools and having more
programs and doing all these things in the cost of
education is increasing, but the quality isn't. And the people
of Texas are angry. And the Lieutenant governor and the
governor have been there for a while and the problems
gotten worse on their schedule, on their on their watch,
and so they're now rolling out. They're they're testing out
(30:31):
their themes. We're gonna cut property taxes. And all I
hear people say is, but why didn't you cut Why
didn't you do that already? You were already you already
could have done that. Well, why do you need to
be re elected to do that? And you've got state
reps and state centers. We're gonna go out there and
(30:53):
we're gonna do what we about to tell you we're
gonna do.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
But what didn't do it before? When your teenage kid says, hey,
can I have a car? Can I have an iPhone?
Can i'm an iPad and I have a computer? Can
I go on this trip?
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Can I go this w If I can do that,
then I'll keep my room clean, But why didn't you
keep your room clean before.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
I'll do the laundry, I'll watch the cars, I'll mow
the grass. But why did you do it before? Why
do you do it when I asked you to?
Speaker 2 (31:26):
Then you'd have some capital built up, some political capital,
some parental capital. So it's not the case that, well,
we don't got a sandbag this deal. We don't want
to get everything done this term, then we won't have
the reason to elect us. Voters would reward you for accomplishment,
but you don't have accomplishment. Where are the accomplishments? You
(31:50):
keep telling us the Democrats are so evil and we
have to send you back to office to accomplish things.
And we did again and again and again and again,
and at some point Charlie Brown doesn't kick that damn
football because he knows Lucy's lyon. Our biggest problem and
(32:11):
why we're at the greatest risk of losing the House
and the Senate come November is because Trump voters don't
believe the rest of the Republicans are committed to doing anything,
so they don't see a reason to go out and
work hard and get them elected. Say what you will
(32:33):
about Trump if you're not his biggest fan. He did
more on the first day of his second administration with
the executive orders than Bush did the entirety of his
last term. And he managed at the end of his
first term to get us out of the Afghan War,
(32:54):
which Bush dragged us into and we should not have
been in after all those years. So I want to
be clear, it's not that Trump has a problem. The
failure of the Republicans is not a reflection of unpopularity
of Donald Trump. It's a reflection of the fact that
(33:15):
the Republican Party is not enacting his agenda, which is
a popular agenda that the American people want. That's not
kissing Donald Trump's ass. That's calling balls and strikes.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
That's how they are
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