December 2, 2025 • 10 mins
He discusses why some believe Democrats are attempting to gain control of numerous cities across the country, including figures like Zohran Mamdani. The way people consume media may play a significant role in shaping voters’ decisions in upcoming elections. California Governor Gavin Newsom could be a contender in the 2028 presidential election, and the economy should be a key issue for future candidates.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to you are well. Let's talk to the
Dean himself, the greatest campaign manager and the best analyst
of all Ed Rollins. How you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm doing well, thank you to Thanksgiving and had a
wonderful day.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I'll lead it too, Yeah, definitely. Hey, we're talking of
this before twenty twenty six summer saying could be the
most important election ever for Democrats. It's the final last
chance to stop Donald Trump. If he gets both houses
again and has complete control of Congress, it's smooth sailing.
They've got to take Congress back to stop them and
(00:38):
peach them whatever they want to do.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
What do you think, Well, I think that's their goal obviously.
And the reality is the numbers aren't very good for
nobody in the political business today. The Congress numbers are terrible.
But the reality is Republicans are running in the whole show.
So they've got a somehow breakthrough here what happens. And
then having run the progrescial races as a chairman of
(01:01):
the Congressional for medical chairman, uh and having gone to
a mid term election when I was a White House
political director. These are straining elections and they start now. Uh.
We don't have a year to get ready. We have
a We have a couple of months to get ready.
And what occurs as members start doing their own polls,
and the vast majority of members of the most important
(01:21):
thing it's getting re elected. They don't care about anybody else.
They care about the president to a certain extent Republicans,
but at the end of the day, if they start
doing badly, they're going to do everything they can to
get themselves reelected, which may not be what the president wants.
So we've got a lot of chaos. The budget bills
aren't going to get through. They very clear that Dune
yesterday said he's gonna trouble. We're gonna have trouble get
(01:43):
the budget bills through. They made a promise on the
healthcare and publican's problem for years of healthcare is we
don't have an alternative, UH to Obamacare. And so we've
got through real fight to the head of us. And
I just would urge the president to stay consistent on
a few subjects here and not be traveling all over
the world and not get us an war and in
(02:04):
other parts of the world. Yeah, star wars, we won't.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
We don't have wars, but you're the expert, and you
know we don't have much time. But when you say
we don't have much time, it's a year from now.
Can't anything and everything change by then?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
It won't change the reality is, you know, the economy
may get a little stronger. Hopefully if that does that,
it can turn it around. But everything is kind of
in play now. And the budget. The next big battles
here are the budget battles, and we control that process.
So we've got to make sure whatever it takes to
get get them through. And the country sees the Congress working.
(02:42):
The Congress don't see the Congress working in particularly the
House getting things done. The reality is a load against
the majority that's there. We've got a big election today
in Tennessee. Tennessee seven. Yeah, this is where the president
carried by twenty six points. Shouldn't even be at a race.
But it's dead it even according to the pools that
(03:03):
I've seen. So if we lose this, it's sort of
the process keeps feeding itself, and what happens they eat themselves.
They basically say, okay, our here's our plan for the years.
We're we're going to do ten things, five things, whatever
the number is and then you stick with it. Unfortunately,
the numbers are so small both the sun in the
House that a defection of five six seats anywhere changes
(03:27):
the dynamic dramatically.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, can you explain to us this crazy phenomenon of
these new Democratic candidates. They're all kooks, you know, like
Mom Donnie. Well, this woman in Tennessee, she doesn't like
country music and she said her districts in Nashville. I mean,
w how did the Democrat ends up with these kookie people?
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Well, I've seen her on TV. I don't know her
at all, but she's she's pretty pretty charismatic, and I
think that's part of it. They say what they say,
what they want, they say what they think they want,
and it's pretty much running against Republicans, running against Trump
much promoting himself. Obviously, Mon Dabi was different, but Bondaby
didn't run on his own record Nabi and we didn't
(04:06):
do a very good job with laying out what he
really is. He really is a socialist comments whatever term
you want to use. It's all what the vast majority
of New York is, or how the vast majority of
people in the country are.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah about Mon Donnie, the same thing on paper, the
worst candidate in the world. But you're right, he's charismatic
on TV and online social and.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Media and the way things are now, you know, everybody
has their own independent way of getting their news. They
don't watch television walk they used to. They don't watch
the news shows. And you know, the reality here is
that people go on and they're charismatic and they say, oh, no,
I'm just against Trump. Trump's doing all these bad things.
I'm going to change that. And whether he is or
is and is not always relevant. It's the perception. And
(04:48):
the perception right now is there's too many fights going on.
You can't be fighting with Navy seals, he can't be
fighting with the astronauts. Get the job done, and the
president needs to focus on that. In the White House States
philps got.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
That, so, uh, you can have the worst wreck in
the world. But as long as you're charismatic, does that
mean Gavin Newsom has a great shot in twenty twenty
eight he.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Has He should not even be in the game. This
guy has been recalled to be called as the worst
record of anybody in California, and modern history of the
state's in terrible, terrible shape and yet he's in the
election was held a couple of school get a fifty
four percent of brewery from Californians. So he's certainly got
(05:33):
a base to run on, and he's not going to
run on his record. He's going to run on against
against Trump. In my sense, that's that's what all do is.
It's all going to be against Trump, and Trump basically
has got to be very disciplineous message. He's got the
strongest party he's ever anybody's ever had, but they're going
to start up backbrating if they don't see him turning
this back around it. It's all about the economy, all
(05:56):
about the economy.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
The rest of it is, what does it mean discipline
in his message? You mean talk less, don't tweet every
two seconds, do a little less.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Don't tweet every two seconds, and don't let everybody else talk. Basically,
pick who you're going to have out there doing. What's
the message of the day. The message of the day
right today is we care about what happened to these
You know these guys are gonna shot out on the boat.
Yeah that's the story. Then have your message down, stay
on the message, don't let people want and there's too
(06:25):
many people that are independent and know what you're going
to say. I've always ard with his strategy clients or
whether it's political lines. We'll write it out. Here's what
we're going to say, here's how long we're going to
say it. Here's where the kinds of shows are going
to go on and make sure that everybody's hearing from
us the same message and not fifteen different messages.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, but you know when you get a private sector
billionaire running, well, you had, you ran the Russ Paro campaign,
the private sector billionaire business guy. It's hard to tell
them things, isn't it. They don't listen, do they They
don't listen.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
They don't listen. I finally said it pro one day.
So you're just trying to run a traditional campaign, said no,
I'm not just trying to run a campaign.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But they became billionaires, so they must know something.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Right, They do know something, and they should stay in
the lane where they know something. That's good. Let let
people understand politics and communications do that. Yeah, so you're communicating,
You're every day, every day, you're out communicating your message
every day in your basically talking about the things that
matter to you, anything matter to your viewers. If all
of a sudden tomorrow you are going out there and saying,
you know, we just got a lock to the greatest
(07:28):
mayor in the world in New York. Let's get them
a shot. Your ears have started clicking off. That switches that. Yeah,
you got to stay consistent in your message who you
are and what you are.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah. But but you know, even like that's take the Venezuela.
The boats people are basically common sense. Don't they realize, Hey,
these guys are defending drug dealers. Well, we can't defend
the drug cartels.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
But we haven't. We haven't proved the case yet. We
need to go prove the case. And I would argue
at this point in time, this is serious. If they
if they charge the sectarior defense whatever he wants to
be call as you call the world ward. But at
the end of the day, he's not a very good
communicator and he may not be a very good Secretary
of Defense. He may have made a big mistake here.
And for some reason, when it's spend the Christmas holidays
(08:10):
talking about to we murdered two guys hang on the
side of a boat. We think they were trying to do.
Is we don't know that for sure. And the Congress
is calling through hearings. He got to cooperate with the hearings.
What are you gonna do, sit down and get a strategy,
get a plan. There's no strategy in this White House
right now.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
All right, Well, good stuff, Ed Rollins, always great talking
you thanks for the great analysis. Keep up the good work,
and we'll talk against him. Take it, take care or
interesting stuff. Yeah. Hey, we got a lot to get
to throughout the day, all sorts of stuff to cover.
H We didn't get to the Tim Waltz fraud either.
(08:47):
That is pretty amazing, that fraud Tim Waltz. You know
this happens with these democrats. Look at the Toplasia when
he was in office with his wife's crazy program Thrive NYC,
which were these crazy centers with like yoga for the homeless.
Somehow a billion dollars got put into that and then
(09:07):
went missing. The billion dollars disappeared. To this day, nobody
knows where it went. And by the way, the program
itself never opened, the single center, never got a single
program done, still hasn't to this day. The billion disappeared.
That's what happens when you get these Democratic socialists. Now
look at the Minnesota where you got Tim Waltz in charge,
(09:28):
same exact sort of thing. It also happens to be
a billion dollars went missing, a bunch of crazy programs
in Minnesota, same kind of left wing coop nonsense programs.
The billion dollars is missing. Tim Waltz cannot seem to
explain for a second what happened to the money, will
not even take responsibility for it. People have asked him
(09:50):
over and over and over again. He can't explain it.
Same thing happened with the Blasia. Luckily it's he's a
left wing guy. They don't push him to our bit.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Waltz, do you take response ability for failing to stop
this fraud in your state?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Well, certainly I take responsibility for putting people in jail.
Governors don't get to just talk theoretically. We have to
solve problems. And I will note it's not just Somali's.
Minnesota is a generous state. Minnesota is a place, and
it's basically a no no. He will not take responsibility
for it. Hey, I don't forget Tonight at nine excellent
news show Jimmy Fayla, very funny, interesting, show every night
(10:24):
nine o'clock here on seven to ten wor
You're listening to you are well. Let's talk to the
Dean himself, the greatest campaign manager and the best analyst
of all Ed Rollins. How you doing.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
I'm doing well, thank you to Thanksgiving and had a
wonderful day.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I'll lead it too, Yeah, definitely. Hey, we're talking of
this before twenty twenty six summer saying could be the
most important election ever for Democrats. It's the final last
chance to stop Donald Trump. If he gets both houses
again and has complete control of Congress, it's smooth sailing.
They've got to take Congress back to stop them and
(00:38):
peach them whatever they want to do.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
What do you think, Well, I think that's their goal obviously.
And the reality is the numbers aren't very good for
nobody in the political business today. The Congress numbers are terrible.
But the reality is Republicans are running in the whole show.
So they've got a somehow breakthrough here what happens. And
then having run the progrescial races as a chairman of
(01:01):
the Congressional for medical chairman, uh and having gone to
a mid term election when I was a White House
political director. These are straining elections and they start now. Uh.
We don't have a year to get ready. We have
a We have a couple of months to get ready.
And what occurs as members start doing their own polls,
and the vast majority of members of the most important
(01:21):
thing it's getting re elected. They don't care about anybody else.
They care about the president to a certain extent Republicans,
but at the end of the day, if they start
doing badly, they're going to do everything they can to
get themselves reelected, which may not be what the president wants.
So we've got a lot of chaos. The budget bills
aren't going to get through. They very clear that Dune
yesterday said he's gonna trouble. We're gonna have trouble get
(01:43):
the budget bills through. They made a promise on the
healthcare and publican's problem for years of healthcare is we
don't have an alternative, UH to Obamacare. And so we've
got through real fight to the head of us. And
I just would urge the president to stay consistent on
a few subjects here and not be traveling all over
the world and not get us an war and in
(02:04):
other parts of the world. Yeah, star wars, we won't.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
We don't have wars, but you're the expert, and you
know we don't have much time. But when you say
we don't have much time, it's a year from now.
Can't anything and everything change by then?
Speaker 2 (02:19):
It won't change the reality is, you know, the economy
may get a little stronger. Hopefully if that does that,
it can turn it around. But everything is kind of
in play now. And the budget. The next big battles
here are the budget battles, and we control that process.
So we've got to make sure whatever it takes to
get get them through. And the country sees the Congress working.
(02:42):
The Congress don't see the Congress working in particularly the
House getting things done. The reality is a load against
the majority that's there. We've got a big election today
in Tennessee. Tennessee seven. Yeah, this is where the president
carried by twenty six points. Shouldn't even be at a race.
But it's dead it even according to the pools that
(03:03):
I've seen. So if we lose this, it's sort of
the process keeps feeding itself, and what happens they eat themselves.
They basically say, okay, our here's our plan for the years.
We're we're going to do ten things, five things, whatever
the number is and then you stick with it. Unfortunately,
the numbers are so small both the sun in the
House that a defection of five six seats anywhere changes
(03:27):
the dynamic dramatically.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, can you explain to us this crazy phenomenon of
these new Democratic candidates. They're all kooks, you know, like
Mom Donnie. Well, this woman in Tennessee, she doesn't like
country music and she said her districts in Nashville. I mean,
w how did the Democrat ends up with these kookie people?
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Well, I've seen her on TV. I don't know her
at all, but she's she's pretty pretty charismatic, and I
think that's part of it. They say what they say,
what they want, they say what they think they want,
and it's pretty much running against Republicans, running against Trump
much promoting himself. Obviously, Mon Dabi was different, but Bondaby
didn't run on his own record Nabi and we didn't
(04:06):
do a very good job with laying out what he
really is. He really is a socialist comments whatever term
you want to use. It's all what the vast majority
of New York is, or how the vast majority of
people in the country are.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah about Mon Donnie, the same thing on paper, the
worst candidate in the world. But you're right, he's charismatic
on TV and online social and.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Media and the way things are now, you know, everybody
has their own independent way of getting their news. They
don't watch television walk they used to. They don't watch
the news shows. And you know, the reality here is
that people go on and they're charismatic and they say, oh, no,
I'm just against Trump. Trump's doing all these bad things.
I'm going to change that. And whether he is or
is and is not always relevant. It's the perception. And
(04:48):
the perception right now is there's too many fights going on.
You can't be fighting with Navy seals, he can't be
fighting with the astronauts. Get the job done, and the
president needs to focus on that. In the White House States
philps got.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
That, so, uh, you can have the worst wreck in
the world. But as long as you're charismatic, does that
mean Gavin Newsom has a great shot in twenty twenty
eight he.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Has He should not even be in the game. This
guy has been recalled to be called as the worst
record of anybody in California, and modern history of the
state's in terrible, terrible shape and yet he's in the
election was held a couple of school get a fifty
four percent of brewery from Californians. So he's certainly got
(05:33):
a base to run on, and he's not going to
run on his record. He's going to run on against
against Trump. In my sense, that's that's what all do is.
It's all going to be against Trump, and Trump basically
has got to be very disciplineous message. He's got the
strongest party he's ever anybody's ever had, but they're going
to start up backbrating if they don't see him turning
this back around it. It's all about the economy, all
(05:56):
about the economy.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
The rest of it is, what does it mean discipline
in his message? You mean talk less, don't tweet every
two seconds, do a little less.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Don't tweet every two seconds, and don't let everybody else talk. Basically,
pick who you're going to have out there doing. What's
the message of the day. The message of the day
right today is we care about what happened to these
You know these guys are gonna shot out on the boat.
Yeah that's the story. Then have your message down, stay
on the message, don't let people want and there's too
(06:25):
many people that are independent and know what you're going
to say. I've always ard with his strategy clients or
whether it's political lines. We'll write it out. Here's what
we're going to say, here's how long we're going to
say it. Here's where the kinds of shows are going
to go on and make sure that everybody's hearing from
us the same message and not fifteen different messages.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, but you know when you get a private sector
billionaire running, well, you had, you ran the Russ Paro campaign,
the private sector billionaire business guy. It's hard to tell
them things, isn't it. They don't listen, do they They
don't listen.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
They don't listen. I finally said it pro one day.
So you're just trying to run a traditional campaign, said no,
I'm not just trying to run a campaign.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
But they became billionaires, so they must know something.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Right, They do know something, and they should stay in
the lane where they know something. That's good. Let let
people understand politics and communications do that. Yeah, so you're communicating,
You're every day, every day, you're out communicating your message
every day in your basically talking about the things that
matter to you, anything matter to your viewers. If all
of a sudden tomorrow you are going out there and saying,
you know, we just got a lock to the greatest
(07:28):
mayor in the world in New York. Let's get them
a shot. Your ears have started clicking off. That switches that. Yeah,
you got to stay consistent in your message who you
are and what you are.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah. But but you know, even like that's take the Venezuela.
The boats people are basically common sense. Don't they realize, Hey,
these guys are defending drug dealers. Well, we can't defend
the drug cartels.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
But we haven't. We haven't proved the case yet. We
need to go prove the case. And I would argue
at this point in time, this is serious. If they
if they charge the sectarior defense whatever he wants to
be call as you call the world ward. But at
the end of the day, he's not a very good
communicator and he may not be a very good Secretary
of Defense. He may have made a big mistake here.
And for some reason, when it's spend the Christmas holidays
(08:10):
talking about to we murdered two guys hang on the
side of a boat. We think they were trying to do.
Is we don't know that for sure. And the Congress
is calling through hearings. He got to cooperate with the hearings.
What are you gonna do, sit down and get a strategy,
get a plan. There's no strategy in this White House
right now.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
All right, Well, good stuff, Ed Rollins, always great talking
you thanks for the great analysis. Keep up the good work,
and we'll talk against him. Take it, take care or
interesting stuff. Yeah. Hey, we got a lot to get
to throughout the day, all sorts of stuff to cover.
H We didn't get to the Tim Waltz fraud either.
(08:47):
That is pretty amazing, that fraud Tim Waltz. You know
this happens with these democrats. Look at the Toplasia when
he was in office with his wife's crazy program Thrive NYC,
which were these crazy centers with like yoga for the homeless.
Somehow a billion dollars got put into that and then
(09:07):
went missing. The billion dollars disappeared. To this day, nobody
knows where it went. And by the way, the program
itself never opened, the single center, never got a single
program done, still hasn't to this day. The billion disappeared.
That's what happens when you get these Democratic socialists. Now
look at the Minnesota where you got Tim Waltz in charge,
(09:28):
same exact sort of thing. It also happens to be
a billion dollars went missing, a bunch of crazy programs
in Minnesota, same kind of left wing coop nonsense programs.
The billion dollars is missing. Tim Waltz cannot seem to
explain for a second what happened to the money, will
not even take responsibility for it. People have asked him
(09:50):
over and over and over again. He can't explain it.
Same thing happened with the Blasia. Luckily it's he's a
left wing guy. They don't push him to our bit.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Waltz, do you take response ability for failing to stop
this fraud in your state?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
Well, certainly I take responsibility for putting people in jail.
Governors don't get to just talk theoretically. We have to
solve problems. And I will note it's not just Somali's.
Minnesota is a generous state. Minnesota is a place, and
it's basically a no no. He will not take responsibility
for it. Hey, I don't forget Tonight at nine excellent
news show Jimmy Fayla, very funny, interesting, show every night
(10:24):
nine o'clock here on seven to ten wor
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