The Unifying Message. Gary Dietrich Talks To A&G

Long-time friend of A&G and CBS News political analyst Gary Dietrich joins Jack Armstrong to talk about the aftermath of the murder of Charlie Kirk, and the impact of CA's Prop 50 (the redistricting bill) on Gavin Newsom's political future.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Old front of the Armstrong and Getty Show.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Gary Dietrich, CBS News political analyst, Gary, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:06):
Hey, Jack.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Good to be with you.

Speaker 3 (00:07):
And by the way, my friend, it's been decades we've
known each other. But I don't think this whole secret
is slipped out on air. I am an eagle scout.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Oh are you cool? That doesn't surprise me. You seem
like the kind of guy that would be an eagle scout.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Good for you, Well, that's very kind of you, and
I catch every once in a while. You mentioned your son,
Henry and scouting, and you've been singing the praise of scouting.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Man.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
My scouting experience was absolutely awesome. I highly recommend it
to everybody. But I'm saying this particularly this morning, Jack,
because I heard in your lead in segment to this
that you're going to be out in the wilderness somewhere
and I just wanted to offer if you have self
service and get desperate, hide in the tent, text Gary
and say what do I do? Now?

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Okay, I'll keep that in mind. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Hey. One thing, though, I won't be available for bear removal.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
So that's that. So did you ever meet Charlie Kirk.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
I did not meet Charlie. It's just kind of one
of those things. For some reason, his path and mind
never crossed. But you know, I don't I don't know
exactly what to say.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Well, speak to is because I know you know about this.
Speak to his impact with voting for young people across
the country.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Oh, it's you know, Jack, It's nearly impossible to overstate.
I mean, the reality is this if you look at
all the studies that have been done over the last
decade too, including I'm not going to mention it at
a place that has an institute for Youth, et cetera,
involvement that the involvement of youth, especially their voting rates

(01:41):
and you know this, Jack, have been on the decline substantially,
and people had thought this was inexorable. I mean, this
is just sort of out, what are we going to
do now? You know, our kids are never going to
be part of democracy. What Charlie Kirk, I won't say
single handedly, but certainly as part of the MAGA movement,
as you know, really earned this around. And so of course,

(02:02):
now if you look at the major demographic groups that
many people attribute to Trump's win and Harris's loss last fall.
One of them was the youth vote, more specifically young males,
which of course is basically the target audience for much
of Turning Points efforts.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
And do you think without him, because he was a
unique character with a hell of a big brain, do
you think without him they can continue their trajectory?

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Well, that's of course the gigantic question. I mean, whenever
you lose a founder, not just you know, a major spokesperson,
it's tough. I mean it's tough in anything, and business
endeavors anything else, but especially tough in politics because so
much of politics, as you know, Jack, is personality and

(02:49):
capability driven. I mean, just go down lists of people
that we know actually change trajectories of politics. Ronald Reagan's
a good example, Barack Obama. You know, even JFK and
those in many people's minds are sort of singular individuals.
They're unique, at least to their generations. So I know,
the Turning Point folks are ramping things up. I know

(03:11):
there's already been significant donations to assist in that. I
know there's already been reportedly many many requests for new
Turning Point chapters on college campuses and even high school campuses.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
So we'll see.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
So I'll lay it out this way. So the Wall
Street Journal had an article the other day. One of
their opinion guys thought, that Prop fifty in California going down.
That's Gavin Newsom's effort to match Texas's redistricting.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
You know, we're gonna fight.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
We're gonna fight their dirty tricks with our dirty tricks
going to redistrict in California. And the Wall Street Journal
opinion guy thought, that's gonna go down and it's gonna
doom Gavin Newsom.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Okay, that's that's one topic.

Speaker 2 (03:52):
The other is I remember asking you about it a
couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about the
polling on how like two thirds of Californians are a
no on it, sixty percent Democrats were know on it.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Yesterday, Gary, we had.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Lana hee Chen on it, and he thinks it's going
to be close, because he says, by the time we
get elect to election day, they're going to have successfully
turned it into a are you for Trump or against him?
It'll be a yes or no on Trump as opposed
to a yes or no on a redistricting thing.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
What do you think?

Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, Well, this break goes out real quick, Jack, A
couple of things. First off, let's take that last one
that is that line of thought is the messaging for
Yes on fifty and Gavin Newsoen made that clear at
the very beginning. They now have a running commercials in
California with Senator Elizabeth Warren. In the first ten seconds

(04:42):
she makes that point very clear. So because of Trump's
standing in California, you know, he didn't carry the state
and he's underwater poling here, no surprise to people. That's
why that messaging is been front and center for the
nission campaign, countering that people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who the
governor when this was put into place, and I mean

(05:02):
our independent Citizens Commission was put into place, and he
is saying, no, this is an assault on democracy. We
can't set aside democracy for three election cycles and then
bring it back. And also his other big line and
he spoke on Monday about this, was hey, listen, if
we start acting like Trump, we're going to become Trump.
So let's see who wins the day on that messaging.
But that's kind of the key one thing about that

(05:24):
polling you mentioned, Jack, this is key the numbers you're
talking about seventy percent of California's support the Independent Citizens Commission,
including as you well note, a big majority of Democrats.
That's different from this particular ballot, and so we're trying
to get trying to get solid numbers on that. The
initial poll, the internal poll that came out this week,

(05:45):
access or somebody who reported political said, oh, we're ahead
by ten. You know, points I never take politically. I
mean internal poll seriously, because when have you ever heard
an internal poll that was bad for their guide released?

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Right? Right?

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Doesn't happen. But there was a poll said forty eight
percent of California's currently supported it. But that's not a
great number. When you are working on propositions in a
state the side of California, you always want to start
well above fifty percent, knowing you're likely historically to get
a drop off.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Then how about the if it goes down, it will
really damage Gavin Newsom nationally.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
Well, there's no question that you know right now, this
is his big claim to political fame. It's what's getting
him all the headlines. You know there will be if
it fails, there will certainly be a spin of well,
we see there were so many MAGA dollars spend against it.
I mean that whole line of thinking, and he certainly
has time to recover him. We're three and a half
years away from twenty twenty eight now. Realistically, realistically, I

(06:42):
would say after the midterms you're going to see and
even as early as next year, you're already seeing a
lot of prospective candidates out there. There's no there's no
question that it would damage Gavin's brand and certainly you
know that affects things like early donors, fundraising, people jumping
on board, staff wise, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Back to the hot topic of the country, political violence.
How do you feel about our trajectory on that. Did
we reach a point where it got everybody's attention where
we think, wow, we've gone too far. We need to
get this under control, or are we going to continue
the tit for tat both sides believing the other side

(07:24):
is worse and you know we're headed the wrong way.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
Yeah, you know me, Jack, I would certainly certainly hope
it's the latter. I mean, it was a sad week
for our nation in the last week. I don't care
what your politics are, what your ideology is. I just
nobody should be killed over their politics. I mean, I
don't know how to say that more unequivocally. And I
think that's the credible voices out there, regardless of where

(07:49):
they're on the political spectrum, of the ideological spectrum. That
needs to be the unified message now being you know,
looking into the crystal ball. Where is this going? I
don't know. I mean, you know, you also know me check.
I tend to want to be pretty optimistic about things,
not naive, but optimistic. So I would hope there is
a day of reckoning it's coming. Is that the case?

(08:11):
There's a lot of people that have questions about whether
that's actually where we're headed.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Yeah, well that whatever the percentage is of people that
are on social media that are the extremes of both parties,
and I don't know if it's three percent or eight
percent or what it is, but it looks like and
sounds like a lot of people. If you spend time
on social media, they sure control a lot of the conversation.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Yeah, well you are you have hit that dead set.
I mean, and I think this is a challenge. I mean, yeah,
the person whose mouth this came out of Richard Nixon.
You know, many people have question much about politically, but
the silent majority. That was what he kept talking about.
Look at there's people on both sides of you, and
I'm more but the silent majority, you would say, And

(08:56):
I do think there is a resonance in that verbiage
in today's political world. There's a lot of people who
never ever, as you know, go on social media. They
don't even have a social media accounts. And yet yet
what gets reported is so many people on social media
are saying, well, it's sort of like, you know, the

(09:18):
old verbage about talk radio. Less than one percent of
people all the research shows ever call into a talk
radio program, and yet people say, well, listen, everybody's saying this. Well, no,
everybody may not be saying.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
That good point.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
It's exactly the same as talk radio callers back in
the day when that really mattered.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
That's a good point. So it's amazing that I like you.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
You're a good guy, but you're you're an eagle scout,
you went to Harvard, and you're handsome. It's really easy
to not like a person like that.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Well, listen, you know, you know, I've got plenty of
flaws somewhere, and who knows what they are. I know
it's not all. Let others decide that, and you can
get flooded with emails. You get flooded with emails and
texts and say I hate for these six reasons, and
then you can share that with me. But but I
know it can't be Kansas because we share that deep
in our hearts as well. I don't know, but I'm

(10:08):
sure there's all kinds of things. Let's see. I can't say,
like George Bressenior, I hate Brocoln because Brockley's kind of okay,
But maybe it's I am a Disneyland fan. Now that's
going to really infuriate half your audience, that.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Man.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
Okay, No, no, only because my kids and I I
never told you guys this. I never told you guys.
Just you know the old Super Bowl added you know,
win the Super Bowl and they go up there quarterback
and he goes, I'm going to Disneyland, no joke. My
kids and they had this thing we're after every election
cycle because they were so onerous, so all consuming. I say,
kids just hanging there because after November whatever it was
going to be, we're going to digneyman. And we did

(10:46):
that like about every other year when they were.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Do I like the rides?

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Anything that I ride the rides, But anything that drops
quickly or turns me upside down is absolutely right.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
Here's the main question. This is the the deal breaker.
Do you have you ever gone without kids?

Speaker 3 (11:03):
No?

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Okay, there you go. Okay, you're you're in the range
in a rumble. Then that's perfectly good. CBS News political
analyst Gary Dietrich, appreciate your time today. Okay, buddy, Wow,
Eagle scout and he went to Harvard and he's got
TV handsomeness.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Again, it's easy to not like somebody like that, but
I like him. Gary's a good dude. Armstrong and Getty