Will GOP Convention Rally Disgruntled MAGA Voters?

SPEAKER_1 (0:11)

From Memphis, Tennessee, it's America's favorite gun totem, Bible-clinging, deplorable American. Todd Starnes.

Josh Jones (0:28)

All right.

Todd Starnes (0:29)

Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Todd Starnes Radio Show.

Tonight in Dallas, the Republican Midterm Convention kicks off, and we have a jam-packed show. We're gonna be taking you live to the convention. Congressman Andy Harris is expected to be here. Also, Congressman Randy Fine will join us in just a little while, as well as Josh Jones, who is our guy in Dallas. Josh Jones, our chief political strategist, and he'll be joining us to give us a preview of what to expect. President Trump, and by the way, we've got the whole schedule here, and we'll go through that a little bit later, but President Trump is going to be speaking both nights of the two-night convention. Now, the question is whether or not this is going to be the remedy for what is broken with the Republicans right now. You have a very demoralized Republican base of the party, and you can pick a number of issues. One of those, of course, being the war in Iran, the rising gas prices, grocery store prices, affordability issues. Okay, there are a lot of things that have really frustrated Republican voters. And, of course, the do-nothing Congress, which, well, they really haven't done all that much. Now, Ted Cruz, should we go ahead and explain why Ted Cruz is in the news every single day? Ted Cruz is going to be running for president in 2028 I just, we'll go ahead and get that out of the way. But Ted Cruz, that's why he's on the View today with the, why else would you go on the View other than the fact that you're running for president? Nobody wants to subject themselves to that sort of, well, it's sort of like, I don't know, waterboarding, political waterboarding.

So anyway, he's running. That's all there is to it. We'll get some audio from the View and from Whoopi. As a matter of fact, the audience started booing. Whoopi Goldberg had to step in and say, no, we don't boo on this show, and had to lecture the audience. So anyway, Cruz is out there saying, the problem here is really not that the Republicans haven't done anything. Ted Cruz is out there saying, no, no, no, no, no. The problem is we're just not conveying our message. We're not doing a good job of messaging. And that's the bigger problem here. So we'll get into more of that with Josh Jones, and maybe he can give us an idea of what exactly to expect. Here's the problem with this, and I'm not sure. I mean, I'm not sure this is going to move the needle much, and I want to explain why.

This is really meant for a broad audience, but a broad audience is not going to be watching the next two nights. This is going to be a very partisan audience that's going to be watching this two-night midterm convention. You're not going to get massive people who normally are not involved in the political process watching this, and there are a couple of factors. Number one, you've got competing events.

You've got 9-11. You've got the 25th anniversary of 9-11. You've got the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which is tomorrow, that one-year anniversary. That is, what, tomorrow?

And then you've got the NFL kicking off tonight. You have what? You have a big game tonight. So CNN is trying to explain what's going on here, and I think a lot of people are saying the timing is off. This should have been done after 9-11. Get all of that out of the way. So at that point, you're focused on the election, but they didn't do it. The scheduling, for whatever reason, did not work. And so they have to have it tonight and tomorrow. Here is CNN, cut 29, please.

SPEAKER_4 (4:50)

You know, this idea is so ill-conceived. You can just see it by the fact that they're doing it when the football season is starting. Who does that? My God. And when you look at the numbers, no, that is not the part of the party in which you actually need to motivate. You can see this here. Extremely motivated to vote in the midterm elections. 60% of Democrats are extremely motivated to vote. 59% of that hardcore Trump-based MAGA Republicans, 59% of them, the same as the Dems. The ones who are not motivated to vote are the non-MAGA Republicans, the people who are far less likely to approve of Donald Trump, the people who think that Donald Trump's Republican Party, probably, this should be the end of it. That's where the problem is. So no, it is not, in fact, the hardcore Republican base that needs that motivation. It is other folks at this convention simply won't be reaching because they'll probably be watching football, like most Americans.