Matt Kibbe and "The Hostile Takeover"

June 19, 2012

Writer

FreedomWorks founder Matt Kibbe joined Glenn on radio today to talk about his new book Hostile Takeover and the upcoming FreedomPac that will be taking place the week of Restoring Love. The FreedomPac event will be a gathering of a global Tea Party and will feature a large number of people from Europe coming to learn more about America's Tea Party and libertarian movement.

A rough transcript of the interview is below:

GLENN: Matt Kibbe is with us. He has a new book called Hostile Takeover: Resisting Centralized Government's Stranglehold on America. Matt is from FreedomWorks.org and a good guy, really, really gets it. You describe yourself more as a libertarian, Matt?

KIBBE: Yeah, I definitely am in the libertarian camp.

GLENN: Okay. Which I think is why I like you because you're not ‑‑ you're against both the Republicans and the Democrats. You'd vote for either of them if they understood small government, but you're trying to work within the system. The point of your book is trying to explain what's going on and how to get out of it. In my book Cowards, I have a chapter on libertarianism where it talks about, "Look, you can't be the crazy libertarian, hey, let's legalize heroin tomorrow." That can't happen tomorrow. You automatically count yourself out. There are steps that you need to take, which is really kind of what you believe, isn't it?

KIBBE: Yeah. Libertarianism is about individual freedom and responsibility, and these are the values that defined our country. But it's a ‑‑ the interesting question today is how do we get from where we are. We all know we're off track. How do we get back to those principles. And it's got to be done through the process that the founders established. It's got to be done frankly between one ‑‑ between one of the two parties. And that's why we've called for a hostile takeover of the Republican Party because we've given up on the Democrats, the progressives have hijacked that party and when you look at what they say at least, I see only one party that's at least talking the talk.

GLENN: Let me play a little bit from Chris Matthews yesterday. He's talking about Mitt Romney. I'll play the whole cut later but listen just a little of about. This is amazing.

MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with this Romney character. I don't think Romney cares all that much about the presidency except that he wants it. If he weren't running do you think he would be watching this show or any other show on politics?

PAT: No one watches your show, Chris.

MATTHEWS: Mitt cares about three things: His faith, his family, his business. Right now his business is running for the president. That's why he's interested in the presidency. It's his business to be interested. Let's answer questions, if the interviewer doesn't ask the most obvious thing, something that Mitt's briefers have been over and over with him, he seemed stunned. He doesn't have an answer. Why? Because he never thought of that one. Fact is he hasn't thought about many things outside his zone of interest which again includes his faith, his family, his business. And this is the most dangerous thing about this guy. Since he doesn't have a foreign policy, he buys the foreign policies of the powers that be. So he sings this song of his neocon so‑called advisors. What they really are, of course, are people advocate a point of view: The need for a new war with each new Republican president.

GLENN: Okay. Stop. This is amazing. He's trying to, A, make Romney look like an empty airhead, which he's not, and beholden to people like Grover Norquist. First of all, do you believe that Mitt Romney is beholden to people like Grover Norquist and, B, how do we make sure, if he is or isn't, that he doesn't become beholden to anybody except the Constitution?

KIBBE: Well, I don't think he's necessarily beholden to any particular person. I would love for him beholden to the values and the people that he needs to get elected in this cycle and I think that's the challenge. We've talked a lot about Mitt Romney's weaknesses and whether or not he shares the values that everybody that listens to the show does. I think if we show up, if we do all the things that you've talked about and I talk about in Hostile Takeover, Mitt Romney can be a placeholder for those values. It's not so much whether or not he believes them. It's what he does in office that matters.

GLENN: So tell me, because people will say that you're just playing the game. Here you are, Matt Kibbe, you're just playing the game. You're ‑‑ you know, they always give you two choices, you decide to go with the Republican and ‑‑ I mean, look what ‑‑ look what Rand Paul, who's one of the best libertarians out there, the best thing that's happened to libertarianism in I don't know how long and look what the libertarians are doing to him.

KIBBE: Yeah.

GLENN: Because he's saying "You've got to go with Mitt Romney."

KIBBE: Well, here's the bottom line, and I think we forget this sometimes. We've obsessed so much about who's going to be in charge of the executive branch as if we're looking for a benevolent despot to solve all our problems for us. We don't believe that. We've never believed that. George Washington certainly didn't believe that. It's gotta be bottom‑up accountability. It's got to be our ability as a sustained social movement based on a set of values to constantly hold who's ever in the White House, who's ever in the Senate, who's ever in the house, we have to hold these guys accountable because elections don't matter as much as our ability to sustain a set of opinions. Because politicians will respond to that. I've been arguing in the book that even George Washington was responding to the bottom‑up values of colonial America that insisted on respect for the individual over anybody in power.

GLENN: What do you ‑‑ are you concerned at all, Matt, about the movement, if Mitt Romney would win, the movement all of a sudden saying, whew, okay, we dodged that bullet, and we kind of go back to sleep. That people don't understand that this is a runaway freight train and you're going to have to go for cuts for yourself, they're going to affect you, and you can't sit down.

KIBBE: Well, this is the challenge of the evolution of the Tea Party movement, the evolution of decentralization and politics. Do people understand that this is not a one‑time event, it's not about getting somebody elected and that November 7th is more important than November 6th because the process of making sure that Mitt Romney keeps the promises he's made on the election trail, that the senators that we elect. This is what our responsibility is as citizens, and if you just elect a new set of bums and then leave them to their own devices, you're going to have the same disappointments you've had in the last cycle.

GLENN: Any comment on Orrin Hatch last week during a debate on radio with Dan Liljenquist? He called Freedom Works sleazy?

KIBBE: He said we were the sleaziest group he had ever seen before. And I couldn't help but think about his good friend, his good self‑proclaimed friend Teddy Kennedy. And I wonder, really? Am I sleazier than Ted Kennedy?

STU: (Laughing.)

KIBBE: I think it's politics. I think he's trying to demonize Freedom Works and all of the activists in Utah that want to hold him accountable. Because he doesn't want to talk about his record.

STU: Not to mention Kennedy worked his entire life for that title. I mean, you couldn't have possibly outpaced him this early in your life.

GLENN: You're still really early on in the game, Matt. I don't know if you know that.

The name of the book is Hostile Takeover: Resisting centralized government's stranglehold on America, a great roadmap out, a great book to really help you understand where we are, where we're going, what we have to do, why we have to do it. Hostile Takeover, available in bookstores ‑‑ it's out today, right?

KIBBE: It's out today.

GLENN: Out today. Go ahead.

KIBBE: And if I say so myself, it's awesome.

STU: (Laughing.)

GLENN: With all the enthusiasm that Matt Kibbe can muster there. Calm down, Matt.

By the way, Matt is going to be with us on July 26th at Free PAC. You can grab your tickets. They're like 15 bucks, here in Dallas. That is the weekend of Restoring Love. That's on the Thursday. A ton of people coming for it. It is really, really cool. I don't know if Rand Paul was supposed to let the cat out of the bag, but he did a couple of days ago that he's coming. Did you know that he did that?

KIBBE: I actually didn't know that he did that.

GLENN: Yeah. Did you know that he's coming?

KIBBE: Well, we were wrestling with the Senate schedule because I know he's desperately interested in coming and, you know, if Harry Reid messes with the schedule, we're going to have to deal with that.

GLENN: Yeah. All right. Well, that is happening. You can find out all the details on that at FreePAC.com. FreePAC.com. Thanks very much, Matt. Talk to you, man.

KIBBE: Thanks, Glenn.

GLENN: Appreciate it. Bye‑bye.

Counting cookies? Here are the CRAZIEST ways people predict the election.

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Every four years, America faces the same question: who will win the presidential election?

Top political scientists and media companies devise elaborate polls, complex formulas, and sophisticated projections to calculate who will win the election at any given moment. Even Stu has thrown his hat in the ring with Plusecast, a one-stop shop for all your polling questions. But these methods aren't the only ways to predict who will be the next commander-in-chief.

From cookies to football, here are some unorthodox ways to predict the next president:

The Cookie Poll

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Can cookies really predict the next president? According to Busken Bakery, they are more accurate than you might think.

Busken Bakery, has been using cookies to predict the winner of presidential elections since Regan beat Mondale in 1984, and has only been wrong once. Their method is simple: they sell cookies with the faces of both candidates and tally the sales of each. Whoever sells the most cookies is predicted to win. The simplicity of this method is its strength, and the only time it was wrong was the 2020 election. Currently, President Trump is far outstripping VP Harris, selling 23,477 cookies compared to her 8,781 cookies (as of 8/15). Busken posts daily updates on their Instagram, here.

Busken isn't the only bakery to make presidential predictions. Lochel's Bakery in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania has gained popularity recently. Lochel's has correctly predicted three of the last four elections by selling red and blue cookies printed with the names of the candidates. The current count for Lochel's is 28,212 for Trump and 2,097 for Harris. Again, Lochel's posts daily updates on their Instagram, here.

According to the cookies, this election is looking pretty sweet for President Trump!

Vegas Odds

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It's time to put your money where your mouth is.

It's not just political scientists who cook up election predictions. Casinos and sports betting services get in on the action. What could be a better way to predict an election than by asking people to put their hard-earned dollars on the line?

The big casinos and sports betting sites all have odds on the election, and Trump tends to be the favored candidate. If you are unfamiliar with betting odds in the U.S., the simple explanation of how they work is the smaller the number the better the odds. Here is the spread for three of the big betting sites:

bet365- Trump: -138, Harris: +110

BetMGM- Trump: -137, Harris: +110

Caesars- Trump: -145, Harris: +120

While you shouldn't take this as a sign to put all your money (or any) on President Trump, it is an optimistic sign!

The Redskins Rule

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The Redskins Rule is a well-documented correlation between the outcome of the presidential election and the performance of the Washington D.C. football team, the Redskins (now The Commanders). The rule is that if the Redskins win their last home game before the election, the incumbent party will win the election. If the Redskins lose, the challenging party will win the election. This rule is surprisingly accurate and held true for every election between 1940 and 2000.

If this rule is to be believed, the determining game is on Sunday, October 27th when the Redskins/Commanders play the Chicago Bears in Washington D.C. If the Bears win, that should mean Trump will win the election. If the Redskins win, then Harris will win.

But there is the fact that the rule has been broken several times since 2000. Has the charm worn off? And does it even count anymore if the team is no longer called the Redskins? Only time will tell!

Glenn joined Trump for an eventful weekend in the Southwest

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We are mere weeks away from the election, and President Trump has been making every day count.

This last weekend, Trump held two rallies back to back in the southwestern corner of our country—one just outside Coachella, California, and the other in Prescott Valley, Arizona. Glenn joined Trump in Arizona, along with thousands of other Americans, to support the former president in his final push towards election day. The polls still show a very tight race. Every vote matters, and with so much at stake, Trump has to finish strong.

Catch up with Trump and Glenn's busy weekend below:

Coachella

On Saturday the 12th, thousands of Donald Trump supporters flocked to Calhoun Ranch, an area not far from the famous Coachella fairgrounds, and braved the heat, drawn by Trump's promise to "Make America Great Again."

The headlining event of the rally was the alleged third assassination attempt on President Trump, although the Trump campaign doesn't see it that way. The action started when the alleged assassin, Vem Miller, was arrested while trying to enter the rally using allegedly fake press credentials and was charged with illegal possession of a handgun, a shotgun, and a high-capacity magazine. Miller has not admitted to an attempted assassination, and in fact, claims to have been a strong Trump supporter since 2018. Miller claims the firearms were purchased as a defensive measure after he received death threats linked to his work in the media. He also claims that the press credentials are not fake, and the mix-up was caused by the fact that he uses a different name on his press credentials as a safety precaution.

The Trump campaign, Secret Service, and FBI do not believe this was an assassination attempt, but in this heated political climate, one can never be too safe.

Prescott Valley

As soon as his rally in Cali was over, Trump hit the road to prepare for his next rally. On Sunday the 13th Trump held a rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona, where both Glenn and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake gave opening remarks.

In Glenn's short, yet powerful speech, he emphasized the importance of this election and highlighted all that was at stake— this is a battle of good and evil. He brought up the Left's attempt to erase women through transgender ideology and how that ideology encourages the predation of children. Glenn furthered the case of good versus evil by citing the Left's obsession with abortion. Glenn called abortion the sacrifice of a child's body for the convenience of the parents, a perversion of Christ's sacrifice of His body for us. Glenn called for God's Army to stand up and fight back against evil, using our voices and most importantly, our vote.

Glenn also lambasted Kamala for a recent interview where she admitted she wouldn't have changed anything if she had a chance to do her term as VP over again. He laid into her for marketing herself as an agent of change, while simultaneously defending the status quo. Glenn pointed out that if anyone wants to change the country for the better, Trump is the man to do it: Trump is the candidate for change, not Kamala.

Glenn: What I saw on the ground in Asheville gave me hope

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The government can’t save us. Washington is too slow and too bureaucratic, and quite frankly, the government doesn’t care.

I’ve seen a lot of destruction in my life. I’ve walked through war zones and cities torn apart by riots, and I've stood at the sites of natural disasters that leave communities devastated. But what I saw in Asheville, North Carolina, after Hurricane Helene was unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed.

Houses were washed down rivers, upside down and crushed. Train tracks, strong enough to support locomotives, were left suspended in midair after the earth beneath them was eroded away. Semi-trucks, rolled by the force of the floodwaters, now lie like children’s toys, tossed and overturned hundreds of feet from the road. Whole towns have been uprooted and scattered — debris from homes miles away, stacking up like dominoes, bridges that stood for decades washed out by water so high that it flowed six feet over their tops.

'You tell everybody you know — even if they don’t care — we’ll take care of our own damn selves if nobody shows up.'

I stood there, looking at this idyllic small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I thought, “This will take years to rebuild. Maybe even decades.” But I didn’t just see destruction. I saw something far more powerful than nature’s wrath: the resilience of the American spirit.

My expectations for the government’s assistance were low before I arrived in Asheville, given its failing track record in previous natural disasters, but its response to Hurricane Helene victims — or lack thereof — was a new category of negligence. But the people in Asheville weren’t waiting on FEMA or the federal government to swoop in. They knew no one was coming.

The bridges were out, roads were destroyed, and the mountains had isolated them from outside help. But instead of despair, I saw hope. Instead of panic, I saw action. People were taking care of each other, and that is the America I remember, like in the days after 9/11 when we came together regardless of political party, race, or background. We didn’t care about who voted for whom. We just saw our neighbors hurting, and we asked, “Are you OK? What can I do to help?”

I saw that again in North Carolina. I saw it in the man who turned his Harley-Davidson dealership into a helicopter landing zone, shoveling mud out of his showroom just so rescue teams could land. I saw it in the volunteers flying missions across treacherous terrain, getting the elderly and the injured out of danger. They weren’t asking for government permission. They were doing what needed to be done.

Adam Smith, a retired Special Forces veteran who is coordinating the landing of helicopters in Asheville, told me that the FAA is trying to shut down the operation because it isn’t federally regulated. He told the feds that they’re going to leave because he has a helicopter landing in a few minutes that will actually help people while they are barking orders from Washington.

One story stood out to me. We landed to help evacuate an elderly woman with a broken hip and a severe infection. She just had surgery, but because her family didn’t have insurance, the hospital pushed her out as fast as it could. Her wound became infected, and her leg was on fire. We helped airlift her to get her desperately needed antibiotics and treatment. There were no government resources to help her to an emergency room.

As we loaded the woman into the helicopter, her grandson turned to me and said, “You tell everybody you know — even if they don’t care — we’ll take care of our own damn selves if nobody shows up.” That hit me hard because it’s the truth. It’s the way America used to be, and it’s the way we need to be again.

As I flew through those mountains in the helicopter, I couldn’t help but think of Billy Graham. I’d visited Asheville about 10 years ago to see him, and I remember thinking how beautiful and peaceful the town was. Today, it’s unrecognizable. The destruction is overwhelming. But the people are stronger than ever.

The government can’t save us. Washington is too slow and too bureaucratic, and quite frankly, the government doesn’t care. I saw it firsthand. We found a FEMA truck parked under a tree, its workers sitting at a card table in the shade. They weren’t doing anything to help.

But we’re Americans. We can take care of ourselves. We don’t need Washington to save us. We need each other. This is the America that Billy Graham spoke to me about — the America that will rise again in times of trouble. And while the government might fail us, we will not fail each other. And that’s exactly what I saw in North Carolina — Americans stepping up, taking care of their neighbors, and rebuilding their communities.

This is what I told the people of Asheville: You are not forgotten. There are millions of Americans who love you, who are praying for you, and who are ready to help. Because that’s what we do. We don’t wait for permission. We roll up our sleeves and take care of our own.

And to the rest of America, I say this: It’s time to remember who we are. It’s time to stop looking to Washington for solutions and start looking at each other. Because when the chips are down, it’s not the government that’s going to save us. It’s you and me, and if we stand together, nothing — no hurricane, no flood, no disaster — can break us.

Editor's Note: This article was originally published on TheBlaze.com.

UPDATE: Will Florida survive Hurricane Milton?

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For the second time in two weeks, Florida is in the path of a major hurricane.

Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall sometime tonight, Wednesday, October 9th, somewhere near Tampa Bay. This will mark the first time in a hundred years the city has been hit directly by a hurricane, raising concerns about the preparedness of the city's infrastructure. Milton, which was rated a category five hurricane earlier this week, has been reduced to a category four as it approaches land and is expected to make landfall as a powerful category three.

The Sunshine State has already begun to feel the effects of the historic storm, with strong winds and heavy rains battering Tampa Bay this morning. Many are still trying to evacuate or prepare for the storm as conditions worsen. Highways have slowed down, and gas has run short. Residents are preparing for the worst.

The federally recognized "Waffle House Index" is in red, meaning that several Waffle House locations in the Tampa Bay area will be shut down. Waffle House prides itself on being open 24/7, no matter the conditions, so for them to shut down, if only for a brief time, indicates that severe damage to the area is anticipated.