Live from Virginia Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show –  live weekdays on WNTW AM 820/ FM 92.7 – Richmond, WJFN FM 100.5 – Central Virginia, WMPH AM 1010 / FM 100.1 / FM 96.9 (7-9 PM) Hampton Roads, WBRG AM 1050 / FM 105.1 – Lynchburg/Roanoke and Live Weekdays 6-10 am and 24/7 Stream –  host Fredericks welcomed Trump Campaign Press Secretary Hogan Gidley to the show to weigh in on national polls, early voting, and Trump’s ground game.
Fredericks: Joining us now Hogan Gidley. Hogan is the press secretary for Trump-Pence 2020. Hogan great to have you.
Gidley: Hey great to be back. Thanks so much for the time
Fredericks: Hogan everything moving in our direction. You know there’s an old saying you don’t want to peak too early. Biden did. You want to close at just the right time. Trump is. We got seven days and the Rasmussen poll out today and for the first time actually shows the President in the lead nationally and that’s like unheard of. If he’s ahead nationally he wins in a landslide. We’re ahead of Pennsylvania we’re heading in Florida we’re ahead of North Carolina. The numbers in Florida stunning the early vote turnout we have in Republican areas. Tell us what’s going on here Hogan?
Gidley: Well the president’s winning is what’s going on. The message that’s patriotic. It’s unifying. It’s uplifting and it resonates with the American people. We’ve seen record-setting success and record-setting time for all Americans regardless of race religion color or creed. The policies this President has put in place have literally improved the lives of all Americans.
And the age-old question that Ronald Reagan asked years ago from that debate stage, are you better off today than you were four years ago? 56 percent of the American people say yes they are. Even Joe Biden had to admit I guess those folks should vote for Donald Trump then. Thank you, sir. We are going to. This country deserves four more years of peace and prosperity with Donald trump. We had it for the last four. We can have it for the next four. You just have to get out and vote.
Fredericks: If you get out of vote you win. I mean Hogan it’s as simple as that. we expect a big lead on game day. Tell us about that. Tell us about the early voting right now in Florida because that’s a pretty bellwether state. You look at the trends in Florida it’s going to probably extrapolate through Georgia and North Carolina which is the spine of the campaign.
We look at the early voting numbers in Florida and here’s what we see. Democrats way underperforming. Republicans over performing. They had the early lead on the mail-in ballots. The Democrats did. Now the Republicans are eating into that every single day. Plus we know they’re going to have a big game day turnout. What is going on there and how does that relate to North Carolina and Pennsylvania?
Gidley: We were down 19 points in Florida. 19 with the early voting. Now we expected to be down and we expected to be down by a lot because you know the Democrats have put every single egg into the absentee basket. And what you’re seeing though is a lot of votes being you know asked for and requested but not
turned back in because they don’t have a turnout apparatus number one. This administration, this President, this campaign does.
We’ve made 10 million calls in the last week. We made 10 million in all of 2016. So that 19 point lead in Florida I was talking about in the last seven days has gone down to six. Now I don’t mean he’s leading by six. I’m saying he’s leading by six in some of the early vote metrics. Now that thing is basically a dead heat because we have people in the field. We have excitement though and enthusiasm though for a candidate who’s got the best message.
He’s got the best record and he’s got the best work ethic. He’s going all over the country while Joe Biden sits down in that basement and pops up every once in a while. I guess his internal polling’s over at the Biden campaign show that he has to really lock down Delaware because he sure spends a lot of time there. But other than that I’m telling you this looks good for us. It looks good in Michigan. Early voting numbers there we expected an 80/20 split of Democrats to Republicans in early voting it’s closer to 50/50.
Nevada looks good as well. North Carolina looks good too. Internal polls have us winning or tied in all the states needed to retain the White House. It looks like it’s really going to be a successful campaign. But again as you said and I’ve said already you got to get your friends you got to get your family you got to get everyone you know and acquaintances to get out and vote because Joe Biden is not going to protect your jobs. He’s not going to protect your family.
He’s not going to protect the American way of life because he wants to remake this country. You saw that on the debate stage with the admission of locking down the country again. I mean look, I know Joe Biden loves China. Don’t get me wrong. We understand. He sent three and a half million of our jobs to China. So I get that he loves the communist regime over in China. But china to copy them on their pandemic response which was welding people shut inside their homes. I guess that’s what Joe Biden’s talking about because we can’t afford not just financially but from a health standpoint to lock down this country again.
And that’s what Joe Biden’s advocating for. And then also that he’s going to end the fracking industry and then get rid of oil and gas altogether in five years. That’s insanity. You can’t run this country on gumdrops and rainbows and unicorn hair. (Fredericks laughs) It just doesn’t work that way. You need oil you need gas. And we’re the net exporter of energy for the first time in decades and we’re not beholden to the whims of Russia and China and the Middle Eastern countries for prices to fuel our automobiles and heat and cool our homes. Joe Biden wants to take us back to that. It’s a national security threat his plan.
Fredericks: You got me on the unicorn hair thing. (Giggling)
Gidley: You can’t. I’m sorry it’s a fact.
Fredericks: I can’t stop laughing. Unicorn hairs are not going to do it. So I just want to get back to Florida. Democrats were up by 19 percent in early voting. I mean in the mail-in ballots. Then the early voting came and in seven days you’ve cut that from Dems up 19 to Dems up six in Florida. With early voting and mail-in ballots if they’re only up six going into game day they get crushed.
Gidley: Not enough. It’s not enough that’s what I’m trying to say. It’s not enough, and a lot of the ads they’re running in some of these states are how to vote ads. So people like wow they’re really putting up a lot of ads on how do I vote because people don’t have a turnout apparatus as we do. Two and a half million volunteers across this country many of our folks on this campaign have been living in these states for three years working on this and developing this.
This is where you know the shoe leather campaign kind of works because you can talk about voting all you want to you can order an absentee ballot but filling it out and signing it doing all the right things to get it to count, that’s a much different proposition. you need a ground game. Joe Biden doesn’t have it. But I mean it’s indicative of him as a candidate. He doesn’t go anywhere either. I mean you know he stayed at home too. So it’s very similar.
Fredericks: The ground game doesn’t show up in any of the national fake news and narrative media polls. But then let’s get to Michigan where you said you expected early voting mail-in early voting there to give the Democrats the 80/20 edge it’s 50/50. How’d that happen?
Gidley: Again I think a lot of it is excitement enthusiasm a lot of is what I said before that they asked for the ballots and then they kind of waiting to see the debate happen. And you saw a place like Michigan which is an energy-producing state go wait a minute, he just said he wanted to end my job. He wanted to send us into a depression. He wanted to allow foreign countries to dictate prices for oil and gas. What are you crazy? I mean that’s what he said.
And now he’s trying to clean it up. It’s so funny. The press gives him a pass. He literally told you everything he wanted to do. I want to phase this out. I want to get rid of it. I want to get rid of in five years he said on that debate stage. And the press didn’t really say much about it. Then all of a sudden Pennsylvania was slapped in the face with it and went wait a minute. No, no, no, no Joe. We have got to work to stop all that nonsense.
And then Joe comes out and says no I’m going to keep energy and I’m going to nuance my answer a million different ways to make it look like I am really for fossil fuels. Well if that’s the case then the left is going to be angry with him too. Look, the fact is this guy has embraced socialist ideology from Kamala Harris and the others to try and make sure that this country doesn’t look the same if he were elected.
This country is fundamentally changed into the image of socialism. We can’t have that. We don’t want that in this country. And for Joe Biden to continue to tell us that this nation hasn’t ever lived up to its potential and that this nation is inherently evil and it is the cause of the world’s problems is just gross. This country is the greatest place in the history of the planet. The President knows it. The President can talk about America’s greatness because he believes in it. Joe Biden can’t talk about it because he doesn’t believe in it.
Listen to the full show here:
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Photo “Hogan Gidley” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0.
