RNC Chair Michael Whatley on Marjorie Taylor Greene's antics

The shift away from Joe Biden, the animosity toward him among younger voters, is not just due to his age and decrepitude. It's also due to the fact that he is just not speaking to any of their priorities, any of their issues.

He doesn't have an agenda for them. His agenda is targeted at the far left core of his base. And that's been something that's been true of this White House basically since the midterms. They're running this election as if it's a midterm election, as opposed to doing anything to shift toward what a general election audience would look like.

And this is the result. And what Ben Dominic was referring to last night is a brand new poll, Fox poll that says head to head Trump first Biden among voters 18 to 34. Trump is up 11. Excuse me, it's a CNN poll.

And also younger people feel less or they were asked the same group 18 to 34. How do you feel about your finances? Are you more or less satisfied than you were with Donald Trump? 38% said they were satisfied.

62% said they were less satisfied. Joining us now is Michael Watley, RNC chair. Got the job a few weeks ago along with Laura Trump. Michael, welcome back.

It's good to be on with you again, Brian. So the my view, the president just spoke a short time ago. So he's against protests. He's for First Amendment protests, but not for the anarchy that's been created on campus. This is taking him two weeks to answer. And you know politics, Michael. Part of it is he does not want to further alienate voters in Dearborn and in Minneapolis. And because of that, he's allowed 25 campus riots to heat up, over, over, overheat. And now he finally was forced to speak up in order to get the young vote. And it doesn't seem to be working.

No, it's not going to work. I mean, look, when you think about what every voter across America cares about, what the families, when they sit down at the table and talk about, they care about jobs and economy, they care about education, they care about safety, and they care about security. And he is failing on every single measure that we're looking at. You can't turn on the TV without seeing all these riots and protests. And people understand these are the same people, the same groups, the same funding streams that funded all of the riots that we saw in 2020. And here we are four years later in the summer before an election.

And we're going to have these things pop up again. And Joe Biden's just completely unwilling to address it. He's put his head in the sand. You know, this election is going to come down to weakness versus strength. And he looks awfully weak right now. Well, you got to do the job.

And then we can make decisions on whether the voter can make a decision if they like it or not. But he's just been invisible through this whole thing. His press secretary has no idea where he stands.

On Friday, they said, well, the president's been doing focusing on the peace deal and a ceasefire, hasn't been watching much of the protests. Really? You don't have two flat screens in the White House? That's news to me. But let me ask you, do you feel as though for what you know, this is worthy of a Department of Justice investigation to find out where the money is coming from and how how these kids got radicalized?

Yeah, I do. I think it's absolutely important for us. And when you think about, you know, we're starting to see now a number of different reports that are saying that these are coming from the same Soros backed and progressive left backed foundations that funded all of the riots that we saw in 2020. I'm glad that these conversations are moving faster right now than they did back in 2020.

But it certainly looks to have all the same characteristics of what we saw four years before. And we need to track it down, because when you think about the crimes that are being committed here, you know, you need you need to have them prosecuted. You need to have them investigated.

And you want to find out who's funding them. Michael Whitley, our guest. So, Michael, you had a conversation with Marjorie Taylor Greene. It's been reported to say, listen, this is the time for unity. This is the time for the party to come together not to challenge Speaker Johnson.

But then she said this. Now we have Hakeem Jeffries and the Democrats coming out embracing Mike Johnson with a warm hug and a big, wet, sloppy kiss. And they are ready. They have endorsed him. They are ready to support him as speaker. They want to keep it going, keep the band together.

Why? Because Mike Johnson is giving them every thing they want. Number one, is that true? And do you believe that Marjorie Taylor Greene is right? Look, we need to win this November, right? We are we are sitting on a one seat majority in the House. Democrats have a one seat majority in the Senate. The presidential election in 2020 was decided by forty four thousand votes over multiple states all across the country. And we're we're we're literally a 50-50 nation. And as Republicans, for us to be able to hold that majority and expand that majority in the House, I feel very strongly we need to be unified and we need to be speaking with one voice.

And unfortunately, right now, we're just not doing that. What is wrong with her? I mean, I mean, does she not understand that you have been involved in a team sport? Look, I don't want to question Marjorie's motives on this.

Can you tell me what she said to him? But she basically said that, you know, she feels that this is an important conversation for us to have right now. And look, you know, she supports the president and I understand that. But the president has made it very clear that he feels we need to be speaking with a unified voice as well.

So, you know, we're going to have to wait and see how this pans out next week. Here's what Ted Cruz told me last hour. Look, I agree with President Trump. I think Mike Johnson is a strong conservative. I think he has a virtually impossible job because he's got a tiny majority in the House, just two votes. And frankly, it's got people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who will run off on any crazy wild tangent. I think what she's doing is is ridiculous.

I think it is foolish and I think it is really counterproductive that she's trying to throw the House into chaos. And she's risking handing the speakership over to the Democrats. Part of the reason that Johnson can't win more conservative victories is people like Marjorie Taylor Greene won't actually stand up and take victories instead that they grandstand. So, I mean, that's Ted Cruz. That is not some moderate who flip-flops. You know, he's conservative as it gets.

He's frustrated. Well, like I said, I think that we're staring down the barrel of this election cycle. We are six months away. And I think if people feel like we can have these fights here without any ramifications on the election, I would disagree with that. I think the voters are watching and they need to know that as Republicans that we can manage the House. And it's very, very important for us to have a unified voice and a unified message. When I took over at the RNC with Laura and I going in, the first thing that we did was we merged our operations with President Trump's campaign, because I didn't want to have two different voices going out there. President Trump is the leader of our party, and we need to have everybody from every faction of the Republican Party unified and moving in one direction with one voice. Yeah, let's see if that works.

Tom Massey, as well, might be doing that next week. What do you say? Will that hurt your fundraising if Hakeem Jeffries has to save the Republican speaker? Look, I think the biggest thing that we need right now is to have a message on how Joe Biden and the Democrats are hurting America. This is an election right now where it's just about the border. It's about where we stand in the world. It's about how weak the U.S. economy is. The fact that inflation has risen 20 percent over the four years that Joe Biden has been president and wages have not. And so it is harder for every American family. We need every Republican candidate to be focused on these issues and focused on putting solutions for American voters on the table.

Or we're not going to win this election. So do you believe last week, Joe Biden sat down with Howard Stern for two hours? Fascinating. To hear him make up so many stories unverified, but allowed to fly.

But that happens. And at what point he was asked about debate. He goes, yeah, we're going to do a debate.

We just don't know when and where. What did you what did you think when he said that? And what has been done since to lie to lock up a debate schedule? Well, look, I'm sure that as surprised as I was to hear that, I was not as surprised as his staff was. But I was surprised.

I was surprised was. But I welcome it right. I think that it is absolutely critical for us to have these two men, President Trump and Joe Biden, on a stage. There's never been a bigger contrast between two competing candidates in terms of their visions for America. And we want to have that discussion, as President Trump has said, anywhere, anytime, any platform, we will have a debate with Joe Biden.

And he is absolutely ready to go. So, you know, the big issue that I have right now with the Commission on Presidential Debates is that they they are not proposing any debates before voting gets started. All three of the debates that they have proposed are after votes get started. Why would they do that?

We expect 10 million votes are already going to be in the door. See, why would they do that? It doesn't work to their advantage to have a scheduled debate after voting started.

What do they do? They have all they all have summer vacations planned. You know, I really think that it's just they are set in their ways and they're not willing to make any changes. And in changing has voted, you know, over 50 percent of all American voters are going to vote before Election Day. We have to talk to them before they go vote. Michael, how's your ground game?

Because we hear that Ronald McDaniel was making advances in that it suffered since. No, look, I think we feel very comfortable about the plan that we have. The fundraising is going very, very well. We are going to have the resources that we need to talk to all of the American voters across the country.

And we feel very comfortable in our approach. What we're going to be doing is reaching out to those voters before they vote and having those conversations. When people go out there, we want to bank the vote. We want to grow the vote and we want to protect the vote. And so those are the programs we're setting up.

We feel very comfortable about our path. So I'm looking at these court cases and they're playing such a role in this election. How much has the president been hurt by having to sit in that court for the last four or three weeks and knowing he's got to do it for another four? Yeah, when he talks about this being election interference, he's not kidding.

Right. I mean, the fact that you are spending four days all day in the courts, it really truly is designed to get him off the road. But when he's been able to travel on Wednesdays, we saw yesterday that he did a rally in Michigan, a rally in Wisconsin.

Both of them had absolutely huge, fantastic crowds that were out there. And he's even taking advantage of opportunities in New York. He went out after court one day and visited a bodega and then absolutely owned the media cycle for 48 hours. The other day, he went to a construction site at six thirty in the morning when Joe Biden was still in bed and turned it into an all day kind of news event that he was up there with a teamster. So, you know, he's going to take advantage of opportunities in the media cycle to be able to get his voice out. One thing that you've got to give President Trump a lot of credit for is he has an ability to communicate directly with the American people, no matter where he is or no matter what he's saying and whether it's just an impromptu press conference at the courthouse or its other events while he's doing his travel or even in New York. He's going to get the message out.

And the message is simple. Are you better off four years ago? Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

And the answer is no. As a country, we're not. And you have a record to contrast between the four years he was president and the four years that we're living through with Joe Biden.

And you're very happy with that comparison. Daniel Dale has been hired at CNN just to fact check former President Trump. Listen to what he said when Donald Trump comes out and says Joe Biden's behind these court cases. This is what he said.

Cup 41. Former President Trump said this is a Biden trial or this is a Biden indictment or Biden is the one who brought this case. I come out here and note correctly that that's not true. It's completely baseless.

Again, for the I don't know how many times I've said this. This was a case brought by a locally elected prosecutor, Alvin Bragg. There is precisely zero evidence that President Biden has had any personal role in bringing the case. Former President Trump keeps invoking former DOJ official Matthew Colangelo, who went to work for D.A.

Bragg's office. There is no basis for any suggestion that President Biden personally put him there, ordered him there, et cetera. Your thoughts? Look, Joe Biden and his allies have absolutely weaponized the judiciary system, both in civil cases and in criminal cases, to go after President Trump and his allies.

There's absolutely no question about it. They even raised one of the key issues that we've seen. But we've also seen the Georgia prosecutors having meetings in the White House. You know, I don't suppose that those are just visits and pictures, right?

Nathan Wade. Yeah. I met with him in Athens, Georgia, too.

Yes. You know, and so so there's there's no question that there is absolutely a coordinated effort across the country with these activist Democrat prosecutors to try and bring all of these cases against the president and his allies. And by the way, Politico wrote a story in 2022 that Joe Biden is getting impatient with A.G. Garland because he has not charged Trump yet. So that's those are facts, along with the fact that Michelangelo takes a massive demotion to leave a very prominent position in the Department of Justice to go back to New York to try this case.

And now is in the lead. So that isn't just one guy looking for a lateral move. That was a huge step down to go back to a local district and work for Alvin Bragg. So there's something up there. Michael, you got an important job. Best of luck. All right. Thank you, sir. We appreciate it and we appreciate your listeners.