What's fair game in politics?

Hey, welcome back. I'm Jim Locke. This is Weekend Live, and we thank you for joining us here on Fox Local. It is good to have you here. Nine days away from the midterm elections, and over the last week, things have gotten particularly nasty. You may not be seeing it here in our region, but across the country, one of the most hotly contested races in all places is Ohio, where one ad put forth by the Republicans has garnered a lot of criticism. Just one of the things we'll be talking about tonight. Andrew Donaldson is the editor of Ordinary Times. He's one of my closest friends here on Fox 5. He joins me on the Final Five, and you're on Fox Local. Hey, Andrew, good to see you tonight. Hey, buddy. I'm glad I got upgraded to closest from close. I didn't know when that bump happened, but appreciate the promotion, my friend. We always appreciate having you here. All right, let's get it going here. So, first of all, that ad. So, Amy Ackman is a Democrat. She is running for governor. She was a health commissioner during COVID. That's how she made her name. Vivek Ramaswamy made his name as a presidential candidate. He's running. Ohio has been a red, red, red state in recent years. It is very contentious. And then two weeks before, they dropped this ad with her estranged mother. By the way, an estranged mother who stayed with her daughter's abuser basically chose the abuser over the daughter. And then the campaign doubled down and said, we're putting $4 million to air this ad. Yeah, this is pretty grotesque stuff. And just so people understand how out of the box this thing is, the events that are described here, the sexual abuse, the losing custody of the child who is now the candidate for governor in Ohio yeah but but Vivek the Vivek campaign here this is just so far off the board that it's being roundly condemned by everybody even people who play pretty dirty in politics have come out and said this is not a great idea so it's actually been somewhat heartening that it's been across the board criticism of this for the most part but this is one of the more disgusting things i've ever seen in politics frankly but i think the question this leads to because you know the concept of the ad is one thing and and this is all corroborated by court records like this is not there's not a did it happen did it not happen this guy this guy was was was charged he was indicted he fled the state with with the mother but people were doubling down on this uh the the republicans said it's a matter of her being a liar because in this ad the mother called Amy a liar and it begs the bigger question are there any lines left in when it comes to political campaigning there should be but there are not we go through these cycles though where somebody really really pushes the envelope like this and then it'll swing back the other way because people will kind of look over the brink and go nope that's too far and we'll back off so i do think this is just kind of one of the extremes of the pendulum swing that we see in modern politics but yeah there should be lines this definitely is way beyond anybody's line that has any kind of integrity or decency but we every now and then we get somebody who they're telling us this campaign tells us they're desperate enough they think they need to do this to win so no matter how disgusting it is that's what they're really saying is we are desperate enough to win that we're going to go there no matter what it is Even though people say it's a bad idea, we know it's a bad idea. That's probably more of the lesson here is they know it's wrong and are doing it anyway. And that breeds some desperation. Yeah. And I mean, look, I can't if there was a if there was a Democratic equivalent, I certainly bring it up here because, you know, politics. I think we've just accepted the fact that politics can be nasty. And I think we just as a society said, well, that that's just how it goes. And I think it's a reminder that in the end, there are there are people who are real life people involved here. their real life real lives caught in the crossfire i i i want to move on to what we're seeing right now too though out of the white house because uh it's no no secret that the president is given wide access to the white house to the media and and that is that can't be up for dispute the president takes more questions uh may not necessarily give the answers that reporters are seeking but it also gives the president a lot of leeway to uh continue his hostilities with the press sometimes maybe warranted most of the time it's not uh this is a pretty effective campaign tool though for the president when it when it comes to using the media as a as a cudgel using the media as a as a frequent uh punching bag because it resonates with his base yeah it is but it's also kind of getting old we're 10 years into the Donald Trump era of dominating media and we're pretty much to what we've kind of jokingly referred to of he's playing Freebird again you go to the classic rock concerts you play Freebird everybody gets excited but that's what we're doing we're playing the greatest hits now i mean he's he's lumping in the new stuff to it but i'm not sure how effective it is outside of his base and even some of his base is kind of like okay let's go to something else but that is who he is and he's pretty unrestrained at this point he knows this is his last term midterm election in a lot of ways his last election even though he's not on the ballot so he feels pretty unrestrained to really be himself and we're seeing more and more of that so he's hitting the hits and he's doing them louder and more frequently and he's playing those hits but he's also kind of not bringing up the message that a lot of republicans would like to see him talk about which is cost of living i know the price of gas is is look we're not paying the most we've ever paid for a gallon of gas that's not up for dispute we saw it hit five dollars during the biden years but it wasn't this sustained level with no end in sight here yet the president over the weekend said we're making a lot of money uh were so rich. And it's great. If the country's making money from tariffs, I think there's a lot of people in these states, including in Michigan where I was today, where they're not, the government might be making money, but the people aren't seeing the effects of that. Yeah, and this is the good about it, Donald Trump, is you know what you're going to get. You're going to get a crowd, but he's also going to make sure everything he talks about revolves around him and what he wants to talk about and his wants and feels and what he thinks is going on. And when you're in the homestretch of a campaign, those people probably would like to get some really specific things about the places he are and not him like we were just saying playing the greatest hits and talking mostly about him and then you start seeing things that are kind of cringy where he talks about well i don't care about the gas prices they're going to go down immediately even though they're just a little bit higher that little bit higher is hurting a lot of people a lot of people aren't happy about it you get into places like maine and michigan where they're this fight with canada is is not something that's abstract like the president seems to treat it it's friends neighbors businesses that's real life stuff to them you look at somewhere like kansas where he made the offhanded comment about bombardier well bombardier has their factory in wichita so all of a sudden something that the president says becomes an issue for a senate candidate that probably was doing pretty good you know marshall was doing pretty fine now all of a sudden he's got national attention on his race that's the good and the bad of the donald trump experience you're going to get all of it and all of it's going to revolve more around him than what they're trying to get him to stay on message with do you think though does it still work with him doing these big rallies because he's going to be on the road it seems like every day for the next nine days and and there are people who will go to these rallies. They, they, they, they, they stay outside. They want to see the president. I get it. Like when the president comes to your hometown, that is a big deal. It doesn't matter who it is. It's a Democrat. It's a Republican. That does not matter. But when he's saying vote, like I'm on the ballot and, and there are some candidates out there. I mean, Susan Collins is a great example. They asked her, do you think the president's going to campaign for you? She goes, he's not coming to Maine. However, to that end, it looks like there's going to be some relief on those 50 percent tariffs from Canada which would be a i would presume to be a benefit for Susan Collins campaign message yeah and if he did come he'd probably say something not nice about her anyway because he probably couldn't help himself but yeah this is a good lesson on the tariffs and why the tariffs aren't actually about economics they're about power and picking winners and losers and having the economic world revolve around President Trump this is the perfect example they're doing so well that he has to you know pull them back so that we and win a Senate race in Maine, of all places. That tells you a lot about the tariffs. But, you know, it's the same thing. You know, we usually pair Susan Collins with Lisa Murkowski, and the president was very ugly to Lisa Murkowski over the weekend because she's still going to be in the Senate, and you may need some Senate votes, so that's not good politics either. So, again, this is the good and bad of the Donald Trump experience in full display. I want people to understand about Lisa Murkowski. The one thing that she did that's so unique here is that back in one of her previous runs, I want to say this was 2010, and people seem to forget this. she was endorsed uh her opponent was endorsed by the Tea Party she lost the Republican primary she ran as a write-in and got reelected to the United States Senate so in spite of the fact that she may be unpopular with the base and certainly uh not as popular as she used to be she is still a formidable figure in in in Alaska politics um here's the thing one of the things i love talking with you about though is is just style or substance over style because you can get politicians you can have Abdul Al-Sayed get up and and and you know portray himself as this this uh this cool guy who will who will you know isn't afraid to speak truth to power isn't afraid isn't afraid to throw questions back on Fox News but there's a lot that gets lost in the noise here because there's things that politicians can do they can do they have power because they're already in office but they seem to forget about what they can do when you're in the heat of a campaign uh or when it when it becomes when politics becomes more performative yeah what's the old meme you can just do stuff one of my favorite things to do on social media like X is when they send a tweet out about somebody should do something about health care and then i'll just go over the top and i'll google it real quick and like well they've been a senator since 2009 you know that sort of thing because it's it's almost a running theme of we need to do something about Washington and then you look and somebody's been in Washington for 10 or 12 years or maybe they're a senator for a few years but they were a congressman before that or they were governors before that we just have a top to bottom accountability problem and the accountability starts with the voters because if we tolerate it then we are what we tolerate it but a lot of these folks is they don't want to have an accountability to what they actually do in their time in office and i understand if you're in congress you're one of 400 plus if you're in the senate you're one of 100 but you're still there to do a job and the job is not just the perpetual campaign and the fundraising and the online media and the campaign ad which a lot of it's become you're still supposed to push legislation you're still supposed to do constituency services and you're still supposed to do whatever your committee assignments are and actually push stuff through not just have that as social media posts and there's just less and less of it so we get more and more performative and that ratio is going to be out of whack until we the voters decide to have enough and do something about it i mean and how do you how do you prove that you've had enough of it when the when the cycle is just okay you throw the bums out let's say you do that and then they realize that the way to stay above the head the fold of the paper now or the proverbial what am i talking about i'm i'm talking like we're going your age jim well i'm also sitting next to a former newspaper guy in vernon miles here uh but but also but also uh how do people hold those how do you expect more how do you get more out of your elected leaders when we sort of accepted that this is this is the way it goes it's wash rinse repeat i think you're going to start seeing it in a couple things we we are seeing the rise of the double haters for lack of a better term that we haven't figured out of people who are sick of both parties and don't know what's going on i don't think that's going to make a third party i think what you're going to have is you're going to have more and more independents more and more swing voters that just cross the traditional lines and we're starting to see that a lot look at the voters that went trump biden back to trump's probably going to abandon trump in this midterm election you're seeing rising things like the hispanic vote and working class votes that move back and forth and the biggest thing with a lot of this is new things like data centers, like health care, like school choice, you're seeing more and more issues that cross those traditional lines of just liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, where people are splitting their tickets and they're voting on those individual issues and they don't line up just real nice and neat. So I think the days of being straight ticket voters on big ticket issues are probably gone. You're going to have to get people on those two or three things they really care about. And they're not going to be a permanent constituency anymore. You're going to have to earn their vote in day in, day out, cycle in, cycle out. But that'll probably be a healthier system doing it that way than the way we're doing it right now but it's going to take a year or two to get there i think uh hey andrew i apologize for those glitches off the top but uh that you know that that's what happens in the world of streaming but i do appreciate you taking some time to talk with me tonight always good to see you my friend anytime sir thank you very much take care and uh weekend live is back