John Fredericks: “it’s TPAC!”
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Story and photo courtesy of Patricia Murphy, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
David Perdue isn’t the only 2020 GOP casualty considering a comeback.
Former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins said he is looking at a challenge to either Gov. Brian Kemp or U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, who are both up for reelection in 2022.
Collins, who represented the 9th Congressional District for eight years, finished third in the 2020 special election to succeed former Sen. Johnny Isakson. Warnock and former Sen. Kelly Loeffler advanced to the January runoff, which Warnock won.
“We’ve got a good background. People in the state know us,” Collins said in an interview. “Am I open to considering a run for the Senate or governor? Yes.”
As for a timeline, Collins said he’s not in a hurry to decide, but, “We’ll be making that decision over the next little bit.”
While he considers his next step in politics, Collins has already decided what’s in his immediate future. He’s joined Oliver & Weidner, a law firm in Habersham County, where he’ll handle civil and criminal litigation.
And like many GOP personalities before him, Collins will also host a daily radio show. He’ll take over the 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm timeslot on the John Fredericks Talk Radio Network at the beginning of March.
Only Collins knows if he’ll get back into politics. But unlike other longtime politicians, he never seemed to tire of the demands of the campaign trail.
Two weeks after conceding his Senate race to Loeffler, he was back out on the trail stumping for her, most notably calling Warnock’s position as a pro-choice pastor “a lie from the pit of Hell.”
Read the full report by Patricia Murphy, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Angela Davis is saying the quiet parts loud.
The Marxist who earned her fame providing guns to murder a judge in 1970 says she backs Joe Biden because the radical left will be able to push him around.
Here’s one communist who tells the truth, if only once.
Media presents the myth of the moderate Biden, but anyone with eyes can see what Davis confirms: The old vice president is too weak to stand up to the radicals who run in the streets and run his party.
Perhaps Joe will choose Angela Davis as his running mate. She is certainly qualified – she was the vice-presidential candidate of the Communist Party USA twice!
She also meets all the other criteria of today’s Democratic Party.
Female? Check. Non-white? Check. Abolish prisons, borders, and free speech? Check, check, check.
But no matter, even if she isn’t the veep, she and her radical cadres will be calling the shots.
In the short term, their goal is to make the country ungovernable. The riots, the desecration of statues, flags and other icons of American heritage, the social justice warrior mobs harassing anyone with a different opinion, the demands to close businesses and schools as long as possible – all designed to undermine functioning society and create a void for howling revolutionaries to fill.
And just like Angela, the radicals organizing the now daily protests in our largest cities are hardcore Marxists. How do we know? They say so.
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors told an interviewer in 2015: “We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and [BLM co-founder] Alicia [Garza] in particular, we’re trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super versed on ideological theories.”
The Democratic Party in its hatred of President Trump is playing along with the radicals – and playing into their hands. Party leaders rush to accept the revolutionaries’ 10-point program no matter what is in it, from guaranteed jobs for all (except the police and border patrol), to racial quotas in hiring, housing and education, and even the elimination of industrial society.
To be fair, there’s more than Trump-hatred driving Democrats into the arms of the Red Guard.
There’s liberal guilt. These children of privilege believe their advantage came at the expense of the less fortunate – the Marxist version of Original Sin – so they flagellate themselves in order to expurgate their wickedness.
They embrace the notion that America is irredeemably racist, unsalvageable, not worth defending. Our own government peddles this radical poison, the Smithsonian denouncing hard work, planning for the future, and the scientific method as instruments of white supremacy. (New York City’s mad Mayor DeBlasio has his schools teaching this nonsense.)
Converts make the best evangelists, and Biden’s past with segregationists and mandatory prison sentencing make him a most impassioned convert, eager to prove the scales have fallen from his eyes. The only thing a politician likes more than an inside deal is an approval from a cheering crowd.
Smoke rising from the Biden basement signals his eagerness to “systemically transform” America.
There’s no faster way to transform the country than transforming tens of millions of illegal immigrants into voters, so first up on his agenda is immigration “reform.” Getting that done will be much easier if a Democrat-controlled Senate eliminates the filibuster, as Joe says he’s open to. Then, giving Washington, D.C., statehood assures Democrats will have two more senators to cement their long-term hold on the upper house; mail-in voting, another item on the to-do list, guarantees victory for them in local, state and federal elections everywhere. They will lock down the executive and judiciary by eliminating the Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court.
With all power firmly in the grip of one party, they will then “run train on the progressive agenda,” as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it in a most disturbing and disgusting fashion.
All this will proceed in the first hundred days as the former senator from Delaware nods approvingly – or just nods off.
And as Angela Davis cheers.
Tune into The John Fredericks Show tomorrow from 6-10 AM. CLICK HERE to listen live or go to johnfredericksradio.com and click LISTEN LIVE – plus your calls all morning at 888-480-JOHN (5646). Tweet @jfradioshow and hashtag #GodzillaOfTruth – complete show line-up here!
Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden once again chooses union bosses over students with threats to end school choice and his refusal to consider opening schools in the fall…Biden to your kids: too bad, stay home, screw football, get over it.
Ignoring the advice of health and educational professionals, Joe Biden is siding with teacher union bosses over students and families by refusing to commit to reopening schools this fall. The longer schools stay closed, the better his chances of winning are in November.
Science and data only matter to Democrats when it fits their narrative and enhances their dream of unchecked political power.
Case in point, the American Academy of Pediatrics is actively urging officials to allow children to be physically present in the classroom this fall. Biden’s response from his basement? You guessed it: crickets.
When schools do open, Biden wants to eliminate the choice to placate teachers’ unions. The former Vice President Biden on Monday promised to eliminate charter schools, saying they will be “gone” if he is elected president.
Interpretation: it’s not about parents and it’s not about students. For Joe Biden, it’s about teachers’ union’s votes on November 3.
So, if your child is in a failing school: Joe says, suck it up, butter-cup
But that doesn’t go far enough for his Lefty-whacked base, so Biden would also take away scholarships from thousands of largely minority children, forcing them to go to inferior schools that fail to meet their educational needs.
Why? Because Joe Biden believes that he knows better than the parents on how to educate their children.
By contrast, President Trump believes that every child—regardless of background, income, or zip code—deserves the right to quality education and to a life of success.
Trump has advocated for policies that allow more children to attend the school of their choice, which has especially benefited lower-income and minority communities.
President Trump needs to lead on this issue.
He should call on every school district to open up for fall classes by September 8. Any school district that does not comply should be forced to fully explain their decision, backed up by published hard facts, science, and data.
Right now the decision of many jurisdictions to close their schools is backed only by political considerations.
With no data or science to defend their partisan decisions, school superintendents will cave to pressure from parents when they can’t defend their decision to close schools without anything except electoral factors.
The CDC can’t do this. The fake news media won’t do it.
Only President Trump can get schools to open in September.
Tune into The John Fredericks Show on Thursday, July 9 from 6-10 AM. Click here for the complete guest line-up.
On a beautiful June weekend Virginians took matters into their own hands.
Many residents simply defied Governor Ralph Northam’s lockdown E.O.’s and flocked to baseball and softball tournaments, beaches, restaurants, outdoor bars, and other gatherings across the Commonwealth.
Maximum gatherings of 50 people were flaunted, mandatory facemasks were nowhere to be found and hugging was back in vogue.
It is over, Ralph. Give it up. Many Virginians no longer care what you say.
With under 15 percent of available Virginia hospital beds in use, 80 percent of available ventilators sitting in warehouses waiting to be shipped overseas, and deaths under 85 years-old at nearly zero for two weeks running, Virginians have had enough with Northam.
The science and data don’t add up. So, his gig is up.
Northam’s Last Lockdown Gasp: Close Schools
With national Democrats in a collective meltdown over Trump’s V-shaped economic resurgence, deep blue panic has set in.
Another few great job numbers like May, and President Trump is going to romp to re-election.
So, Democrats turn to Gov. Northam, who the far Left took hostage last year when the infamous year-book photos emerged, and “Moonwalk at the mansion” was born.
Here’s the ruse: if kids can’t go back to school with regular hours, many moms and dads can’t go back to work. It’s really that simple: invent bogus reasons not to send kids to school in all the blue states, create fear-hype from the fake news bunch, and tank the job growth numbers.
The Dems need to milk this panic to at least October so they can justify phony mail-in ballots fraught with corruption.
If Joe Biden wins, we will get the “all clear.”
Meanwhile, your kids’ lack of education is mere collateral damage in their unabashed quest for power – and to get Trump out.
Click here for complete show and guest lineup for Tuesday, June 16th on the John Fredericks Show.
WRITTEN BY ALEX WALKER, MEDIA MATTERS FOR AMERICA
A Virginia-based talk radio host and member of President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign advisory committee is promoting local protests against COVID-19 restrictions and spreading misinformation about the virus.
The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted talk radio’s unique ability to reach local audiences. John Fredericks, host of The John Fredericks Show, is one of many conservative media figures who have railed against public health measures designed to slow the spread of the virus. But in addition to pushing familiar right-wing talking points, Fredericks’ show provides a valuable platform for regional protest organizers looking to boost turnout and Trump surrogates hoping to reach a local audience.
A profile of Fredericks for The Washington Post noted, “A local host can repeatedly bolster or attack a local politician, whereas a national host simply doesn’t have the time.” Protests against social distancing have largely been organized at the state and local level. While nationally syndicated hosts like Rush Limbaugh cheer on these protests from the sidelines, only local hosts like Fredericks can afford to spend airtime engaging with local organizers and encouraging audiences to attend specific protests.
Trump’s media allies have cast doubt on the effectiveness of social distancing, and many have voiced support for protesters calling to reopen the economy. Fredericks has been a strong supporter of these protests, even offering up his show as a megaphone for organizers. As he argued during a discussion with one local protest organizer on May 14, “We have got to get out of our pajamas and stop this. And the only way you’re going to stop it is by direct action.”
Much of Fredericks’ criticism has been aimed at state and local officials in Virginia, and he has interviewed several protest organizers in his home state. On April 21, Fredericks encouraged his listeners to attend a rally in Richmond and asked, “When are we going to wake up and stop this nonsense?” Later during the same show, Fredericks interviewed one of the protest organizers with Reopen Virginia.
Read the full report from Media Matters for America.
By Curtis Ellis and John Fredericks
These writers and others who for decades railed against outsourcing industries to the People’s Republic of China were long dismissed as crackpots and Luddites. Now many of those who were doing the dismissing have been forced to admit the true cost of cheap goods is very high.
For three decades, the one-world globalist elites jammed cheap slave labor and outsourcing our manufacturing supply chains down our unsuspecting throats.
They maintained in their Ivy League smugness that share-holder value was king, that free and open trade was good for us and the free movement of peoples among nations was the key to world prosperity.
They mocked national sovereignty and told us our six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer would be five cents cheaper – if China made the aluminum cans.
These same gangster-banksters on Wall Street-led by multi-millionaire Goldman Sachs private jet and caviar senior executives who raped the country in the 2008 crisis by stealing the TARP bailout money-are now telling us “big corporate” knows best.
Just like when they told us if China joined the WTO they would eventually morph into a free and open democratic society.
Now their gig is finally up. Thanks to the CCP.
CCP Exposes Big Business-Wall Street Unholy Alliance
The Chinese Communist Party virus has exposed many of our nation’s infirmities.
The most glaring is our dependence on Communist China for medicine, medical equipment, and so many other essential goods.
China inherited nearly our entire supply chain of medical equipment — by supplying cheap labor to greed-driven business CEO’s and their lower Manhattan cheerleaders.
But that is by no means the only problem the pandemic has exposed. The consolidation of property and industries into fewer and fewer hands is another…and it looms bigger than the pandemic itself.
The New York Times details how corporate consolidation in the medical device industry contributed to the shortage of ventilators our nation is now experiencing.
Over a dozen years ago, in the wake of SARS, MERS, and other deadly outbreaks, the federal government saw a need to stockpile ventilators in case of a future emergency.
It contracted with a small California firm, Newport Medical Devices, that had an innovative design it could produce for $3,000 per machine—significantly less expensive than the $10,000-$20,000 price tag commonly quoted.
A good move by federal government buyers who strove to both save taxpayer dollars and get the right product should the need arise.
But then something happened and everything changed.
“The medical device industry was undergoing rapid consolidation, with one company after another merging with or acquiring other makers,” the Times reports. “Manufacturers wanted to pitch themselves as one-stop shops for hospitals, which were getting bigger, and that meant offering a broader suite of products. In May 2012, Covidien, a large medical device manufacturer, agreed to buy Newport for just over $100 million.”
Covidien, a publicly traded corporation with $12 billion in sales, bought five other medical device companies that year alone. It was playing mergers and acquisitions if not “Monopoly.”
Here’s the rub: Covidien was already selling more expensive ventilators. It didn’t consider developing a low-cost machine to be a priority.
In fact, the Newport Medical machines were a direct threat to their eye-popping margins. So they systematically eliminated them.
Project managers were re-assigned and Covidien told the government it wanted out of the contract.
“Government officials and executives at rival ventilator companies said they suspected that Covidien had acquired Newport to prevent it from building a cheaper product that would undermine Covidien’s profits from its existing ventilator business,” the Times story notes.
Inflated Margins Suffocated Ventilators
No kidding? Just like the $3 trillion in repatriation money that was supposed to come soaring back into the U.S. economy to build factories and create jobs, right? Instead, it went to stock buybacks and senior executive bonus compensation.
It doesn’t end there. In 2015 Medtronic, an even larger medical device company, bought Covidien for $50 billion (can you say “consolidation”?) as part of a corporate inversion scheme so Medtronic could register in Ireland and avoid paying U.S. taxes.
Medtronic, one of the four largest ventilator manufacturers in America today—along with Phillips, GE Healthcare, and Allied Healthcare—has been slow to increase the production of its higher-priced ventilators, choosing to guard it’s existing supply chain relationships.
Public shaming compelled Medtronic finally to announce it would release the blueprints and specs for the low-cost machine Newport (now part of Medtronic) developed at U.S. taxpayer expense.
The nation’s productive capacity and know-how have come under the ownership of fewer and fewer giant corporations.
These corporations try to squeeze every penny from production by eliminating R&D and outsourcing production to the lowest cost cheap-labor camps on Earth, even those ruled by communist dictators.
Unfortunately, the pandemic-inspired shutdown of the economy only threatens to further corporate consolidation in our economy.
The Death of Main Street And Millions of Jobs
A report from Indiana provides an example of how this will play out, even if it is an unintended consequence of shutting down much of the nation’s commerce.
Book stores, toy stores, and other retailers deemed “nonessential” are complaining that Dollar General—a low-cost chain offering food among many other items—remains open and is still selling toys, books, and other items they are barred from selling.
In response to the complaints, county officials ordered Dollar General to rope off the aisles where “non-essential” merchandise is displayed.
Question: Have officials elsewhere barred Dollar General—one of the largest vendors of Chinese imports—from trafficking in prohibited merchandise?
And how about Amazon? Amazon still sells clothes, toys and everything else, much of it from China. None of the money spent on Amazon finds its way into the pockets of American owners and employees of brick-and-mortar shops lining Main St. America that were forced to close.
While small businesses are ordered to shut down, their giant corporate competitors remain open.
This is how the multi-trillion dollar economic relief package is also a stimulus bill for Jeff Bezos, Walmart, and China.
The virus has also revealed another weakness of 21st century America: rule by a cult of experts with an unshakeable faith in mathematical models.
These are the people whose economic models told us trade with China would make us all richer and happier.
Now they place their faith in yet another infallible model, one they tell us will save us from death itself—a Savior Machine.
Its answer is law. Dare to question it and you are condemned as an enemy of the state, complete with a 1-800-neighborhood rat line.
Woody Guthrie said some men will rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen.
Today he would wonder if computer models aren’t the equivalent of those fountain pens.
Trumpworld Has Converted the Nation’s Regional Talk Radio Hosts Into a Loyal Army – By – The Washington Post
Regional Talk Radio is Republicans’ Secret Weapon to Reelecting Trump [VIDEO]
Regional talk radio shows like “The John Fredericks Show,” out of Richmond, Va., have garnered the attention of the Trump White House.
Click play above to watch the video report.
Video: Erin Patrick O’Connor/Photo: Jay Paul/The Washington Post
Fredericks, who declared bankruptcy in 2011 in the wake of the financial crisis and lost his family’s home, vowed to make the radio job work. And he turned his hosting gig at a single station into a regionally syndicated radio network run out of Richmond.
Partly fueled by his bankruptcy and distaste for moneyed elites, Fredericks is a true believer in the Trump agenda and arrived at his studio on a recent morning to deliver the news, deliver himself from career disaster and deliver the country into the hands of four more years of Donald Trump.
Far from the White House and Capitol Hill, Fredericks is one of hundreds of regional radio hosts across the country who have found themselves in the improbable position of being showered with attention by Trump officials and surrogates. While granting access to local media has long been an important element of running a national political campaign, Trump officials have made it a central part of their strategy.
Fredericks says he has interviewed Trump 12 to 15 times and has hosted the president’s son Eric and Eric’s wife, Lara, on his radio show. “Through the campaign, every time he would do my show, he’d win a primary,” said Fredericks, sitting in his office. “So then he got superstitious and he’s like, ‘I gotta do John’s show. . . . Every time we do your show, something great happens. I got to keep doing it.’ ”
Fredericks has interviewed Vice President Pence; former Trump advisers Corey Lewandowski, Sean Spicer, David Bossie and Jason Miller; and White House officials Kellyanne Conway, Stephanie Grisham and Hogan Gidley, some of them multiple times. (It was on Fredericks’s show that Grisham, Trump’s press secretary, made her disputed claim that President Barack Obama’s staff left nasty notes for the incoming Trump team.)
Pouring attention on regional talk-radio hosts is a classic Trumpworld move: giving relatively unknown characters proximity to the White House has paid off with a disproportionate amount of attention and praise lavished on the president and his agenda.
On a recent January morning, Fredericks, 61, walked out of the dark morning into the fluorescent lights of the studio lobby, past a lonely banner featuring his airbrushed image and slogan, “Trucking the Truth.”
Fredericks loves his job. His only complaint is that his early wake-up, at 3:30 a.m. to prepare, grants him so little sleep that he has put on 30 pounds in recent years. But his girth has also granted him a self-assigned nickname, “the Godzilla of Truth,” which he points out daily to listeners of his morning drive-time radio show.
“For a show that goes on at 6 a.m., you can’t possibly prepare the night before,” he said. “It’s a disruptive presidency, and there’s so much happening. There are so many internal battles and everyone fighting with everyone else. It was different in the Obama presidency.”
Not that Fredericks misses those days. On his website, he displays a testimonial from Trump and has given airtime over to Stephen K. Bannon, the former Trump White House adviser.
“They are so disrespected by the political apparatus in Washington that if you show them any outreach at all, they will move heaven and earth to give you accommodation, to give you time to really let you tell your story,” Bannon said in an interview in his Capitol Hill townhouse shortly after he finished taping his War Room podcast, which got its start on Fredericks’s radio network. “Not only will they have you on, they’ll play the clip all day long and they’ll talk about it for days. . . . The amazing thing is this platform’s out there. It gets massive listenership . . . and nobody pays attention to it.”
The strategy has been particularly powerful as Trump and his team have engaged in what Bannon calls “information warfare” over the impeachment fight and the 2020 election, focusing on individual Democratic congressional representatives across the country whose seats are in districts that Trump won in 2016. Regional hosts can hammer on an individual issue or politician far more regularly than national radio behemoths, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.
Fredericks takes his place in Trump’s strategy seriously, too. Even though the medium would allow for something more casual, Fredericks wears a suit every day to work. “It’s a mind-set,” he explains. He leans his head forward over his laptop, his hair thinned on the top of his head to the point of disappearance. He stares over his glasses into his laptop, grasps the edge of the table and starts the day.
Listening to talk-radio hosts across the country highlights just how much some of them sound like Trump — or how much Trump sounds like them. Fredericks regularly grants politicians and others Trumpian nicknames. He calls Richmond “Richvegas” to show his support for a bill that would bring more casinos to Virginia, and dubbed former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, for whom Fredericks says he voted in 2013, “Terry McGenius.” Fredericks is a longtime Republican but said he supported McAuliffe because he brought jobs to Virginia and expanded Medicaid in the state.
Unlike Trump, Fredericks’s nicknames are typically positive. “These are people I have a relationship with,” he said.
On Wednesday morning, Fredericks hosted former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. After bemoaning Lewandowski’s decision not to run for a Senate seat in New Hampshire, Fredericks quickly turned to impeachment. Lewandowski dismissed the “sham” impeachment trial that had just kicked off in the Senate, and Fredericks chimed in that the Democrats “went around for three weeks saying they had overwhelming evidence, and then they get to the Senate [and] they say, ‘we need more witnesses.’ How does that work?” The two men talked about how much all of this was going to help reelect Donald Trump.
“I think he’s going to win New Hampshire, Minnesota, Nevada, I think he’ll win them all,” Fredericks concluded.
Brian Rosenwald, an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the book “Talk Radio America: How an Industry Took Over a Political Party That Took Over the United States” argues that talk-radio hosts paved the way for a Trump candidacy.
“This is the talk-radio presidency,” he said. It began as far back as 1988, when Rush Limbaugh’s show first became nationally syndicated. “What Limbaugh started was a call for a fighter, which was great for radio. And others mimicked that language and message,” Rosenwald said.
As much as Limbaugh created the model that hosts around the country emulate, local hosts can be more powerful in some cases, Rosenwald said. A local host can repeatedly bolster or attack a local politician, whereas a national host simply doesn’t have the time.
The power of those local radio hosts has been harnessed by big conservative donors who have helped fuel the rise of local radio networks such as Salem Radio Network, the BOTT Radio Network, and American Family Radio. Bannon’s impeachment podcast started when he asked Fredericks to grant him the last hour of Fredericks’s 6-to-10-a.m. show.
Once Bannon had a couple of dry runs with his co-hosts Miller, a former Trump campaign adviser, and Raheem Kassam, the former London editor of Breitbart and a former chief adviser to Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, Bannon took over Fredericks’s fourth hour and also expanded the show on Salem.
Fredericks is not part of a corporate radio network, but the rise of such groups has boosted many minor radio hosts. Salem started out as a small fundamentalist Christian operation run out of Southern California and has expanded aggressively in recent years, particularly in swing states. It supports nationally syndicated hosts such as Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, and Joe Walsh in addition to a host of regional personalities largely unknown outside their areas. According to Salem, it now serves more than 2,000 radio stations across the country.
Conservative groups such as the secretive Council for National Policy, backed by billionaire conservative families such as the Kochs, the Mercers, and the family of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, whose sister is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, have fueled that expansion, according to a new book by Anne Nelson, “Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right.”
“These conservative networks have expanded even as local newspapers around the country have dwindled,” Nelson said in an interview. They have “gobbled up independent and local stations, boosted their signals, and made them into an unseen powerhouse in the middle of the country.”
Fredericks is “unabashedly” a Trump supporter, chaired the president’s campaign in Virginia and is on the Trump Advisory Committee for 2020. He has served as a Trump surrogate himself on cable news.
After Trump referred to Haiti, El Salvador, and a collection of African nations as “shithole countries” in a closed-door meeting, Fredericks appeared on CNN host Don Lemon’s show to defend the president, saying the comments were not about race but rather the poor economies of the countries in question. Lemon noted that Trump’s “racist, xenophobic views are one of the most consistent opinions the president has.” Fredericks replied that “it’s not about race, as you like to make it because that’s easy and lazy, it’s about economics.” Lemon cut Fredericks’s mic and brought him back on the show only after he apologized.
“I’ve had multiple hit pieces on me,” Fredericks said later, “It’s a joke, because in my business, all they do is help me.”
But he does not predictably support Republicans, and reaches the “undecideds,” he said, who have been key to the Trump agenda.
“Working-class people, they’re not watching Fox News at 9 p.m. They’re putting their kids to bed. They’re getting ready for work. . . . These are the people that have dirt under their fingernails,” Fredericks said. “These are the people that work with their hands. This is the backbone of America. They’re not tweeting and they’re not on Fox and they don’t watch CNN. . . . So where do you reach them? You’ve got to go directly to them through regional talk radio.”
In addition to voting for McAuliffe and endorsing Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) for reelection in 2014, Fredericks stood by Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, a Virginia Democrat, when he was accused last year of sexual assault by two women. Fredericks said Fairfax deserved due process, even as many other media figures and politicians were calling for his resignation.
On a recent morning in Richmond, Fredericks interviewed Fairfax and kicked off the conversation by reminding him that he was the only media figure who stood by him “when all that went down.” Fairfax agreed that Fredericks supported him but also noted that there were others.
Fairfax extolled the virtues of radio, which lives in the cars and ear buds of voters across the country, and which allows longer conversations than the typical television appearance. “John facilitates a meaningful conversation,” he said, but added that he doesn’t “condone some of the language” Fredericks employs on his show, such as referring to undocumented immigrants as “illegals.”
Fredericks is also a fan of Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-Va.) whom Fredericks says he “loves.” The two aligned over their rejection of the Patriot Act among other issues. Scott, facing less than average demand from constituents and friends, gave Fredericks tickets to attend Trump’s inauguration in Washington.
“We agree on some things and disagree on others,” Scott said. “He’s invited me on the show many times, and I’ve appeared. If you don’t talk to people who disagree with you, you’ll get nowhere.”
Fredericks’s approach to local Democrats in swing districts aligns with what Bannon has made a regular feature of his impeachment-focused podcast. “Make ’Em Famous,” is a segment spotlighting the freshman Democratic representatives who govern in districts that voted for Trump in 2016. Those figures can usually hide behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Bannon said, but he and others hope to call them out and bring a political cost to their support for impeaching Trump.
Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.), one of the newly elected congressional representatives in a district that backed Trump, has appeared as a guest on Fredericks’s show several times, and he praised her as a “tough and strong lady.” But since her vote for impeachment, Fredericks said on his show that Spanberger has “a multitude of issues.” (Spanberger’s office declined a request for an interview.)
Fredericks has also targeted Rep. Elaine Luria, whose district includes Fredericks’s hometown, Chesapeake. Luria has never appeared on his show and Fredericks appears to have a low opinion of her. “I wouldn’t know her if she jumped in my lap and called me ‘Daddy,’ ” he said, using the kind of language that is characteristic of his show. (Her spokesperson didn’t respond to an interview request.)
Largely because of their votes to impeach Trump, Fredericks has a prediction for both women that he seems eager to fulfill. “I think they’ll both lose their next elections,” he said.