H1, Segment 2 - Controversy surrounds a South Carolina Senate debate over media involvement

What this episode covers

Transcript Charlie James: All right, welcome back to the program. We are broadcasting live from the Anderson Civic Center for Sheri Biggs' Salute to Liberty event coming up a little bit later on tonight. We are just waiting for the doors to open and everybody to get in here. That's going to be in a little while. But again, we're going to be talking with Representative Sheri Biggs, we're going to be talking with Representative Ralph Norman, Representative Steve Scalise will be joining us, the House Majority Leader, and sometime today, hopefully, if everything works out, we're going to be talking with Representative Jim Jordan as well. So, there was supposed to be a debate tomorrow night at the Newberry Opera House between Ralph Norman and "the Duchess." Well, apparently, the Graham-Nordone campaign was very upset with the people that were putting on this debate, and that was Newsmax, all right? Newsmax, along with the South Carolina GOP, were putting on this debate. So South Carolina GOP, Newsmax was going to take this debate and they were going to broadcast it on their network. Okay. Well, the Duchess's campaign, they were very upset because Newsmax had put out some, I'd say, some stories questioning the Duchess, all right? And they were talking about, they were kind of pro-Russell Fry over there at Newsmax. At least some of the anchors or the reporters were—they were a little more pro-Russell Fry. So, they got very upset, the Graham campaign, with Newsmax, and they threatened to just completely—now listen, these are people that are running for one of the highest offices in the land. The office of Senate, the office of Senator of the United States is not a minor role. This is huge, not only here in the United States, it's huge globally. United States Senators are respected all over the planet, okay? So, this woman threatened, because of whatever petty reasons that they put out there, they threatened to walk away from that debate tomorrow night. Now, this is what I'm hearing. So, they called Drew McKissick. And said, "Listen Drew, we're very upset about this, we're very upset with Newsmax. We don't like the way they treated the Duchess in the primary, and we don't like it, we don't like it, we don't like it. We're going to walk, we're going to walk." So he was like, "Okay, well, what—" So Drew was like, "All right, what can we do to make it better?" And here's the answer that the campaign came up with: "We want SCETV to be in on this debate." Now why? Why would they want an organization who absolutely hates Republicans? I mean, absolutely hates Republicans. Why would they want that—think about it—why would they want that network, Public Television, why would they want them associated with it? Well, I just told you, they hate Republicans. So whose side do you actually think they're going to be on? Well, they're not going to be on Ralph Norman's side, of course not. So the deal was, they were like, "Okay." So all of a sudden Drew McKissick agreed to that. "All right, fine, we'll get SCETV involved in this." So they called Joey up—Drew calls Joey up on Thursday, right? Joey Hudson. And he says, "Man, I hate to make this phone call, but we've got to pull you. We've got to pull you from this debate." And Joey's like, "Well, I hate that, but I certainly understand," because Joey's a good guy, and he didn't pitch a fit or anything. But then, come to find out that the folks with—so here's where we're at the point right now where we don't know who to believe, okay? We really don't, because there's a couple of different stories and they conflict pretty heavily. So number one, Drew McKissick says that he had to pull Joey Hudson from the debate because that was the agreement—they wanted SCETV on there, okay. Well, some folks with the Graham campaign, they talked to Joey Hudson and they were like, "Oh, Joey, we never wanted you pulled from this debate, we just wanted them added to it, that's all we wanted." Yeah, right. So who do ...

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