H3, Segment 1 - Controversy over Joey Hudson's removal as debate moderator in SC.

What this episode covers

Full Transcript Charlie James: Broadcasting live from the Salute to Liberty with Congresswoman Sheri Biggs. We got a crowd, it's starting to mingle. The volunteers are showing up now. Well, I tell you what, the VIP area just smells delicious with all of that food that they've got out there. Hear we've got meatloaf, which is pretty interesting. I love—oh, love some good meatloaf. Oh, speaking of juicy meatloaf, I got some juicy tidbits. Now, here's what we heard, okay? So, let's go back to just Thursday, all right? Go back to Thursday. There's going to be a debate coming up tomorrow night at the Newberry Opera House. Now, as of Thursday, Joey Hudson was supposed to be one of the moderators of that debate, right? Well, apparently—so, here's how the story went, all right? Here's how the story went. So, the South Carolina GOP—well, let me start even further back. The story goes now—this is a story, this is not my story, this is the story that was relayed to a lot of people, okay? So, we heard that the Graham campaign was upset with the fact that NewsMax was putting on this debate, okay, because NewsMax had run some ads that were favorable to Russell Fry and not Starling Graham. Okay. So, this is the story: The Graham campaign, according to the story, calls the SCGOP—Drew McKissick—and says, "Listen, we don't like the way things are going here with NewsMax. If we don't get, you know, something, we're ready to walk away from this debate." To which, according to the story, Drew McKissick said, "Okay, why don't we include SCETV? Why don't we include SCETV?" And they were like, "Okay, that'll kind of balance things out a little bit. All right, we agree to that. But no Joey Hudson." Hold on, that was the story. That's the story that we were told. So then, Drew McKissick calls Joey Hudson, says, "Joey, Joey, this is the hardest phone call I've ever had to make. I just hate this, but we're going to have to boot you"—I don't know if he used that term, but—"we're going to have to replace you as moderator." So now all of a sudden, Joey Hudson no longer a moderator for this debate. And the story goes that it was the Graham campaign that had Joey Hudson removed. But now we get the rest of the story! It looks like that is not what happened. That is not what happened. This is from Abby Zilch. Abby Zilch is with the Graham campaign. She says: "Setting the record straight. The decision to cut Joey Hudson was South Carolina GOP's, not ours. We just did a forum with Joey Hudson. He is a great interviewer and we think highly of him. NewsMax ran ads for another candidate in this race, and even after the fact, Starling Graham agreed to the debate in Newberry with NewsMax and SCGOP. Anyone stating otherwise is lying. We hope SCGOP will overturn its decision and bring Joey back to the table." So the question is: Who booted Joey? Who was the one to make the decision that Joey Hudson was not going to be a moderator—Joey Hudson of NewsTalk 98.9 WORD, by the way? Who was the person who made that decision? That's what I would like to know. That's what I want to know. Now someone said, "Charlie, if they can't stand Joey, they would probably begin vaporizing if they saw you in person." Maybe so, but this is not about me, it's about Joey, okay? Joey's great. But what we're hearing now, it was not the Graham campaign that booted Joey. And listen, I'll be honest with you, Abby Zilch, all right, if this was just Abby Zilch giving me this information, I might actually discount it a little bit because she's with the campaign. But I got a text just a few minutes before this, verifying all of this from somebody outside of the campaign. So could this be—could this be a case of Drew McKissick just looking for some type of further reach because of this? They wanted to—so, I mean—they wanted to draw a bigger audience in some way with SCETV, and thinking he couldn't do that with—I'm telling you what, somebody's got some questions that they need to be addressin ...

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