Andrew Lawrence and Joe Sudbay discuss callers to right-wing radio shows expressing frustrations with the Trump administration
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Andrew Lawrence and Joe Sudbay discuss callers to right-wing radio shows expressing frustrations with the Trump administration
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From the February 28, 2025, edition of SiriusXM's The Dean Obeidallah Show
JOE SUDBAY (GUEST HOST): Right-wing radio's starting to hear it from their listeners, too. One of your colleagues wrote a piece about that this week. Talk a little bit about that.
ANDREW LAWRENCE (GUEST): Oh, yeah. It's been really fascinating, you know? Right-wing radio, you know, there's nothing like it on the left as far as the way that it sort of drives the momentum at kind of a grassroots level, almost. I mean, you have very local stations where the hosts are very popular in that one city.
And the callers are calling in, they're getting fired, they have friends that are getting fired or being laid off. And these are the hardcore Republican voters. These are the diehards, the P1s, as it's known in the radio industry. And they're to the point where they have to call in and they have to beg these radio hosts to — you know, we've heard Sean Hannity, these people call in, "Please talk to Donald Trump on behalf of me and my friend," you know? "My wife is a veteran," like, "We just got this job and we just moved here. And two weeks before we're supposed to start, you know, we're losing everything."
And the callousness of these hosts, you know, on the other end. Sean Hannity, he'll sit there and he'll sort of feign heartache for these people, you know? He'd say, "Oh, you know, that's terrible. That's a really sad thing to do." But he's got to defend Trump, so in the next breath he's sitting there saying, "Well, you know, there's going to be a lot of job opportunities. There's going to be a lot of great things." And you know, you're talking about a guy that makes $40 million a year between TV and radio, telling these people that are probably making, you know, 80, 150 thousand combined, "Don't worry about it, you know, it's not a big deal." I mean, he's saying things like, "Anybody who wants a job can find one." And this is a guy who talks for four hours a day, you know?
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Where this is all stemming from, is conservative media for years now, decades maybe, has been saying that the government is full of the woke mob and DEI and critical race theory and affirmative action and whatever it was for that year when they needed to blame Black people and minorities and women, basically. They've been saying that stuff for years, and these people are so hopped up on it. And then you have these people coming in, they're saying that they can cut $2 trillion in government spending by just getting rid of the woke. Like, no you can't, because that doesn't exist, so how are you going to do it? Well, we got to cut National Park rangers, we got to cut Social Security customer service caller reps, you know? Stuff like that, stuff that is actually going to impact people.