Thanks for joining the OTR conversation This week On tap is Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sandy Pensler our lead story.

The president huddles with the UAW in Detroit.

On the OTR panel, Simon Schuster, Lauren Gibbons and Chad Livengood sit in with us as we get the inside out Off the record.

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And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to Studio C as we take another week's look at what happened in Lansing what didn't happen, the new polling data suggests that Joe Biden is still in trouble and behind Mr. Trump in Michigan.

And the thing that jumped out to me is Robert Kennedy is getting 8% of the vote.

What does that mean?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that we've always anticipated that this is going to be somewhat of a close election.

You know, the people are just going to say I'm the least and the best alternative.

You've got.

And I think the nightmare scenario for the Biden campaign is that there's another alternative that someone that actually presents themselves as a viable alternative to Joe Biden and that people feel that they can vote for and I think that's their concern right now.

Yeah, I think it's still early days, but you are seeing you are seeing hesitation among voters who did not want to see a Trump Biden rematch looking at the prospect of a Trump Biden rematch.

That's why it is a little surprising considering, you know, the name recognition of both of them.

But it also doesn't surprise me that people are looking for an alternative.

The hard and cold reality of all these alternatives is you have to get to a magic number of 37.5% in every competitive state to win, to win the Electoral College, to win the presidency.

Otherwise, you are just playing spoiler.

And and that is was know the calculation going on right now, especially with the No Labels movement, this kind of group of disaffected Democrats and Republicans who are trying to think, do we do we do we do we draft Liz Cheney or do we draft Joe Manchin to or do we draft them both to run for president and vice president?

And will that be effective?

And so that's that's the real debate going on right now.

As we know, the two parties get saddled with the inevitable choice of of the incumbent and the former incumbent.

So you have the Democrats going to to Mr. Kennedy and say, you're killing us, man.

Have they done that or should they?

I mean, I would assume that they had not.

But I think that it's not inconceivable.

I don't think it would do any good, to be honest.

That would be my kind of pretty big ego.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I mean, I think that the cautious thing about polling data at this point is to acknowledge that both of these campaigns are sitting on war chests that are approaching the nine figures.

If they're not already there.

And we haven't yet seen that sort of advertising onslaught that's not only going to push people from Trump to Biden, but it's going to take undecided voters, people who might be leaning toward these alternatives and push them back into these, you know, traditional camps.

So in the middle of these numbers coming out, who shows up in tone with the president himself?

He does, yes.

And and we know from the polling that he is he's got some issues well within his own coalition.

And so he comes to Macomb County yesterday to have a little get together with some UAW members.

It was not your traditional rally.

It was not a major speech.

He did a little bit of retail politics.

They dropped the no fly zone.

The Selfridge Air Force Base drops down to Harper Woods, goes to a black owned sports bar and then kicks back up into Macomb County and goes to Warren to to a UAW hall.

And it avoids protesters and the protesters with a pretty large contingent of pro-Palestinian protesters outside, you know, chanting now with like signs and what not and their calling them genocide Joe.

They are furious with his position towards Israel and his deference to Israel in the Israel-Hamas war.

And this issue is not going away.

And when you have a state like Michigan has a large Arab-American population or a middle Eastern, North African descendants are estimated at least 300,000 people think that's a major undercount.

That is a significant number of adults voting age adults who could who could decide your election if they sit it out or they go vote for Robert Kennedy Jr. Well, let's put these numbers in perspective because remember, joe Biden did not win in a landslide in Michigan.

And so you take that chunk of voters down in the Dearborn area and put them in another column.

He's got a problem.

That's very true.

And it is interesting because, you know, historically, foreign policy is not often unless you know, there's a war going on or something, not often the major decider of elections.

But here in Michigan, this this issue has hit a boiling point.

And that does spell trouble for Biden.

If he can't thread that needle and alleviate some of the concerns that these voters have.

But on the other hand, Michigan also has a pretty sizable Jewish population who have concerns on the other side of things.

So it's definitely something that is not going away.

And and his campaign will need to handle it if he wants to keep that coalition together.

I think that what's important to see in polling and look for in polling as we move forward is drilling down into these minority groups, people that have been almost taken for granted in prior years as part of the Democratic base, African-Americans, Latino-Americans, groups that are also trending towards Republicans and more conservative politics.

If we can see a poll that has oversampling of these groups that we can really see where they're going as we near the election, I think it's really going to be sort of a bellwether for the president.

The governor was along with him for part of the trip.

She was yeah, she greeted him along with the lieutenant governor.

And and, you know, obviously U.S.

Senators Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow and Representative Debbie Dingell, they all flew on Air Force One and arrived and they came along for the trip and whatnot.

It was, you know, usual get together of the Democratic establishment.

But that's also part of the issue here, is that if Democrats these rank and file Democrats, feel they don't have any connection to this, to this president, that he essentially runs an isolated campaign that also is dangerous for him long term in trying to get people motivated to to come out and vote for him.

Yeah, but he told the Labor folks in Warren he didn't walk around in kind of a roundtable sitting basically saying, hey, you brought me to the dance and I'm still here with you.

Does that work?

You know, and it is still early.

It's February.

It's also there are still a lot of things about the Trump campaign that are still outstanding.

You know, he's got some court cases to deal with.

There's there's a lot going on that could change the factor.

But the fact of the matter is Democrats do better when their candidate at the top is inspiring.

There's there's passion among all of these different factions.

And we haven't seen that passion yet.

If you were.

Yeah, go ahead.

I think that this is also something that's going to be really illuminating about the United Auto Workers.

We've seen this sort of power dynamics shift in leadership from Currie to Shawn Fain.

And under previous leadership, we sort of seen a lack of discipline among union rank and file, which had previously reliably turned out for Democrats.

And so if they can sort of bring back that discipline and get these folks back in order and behind Democrats, it's going to say a lot about, I think, organized labor.

And we're seeing a lot of Shawn Fain.

He is going to be a prominent go to surrogate for the president.

He will be on national television.

He already was on the Sunday talk shows last weekend.

You're just going to see this this union leader from Shelby Township showing up a lot and and essentially carrying the water for the president.

Well, he's got a huge assignment on his plate to pull this off, because remember, the UAW back in the day, many UAW members voted for a guy named George Wallace.

In fact, George Wallace came into this state and with the help of the UAW, won the presidential primary.

If you look at the messaging yesterday, Biden comes in and says and says, you, the country owes you all of gratitude because your union just got a 26% pay raise over four years.

Under Sean Fain's leadership and Shawn Fains strategy to strategically strike the big three different plants, not just focus on one, hit them all and hit them hard.

It's hard with the SUVs and trucks, and they really, really brought it to the to the to the big three.

And the big three gave in on this this contract deal.

And then what happened?

Honda, Toyota, all the other foreign owned automakers started giving pay raises the next week, literally because they're now scared that that you know Shawn Fain's coming for their shop and insurance and he is coming to the shop and so this is that so the president is aligning himself with this strategy that that the unions have have helped boost wages.

We can use this as an argument.

We can use this against Trump, who, you know, remember during the strike shows up in a nonunion automotive supplier in Clinton Township and says the negotiations don't matter?

Well, Joe Biden's going to argue the negotiations do matter to your bottom line.

If you were in the White House scurrying just polling data to find any sliver of hope, I guess the number would be 58%.

58% said if Mr. Trump was convicted of a crime, they would not vote for him.

32% would.

And of course, that is his base.

That's his number.

He holds on to that number regardless of what happens.

So if the Biden people were looking for anything positive, that's the only thing they had.

Redistricting.

Where are we?

Yeah, you know, British voters at the later part of this week went in.

Finally selected a final number of a small number of maps to move on to a shortened public comment period that then after a public comment period and perhaps some small adjustments are going to go before panel federal judges who by the end of March are going to have to sign off on this after looking at those maps in comparison to a special master and outside experts and looking at the maps, it's a little bit of a better edge for the hours, although it's still leaning more Democratic.

Yeah, these are six, six seats that are in play, right?

Yeah, We had bridge a recently did an analysis of the six maps that made it to the final stage.

I think now we're at about three that they're seriously considering.

But yeah a lot of these seats are typically trend pretty democratic anyway, regardless of how they're drawn.

The overall conclusion that we can make here is that they are trying and seem to have drawn more city centric districts and more suburban centric districts.

And in a lot of these configurations, that does make the House slightly more competitive.

But the thing to keep in mind here is that the house map was already pretty competitive.

So it's it was always going to be a, you know, a battle for Democrats to retain the majority.

And if any of these seats are even a little bit more competitive, that's something to keep in mind.

You tend to watch for as all of this is to try to be in compliance with federal law as it relates to minority groups and black voters in Detroit who got these districts where there were a quarter of the voters were in Detroit and the rest of them were in the suburbs, and there was this little tail looking district that got drawn.

Now, in the redrawing of the state, they've upset another constituency, American voters in that Dearborn, Dearborn Heights area of Wayne County and Hispanic voters in the in the southwest, Detroit, downriver parts of of.

So now in trying to accomplish this and be within the legal framework, there may be other co Party core that are upset with the final product is control of the House more in play today based on these maps than it was yesterday?

Maybe slightly.

I think the other important thing to keep in mind here is that this is very preliminary stages.

A lot could still change its and then ultimately the court has the final say.

Unless the Supreme Court intervenes, we could still see some big changes.

But yes, if if it gets a little more competitive, the House could be a little bit more in play.

All right.

Let's call in our guest today, Senators, Senator, maybe Sandy Pensler.

Come on in there.

Only white guys.

Mr. Pensler, welcome back to the program.

It's good to see you again, sir.

Great to be here.

Let's play a little game.

Give me one word to these people to describe them.

Sandy Pensler?

Morals.

Say it again.

Morals.

Mike Rogers?

Unprincipled.

Peter Meyer?

Friendly.

Why don't you pause?

Peter I think he's in a complicated position and when I've met him, he's just seemed very friendly.

I don't think this was the time for him to run, but I think he's a very genuine, friendly person.

I just two more.

Elissa Slotkin?

Unprincipled.

Donald Trump?

Next president two words.

Ex-president.

That's sort of a punt, isn't it?

Iconoclast.

Alright let's go Lauren back to you.

Yeah.

So as as we look towards, you know, the possibility, likely possibility of another Trump Biden campaign, you know, you say that you think he's going to be president again here.

What what do you see on the bottom line, especially as you're talking to voters for your campaign?

What what's changed?

What is is there is there a new excitement there?

What's changed about what things campaign my campaign since 2020?

Well, I think what's changed is the country has had four years or will have four years is three and a half at this point to look at failed policies of President Joe Biden.

And I think the country is going to recognize and already is that those policies are leading to the country burning and frankly, the world burning.

I think they're frustrated and I think that's going to show up at the polls in a big fashion.

How is the country burning right now, in your mind?

In my mind, it's a more it's issue of moral rot.

So what happens?

I think if you look at all of our problems, we're spending money we don't have and borrowing from our kids.

I think it's a moral problem.

We are trying to solve racism using racism.

I think it's a moral problem.

We are funding terrorists and then expecting them not to use it for terrorism.

Again, I think it's a moral problem.

Funding terrorists?

Well, we funded Hamas.

We funded Iran and surprised, surprise, it was used for terrorism.

I think we don't bring a simple morals and Midwestern values to problems.

The problems are complex, but the solutions are simple.

So you don't spend money you don't have and borrow from kids.

You got to be recognize the difference between what you need and what you want, I think.

On the borders I was down in Texas after watching the Wolverines, Sorry I'm in Michigan State Country.

But after the Wolverines win the Champions, I went over and spent a couple of days at the border.

It's not a high tech problem.

We have invited these people over.

On the first day that Biden was in office, he put out an executive order, blocked the state in Mexico, basically said, come on down.

And I think I thought building the wall seems sounded too simplistic, but when I saw it, it works.

And I think we got to stop inviting them.

I don't blame them.

I blame us.

We're inviting them over and we got to stop it.

I'm all for legal immigration.

I'm not for illegal immigration.

Just hours after you announced your campaign, the National Republican Senatorial Committee essentially knocked you for entering the race.

How is that going to inform how you run for office?

Oh, I'm not real worried about making friends in Washington.

I'm worried about the people of Michigan.

So the fact that there might be some Washington insiders that don't like my approach doesn't shock me in the least.

Do you view that as a gift in their reaction?

I don't know if I'd view it as a gift, but I just I don't concern myself a whole lot with it.

Do you favor the Biden policy as it relates to what's going on in the Middle East?

I think the Biden policy, unfortunately, they have blood on their hands.

I think we invited Ukraine.

The problems in Ukraine, not the Middle East I'll get there.

But and I think when we fund Iran and we fund Hamas and we don't take the strong positions and we try to placate and appease evil, we invite what happened, How did we invite Ukraine?

I mean, the Russians invaded the country.

Yes.

And President Biden, before they invaded said if they come in just a little, eh that wouldn't be so bad in Crimea.

And before there, lets talk about what brought on the recent invasion and then go back to Afghanistan, the way we pulled out, I thought it again showed weakness and I think weakness really encourages bullies.

And really, I look at Putin evil and bullies, I guess you need a little of both.

And I think we encouraged it.

Let me put a finer point on my question.

The Biden policy views of the his support for Israel, is it too strong?

Oh, no.

In fact, I think it's not strong enough.

I think there would be some people in Dearborn that would disagree.

Absolutely understand that there are people in Dearborn.

There will be people that disagree with my positions on lots of different things.

That doesn't mean I'll change them.

I think this is almost as simple as good and evil, and we have to stand with Israel.

We can't have half measures and in the Middle East, half measures aren't really respected.

So if Mrs. Talib was sitting here this morning, what would you say to her?

I'd say, think she's wrong.

I think her positions on Hamas are shameful.

I think it was yesterday that she was one of two congresspeople that voted not to condemn Hamas.

And and I think more importantly for my race, Elissa Slotkin did not call her out either.

And Elissa Slotkin was very quick to criticize the IDF.

Those are all the wrong things.

We need to stand with Israel.

We need to be clear.

And I think if we are, we'll have a solution that's better for everyone in that region.

And if we're not, we'll never solve the problem.

Are you concerned about the number of civilian casualties that are piling up.

Of course, war is ugly.

It's a terrible thing.

So should we have some type of cease fire?

That should not be our decision, I think.

Let me let me finish answering Chad's question then.

I'm happy to come back two years.

I think half measures that we're coming and trying to be straddle the issue and try to be on both sides hurts having a real resolution there.

So if you are truly worried about Gazans, there will be some short term pain.

There is no doubt about it.

There will be massive short term pain, but you will not solve this situation if you leave.

If you do not uproot Hamas from Gaza, you will not.

That's my view.

We have a large number of Arab-American Michiganders who are feeling disaffected, dejected by the Biden administration's policies, and they may have had even family members who were civilians in Gaza killed as a result of this conflict.

What would your message to them be?

That I think we need to free Gaza, that I think we need a peace in the Middle East and we will not have one when a governing body so primary documents call for the destruction of all Jews hiding behind trees that you cannot negotiate with.

One that says October 7th was fine.

In fact, we celebrated as a great victory and will have it over and over again.

You can't negotiate with it.

So my suggestion to those people who I feel for, I do just like I probably would feel for Japanese people when we were fighting against them.

We need a solution there.

We have to uproot Hamas to free Gaza.

You're in a pretty crowded Republican primary right now.

What is your message to differentiate yourself from the rest of the field to voters?

I think there are two things.

One, I'm the only nonprofessional politician that has the resources to win the race.

And two, because of that, I bring a different approach.

I'm used to making decisions quickly that are hard and not worrying.

I think when you're a professional politicians, it's hard to kick the can.

A lot of people in most, in fact, have gotten used to worrying about how does this group that group feels so that they can win the next time and keep their office.

I'm just worried about bringing morals to problems.

Mr. Pensler or some of your critics say What don't you understand about the word no?

You ran for the US Senate before and you failed, okay?

You didn't get there.

So now here you are back again.

Oh, at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

But no, I think it's I was ahead in the primary and two weeks out and I lost the endorsement of the president, which is very important.

So it was his fault not yours?

No, no, let me finish.

I am the only candidate in this race who has supported the president throughout.

Even after that, I supported the president.

I think he will be a tremendous change from what we had in the White House.

If he's convicted of a crime, would you still support him?

I think what's happening So I'm going to give you a little longer answer than a yes no, because I don't think it's that simple.

I think the American people are very fair, as would I be.

I think lawfare is being used in a very unfair manner to attack him and take him off the ballot and to take Republicans everywhere.

Here in our state, we have 16 electors that I think were unfairly charged.

We had a moderate Republican governor and some of his staff that were unfairly charged.

And I think it's become a pathway to attack democracy, to deter candidates.

All right.

So I think that's gone on against the president.

So I think it does, does it depend on the facts.

Sure.

But the facts that I've seen, there's nothing that I have seen on the table is still this.

If he is convicted in a court of law, would you still support him?

Yes.

Why?

Because if I view that conviction as one that is not valid and will not stand up on appeal, which I believe most of them would not, then I would still support him.

And as I look at the charges, I think all of them are politically motivated and I think they undermine democracy in a major fashion.

What's wrong with Mike Rogers?

Why did I call them?

What I call them is what you're asking.

What did you call them for The people that didn't hear it on principle?

I think Mike spent five years bashing President Trump on CNN and then went to donors and said, I'm a never Trumper, please give me money.

And then as soon as it was convenient for his election purposes, I was told by Washington, you better support, get on board and support President Trump.

He switched.

I find that problematic.

So basically in the 10 seconds real note he's two faced.

I'd use the term unprincipled.

All right, let's go with that.

Mr. Pensler it's good to see you again.

Thanks for Always great to see you guys.

Thanks very much for what you do.

Thanks to our panel.

See see you here next week.

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Learn more at MartinWaymire.com.

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