Every Friday morning, I join the Cardle & Woolley Show on Talk 1370 Radio in Austin to announce the week’s Winners & Losers. President Donald Trump finally has a Peace Prize, Texas has a team in the Super Bowl hunt and it looks like Verizon is working again. Here’s who made the list:
WINNER: Gov. Greg Abbott’s $106 Million Campaign War Chest
In what the Dallas Morning News calls a “chest-thumping number,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott officially reported this week that he has a total of $106 million on hand for his re-election campaign this year—a figure that withers any efforts by Democrats to take over the Governor’s Mansion anytime soon. Note that Texas House Democrats bragged this week that they have raised a little over $2 million, mostly from folks around the country who supported their Capitol walkout last year. The Texas Democrat big dog, Beto O’Rourke, who has declined to run for anything again, also raised $2 million. Democrat U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico has raised over $6 million and his opponent, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, reportedly has close to that amount, although her progressive allies are currently criticizing her for taking money from the wrong people.
Which is not to say that it is all about the money—or even mostly about the money. Abbott’s broad support from the business community of Texas is a clear sign that people like the direction the state is going—job creation, productivity increases and, of course, Abbott’s lead role in passing school choice last year. The response from Texans is “let’s keep going.” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also broke campaign fundraising records reporting $38 million on hand for his re-election. Both Abbott and Patrick are running for fourth terms.
WINNER: Maria Machado Gives Her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump
After the Nobel Committee passed over President Trump in October, I reported that peace prizes are not usually awarded on merit—(see Barack Obama). But sometimes they are. Yesterday, Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado gave her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Donald Trump, expressing gratitude to Trump for taking out dictator Nicolas Maduro, and for his support of the resistance movement.
Bloomberg says that Norway is stunned by the news that Machado gave her prize to Trump after they specifically told her it was not transferable.
According to the news report, “a sense of disbelief gripped the Norwegian media and expert community”—don’t you love that Scandinavians have a “media and expert community?”
Janne Haaland Matlary, a professor with the University of Oslo and a former politician said, “That’s completely unheard of. It’s a total lack of respect for the award, on her part.” [It is] “meaningless” and “pathetic.”
Of course, Dr. Matlary has it backwards. “Meaningless and pathetic” are what the Nobel Peace Prize has become. Machado has made it relevant again.
LOSER: Immigration Wars in the Streets
We are accustomed to living in a world in which half the people have a viewpoint that is diametrically opposed to the other half. The immigration wars going on in the streets of Minneapolis now are a stark example.
There is no question that the progressive left had been looking for a “George Floyd” moment and they believe they got it when an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer shot and killed Renee Good on Jan. 7. Fully 80% of Americans say they have watched all the videos of the shootings and most everyone has an opinion.
A strong majority—over half—do not believe the ICE agent was justified in using deadly force against Good.
Meanwhile, the same poll shows that just over 60% of Republicans believe the shooting was justified. Almost all Democrats—over 90%— do not, which means that the country has settled into their camps on this issue, before there has been any investigation.
There are lots of arguments we would all like to hurl at the progressive anti-ICE marchers, starting with why they never seem to get mobilized in response to victims who have been killed by illegals, but it is also fair to ask for an investigation to determine why this woman was killed by a law enforcement official. Unfortunately, by the time the investigation gets moving, people will be even more dug in. Nobody is going to win the immigration war in the streets. Everybody is a loser.
LOSER: Verizon’s “Software Issue”
If we needed more evidence of how our fragile world is held together by our cellular service, it came on Wednesday when Verizon’s system went down for about 7 hours—people with Verizon phones couldn’t call out and nobody could call them.
Verizon couldn’t tell you how many of their customers lost service, only saying that 1.5 million people reached out to them to complain. I kept wondering how they could complain if their phone wasn’t working—which is why I suspect it was many more than 1.5 million.
Verizon called it a “software issue,” not a cyberattack, but the reports from other cell phone companies all seemed a little shaky. AT&T and T-Mobile said some customers reported problems to them, but they think it was only because they were trying to call Verizon people. Shouldn’t they know whether their systems are working or not?
Verizon is offering $20 credit to people who were affected, but speaking in solidarity with Verizon customers, I don’t think that will nearly cover the pain and suffering.
LOSER: Crockett Has a Bad Week
Woke apologies are pretty much over, everywhere except in Hollywood and among progressive Democrats, which is apparently why two comedians apologized to Texas U.S. Senate candidate Jasmine Crockett this week for telling voters they should not waste their money on contributions to her campaign.
Two guys nobody has heard of, Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers, described by their compatriots as “white and white adjacent,” went on Instagram to say how sorry they were to have been insensitive, shortly after they were accused of attacking Crockett because she is a black woman.
In addition to the fundraising story noted above, Crockett has not had a great week. The first real poll in the U.S. Senate Democrat primaries from Emerson College shows State Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin leads Crockett 47% to 38%. Pollsters say that Talarico is leading among white and Hispanic voters, while Crockett has about 80% of black voters.
LOSER: Bill & Hillary Clinton Duck Subpoena
Granted, nobody really expected former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to show up on Capitol Hill this week to answer questions about what they knew about Jeffrey Epstein.
The Clintons called the whole thing a “witch hunt,” a term frequently employed by the current president, and they insisted they’d already told everything they know.
Well, maybe, but I don’t believe we have gotten to the bottom of those silky silver shirts that the former President and Epstein are wearing in the most recent set of photographs that were released earlier this year.
House Oversight Chair James Comer, R-Kentucky, is moving forward to hold them in contempt of Congress, but that probably won’t make much difference. It is already pretty clear they have nothing but contempt for Congress.
WINNER: More Evidence the Whole Trans Thing is Over
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court is finally considering whether boys should be allowed to participate in girls’ sports, one of my colleagues on the radio version of Winners & Losers actually made the Supreme Court losers this week because the justices wasted so much time asking the pro-trans lawyers dumb questions that all boiled down to what a woman is.
But cultural change is a long process, and if the reading of the tea leaves is correct and the Supremes are poised to block boys and men from playing in girls and women’s sports, this will be an important victory for our women, our values and culture and our country. Since all that is at stake, the Supreme Court was right to push the ACLU attorneys for the details of their case—they need to put their case on record, even if the Court’s liberal justices, aside from Ketanji Brown Jackson, did not seem inclined to join in.
Just in case the Supremes don’t act, Nevada’s governor is collecting signatures to put a Trans ban on the ballot in the Silver State. Meanwhile, in San Antonio, they are still fighting for rainbow sidewalks.
LOSER: Shake Shack Gaining Ground in Texas
News reports came out this week that another Shake Shack is going up in Leander, forcing speculation that the New York City-based hamburger joint is trying to oust Whataburger from the No. 1 burger spot in Texas.
Granted, there are only 30 Shake Shacks in Texas now, compared to about 800 Whataburgers, but Texans cannot be complacent. Now that red meat is back on the top of the food pyramid, we cannot let some New York ground beef restaurant spawned in the middle of Manhattan threaten Texas’ iconic Whataburger.
It is true some folks believe that Whataburger lost its claim to a Texas title after it sold controlling interest to a Chicago company. But Whataburger is still headquartered in my hometown of San Antonio, and they are bullish about maintaining their Texas brand—and we all should help them. You can’t just show up in the Lone Star State, throw up a hamburger stand and say you belong here.
WINNER: College Football Championship & Super Bowl Speculation
Indiana will play the University of Miami on Monday night for the College Football Championship. To review how we got here, pull up the last 15 weeks of Winners & Losers.It’s a great story. Kick-off is at 6:30 p.m., Texas time.
Meanwhile, Super Bowl Sunday is Feb. 8, but the Elite 8 is set, so it’s time to start official speculation. Let’s begin with the projection model at the New York Times which somehow calculates that the Seattle Seahawks have the highest percentage chance—23% of the eight teams still in the fight—to win the Super Bowl. The Times ranks the NFC higher than the AFC and give the Rams the second highest chance. They give the Texans a 10% chance to win—the Patriots and the Broncos do a little better in the AFC.
Have a great weekend!
Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the former Senior Advisor to Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick.
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