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Here is the Transcript of Tom Zawistowski's 2026 Election Analysis:

Credit to Bob Frantz and His Podcast at Strictly Speaking on Rumble.
 

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): All right. You've heard my opening salvo here on the morning after the bloodbath. Let's welcome Tom into the program. Now, Tom Zawistowski from the We the People convention at wethepeopleconvention.org. Also the Portage County Tea Party, which is very important right now to talk about what happens after midterms and more. Tom. Good morning. How are you? I've been better.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): I guarantee you that it's very sobering. And first of all, I want to thank all the poll workers, all the people you and I know who spent 12, 15 hour days yesterday putting on the election. I want to thank all the donors to the We the People convention and to the Ohio Citizens PAC and the freedom for all PAC for our barn billboard program. It's easy, the morning after everybody wants to blame and criticize. But I want to acknowledge that many people made tremendous efforts at tremendous sacrifices to themselves. And I want to thank all of them. But yeah, there's a lot to discuss this morning. And I've been listening to you to try to see where you're at. I've got some different views on some of the things you've said, but yeah, let's.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Hear it because Tom, this is so important right now. This is the time to hear all of the different views. When we're trying to plow forward toward an election, we all need to be rowing the boat in the same direction, or else it stands still and maybe even goes in circles. Okay. So we kind of have to but after, a resounding defeat like this in the state and across the country, kind of every idea, it's kind of like getting together after a bad quarter in a corporate boardroom. My goodness, we took a bath last quarter. All ideas are on the table. Let's figure out where we have to go from here. No, no opinions are wrong. So we've got to figure it out. So let's do that. Give me first of all, your impression. Let's start with Ohio. Then we'll go to the national scene, if that's okay with you.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Okay. So first of all, I was wrong. I thought a good turnout would benefit us, and it hurt us. I know, and you're right. Not enough people vote. It looks like we ended up at about 57.3% turned out to vote, which by midterm years is very high was historic. So there was a surge. Okay. The problem was, I thought those people were turning out to support President Trump and to keep our Maga agenda going forward. And they were not those people. They were the angry Republicans that you and I have heard so much from, who came out to stick a knife in us to basically say, I'm done with you and I'm going to punish you. And they did punish us. I'll read a quote. I chose an article from Just the News to put on our website at wethepeopleconvention.org. But it says while many liberal pundits declare the election was an affirmation of the far left lurch in America, exit polls showed anger and distrust of both parties and a clear rejection of socialism becoming mainstream in American politics. 57% of voters favored capitalism, compared to just 33% who said they had a favorable view of socialism. This guy who's a consultant and is quoted in here, said, I talked with lots of voters these last few weeks, is very clear that they did not embrace the left. They just repudiated us. I just I know just from speaking to voters that they didn't want to do it to us, but they felt they had to do it, and they did. And he also said his quote was, I think this is just really fundamental. I don't think we should overanalyze it. Conservative pollster Rich Barr said Republicans were the party that promised to fix the economy, and inflation put America first ahead of the war lobby and the Washington Grifters. And we didn't do it. And they punish us for it. And we did, and we deserved it. I think that's really what happened, Bob. We aren't. I say a lot of comments in the chat about welcome socialist America and all that. I don't think that's true at all.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Okay, let me respond to a little bit of that Tom because I agree with some of that because the angry Republicans were there, 57% was still not enough because of their turnout there. There. They were just rabid. And since 2024, honestly they have been just waiting for this moment. And they we needed to match them vote for vote. We needed to out turnout them and we just did not do that. But you're right. Some of those who did come out did not support us. And they think that well, this had to happen. We deserved it and we needed to do this. I have never, ever, ever believed that you can ever win by losing. You can make yourself better from a position of authority, from a position of majority. You can improve yourself and figure out what we have to do to be better. But to do it from the losing side, to give power to another side that is embracing socialism. There are now no less than seven. There used to be just 1 or 2, Bernie Sanders and AOC. There are seven actual members of the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America that are in our Congress now. And there are many more like Sherrod Brown, who vote with them every step of the way. They're non-declared socialists. They are all screaming for Medicare for all, which is socialism. They're going to rip the Border Patrol apart and open the borders. They are literally embracing a lot of socialism. And Republicans who came out to quote unquote, punish us for affordability or and so forth. We did just hand the socialists more power time than they have probably had in our country's history.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Yeah. So first of all, none of what you said is going to happen. They don't have the power to do any of that. Those are threats. They can't do any of that. Okay. They're not going to open the borders. Donald Trump's in control of that. They're not going to implement these things. They will if they win the presidency in 2028. But they can't do it now. So everybody needs to relax. Okay.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): I don't disagree, Tom. And I said that kind of in my opening monologue. I there are a lot of things that we control right now for the next two years, but the fact that there, like I said, are seven declared members of our Congress who are that. And we just elected another socialist in El sayed and it was also an Islamist. And we also just elected another Somali member of Congress because we allowed all of these people to come in from Somalia and vote in a big bloc in Minnesota. My point is that this is a statement that we did hand a lot of control over to people who, in the long term, have been wanting to do this incrementally, grow their membership in our legislature, not just the US legislature, but the state legislatures as well. They are trying to eventually stage a long term long game takeover. And they took a lot of steps toward that last night. So it's not I agree with you. They can't kill us in the next two years. That's why my rose colored glasses in the open said that for two years, President Trump still has the veto stamp and they're not going to be able to remove him with an impeachment trial in the Senate. We still have a lot of good things going, but damn the steps toward the left, the real far over the edge progressive socialist left were taken last night. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Again, you can't deny that those people were elected, but you can't over emphasize what that means. All right. And I'm going to challenge you on a couple other things that I think you need to think about you said, okay, I gotta get up this morning and we gotta, get back in the game and get ready to go. And the Republican Party can come back from this. I don't think that's where we're at right now. I can tell you from talking to people all over the state and all over the country, there is huge feeling that this whole thing is broken and we need to go in a whole different direction. I'm just telling you flat out that this experiment of the Tea Party and Maga getting behind Republicans and expecting to get the things we want was proven to be a total failure yesterday. It's a total failure. So I don't think you're going to you can say, let's just get going now. Because you know what? We don't know which direction we're going. There's going to be a lot of talk in the next.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): What is the Republican Party, Tom? Now, what is the Republican Party and your by your definition.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Besides a joke. Okay.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Direction. Wise. Direction. Wise. What is.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): There. There is no direction, Bob. The only person that in the Republican Party that cares about America and the people is Donald J. Trump. The Republican Party resists Donald J. Trump. The Republican Party is the party of consultants and lobbyists and big money. They aren't. Again, look at Ohio. Why did we have the outcome? And let me make a point. You said, oh, they out turned. They turned out more than us. Look at all the races. They were very close. They were very close. The margin was the angry Republicans. I want to tell you that that was the margin because until. And wasn't it interesting? Yeah. How Lucas County at 1115 last night hadn't reported any election results. I saw that and Cuyahoga County had only reported 34%. How long have the Republicans been in control and done nothing about that? When the Tea Party started, way back when we elected John Kasich and Rob Portman, and which turned out to be mistakes we all heard about, oh, yeah, the Cuyahoga County waits to see how many votes they need, and then they run them through the machines. That's what happened last night. We were winning, or close to winning everything until they came out. This is the part that we can't stand because the Republicans have the ability to fix it. They fix nothing. They fix nothing. And they didn't listen again. You say, why did this happen? You talked to Vivek a lot. I talked to Vivek. I told him last February, you've got to put the property tax reform on the ballot this election to get our people out to vote and to get them to vote for Republicans. And they talked them out of it and it cost them. There was just lots of mistakes. But let me just say to you this is no way to elect people. This is a freaking circus. The Democrats have proven with Joe Biden. Now, Amy Acton said, you don't even have to be a candidate. We can put up a cartoon character and we will not let her even speak. We will not let you record her quote unquote speeches. And we're going to let her governor. How does that happen? It happens when you have a system where we the people, have lost all agency. We have no ability to put someone on the ballot in the primary. We have no ability to elect anyone in the primary. And we sure as hell have no ability to elect people in the general. Because when you spend $300 million lying to people and ginning up anger, how do you fight against that Bob? The system is totally broken. And so I for one, am done with that crap. We got to change things because this is no way you can't. Like you said, how do you win? By losing. Well, my question is how do you win? By electing people who hate you. How do you win when Donald Trump endorses totally horrible people like Mitch McConnell, Tillis? And now, Graham who lost and these people who are his friends but aren't friends to the people. This is what's wrong. There's something totally wrong with this. We in the Tea Party movement, and many other conservatives and even some libertarians and stuff, are tired. We spent 17 years. I spent 17 years of my life trying to use the system as it was to achieve what we wanted. We have come full circle. When I started in 2009, Richard, was it not Cordray? Strickland was governor. Right. And Brunner was secretary of state and Cordray was attorney general. 17 years of my life. And where are we today, Bob?

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Right back there.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Right back there. We got nothing to show for it. We gave the Republicans everything. And we did. We the people took us from a purple state to a red state, but we never could get what we wanted because they rigged it because oh, Mike Dewine's running for governor and we're supporting Jim Renacci and oh, John Huston, who was challenging the wine. Oh, takes the bribe and becomes lieutenant governor. They rigged it. They rigged it, you think? You think the Amy Acton ad just came out by accident? You think really? When all of the staff are former Kasich people, when they've been sabotaging him the whole time? Because the last thing the Columbus cartel wanted was Vivek Ramaswamy. That's the last thing they wanted. The Republicans, quote unquote, RINOs. The people who are not like us are celebrating in Columbus today.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Oh, they're.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Thrilled that Amy Acton is governor. Oh, because they'll look very conservative when they act to stop her. That's not what you.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): They didn't. They didn't want to be controlled. Yeah. They did not want to be controlled and have to answer to a true conservative governor, which Vivek Ramaswamy would have been. There's no question.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): To be controlled. I want him to be conservatives. I want to be Republicans. I want them to be fully engaged with Vivek, because they should have been listening to you and I.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): But they don't want that though. But they don't want that. They wanted control over the governor. They don't want to have the executive.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): So why should we support any Republicans? Why will you continue to support these Republicans that we can't control who they are, right. We can't get them ourselves. We can't get anybody who's just a regular citizen in. Why do you want to support them? I got news for you. I'm not gonna anymore. We've tried this route.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): What are you going to do? What are you. What are you going to do? What's the alternative?

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Washington and Jefferson said the party system would be the death of our republic. That is proving to be true. That's a fact. The party system is killing us because there's nobody fighting for America. They're fighting for the Socialists of America. They're fighting for the Republican Party. They're not fighting for us. So yeah, we're going to talk about that. There's a lot of good ideas out there. I don't know if you saw Matt Maher's column about he wants to blow up the whole Republican Party. Okay. And I got all this crap about, oh, third parties never work and all that stuff. Yeah, I've heard all that. All I can tell you is.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): But we're talking today because it just doesn't work. But you just.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Dismiss does not work. And we got to stop pretending it does. And it never will work. It will never work. Bob.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Yeah. You just missed that whole thing about third parties don't work. But it's true. There have been third parties. There have been green parties, there have been libertarian parties. There have been all kinds of different third parties trying to crack into the two party system and give people a real option and so forth. It has never worked. So it. Right.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): And that's what I said to you. So what did I say to you? Yeah. I said the party system is the death of America.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Okay. But what's.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): I don't. Want to. Start a political party.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): What is the alternative to that then?

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): No party. You know what the alternative is? Your alternative is what I did in Portage County, which is which was we took over. We didn't support the Republican Party at all. We picked our own candidates. We went door to door. We elected them. Now they ran as Republicans.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Exactly.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): But many of them could have run as independents. And I and the whole point is we need to get back to localism where I went wrong. Okay, let's just get all the cards out on the table. Let's get all the cards on the table. Where I went wrong is when the Portage County Tea Party was kicking ass in Portage County. We then got talked into Tom's, got reported, recruited to be the head of the Ohio Liberty Coalition to run the tea parties all over the state. And then, the We the People convention came out of that. And what was our job? Oh, to elect Republicans statewide to respect elect Republicans federally. That was the mistake. This whole thing that came out of Arizona with the Dan Schultz guy that you've had on your program talking about, oh, we can take over the Republican Central committees and reform them. Bullshit. It's a lie. You can't you cannot reform a corrupt organization. You have to replace it. Okay, so here's what I'm telling you man. You're going to see a lot of people in our movement go hyper local, screw the state races, screw the federal races. They don't listen to us. We have no ability to affect that. But I'll tell you right now, I can elect county commissioners. I can elect city council, I can elect mayors, I can elect township trustees, and I can win that fight. And I'll be better off if I have people who are good people in my county than whatever the hell they're going to do to us at the state and federal level.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Tom, I obviously, excuse me. I appreciate the passion. I need a drink too. You're the one doing all the talking. But I need a drink.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): You might need a stronger drink than that. I'll tell.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): You that. I was gonna say it's water, not vodka. Although that might be a preferable thing right now, but. No, Tom, listen, all of the points you're making are good points with respect to being hyper local and getting commissioners and so on and so forth. But it all starts from the top down. You know that the funding is still got to come from the feds. The funding has still got to come from our representatives in Washington. And then, of course, in conjunction with the state, we can't just say we're going to be hyper local and ignore if you got no money being brought in any of the agenda that you have with these local commissioners and so on and so forth is going to be lost. So yeah.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): But who spends the money? Who spends the money? Where's the money go, Bob, where's the money go? It starts at the top. It goes to the state, it goes to the counties. The like 40% of all the money that the federal government spends is spent at the county level. Right? There's plenty of money. Yeah, but plenty of money.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): But. But what? The question is how are they going to allocate that money? One of the things that we voted for Trump to do, and we voted for Republican majorities to do, is to defund localities that are sanctuary cities, for example, to defund localities, counties and cities and so forth that are screwing the people.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Yeah, but that's the problem. They didn't.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Do it. Democrats control. We give Democrats control. Tom, you're saying to screw the Republican Party. There is no alternative at this point in time.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Yes there is.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Is it not from a financial investment.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): So did the Education department, defund the unions? Did the Education Department is the national level able to really do any of the things you just said at the local level? It's real simple. If you don't want die in your schools, you elect school board members who won't allow die in your schools. But we keep wishing that this king, Donald Trump, is going to solve all our problems. Our congressmen and so on. They haven't solved any of our problems. It's local, Bob. That's what the Constitution said. That's why we have townships. That's why we have. And I know this is a foreign concept to you and most of the people listening to this podcast. And I again, for 17 years, I've been the guy saying things that nobody believed could happen for 17 years. I'm the guy that said, we're going to elect Donald Trump. And they said, you can't do that. Okay. For when I when we turned Ohio red and elected all Republicans, they said, you couldn't do that I got it. That's the role I play. I'm telling you that the direction we're in cannot work. Not only did it not work this time, it can't work going forward. This is no way to elect anybody and we need to change direction. I don't have all the answers, but I'm going to be talking to a lot of smart people who are going to help me find answers, and we're going to go in a different direction. I'm just telling you it doesn't work. It's broken.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): I hear what you're saying. I just what you're talking about is it's not even a sea change. We're talking about tearing down and rebuilding from the ground up. A system that they're just going to continue to swim in. They're going to continue to work toward for 2028. We have two years. We have two years before that little creeping toward socialism that you and I just discussed a few minutes ago becomes full on. Okay. They're going to continue to do this and they're going to take the white House and then they're not going to have the veto pen stopping them. And you're going to say, and we're going to say how bad that is and we're going to be right. And we're going to talk about how we need to change the system. But at that point in time, Tom, they're going to have enough votes to get rid of the filibuster. They're going to have a Democrat president, and all will be lost. None of the efforts, even the hyper local stuff that you're talking about, are going to be able to stop the massive transformation of the government from the top down. That's what I'm worried about. I'm thinking. Tom, what do we do as conservatives? Forget about Republican for a minute. Yeah. About the label conservative people who want, government out of our lives. We to the extent that we can get that we need them for certain things. But we want government out of our lives. We want opportunity. We want free market. We want the ability to build what we want to build and so forth for our families. We want school choice. All of these things in for the next two years. Tom, we need to be working toward that within the system that has been built. If it's if we tear it down now in order to like you said, build something new. I just question whether we have time to do that while we're in such a critical, transformation phase to the socialists. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): I'll push back on you in two points. Number one, we're not tearing anything down. We're going back to our foundation, to our Constitution, and doing what it said to do, which was intended to protect our individual freedom, liberty and prosperity. So I challenge you. One, we're tearing anything down.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Number two well, what I meant by that time is when you said the system, the party system is broken, the party system we have to get rid of. And that's what, tearing down right now, we operate within the two party system. And if you're saying we have to get away from that my verbiage is tearing that down. So that's what I mean.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Okay. And I'm just talking about, using the Constitution where, the most important government is the government local to you. Okay. And that's where you've got control and that's where you can do things. And so we got to get back to that because we forgot all that. We gave it all up. Everybody, spent all their time working on governor candidates. They didn't spend their time working at the local level. That's the problem. Okay. That's a huge problem. But let me go forward. Listen, how much control do you think we the people are going to have about what happens in 28, 20, 28, how much control when you've got billionaires and multi-Millionaires and trillionaires and foreign governments and everyone and their brother affecting that. You and I both know that JD Vance is in the pocket of Peter Thiel and the AI guys. You think you're going to have anything to do with that? You got nothing to do about that. You have nothing to say about that. All right. So let's stop fooling ourselves. The point is they've used us and they haven't given us anything that they promised us. And I love what you're talking about. The Democrats are going to do this and do that. Yeah. Who had the ability to do all that stuff three months ago and didn't? Who has the ability in the next two months? Thune could end the filibuster right now before January and pass the Save act and do all kinds of things right. Are the Republicans still in charge? Are they going to do that Bob? Of course not. Hell no. And so what? It's our fault. That's our fault. And the next group of clowns that we're going to elect in 2028, they're going to do that when we can't pick who's on the ballot. Really? You think that's going to happen? Bullshit. Look out! This is all rigged in the wrong way. So there's one idea that is true, and that is if you elect ever. And I think we should only support people who will run as independent, not run for a party at the local level. All right. Why? Because if you take over all the local offices with independents, the state parties don't have anybody to run for Senate and House in the state. They don't have any run because they have no political capital. That's how you start. Again, I'm not telling you Tom's going to wave a wand and this is great. If I had Elon Musk money, I could tell you oh yeah, we're going to do this and we're going to kick ass. All right. Part of the problem is how come nobody will fund us, Bob? How come? I think I don't know if I talked to you talked about this and there was no small thing. Look at the margins, the Libertarians and the other candidates in the House race. In the well, even some House but in the Senate race and in the governor's race. How important were those margins? Well, yeah. What did we have? The guy. I think it was Chapman, I think the libertarian candidate for governor. Yeah. He raised $55,000. I'm getting flyers. Beautiful mailings from him the week before the election. I'm getting text messages where they're attacking Houston and say, vote for Chapman. Yeah. Who paid for that? A group called the Buckeye Freedom PAC, which didn't exist until this year, had zero donations in their FEC filing on October 14th. And between October 14th and Election Day, they spent $2 million supporting Chapman because they knew if they could peel. Don't you mean Kissick? Don? No. The libertarian for governor, I forget. I'm sorry. I. Robert, whatever his name was, it doesn't matter that what did that tell me that told me on October 14th, the Democrats knew that Houston was beating Brown head to head, and they needed to spend $2 million to peel some angry Republicans off to make the difference. And it worked. What did we have to do with that? How come $2 million didn't come to the We the People convention so we could do something? How come that never happened in 17 years? There's a big problem, Bob. It's not a simple thing. No, it's not. Where we are today because the system we're in is broken and it's not going to get fixed by helping. The Republicans tried that for 17 years. Last night, proved it's a total failure. But two years ago, Tom, we were, doing this very type of show on the radio after. After President Trump won and after Charlie Kirk gave that big sigh of relief that we just saved the country. And we did temporarily at the time, and we did it within the system and we felt good about it. So two years later, we have this the opposite happens. And now we have to start voting independent. I just. So here's the point. How many chances do you have to give them? How much of our blood, sweat, tears and money do we have to give before we get what we want? The deal was this. We went all in 24 to stop the commie socialists who had control, put Trump in charge, gave him the House and the Senate. Right. So they would do what? Fix it. Defend us. Do what we needed. What did they do? They did what they did in his first term. How many bills did Congress passed in Trump's first term? One. How many bills have they passed so far in second term? One. The big, beautiful bill. They're not doing anything they're not doing. Because you know what? Because Congress doesn't work for us. Congress doesn't means nothing. That's why Donald Trump is doing executive orders. That's why Joe Biden did everything without congressional approval. How much time I would still have. I would still push back and say, would you rather have that Republican majority not doing enough, or a Democrat majority doing a whole hell of a lot? That's way worse than is going to literally destroy every giant government that's going to destroy all of our individual liberties, which I know is what you live for. Is that is our liberties. And let me ask you. You're talking about we need to run a whole bunch of people at the local levels as independents and screw the party and screw the party system and so on and so forth. But you know as well as I do, the overwhelming majority of voters in the state of Ohio and around the country don't operate in the bubble that you do and that I do to a lesser extent. You've been doing this for much longer than I have. Okay. They don't have the knowledge. They don't have the inside baseball knowledge and information to figure out which independent candidate most reflects their views. That's why they settle on that slate car. Well, the Republican Party or the Democrat Party most reflects me. And that's. So if they're not able to do the real intellectual push ups and homework that it takes to figure out every individual independent candidate how are we going to get those people involved anyway? How are we going to get them in? Nobody's going to know who to vote for. That represents them because they don't study it like with a passion like you do. And so and. That's why the. Parties exist, right? That's why you get your name and you get that. That's why the Tea Party was so successful. When we started up. Bob, most candidates didn't even have a website. There were no videos of any candidates in Portage County, and no one could learn anything about the Republicans or the Democrats, let alone an independent. So what? The poor guy tea party started to have meetings where we had every candidate speak, and we videotaped it, and we put it on our website. And that's where people got to see him for the first time ever. We did our own slate cards. We went door to door and we used the tactics that parties used, but not for our benefit. We did it to inform the public. The problem we have right now, and you and I have talked on your show. I have never been more censored in my life. The fact that this year, for the first time in 17 years, I could not do polling my own polling, so I knew what was going on. And I could not then intervene in elections where we had a chance to make a difference. That's the first time in 17 years that has happened. We. We need to build new systems because guess what? Both the Democrats and the Republicans have silenced us, have taken away our ability to speak. And they've done it with money. They've done it with money. So yeah, we got a long road to hoe. But I got news for you. I'm done digging the ditch that they're going to bury me in. Okay. I'm done. We've done is there I tried it, I gave it my best. We gave them everything. They blew it. I didn't blow it. They blew it. Now we got to go a different way. And you I got it. It's easy to disagree. Let's just keep on doing that. Yeah. See how that works out. I'll be working on something that I think actually works. No, and I respect that. And you've had a tremendous amount of success through the years doing what you feel is right and transforming some things. Let me ask you though, is there a chance is there a possibility that everything that happened last night is a lot more simple than that. President Trump is at the top even though he wasn't on the ballot. He's on the ballot. He's he. He is the Republican Party. Maga became and took over the Republican Party. He is at the lowest approval rating of his entire career. Okay. Both terms. Gas is at the what it is. Even though you and I know it's still not as high as it was under Biden. Doesn't matter. The average voter, including Republican voters, are sick of seeing the total, say, $80 to fill up their tank. Or if you've got a truck like mine, $100 to fill up their tank, and they're pissed off and they're blaming the Republicans and therefore every and they blame the Republicans for that. And specifically President Trump because they're tying it to obviously, the Iran war. And how does that happen? The oil prices spike and the world energy market responded and blah. We all know. Okay. Is there a chance, though, that that what happened there is because of the Iran war, because of President Trump's call to go in and start that bombing campaign, completely botching the prediction, thinking it would take a few weeks. And what we've done. Yeah, that was just a big flat out. We have to say it. It was a mistake. But because of his low approval ratings based largely on that. Anybody that's wearing Donald Trump's R next to their name is going to take a bath as well, because and I think that means from the governor's races to the Senate races to the House races to the county commissioner races, to the local races. Even our statewide elections. And I know what you said about the fraud, too. Lucas County, Cuyahoga County, I get that but I'm just saying that because nationwide, this bloodletting happened here. Is there a chance that it's not as deep as what you're talking about from a infrastructure level? It's just that people are pissed off at the cost. The affordability issue is 86% of the voters that I saw top issue and blame the guy at the top for that because of the war, largely that he started. If they blame him, everybody else is going to feel the impact as well. And that's what happened in this particular cycle. Without any doubt. Listen, it was self-inflicted.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Right? Occam's razor.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): It was self-inflicted. President Trump wasn't listening to the people. He was listening to consultants or lobbyists or the war industry people, whoever the hell he listened to about his war decision. And again, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Amy Acton had killed him. Killed him. These are self-imposed, wounds, right? So the problem is here's the truth. The truth of the matter is 66% of people are not members of either party. They're independent. Here's the truth. The Congress's approval rating. Do you think Trump's is low? His is about 25 points higher than Congress. They hate the Republicans and the Democrats. We the people hate the Republicans and the Democrats. That's the truth. The problem is they've done a great job of not giving you anywhere else to go. Right. That's the problem. So is there a solution to that? That's what I'm going to be working on. But is it? It's real simple. Jim Jordan wrote a book. What's the title of the book? Jordan wrote do.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): What we said we would do. Right. Do what we said we would do.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Is that it's that simple, right? So when you're running for office here in Ohio and you got people mad about data centers and people mad about property taxes, okay. And people wanting you to do something. Wow. Wouldn't it be great if you did something? Wouldn't it be great if you didn't just talk and you did something? But they didn't because they think they're above us. They think that they can just get away with whatever the hell they want. All right? And we'll just take it. Well, that's what happened. So they lost. Guess what? You're exactly right. The Democrats are going to fail. Amy Acton's gonna fail. Right. They're going to shovel all kinds of money that the teachers unions and the schools cut property taxes. Yeah, they'll freeze your property taxes and then take a boatload of money out of the state budget to give.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): He's not going to run the state anyway, right? She's not going on the stage. She's a she's she was the face they put up there. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Okay. So but then they're gonna fail everything the Democrats are going to talk about in Congress. You think Americans want to see Donald Trump impeached over and over again for stupid shit? No. But what's the alternative? There was no alternative. So you know what'll happen. It'll swing back, but it's not moving us forward. It's just the stupidest system ever. Because we the people, are supposed to elect our representatives, and they are supposed to do what we elected them to do. And they said, and here where we went wrong, when we lost the ability to throw out the people we elected, that's when it all breaks down. That's the problem. There's no accountability for anybody.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Tom, the what you're saying you've articulated that you don't have all the answers. Obviously, you're just sick and tired of the way it is and we have to do something different and so forth. So I don't expect you to know the answer to this question, but I just want you to talk about it for a second, okay? Because I think it matters. What kind of a time frame are you talking about here to change this to break away from the party system and screw the Republicans you've spent 17 years doing and supporting them and it didn't work. Look at the way they're treating us and we're independent, hyperlocal thing. Everything you're talking about is like I said, it's infrastructural change that takes a long time. And my fear, this is my biggest disagreement with anything you're saying. I don't disagree with your content. I'm just talking about the implementation thereof. If we don't get it right by 2028, it's all over. You said Thune didn't do the filibuster. They will. You better believe they will. And if they get a Democrat president in 2028, everything that Musk wrote about a couple of days ago, and you and I and everybody else have talked about Puerto Rico and D.C. And 15 justices. And it's all coming to reality. It's coming to fruition and it's going to happen if we don't fix things by 2028. So I know you don't have all the answers to what your grand vision is here, but you're talking about something that's going to take a very long time, right? Do we have that kind of time? Tom? Well, that's a good question.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): I don't know. I don't know how long it will take. We're in the age of AI. There's going to be big changes in elections in the way things are done with AI. There's no doubt about that. I think, quite frankly, Bob, sitting here today, you and I and everyone watching this needs to really question whether our system of government can survive literally. Can we continue on the path that we think we're a representative republic? But you said they're going to do all these socialist things. We're already socialists. Everything in our country is socialist. Medical system is socialist, right? Education is socialist. Everything our government does is to do what? To have government, state control of everything. That's not capitalist. We're already there. Trump is not the revolution. Obama was. Trump is the counter-revolution. And there's a serious question whether this form of government can survive after the 250th year. And there's a lot of history about democracies only lasting 250 years. A lot of history. Matter of fact, I think none have ever survived past that. I think there's serious questions about whether we survive in this form. And you've got to look at that very carefully because when they will do those things, what does that mean? They are going to end our country when we elected the Republicans to save our country. They refused to do so when we said they're cheating. And you have couldn't have had more proof of them cheating than you had in Alaska and in many other cases here in this election. What did the Republicans do? They didn't fix the cheating. They want the cheating. It's all about a rigged game. So here's my point. I don't know how long it takes, but I know one thing. I'd rather work and take the slings and arrows of the problems that come while I'm working to build something that does work, than to continue down this path that has no good end for us. There's no good end for us.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): The last thing for you Tom. And it's not to. It's not to disagree with you as much as it is again, just to kind of explore it a little bit more. We're talking about what we call since you brought up 250 again, we're talking about what we call the greatest force for good in the history of human civilization. The greatest, the better than any empire greater than the Roman Empire, the ancient Greek Empire. Any, anything that's ever been built modern day or ancient. Mhm. It's been built on this system. And this system has its flaws in this system has sometimes, not worked for us and we've had to survive some really bad times and some really bad things, but it's always course corrected and we celebrated, like I said, two years ago, we celebrated, the system worked. Talking about scrapping it all is talking about scrapping what was built over 250 years. You're talking about it not surviving past that it won't survive past with by changing what has worked for it. It has worked, even though it's imperfect. It's like our health care system. It's terrible, but it's better than socialized health care. It's better. You probably know people in your life who have had serious physical ailments, and they've gone to a doctor and they've gotten a diagnosis that was horrific. Okay. And a prognosis that was horrific. And because they had the opportunity to they went to another place and got a second opinion and got a totally different diagnosis and had a complete change in their health care. And they and they're better now. If it's Medicare for all, if it's socialist health care, we don't get that. The government says you get to see one guy and you do what they say. And as Canada has proven, if they say it's time for you to call it a day. Yeah. You're dead. Then you're gone. Okay. You see what I'm saying?

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): I get that no, I get that. So Bob, so you're absolutely right. But here's the problem, right? This is the point I'm trying to make with you with The system that you talk about that helps us correct it in 2024. The system did not correct. We overcame the election cheating, but the whole corrupt system under it was still there. And the. And so what are we based on?

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): I agree. But let's.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Fix.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): The issue of law. Let's fix the cheating rather than scrap the whole system that I don't think we can rebuild in time to stave off that that socialist takeover. That's what we.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): But did we fix that? Can we fix that in the system we've got. You've got. The entire court system has been taken over by the left, and you've got judges who are not following the Constitution. Most law schools don't even have a constitution. Course you've got activist judges. Okay, but here's the problem. Did we impeach Boasberg? No we didn't. If we are a nation that we are, what makes us different. We are a nation ruled by law, not men. But we're not ruled by law. We're ruled by men. You can't bring to justice anyone in power who's committed a crime, except, apparently, Donald Trump. We are. We. Our system is not correcting. It's corrupted. And without those fixes, you're done. So here's a classic example for you. You just said earlier in the podcast, hey, there's seven of these communist socialists now going to go to Congress. I posted an article about do you can you not swear them in? They swear an oath on a Bible. They swear an oath to the Constitution to protect and defend the Constitution. And they're campaigning on destroying the Constitution. What kind of dumb ass country then allows them to be in Congress? Why would you do that? It's just that simple. When you talk about, oh, if they win in 2028. They're gonna, get rid of the Supreme Court, the Electoral College. They're gonna make D.C. A state and the Puerto Rico state, they're gonna, open the borders, do all this stuff. They're going to destroy your country. If I'm Donald Trump and it's 2028 and they're going to do that. You know what I do? I declare martial law, I declare martial law. And I start to arrest them and I start to kill them because they're going to kill you and me. Bob. People don't want to hear that do they? But you understand, that's the reality. Don't give me this crap of oh, when they get in power, they're going to destroy your country. What are you going to do about it? The answer from the Republicans is nothing. They're going to do nothing about it, because they've been part of it since George Bush and the globalists. All right. So give me Cry me a river about the Republicans and how we got to work within the system. There is no system. That's the joke on us. We have a thing called Liberty Camp for kids. The most successful thing we ever did in the Tea Party movement. Kids live like they're back in colonial times. They meet George Washington. They use a quill pen to sign the Constitution. They learn about our history. They love it. They cry when camp is over. They want to come back year after year. Liberty camp's a lie because everything we're teaching them doesn't exist anymore, because no one would defend it. And the people we elected to defend it won't defend it. And when I say Donald Trump should declare martial law because the damn commies will get rid of the filibuster, do everything in 2028. Yeah, I'm not kidding. If you aren't willing to do that. Good luck. Enjoy your life in communism because you're going to be a slave. You're going to be a slave. You want to be a slave? Do it. I'm not going to be a slave. I will fight. And I think you're familiar with the Winston Churchill quote that I play at the end of my podcast every week and stuff that says, and yesterday we had a chance to fight when there's hardly any risk to us, where the chance of success is assured. But then it gets worse from there and it keeps getting worse. And at some point you got to fight because it's better to die than to live as a slave. That's where we're headed. I'm looking for patriots, not Republicans. I'm looking for patriots who will defend our nation. That's where we're at. Bob. I know nobody wants to hear this. And I sure don't think this is the post-election conversation anybody expected. This will be a real interesting podcast for you to post, but I just need to give you what I really feel know.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): And Tom, I would never ask you to do anything but be honest. And you are. And I think that the greatest source of disagreement that I have with you is simply on timing. You're not wrong about the system being broken. You're not wrong about everything that you're articulating. But I think we have to try to implement something like this from a position of power, not from a time when we have just been destroyed because the stakes are just, like I said, by 2028, we may not have a country anymore if we don't fight back.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): And I'll give you an example. I'll give you a good example of that. So Trump gets we elect Donald Trump in 2024. We control the Department of Education. And it's our 250th anniversary. And I send a proposal to Linda McMahon in the Department of Education to say, you want to embed American history into our youth. I sent them a proposal to create a liberty camp for kids in every county in the United States, because nothing would have done more to help educate our children going forward about our founding values and principles than that. And I got a form letter back saying, well, thanks, but no thanks. We really can't do something like that. Okay, there you have it. Yeah. It's not that we didn't give him the tools, not that we gave him the ideas. Not that we don't. Don't tell me I don't know how to fight. I've fought and won with no weapons. Okay? I'm. I'm with the rock, slaying David. All right. Saying Goliath, David and Goliath. But I shouldn't have to be that guy. We should have resources to defend our country. And the fact that we don't is the biggest concern we all should have. So I really appreciate you letting me kind of go rogue on this thing, because there's people that I that I'm talking to who have different ideas than I do along the same path, right? That go a different direction. But we've got to have those conversations and I will in the next two months, and then we'll come back with maybe a plan that I can give you a timeline on.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Yeah, that that would be important. And you know what, Tom? You don't have to thank me. I said at the beginning of our conversation, this is a postmortem. All ideas are on the table and all, suggestions need to be heard. It's like you lose a big game. You're fighting for the division lead and you lose 48 to 7. Guess what you have to do Monday morning? You have to watch film. You have to watch the film. What went wrong? What do we need to rebuild? What can we tweak? What has to be completely overhauled? It's all on the table now, so that's why you roll on as far as you want to roll on with this Tom, I will not stop you for a second. We'll discuss. And like you said, over the course of the next few months, we'll discuss too, and hopefully come up with a plan where there is a timetable and something that's workable because obviously things have to change.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): If you have ideas, if people watching this want to weigh in want to criticize it, want to debate it, write to me, Tom Z, We the People, convention.org. Tom Z wethepeopleconvention.org. Happy to hear from you. We've just got to recover from yesterday, which was devastating. Absolutely devastating. Federal and statewide. Whatever. Okay. We've got to find a way to go forward. And my experience has been don't just start running in a direction. Take a little time to figure out what direction to run in.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): Amen to that. And you can see on your screen now that's Tom's podcast to make sure you watch and that watch that every single week and read the work. I also had up here before the article that you had shared from Solomon from just the news which is really a good read and important as well. So Tom. Thank you my friend. Keep the faith. I know it's hard right now, but keep the faith and we will find ways to get some of the things you're talking about done without sacrificing the country. In the interim, never.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Count out the American people. I never count us out. I believe in our in the American people. And I believe that we love freedom and we'll fight for it.

Speaker 1 (Bob Frantz): You and me both, brother. Thank you. Tom.

Speaker 2 (Tom Zawistowski): Thanks. Thanks, Bob.