Old front of the Armstrong and Getty Show.

Gary Dietrich, CBS News political analyst, Gary, Welcome to the show.

Hey, Jack.

Good to be with you.

And by the way, my friend, it's been decades we've known each other.

But I don't think this whole secret is slipped out on air.

I am an eagle scout.

Oh are you cool?

That doesn't surprise me.

You seem like the kind of guy that would be an eagle scout.

Good for you, Well, that's very kind of you, and I catch every once in a while.

You mentioned your son, Henry and scouting, and you've been singing the praise of scouting.

Man.

My scouting experience was absolutely awesome.

I highly recommend it to everybody.

But I'm saying this particularly this morning, Jack, because I heard in your lead in segment to this that you're going to be out in the wilderness somewhere and I just wanted to offer if you have self service and get desperate, hide in the tent, text Gary and say what do I do?

Now?

Okay, I'll keep that in mind.

I appreciate it.

Hey.

One thing, though, I won't be available for bear removal.

So that's that.

So did you ever meet Charlie Kirk.

I did not meet Charlie.

It's just kind of one of those things.

For some reason, his path and mind never crossed.

But you know, I don't I don't know exactly what to say.

Well, speak to is because I know you know about this.

Speak to his impact with voting for young people across the country.

Oh, it's you know, Jack, It's nearly impossible to overstate.

I mean, the reality is this if you look at all the studies that have been done over the last decade too, including I'm not going to mention it at a place that has an institute for Youth, et cetera, involvement that the involvement of youth, especially their voting rates and you know this, Jack, have been on the decline substantially, and people had thought this was inexorable.

I mean, this is just sort of out, what are we going to do now?

You know, our kids are never going to be part of democracy.

What Charlie Kirk, I won't say single handedly, but certainly as part of the MAGA movement, as you know, really earned this around.

And so of course, now if you look at the major demographic groups that many people attribute to Trump's win and Harris's loss last fall.

One of them was the youth vote, more specifically young males, which of course is basically the target audience for much of Turning Points efforts.

And do you think without him, because he was a unique character with a hell of a big brain, do you think without him they can continue their trajectory?

Well, that's of course the gigantic question.

I mean, whenever you lose a founder, not just you know, a major spokesperson, it's tough.

I mean it's tough in anything, and business endeavors anything else, but especially tough in politics because so much of politics, as you know, Jack, is personality and capability driven.

I mean, just go down lists of people that we know actually change trajectories of politics.

Ronald Reagan's a good example, Barack Obama.

You know, even JFK and those in many people's minds are sort of singular individuals.

They're unique, at least to their generations.

So I know, the Turning Point folks are ramping things up.

I know there's already been significant donations to assist in that.

I know there's already been reportedly many many requests for new Turning Point chapters on college campuses and even high school campuses.

So we'll see.

So I'll lay it out this way.

So the Wall Street Journal had an article the other day.

One of their opinion guys thought, that Prop fifty in California going down.

That's Gavin Newsom's effort to match Texas's redistricting.

You know, we're gonna fight.

We're gonna fight their dirty tricks with our dirty tricks going to redistrict in California.

And the Wall Street Journal opinion guy thought, that's gonna go down and it's gonna doom Gavin Newsom.

Okay, that's that's one topic.

The other is I remember asking you about it a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about the polling on how like two thirds of Californians are a no on it, sixty percent Democrats were know on it.

Yesterday, Gary, we had.

Lana hee Chen on it, and he thinks it's going to be close, because he says, by the time we get elect to election day, they're going to have successfully turned it into a are you for Trump or against him?

It'll be a yes or no on Trump as opposed to a yes or no on a redistricting thing.

What do you think?

Yeah, Well, this break goes out real quick, Jack, A couple of things.

First off, let's take that last one that is that line of thought is the messaging for Yes on fifty and Gavin Newsoen made that clear at the very beginning.

They now have a running commercials in California with Senator Elizabeth Warren.

In the first ten seconds she makes that point very clear.

So because of Trump's standing in California, you know, he didn't carry the state and he's underwater poling here, no surprise to people.

That's why that messaging is been front and center for the nission campaign, countering that people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who the governor when this was put into place, and I mean our independent Citizens Commission was put into place, and he is saying, no, this is an assault on democracy.

We can't set aside democracy for three election cycles and then bring it back.

And also his other big line and he spoke on Monday about this, was hey, listen, if we start acting like Trump, we're going to become Trump.

So let's see who wins the day on that messaging.

But that's kind of the key one thing about that polling you mentioned, Jack, this is key the numbers you're talking about seventy percent of California's support the Independent Citizens Commission, including as you well note, a big majority of Democrats.

That's different from this particular ballot, and so we're trying to get trying to get solid numbers on that.

The initial poll, the internal poll that came out this week, access or somebody who reported political said, oh, we're ahead by ten.

You know, points I never take politically.

I mean internal poll seriously, because when have you ever heard an internal poll that was bad for their guide released?

Right?

Right?

Doesn't happen.

But there was a poll said forty eight percent of California's currently supported it.

But that's not a great number.

When you are working on propositions in a state the side of California, you always want to start well above fifty percent, knowing you're likely historically to get a drop off.

Then how about the if it goes down, it will really damage Gavin Newsom nationally.

Well, there's no question that you know right now, this is his big claim to political fame.

It's what's getting him all the headlines.

You know there will be if it fails, there will certainly be a spin of well, we see there were so many MAGA dollars spend against it.

I mean that whole line of thinking, and he certainly has time to recover him.

We're three and a half years away from twenty twenty eight now.

Realistically, realistically, I would say after the midterms you're going to see and even as early as next year, you're already seeing a lot of prospective candidates out there.

There's no there's no question that it would damage Gavin's brand and certainly you know that affects things like early donors, fundraising, people jumping on board, staff wise, et cetera.

Back to the hot topic of the country, political violence.

How do you feel about our trajectory on that.

Did we reach a point where it got everybody's attention where we think, wow, we've gone too far.

We need to get this under control, or are we going to continue the tit for tat both sides believing the other side is worse and you know we're headed the wrong way.

Yeah, you know me, Jack, I would certainly certainly hope it's the latter.

I mean, it was a sad week for our nation in the last week.

I don't care what your politics are, what your ideology is.

I just nobody should be killed over their politics.

I mean, I don't know how to say that more unequivocally.

And I think that's the credible voices out there, regardless of where they're on the political spectrum, of the ideological spectrum.

That needs to be the unified message now being you know, looking into the crystal ball.

Where is this going?

I don't know.

I mean, you know, you also know me check.

I tend to want to be pretty optimistic about things, not naive, but optimistic.

So I would hope there is a day of reckoning it's coming.

Is that the case?

There's a lot of people that have questions about whether that's actually where we're headed.

Yeah, well that whatever the percentage is of people that are on social media that are the extremes of both parties, and I don't know if it's three percent or eight percent or what it is, but it looks like and sounds like a lot of people.

If you spend time on social media, they sure control a lot of the conversation.

Yeah, well you are you have hit that dead set.

I mean, and I think this is a challenge.

I mean, yeah, the person whose mouth this came out of Richard Nixon.

You know, many people have question much about politically, but the silent majority.

That was what he kept talking about.

Look at there's people on both sides of you, and I'm more but the silent majority, you would say, And I do think there is a resonance in that verbiage in today's political world.

There's a lot of people who never ever, as you know, go on social media.

They don't even have a social media accounts.

And yet yet what gets reported is so many people on social media are saying, well, it's sort of like, you know, the old verbage about talk radio.

Less than one percent of people all the research shows ever call into a talk radio program, and yet people say, well, listen, everybody's saying this.

Well, no, everybody may not be saying.

That good point.

It's exactly the same as talk radio callers back in the day when that really mattered.

That's a good point.

So it's amazing that I like you.

You're a good guy, but you're you're an eagle scout, you went to Harvard, and you're handsome.

It's really easy to not like a person like that.

Well, listen, you know, you know, I've got plenty of flaws somewhere, and who knows what they are.

I know it's not all.

Let others decide that, and you can get flooded with emails.

You get flooded with emails and texts and say I hate for these six reasons, and then you can share that with me.

But but I know it can't be Kansas because we share that deep in our hearts as well.

I don't know, but I'm sure there's all kinds of things.

Let's see.

I can't say, like George Bressenior, I hate Brocoln because Brockley's kind of okay, But maybe it's I am a Disneyland fan.

Now that's going to really infuriate half your audience, that.

Man.

Okay, No, no, only because my kids and I I never told you guys this.

I never told you guys.

Just you know the old Super Bowl added you know, win the Super Bowl and they go up there quarterback and he goes, I'm going to Disneyland, no joke.

My kids and they had this thing we're after every election cycle because they were so onerous, so all consuming.

I say, kids just hanging there because after November whatever it was going to be, we're going to digneyman.

And we did that like about every other year when they were.

Do I like the rides?

Anything that I ride the rides, But anything that drops quickly or turns me upside down is absolutely right.

Here's the main question.

This is the the deal breaker.

Do you have you ever gone without kids?

No?

Okay, there you go.

Okay, you're you're in the range in a rumble.

Then that's perfectly good.

CBS News political analyst Gary Dietrich, appreciate your time today.

Okay, buddy, Wow, Eagle scout and he went to Harvard and he's got TV handsomeness.

Again, it's easy to not like somebody like that, but I like him.

Gary's a good dude.

Armstrong and Getty