The Polls Have Spoken – The Marathon of Culture Building - with Mark Mitchell – [Ep. 240]

Linda J Hansen: Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101® Breakroom Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host and the author of Prosperity 101® Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Breakroom Economics online course.

The book, the course, and the entire podcast library can be found on Prosperity101.com. I seek to connect boardroom to break room and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs. 

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And today I have someone that is very involved in understanding what's going on in the economy, in the nation, in politics, in all things related to our daily lives. And today I have Mark Mitchell. Mark is the head pollster at Rasmussen Reports. He is a repeat guest, which I'm really grateful for, and has become a friend over the months.

And I'm really thankful for his input, his insights. And I love what he put on Twitter. He's described himself as a polling truther and said, people are biased and polls are bad. Shouldn't be, I love that line. Mark is an incredibly successful and diverse with a rich business background. And today we're going to discuss the intersection of politics, policy, and business and how polling can help us understand it all.

So thank you, Mark, for being here. And I just am so grateful. I know we had to finagle a time because of your busy schedule, but I thank you so much for fitting this in. And I'm really grateful for that and actually in looking at it from the big picture, I think it's better that you are on the show now we can kind of take a brief look back and see what your polling showed and why you're polling was really indicative of what was really happening in the nation.

But then how do we look forward and how do we prevent against the complacency that so often comes when especially conservatives think they've had a big win?

Mark Mitchell: I don't think we're going to see complacency much at all anymore. I really think that things, I listen, people talked about issues for this cycle and what you may have heard multiple times is that the economy was number one and the border was number two.

And then sometimes depending on the pollster you hear, “Oh, well, abortion is super important also.” And that one, not really. That was basically a dog whistle for radicalized leftists who watch MSNBC too much. The same with threat to democracy. It really was border and the economy, but in my opinion, those words don't really capture what Americans are actually feeling, which is why issue polling is so important.

That's the thing is a lot of people polled on, Matchups to try and put out election predictions, but they didn't do the work of the actual fundamentals and especially in the battlegrounds. Things were really bad, but we asked questions. Were you better off than you were four years ago? Only about 35 percent of voters say yes.

Will today's children be better off than their parents? It's like 22 percent. Are you safer than you were four years ago? 27 percent. And then you ask questions about Trump's immigration policies and you see that, wow, people overwhelmingly support mass deportations, 65 percent to roughly 30 percent.

They would support a 100 percent deportation candidate over a 100 percent amnesty candidate, 53 to 36 percent. So the idea of just economy and the border don't actually, accurately represent How inflamed people were by the overreaches of the government only 30 trust the federal government right now.

So everybody's going to blame Kamala Harris and she wasn't a perfect candidate, but to be honest with you, she probably did the best she could have with how bad a hand of cards she was dealt.

This was a referendum on the government because people are hurting, and that's not going to go away. This is a holdover from all of the overreach of the Biden administration, the radicalization of, you know, people during COVID, neighbors were turned against each other, businesses were shut down. It got to the point where people, they wanted to round unvaccinated up and put them into camps.

And also, I would say that over the last eight years, Trump's support has just been steadily increasing. There hasn't been an ebb and flow of support. He's picked up more voters every single time. So he really has earned a mandate. All of his policies are popular, in fact, more popular than him. And what we see now is just, well, he's going to have resistance.

It's going to come from the media. It's going to come from D.C. and it's going to come from establishment Republicans, and that's what's going to play out now for the next year and a half. 

Linda J Hansen: Well, that is very insightful. As I said, you would be but also I see that, yes, there's not going to be complacency now, but I also think that if we don't keep the gas on, you know, and we don't keep pushing forward very proactively, in a year, two years, as things sort of settle in a little bit more. 

That's when people will become a little more complacent as things start to get better in their life. You know, they can pay for groceries. They can take a vacation. Other taxes are lower. Their 401k has grown. These are things that often cause people to become complacent.

And then if we do that, then we end up in the same. situation we've just been in for four years, which we really want to avoid. So, as you have polled and you've looked at the thoughts and emotions really of the American public what would you say to people on how we can prevent the same type of scenario from happening in future elections and election seasons?

Mark Mitchell: I think the biggest new paradigm is the way that the media consumption has changed just in the last month, even the biggest loser in all of this was the mainstream media, who, in my opinion, heavily radicalized a very large portion of the country to be The threat of violence is higher than it's ever been, as graded by the risk of civil war.

Out of voters own mouth they think 43 percent likely we'll see a civil war in the next few years. And over half of Americans thought there would be a violent reaction to this election. And it really came down to People that watch MSNBC, their number one issue was Trump's threat to democracy. And then when you add abortion, that's like three quarters of them.

They didn't care about the border. They don't care about prices. They really didn't care about abortion. It was literally those issues, which is just Trump. And now Trump won and they're starting to see, well, all of the people that I've been looking at don't think he's Hitler. People are tuning out of MSNBC and what I think they're starting to realize.

Just recently, is that Twitter became the locus of dialogue. And that also, not only that, it's the core of the conservative mentality. And so, I think what you're seeing now is that a new narrative gets floated. And this is a long way of saying that, again, I don't think we're in an age of complacency, where people say they're going to vote Romney, and they don't show up, and they're not engaged, and they're dissuaded by talk of like policy, and, oh, wait two years, and maybe we'll have a bill.

No, these people want Trump in there. They overwhelmingly support his cabinet picks. They, in polling we put out today, they actually say, well, like, we don't even care. If he has the picks even have any experience at all in D. C. Trump should literally be, here's a question, which is closer to your belief?

President should choose cabinet officers he knows he can trust, 55%. He should choose officers with experience in D. C., 39%. But Republicans, it's 82 to 14, Independents, 53 to 39. So, they want him to get his way. And they're watching very closely, and what you're seeing is, if a new narrative pops up, people immediately go to Twitter.

And the news cycle is so fast right now. You literally see a fake headline, and it's debunked in hours on Twitter. And that's something that the mainstream media had everybody just tapped in. It was like peak gaslighting for August, September, and October. Talking about the debate, talking about Trump's hoaxes, and it was all getting shot down, none of it moved the race.

And now what you're seeing is CNN in shambles, MSNBC on the auction block they've completely lost. And so, there, this is holiday season, people are disengaged. But I think you're gonna see more people than ever down in Trump's inauguration, people watching very closely Doge and all of this grand drama playing out on Twitter of Trump actually going in and taking a wrecking ball to the D.C. establishment. 

There's no way people are gonna forget about that. Especially after crawling over broken glass to turn out more. Then I think, for anybody, ever, we can, I think, disregard 2020. Yeah, like this is literally the biggest political arc there's ever been. Trump is an entertainer and he had the biggest You know, underdog story ever political comeback.

People are primed and engaged more than they ever have been. And they want the Trump agenda. So I just don't see it. I don't see complacency. I again, with 43 percent of Americans think a civil war is coming in the next few years and we're on the cusp of world war three, not going to happen. 

Linda J Hansen: Well, that's encouraging.

Very encouraging. And I love it how you said you know, they've crawled over broken glass to get the vote out in a sense people maybe who have been tied in more to mainstream media and really didn't realize what was happening to those of us conservatives who have literally been trying to tell the truth for all these years and have really been trying to get it out.

I mean, people have been debanked. I mean, they wake up one day and their bank account is, you know, is closed because of, you know, their views, their political views. They've been taken off the internet. They've, you know, been threatened. Some of them have had the FBI at their door. Some of them have been thrown in jail. You know, it's crazy. And—

Mark Mitchell: We got swatted three times. 

Linda J Hansen: Well, I'll be so you—

Mark Mitchell: Probably the only pollster that's been swatted. 

Linda J Hansen: That's incredible. So, for listeners who might not know what that is please tell them what that is. 

Mark Mitchell: Yeah. I use that word loosely, but basically it's like they call the cops on you and they say, oh, there's something bad happening.

And then they come to the office that happened to us three times over the last year and a half cops show up after hours. So, I think that's, people don't like the truth getting out there and they'll slander us and call us a right wing pollster. But as my polling this cycle will prove, if anything, we leaned Kamala Harris by about 0.

5 to 0. 7 percent. We had about as close to zero bias as anybody in the industry. And every single That mainstream pollster was to the left of us, every single one. So we're the right bookend, but we're still left. And that makes us dangerous. 

Linda J Hansen: Well, that's really interesting. So when you think of how to explain to, you know, the average person out there how they should view polls and how they should discern between what polls.

are good to watch and what ones are not good to watch. I mean, how can people know when they're being brainwashed or hoodwinked through polling because people can manipulate numbers and they can say things and we have to really be able to discern what's really true here. So what would you recommend to the average person who's kind of new to all this?

Mark Mitchell: Well, I think the real dichotomy here is there's two different consumption patterns of information. There's reality and then like anti reality. And we just talked about the split between MSNBC and Fox News and Newsmax people. They cared most about the border and the economy. By far, three quarters of them.

So it's like two different Americas and the MSNBC America, the issues they cared about were things that MSNBC was lying about saying that Trump is going to take these things from you. And the people watching Fox news and Newsmax, their issues were things that Biden objectively didn't take from them affordable groceries and a secure border.

So what I would say to people is first off, public opinion is massively important because without us. How would you know that you're getting what you voted for down in D.C.? The second those guys go to D.C., you know, the lobbyists, the bribes, all the backroom deals, definitely take front and center. So where's the accountability?

That's what we do. We ask Americans what they want and then tell the politicians in the news like, hey, you're not giving it to them. And so I think we're very important from that perspective. And we put more polling like that out than anybody else. So people should follow us to look at that stuff. But I'll be the first to tell you, when looking at our election prediction stuff, you should be cautious.

You, we put out, not predictions, we put out data. And our data is to be analyzed in the context of all the other information out there. And so, in my opinion, we weren't the only ones to get it right. We were part of an ecosystem that invests in reality, and there was a ecosystem that does not. And so for accurate information, you could go to a lot of places this time out.

You could go to other independent pollsters and they put out viable data that can be compared to ours to validate our accuracy. The internal polling of the Trump campaign, I'm pretty sure, looked a lot like ours based on what I've heard. So, internal pollsters get it right. Even Kamala Harris leaked internal polling showed what ours did.

So, internal pollsters work. Independent pollsters work. The betting markets as of about, you know, October 15th, the betting markets pretty much called the race accurately all the way out then too. And even most pundits on Twitter, listen, there were some people out there saying, “Oh, Trump's gonna win a landslide 400 votes.”

I think you'll find on Twitter most intelligent, rational humans came up with about a 312 map. And that's totally wild because it's completely different from anything out of mainstream media. Even the pollsters that came close from a national popular vote perspective. Maybe they had Tide or they had TrumpUp1.

Not a single one of them put a set of state polling maps out that showed that Trump was going to win. It's like they literally couldn't help themselves. They had to show Trump losing. Even Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight, who are statistical models that are supposedly correcting for bias in the industry, inserted more bias than the industry just enough to put out maps showing that Kamala Harris was winning.

So my advice is if you're consuming anything from a large corporation that has incentive to maintain the status quo in D.C., run, avoid it at all costs. You're being lied to because their interests are more important than yours.

Linda J Hansen: Good points. We talked before we were recording too about just the input of common sense when we can help people understand just things from a common sense perspective. You had mentioned how conservative policies are common sense policies, you know, they're very helpful for people.

And when we can just help people understand that, give them the information that they need. Then they tend to come up with the conclusion on their own. And I think that's a really important part of what happened in this election. Like you talked about the switch in media, people were able to see more opinions, more truth more facts that were out there and then they could come up with those decisions on their own.

And it's incredible what can happen. You know, if you give people the right information, they'll make the right decision. 

Mark Mitchell: Yeah, free speech and dialogue are amazing. It was kind of incredible is that there's been so many echo rooms, even on the right, that they haven't been able to engage in those dialogues, but the Greeks.

Like, Plato figured it out 3,000 years ago. If you read a Plato dialectic, he's not arguing about different positions based on credibility or credentials or authority. It's about logic, right? It always has been. And that's what's so crazy is that it always does come down to the literally common sense and reality versus, like, there's no reality in which gender transitioning children is good, objectively good for them, right?

And yet their entire political paradigm rests on everybody having to affirm this. And there's a million issues like that, a very carefully crafted bubble that you could actually actively see Kamala Harris attempt to maintain when she went on Fox news, she should have been there to try and win voters, try and come up with objective and reasoned positions on why, what happened on the Southern border did happen and what role she played in it and how they were going to change it going forward.

And instead she like wrestled with. Brett Baer to craft a reality in which he wasn't held accountable for it. And it is so transparent now because we do have a public square. And that's why I think Twitter is so important. You look at, I think recently, interesting for people to watch, I forget his name, but the CEO of Axios News was just spouting off about how horrible it is that people don't value real journalism and how journalism is hard and it's like, yeah, I actually do think it is probably hard to go out and do a lot of research, collect sources, Put together a detailed story that captures all of the context by yourself on a very complex, difficult situation.

I think that is probably hard. Which is why it's a team sport on Twitter. Somebody says something and somebody says, “Oh yeah, that's right. But,” and then like, “Oh, okay.” You know, and there's a dialogue and open dialogue and you can see people on the left starting to get drawn into it. And I think that's really powerful because they'll start to realize that the last four to eight years has been about vilification.

Enforcing dogmas, cult like behavior, ostracizing people that didn't tow the line, cancellation censorship, all very un-American things. And people, often I hear, it's like, well this is what happens when you destroy Christianity in America and Marxists love to undermine religion. And I do think that's a major theme, I do think that's a problem, but what they've undermined is rational thought.

This idea of Western logic, critical reasoning, it's totally gone. Even in the companies. Even in the boardrooms, they're coming up with ridiculous ways, mental gymnastics to justify lighting shareholder value on fire to virtue signal about how they're like saving the world, which they're not. It's crazy. 

Linda J Hansen: I appreciate that you brought that up.

And you know, the boardrooms and what I do, I like to connect boardroom to boardroom. To break room, you know, and basically by connecting boardroom to break room, we help the employees understand the policies that affect their business, that affect their employers. And you brought that up. That's so good.

Before we were recording, we were talking about these companies that are going from totally woke to you know, maybe more awake. I always say, I like to help companies become more awake, not woke. And that is really, you know, like you have said, it's important to just go back to the logic and common sense, you know, companies should be there about creating a better bottom line for their investors, for their consumers, or, you know, for their company, but also then a better product, a better service for their customers.

It's like, it's common sense but they have you know, fallen in front of the altar of wokeism and it has not only affected their companies, it has affected families negatively. It's affected our nation negatively. And I love what I'm seeing, like Robbie Starbuck and all the changes in like just recently Walmart said they're going to discontinue their DEI training their racial Training and funding pride events and things.

I just think it's great. You know, they're taking transgender items out of their baby department, you know, I mean, incredible, right. And it's just great. And now we've seen like tractor supply and other companies that have said, okay, we get it. You know, we just need to go back to being a company, you know, and like Robbie often says it's not that we want everybody in the company to have every single same view that we have.

That's not it. We're just saying just be neutral and just be a neutral company that works to provide goods and services and, you know, get politics out of it. 

Mark Mitchell: Yeah I got a really good lesson on this because I worked simultaneously for a company Jet. com, which is a Silicon Valley backed e commerce startup that grew to a billion dollars and got acquired by Walmart.

And then I also wound up with a Walmart job. And I applaud Robbie's work, and I think things are moving in the right direction. But I'm not as rosy as most about the future of the corporations and what woke means. And there's been a lot of thought put into it, but I haven't seen anyone able to fully capture what I experienced inside the belly of the beast which is in my opinion, that woke is a leadership problem first and foremost, because in jet.com I experienced what everybody would probably say is a woke corporation. 

There are identity-focused employee resource groups. There are pride parties. There's all kinds of like employee training and they try and increase diversity in the hiring process. But when I got there and I got put in charge of a pretty sizable team, I found that they were very collaborative people and ambitious and took to traditional conservative leadership incredibly well, very smart folks and looking for guidance, and the company itself had a strong leader and was focused on growing the business at all costs. 

And everybody worked together very fast, focused on the customer, very empathetic people to build an excellent e commerce business. It was very effective. Then at Walmart, you say, well, that's more traditional, stodgy, probably has a lot of conservatives there, I would agree. But in my experience, that's where the woke was because you have Doug McMillan tied into the business roundtable. You had the pressure training presser training coming from the top down.

And there's this layer of like senior vice presidents that were just ubiquitously focused on doing their jobs by being the TV star at the town hall. Then talking virtue signaling essentially, and I worked in a part of the business that was trying to clean up the e commerce business. My team saved hundreds of millions of dollars and fixed issues causing millions of customers harm and long story short, nobody knew about my team.

It was very received very hostily. They did not like the idea of objectively uncovering problems and fixing them. In fact, it was very much, oh, well, we can't talk about bad things, that has to be swept under the rug, or why aren't you a team player, and that kind of stuff. So, not receptive to objective, like, furtherance of shareholder value.

And so when I see things like Robbie Starbuck getting Walmart to capitulate on these points, I think that's great. However, the problem is because of that leadership, you have people at every level of that organization now who have been trained in a culture not focused on the bottom line. And I think that's going to play out everywhere, and some of the companies are going to be able to fix it, some of them aren't.

You look at Disney. Obviously had woke leadership problems. And now it looks like Disney's trying to change and knows it has to. But they fired all of the good writers. They're gone. Like, how do you fix that? So that's great for Walmart to say they don't want to do it anymore. You know, prove me wrong. I'd love to see how they're going to fix that.

Linda J Hansen: That's really a good point. You know, it's like turning the Titanic. It's what I tell people too, about even like Trump being reelected. I mean, the problems are not gone. This just means we have an opportunity to fix them. We have a short window of time where we can turn our country back to the values on which it was founded.

But it is something that, you know, we can't give up on. And I like to say that like my work is something where I hope that my online course and the things that I do, even, you know, seminars in the business or whatever can help to turn that Titanic in a business. It can replace, you know, it's like you, you can't just leave a void there.

You know, you're taking out these training materials, you're taking out this whole way of doing business and training your employees. So what do you replace it with? And I say, you know, I would love to work with companies and bring in my break room economics online course or help them be able to have workshops and seminars that help their employees understand.

It's not about a person or a party. It's about the policies that help keep that business alive and to help keep our economy moving. 

Mark Mitchell: Yeah, it's an exercise, in my opinion, of culture building. Yes. And the culture of corporate America on the whole is horrible. And it's because they swallowed too many Silicon Valley sensibilities hook, line, and sinker.

Everybody was a tech unicorn and they had the same kind of perks and mentalities because of it. And I think the velocity of employees has increased rapidly too. You see somebody work somewhere for two years, hop over and move up to manage it back and forth. I see that all the time. You see an SVP come in at Walmart.

They wouldn't even understand the business, they'd just virtue signal for about a year and a half and then go get promoted higher up in Target. And I think that's a problem. The military is very good at this. The military knows what it's mission is, and I don't think it's doing as well now. But the military built a culture and a structure to ingrain a certain set of values and outcomes into the way it deals with people.

And I think companies can and should do that as well. I don't think many of the leaders are equipped to handle that, but that's the tools I did. I built a team culture and it helped me have my team like do better work. And I would love to see them figure out how to fix it. And it probably is going to be different than the military, but at some point you have to be able to say, well, no, your feelings don't matter in this particular situation.

And yet at the same time, be open and welcoming to a diverse set of people. Again, the Navy does it well too. It was the most diverse organization I was ever a part of. I was back late nineties, early two thousands. And there are people from all races, colors, creeds, all walks of life. And we all made fun of each other.

And on the whole, everybody was an equal because it was a meritocracy and you, we weren't there to be your like therapist. Right. And that's kind of, you know, everything's gotten soft and integrity is going out the window and it's, there's the pendulum's got to swing back. 

Linda J Hansen: Well, it does need to swing back.

And as it's doing so, it'll be great to watch your polling come out and see what the American people are thinking. And you know, I loved it that you said it's like a cultural restructuring. And I feel like with the work I do I always tell people, if you want a politician, they'll just think about the next election, but we need to think like statesmen.

We need to act and think like statesmen who care about the next generation. And I feel that, you know, my passion and calling is to make sure we're impacting current and future generations. And what we can do too is, you know, we've had these 20, 30, 40-year-olds coming to the workplace. And like you said, I mean, they've been taught to virtue signal.

They have been taught to, you know, just identify by their pronoun or their color of skin. And this is not Really conducive to great companies growing their bottom line. And so we need to, you know, really change that way of thinking, but you can't come in and tell your employees you can't think like that anymore.

You know, you can't do that. And so it's gotta be a gentle understanding and helping them come to the conclusion themselves by giving them the information that will be helpful for them. And so that's what I try to do. I know that's something you try to do with your polling. You just help people see what's true.

So yeah, you have something on the tip of your tongue. I can see it. Go ahead. 

Mark Mitchell: Like I can do it. Give me a team of 100 to 500 people. I'll come in, I'll figure out what the vacuum is. I'll fill it with leadership and culture. The problem is you got companies of a million people and that's where it becomes a problem.

Especially because I think a lot of these you know, people at the top spend more time in the boardroom or talking to investors or the media when they spend less time introspectively understanding how the business works. That's a really big challenge, but yeah, I, From a public opinion perspective let me just say, I don't know.

I think we're going in a good direction. I see a lot of like positive reaction to Trump's early cabinet picks. His approval rating has spiked higher than it has in years. He's still going to enter office probably with the lowest approval rating of any president ever, but that's a sign of the times.

And ultimately, what it comes down to is there is an opportunity now. Basically, I look at America as somebody dying on a couch, like sedentary, watching TV. And he had a little angel and a devil on the shoulder, and the angel won and said, All right, you got to run a 5k now. You got to go through a program.

It's going to be hard. It's going to be pain along the way. But right now, the country looks committed to it, and there is so much that has to change, it can't, it is, all hands have to be involved in this, and I don't know, that's like one of the big question marks, how Trump is going to fix this going forward, because this is a byproduct of D.C., where we're at now. 

And that's great, like Elon Musk can get together with Vivek and go down there and fire a bunch of federal workers. But at the end of the day, the problem is, like, case tree and the way it's tapped into Congress, and the way that the establishment Republicans have never given voters what they want.

That's the theme. It's like, Over and over again, we say, every time there's a debt ceiling debate, hey, do you want the government shut down until they achieve spending cuts? It's always a majority, it's always like 85 percent of Republicans, and even a majority of Democrats say yes, please, shut it down, we don't care about the government, we don't trust it.

And the can gets kicked every single time, and guess what? We're seeing one of them in January. So that's probably your big first test. You know, the first test is, will there be a transition? It looks like there's going to be. I don't know if Biden made a deal or whatever. The second is, okay, will the Senate play ball on the nominations?

You know, it's like, okay, does Trump get to the inauguration even though like 65 percent of Republicans think there's going to be another assassination attempt on his life? Like that's another test, but then it's like, okay, Republicans we're going to have another debt deal and they're going to be watching Mike Johnson and the entire motivation of force in D.C. is to extend and pretend and get nothing out of that deal and it'll be fascinating to see what happens. 

Linda J Hansen: It will be, and I think there are some real correlations to what you talked about in the boardrooms of businesses not being you know, really relatable to what's going on with the Basic people, you know, with their shareholders or others.

But in government, you know, they get up there and they're talking to each other and they huddle around in DC. And then they forget there's all of us out here who have opinions in real life. And so I'm excited. Like you mentioned those, the department of government efficiency with VBAC and Elon, and I think that is great.

So listeners too, they're actually asking for your input. They are literally asking for your input so you can go. Go online and look at how you can give your opinion on what kind of government programs should stay or go. And I hope we get an incredible influx of ideas of, you know, kick it out.

But also they also have policies for people and it's just really, you can go as a listener, you can go and you can give your opinion on policies. And so, you know, you mentioned how there's a real reshaping of the media and how we. Yeah. We take in media and what is happening. And even just the incoming Trump administration is talking about having, you know, podcasters, well known podcasters being in the briefing room.

I mean, this is incredible. This is incredible. And so there's a huge shift happening and we're just glad that you're there to You know, really help get the heartbeat of the American people and understand what they're thinking, how they're feeling about what's going on. And that can be really great information for us as we move forward into how to meet the needs of the nation in the future.

So, do you have any closing comments before we go? 

Mark Mitchell: Sure, yeah, this is a time of great change, and as we all know, that's when you pay attention if you're in the business world. And I don't know if everybody's come to terms with the scope of the change now, but it is, push information doesn't work anymore.

It's all pull information now, and I'm sure people have been talking about that for a long time, but I would point 2020 election and the 2024 election on election night. 2020, everybody was watching Fox News. Everybody was watching MSNBC to see what states were called. Brett Baier called Arizona early.

It made people really mad. Fox News lost a ton of viewers, major blowback. But the whole point is that the mainstream media was very much the center of this very seminal key component of American democracy. Okay. I was up till 4:30 AM on election night and I was on, I think, at least 20 different shows and there were another 5 or 10 that I knew of that I could have hopped into and I just didn't have time.

Not a single person at all talked about any mainstream media outlet calling any state for anybody. They were all doing the math by themselves. Some of them had their own analysts. Other people were looking at betting markets or asking me for my opinion. Total, complete, 100 percent shift, because Twitter has enabled people to finally have a dialogue and go through information gathering and consensus building by themselves.

The media has been cut out, and now exactly what you're seeing, what you're talking about, policies for the people, the fact that now you're going to see all these independent influencers and media and journalists completely undercut a massive industry that has been complicit and lying to voters for decades, for probably over a hundred years. 

We are in a time of rapid change and it's going to be absolutely fascinating to watch. And as public opinion professional, I mean, I love it because I'm going to be there like grading the whole thing and watching as it develops. But yeah, you know, somebody from InfoWars like Owen Schroyer on the front seat in the white hat, like that's going to be absolutely incredible.

While somebody from the old gray lady gets relegated to the back, you know, the paper of record Of the United States political system. We're gonna see so many wild things. And then even, the idea of like, maybe Elon Musk buying MSNBC. Putting Joe Rogan on there. The horizontal integration of independent media into cable news.

Wouldn't it seem nothing like it? And in my opinion, it's the best chance voters have ever had. of getting what they want, which is accountability, more freedoms, and a better economic situation. 

Linda J Hansen: You just explained that all so well. It is exciting. And it just, it's almost like we're in another revolution of sorts.

And we are flipping the script. And, you know, we are really having an opportunity to return our nation to an of the people, by the people, and for the people. So, listeners, we are the people, we the people are the ones that need to stand up. So there's no time for complacency. There's no time to go back to business as usual in your relaxed life.

We are fighting for the freedom for now. And the future years for America and really the world, a strong America makes for a stronger world. So, thank you so much, Mark. I look forward to having you on again. And if people want to follow you or to contact you, how should they do so? 

Mark Mitchell: Yeah, this is always a really great discussion.

I don't often get to talk about the business aspect and that's where I spent most of my career, but Mark_R_Mitchell on Twitter. I've been there three months. I'm loving it. It's incredible. And also our main account Rasmussen_Poll. We talk a lot about public opinion.

People can follow us there. You can subscribe for a few bucks a month to help support us because that's one of the reasons we're accurate. We're not funded by anybody except advertisers and subscribers. 

So really love to have you there to Rasmussen_Poll and also you get the added benefit of we're pretty much the only people in the industry that talk about election integrity issues of which there are many and that's the whole new paradigm to there's accountability coming from these for these people as well. So, love to have you there and follow us on YouTube, also Rasmussen_Poll. 

Linda J Hansen: Well, thank you so much. And thank you for focusing on election integrity. It's such an important issue, and we need to make sure we get a handle on that as we move forward into every other election. So I appreciate the fact that you count that as important and an actual issue to cover. So thank you. 

Mark Mitchell: The issue.

Linda J Hansen: Yes. Yes. So thank you so much. And so listeners, I recently joined Twitter too. So, you can go to Linda_J_Hansen. I'm a late bloomer on Twitter. I know, but I have been on LinkedIn and Instagram for a long time, but just recently joined Twitter.

So it made me feel better to know that even Mark was a late bloomer on Twitter. So—

Mark Mitchell: It's incredible. So zero tweets up until the middle of July, and then there was just so many lies to debunk. Now I'm at 75,000 followers and Twitter Elon Musk pays me 2,000 a month just to make fun of people like Keith Olbermann. So if you're not on Twitter, you're wrong. 

Linda J Hansen: Well, I'll have to take lessons from you. So anyway, but thank you so much. And to listeners, thank you so much for joining and please do follow Mark and make sure you keep up to date on this. And when Rasmussen Reports calls you or contacts you, let them pull you because the American people are really beginning to have their voice again.

As I said, we, the people are rising up and we are changing things. So let's not stop. Let's keep pressing forward and make America strong. So thank you, Mark. 

Mark Mitchell: Thank you.

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