The Charlie James Show Podcast

The Charlie James Show Podcast is conservative talk radio from News Talk 98.9 WORD, a station that calls itself on air the voice of the Carolinas. Immigration runs through it. In the recent episodes, Charlie keeps coming back to one House vote. Ten Republicans and one independent backed a three-year extension of temporary protected status for Haitians. His objection turns on the program's own words. The T in TPS stands for temporary, he points out, and the D in DACA stands for deferred, so a program with either word in its name should carry a sunset date. He names Maria Salazar as the one who led the Republicans who voted yes. That vote feeds a bigger complaint about the party itself. As he tells it, some Republicans rode Donald Trump's coattails across the finish line and then took the votes as their own. His shorthand is blunt: a moderate Republican is a Democrat, only too afraid to admit it. He doesn't stay on principle for long. One segment is built on a reversal. Charlie tells the story of an American citizen said to have been detained by ICE after an overseas work trip, all the way to her transfer to a Wisconsin jail. He calls it horrible, then says none of it is true and plays an ABC7 Chicago report in which a sheriff calls the account made up. Violent crime cases get read out in grim detail, one of them with an ICE detainer attached. He expects to hear that the country needs the workers, and he answers with the crimes and a question: how many criminals is okay? Then the phones open. Callers from Spartanburg and Greenville are greeted by first name and thanked on the way out. A truck driver describes a man making an indecent scene outside a school and a 911 center too overloaded to answer. The officer who handled it, he says, only promised to see the man home safely. Charlie's answer is short: that is where things are headed. Episode titles go beyond the border, too. One hour lists the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz and 2030 Census projections next to South Carolina's immigration policies, and another asks whether the state is a sanctuary state. The delivery is plain and repetitive. He says a phrase, then says it again, until the point can't be missed. The most direct way in is 'We got a lot of moderate republicans. A moderate Republican is a democrat', where the coattails argument and the Haitian vote come together.