Welcome to the McCarthy Report, the podcast where Rich Lowry discusses with me, Andy McCarthy, the latest in law and national security issues, baseball innovations,

which I can poo-poo without Rich pushing back today, and all kinds of other hijinks that we

usually indulge in here. I'm flying solo today because our fearless leader is on a secret

mission, and we're going

to try to get through a number of things that have popped up in the news recently.

I have to say I've had a busy week so much so that I almost was not able to take any notice

of the biggest win that the Knicks have had in the 21st century last night.

It's obviously very exciting for basketball fans in New York to have the Knicks in the finals

and to have them ahead in the finals. We'll have to see next week where that all goes.

But I've been kind of distracted because having prosecuted the blind shake, what this has ended up over the next 30 years of my life is that because that case was nationally prominent in some ways globally prominent. Every two or three years,

something pops up, which extends by a few ticks, the 15 minutes of fame that Andy Warhol

said I was entitled to. And that has reared its head.

It really reared its head again Tuesday night, but it's been an issue for the last month.

And that is the emergence of Adam Halmawi as a Democratic candidate for Congress in the 12th congressional district in New Jersey, which is a very blue

district in the Garden State. It includes Princeton, which is a big city, Democrat city.

I think, did I say Princeton? What I meant was it includes both

Princeton and Trenton, which is another, one of the biggest cities in New Jersey and a very

blue one, obviously. Just to give you a sense of the politics in New Jersey and the way they're

kind of roiled by President Trump, we had a very close gubernatorial election in 2021 in which a guy who turned out to be a very good candidate,

Jack Sidorelli, almost beat Phil Murphy, who was the incumbent.

In fact, it took two or three days to get to the final tally.

And he ultimately, I think Murphy won by, you know, two or three points in the end.

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