Sen. Mike Lee: You're Underestimating Kamala Harris and the Media Machine. Here's Why.

Obama Kicking Biden Out So did you read the, the Sy Hersh piece about how Biden was driven out of his job? Yeah, so I read a summary of it. I have not read the piece itself. I just read it this morning. Here's just here's here's the cliff notes. Obama colluded with Nancy Pelosi in hacking Jeffries and Schumer and calls Sunday morning calls Biden and says, you're done. Kamala's going to 25th amendment. You and she got to step aside. And who places the call? Obama? Obama does. So Obama calls the sitting president and tells him you're done. Then, tells I mean, this is what he says. Tells Kamala Harris, okay, you're going to be, you're gonna be the nominee. But if you don't gain traction, if you're not popular, we're going to take you out to. So my question to you, I mean, it's all shocking. It sounds true. New York Times, Washington Post, by the way, Wall Street Journal have not done any meaningful reporting on this. So this is this is what we know so far. Is that legal? It certainly presents a lot of legal questions. That could be problematic, for example, if in fact, the 25th amendment is worthy of being invoked. Yes. If his condition is such that it needs to be invoked and then they don't invoke it, then they're leaving the country in a precarious position of being led by a man not in possession of his faculties. If, on the other hand, it's not worthy of being invoked, then they've used an extorted threat. Yes, to oust the guy who's at the top of the ticket, who's the current incumbent president. And that's not okay. I mean, I'm pretty sure that. Qualifies in some way as extortion. But if it's not extortion, it's just a very. Underhanded manipulation of the process. But voters don't enter into the calculation at any point. No. So I know this is like a tired observation at this point, but the same people who've been lecturing us, berating us, finger wagging for years now about democracy, just kicked the president out of a spot without any votes being cast at all, ignoring the votes of Democratic primary voters. Like, I can't imagine a graver attack on democracy than what they just did. Right. And it denigrates their own party, faithful to the voters who showed up in what was essentially an uncontested primary election. And they've turned that into a sham because I'm guessing I can't know for certain, but I'm guessing they've known for some time, just as we've been able to tell for some time that President Biden has problems. Yes. They didn't do anything about it. All of a sudden, when they decide the timing is right, perhaps because of his debate performance, which I suspect they had a hand in planning because they knew how it would turn out. At some point they said, okay, the time is right now. Now we're going to show the world that he can't handle the job. But I find it difficult to believe that they didn't show up. So you think that it's possible Biden must set up? Yeah. Yeah. They knew he was failing. They had to have a kind of pivot point to change the story. And that's maybe why all the lackeys, all the boot lickers at CNN, instantly pivoted as one from Biden cheerleaders to Biden denigrate instantaneously. In fact, my wife Sharon, who you've met, she and I were watching the debate together. Charming. Cool woman, isn't she? Though she is amazing. I don't know how I convinced her to marry. Me like that. That thought did occur to me, I was impressed. Well, I just thought I'd put that out there, but. No, it's actually true. Her immediate reaction when things turned. Remember when the CNN panel came on right after the debate ended? She said, this appears orchestrated. This is all choreographed. It's like they were ready to do this. This has the feeling of being planned in advance. They knew what was going to happen and when else. Tucker, have you seen a presidential debate between two general election opponents occur that early in the year before either nominee has had convention before either nominee is technically fully the nominee, right. I can't recall a time when that has happened. And so why then? It seems awfully curious that the Biden campaign team agreed to that. And the only rational explanation I can think of was the one that we're alluding to here. Well, especially because they were telegraphing sending signals that they might not debate Trump at all because he was at this point of felon and accused felon. I mean, they were leaking this for months. You know, it lowers us. The sitting president shouldn't have to debate a guy charged with crimes. They were they were saying that. And then in a day they're just like, oh yeah, of course we're going to have this debate, you know, really early. Like, what is that? Yeah, that is an indication, I think, I think the most rational explanation, there are other explanations that one could draw, I think. But the most logical explanation to me is that they knew that they couldn't hide his condition much longer. The media and the white House staff had done a really good job hiding him, protecting him, explaining all sorts of errors, wandering off the wrong end of the stage, shaking hands with people who weren't there saying weird stuff that was unintelligible. But they realized they couldn't keep that contained much longer. And so they said, all right, let's agree to a debate. And if things don't go as, they should. Inevitably knowing how things were going to go, then we'll do what we've got to do. My very first reaction, one of the first tweets that I sent, I think it was driving my wife nuts because I was live tweeting commentary during the debate. One of my first tweets was, it looks to me like they give him the wrong shot. Yeah. Because, you know, a lot of times when he comes in like to do the state of the Union, he's he's really, really up, sort of like he's just consumed like six Red Bulls at once and, and amped up and kind of angry. He was really low energy from the very outset anyway. Yeah. Makes me wonder all kinds of things, right down to how they prepared him. It does seem it could be a perilous moment for me because we've now seen the kidnapers face. I mean, they've kind of showed us exactly how things actually work. Voters play no role in it. Its donors and Democratic Party leaders like Obama and Schumer and Jeffries and Pelosi, who make all the decisions. And they're not even pretending anymore. No, not even pretending anymore. Because, look, they have a very different experience in the political world than those of us who are Republicans, because they've always got this media bubble shield around them. It's like they've got this laser shield, and that laser shield doesn't, leave them vulnerable to the same sorts of forces that the rest of us have. And so, they can get away with all sorts of things. Tucker, can you imagine the kind of absolute venom that would be released against Republicans if we pulled a stunt like that? I can't even begin to imagine how that would take us down. But it's not even touching them because the media chose not to report on it. It's not even dimensionally. Right, because they're of course, they're coconspirators in it. What did you think as a senator, prominent senator for the preceding three and a half years, where, you know, you have to deal with the white House? I mean, of course, just our process requires you to deal with the white House. Biden’s Impairment Did you know that Biden was impaired? Yes. I could tell just based on things that I saw from a distance. Right. We lost my mother in law a few years ago to Alzheimer's. She had had the disease for, nearly a decade, and the doctors told us soon after she was diagnosed what sorts of things to watch for. And they said, you know, that it's starting to get a lot worse when it starts to affect her posture and particularly her gait when she starts shuffling, kicking her feet forward. Yes. Rather than walking in a fluid, smooth motion, motion like she always has, you'll know that things are progressing quickly and that that is an outward manifestation of what's going on inside of her mind. I saw that same gait and posture in President Biden during his first term in office. I don't remember exactly when it was in 2021 that I noticed that, but it was sometime during his first year. Now, obviously, there are other reasons why someone should could have that happen where it wouldn't necessarily be reflective of his cognitive decline. But then I saw plenty of reasons to believe there was cognitive decline happening as well. Yes. They kept him shielded not only from the public and from non friendly press, but also from members of Congress. Now, remember. Look, I've been in the Senate for 13.5 years. I've, I've served or. Well, we've had three different presidents. You know, Obama and Biden and his vice as his vice president. And then, you know, Trump and now Biden as president. We have seen a lot more of other presidents. Trump was a lot more gregarious. He was a lot more willing and eager to engage with the rank and file members in Congress than Obama was. But Obama was still up on the Hill a fair amount. I mean, I was one time in particular. I remember walking in the basement of the Capitol. I was turning a corner and bumped right into President Obama, and we had a great little chat. Oh, Mike, good to see you. Talk soon about kernel justice reform. It's great. We'd run into him. He would call from time to time just to check in on things that we agreed on, projects that we were working on together. Trump, of course, with very active, members of Congress could call him and get him on the phone very, very quickly. He was very engaging with Biden. It hardly happened at all, really. They shielded him from us. In some ways. My, my, my wife, I think this was in maybe the first half or the first quarter of 2022, went over to an event at the white House for Senate spouses hosted by, the first lady, who was herself a, you know, longtime member of the Senate Spouses organization. And while they were there, President Biden just kind of came wandering in. I think they were in one of the ballrooms, kind of came wandering in, she said. There was no Secret Service with him, no staff with him. He just kind of walked in. She she said, instinctively. I just said, oh, hello, Mr. President's good to see you. He asked her, do you work in the East Wing? And she said, no, no, Mr. President, I'm Sharon, Sharon Lee, Senator Mike Lee's wife. You know, he swore me into the Senate twice, first in 2011, then in 2017, just before he left the vice presidency. And we had interacted with him a lot, she thought that would take care of it. He looked confused. Moments later he said, do you work in the West Wing? And he was not quite there. Moments later, whoa! Moments later, someone came up, to, one of the other Senate spouses, I think it was a Democrat and had a phone in her hand, said, hey, my brother in law is a big fan. It's his birthday. We would say hi to him. This is Biden's signature move. This is he's really, really good at this. I remember when I first came to the Senate and he would have dinner and other gatherings with senators. He got Pat Toomey, his dad, on the phone when he found out he lived in Scranton. And he was like, how the hell are you? So, Joe Biden, I understand you from Scranton by the end of it. Pat Toomey, Dayton, and then Vice President Biden felt like they were old fraternity. Totally. I knew Biden, and I remember very good at this. Oh, excellent. But this woman handed him the phone. It rang. The woman's brother in law answered. Hello. And then he got a confused look on his face. Hell of a phone. Hung it up and handed the phone back. Now that for Joe Biden, that's is very significant. Very. And this is hitting the United States. Yes, yes. And this was, I believe, year and a half to perhaps a little more than two years ago. So we would see little snippets like this. That's a big snippet. And then we would see the, the clips on TV, which in some ways were worse. I'm still stunned that the media, did everything that, they could to minimize, the significance of this, but still they were caught on camera. They were out there and, they just sort of didn't comment on it, as if we didn't say anything about it. It wasn't real. That is an amazing story. So that was almost three years ago, you said. I mean, to senators, I mean, only 100 of you. You all know each other pretty well. I've noticed, smallest club in Washington, which is a small city. Do people do people talk about this? Yes, yes. Republicans talk about it a lot. Of course, when we talk about it with our Democratic colleagues, there was sometimes be nods and, statements to the effect that. Yeah, well, you know, there are good days and bad days, and then they try to move on as soon as possible. They don't like to talk about it. I suppose I understand why they don't want to talk about it, but it's a thing that sometimes needs to be talked about. Well, especially since we've got a couple wars going on that we're paying for. I mean, very high stakes. That's right. This moment. And and if you don't have someone at the top who is a sentient being, who who understands what's at stake and can make real time calculations after making an initial decision to say, I don't know, withdraw from Afghanistan, by September 11th of 2021, if in the days and weeks leading up to that, there are all sorts of. Sort of warning signs that that might not be the best approach, by the way. Why on earth would you tie the withdrawal to the anniversary of a terrorist attack against the United States? I think that's they're really bizarre. But there are all sorts of warning signs that he is making that deadline. Would itself cause problems now? I had been supportive for years of the idea of withdrawal. So me too, was President Trump. And when President Trump was still in office, I talked to him about this a fair amount. And to his national security adviser, Robert O'Brien. And what they would tell me is, look, we've got a really good plan to do this. We think we can pull this off by maybe the first or second quarter of 2021. You know, if he's, reelected, there were some, there was some prep work that had to be done in the lead up to those months. And they weren't able to pull it off in 2020, but their plan involved making sure that there was not a single weapon that could fire, left in the country. President Trump, I think, took it even further. He didn't want a single nail or a single screw, left intact that any gun that couldn't be exported would have to have its barrel melted down or, exploded and rendered unusable. He wasn't going to leave any weaponry behind that could be usable by the enemy. But with Biden having made this arbitrary decision. To withdraw by the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. He didn't back off. Now, why is that? He's the commander in chief, of course. But once he made that arbitrary decision, if he's not in full possession of his faculties, might that explain why he had this dogged determination to proceed with that, even though there were all kinds of warning signs? Well, I mean, given what we saw at the debate. And now, adding to that, the story you just told about your wife's interactions with him at the white House, where he couldn't even talk on the phone. I mean, who's running the government? That's the who has been running the government for the last four years. Who's running it now? He's still president, apparently. Yeah. Why do the bad people have so much power? Because the bad people have all the money where they get all the money. You gave it to them by using their businesses, businesses that undermine this country and empower countries that don't seek the best for your family. Trust us. But there is an alternative. It's called Public Square. Public square is a network of over 75,000 independent businesses, small businesses in this country from which you can buy guns and ammo, fresh food, household goods, things you see you need to live, and when you buy them, you can feel certain that you are not doing a bad deed. You're doing a good deed that will make this a better and more independent country, and make your kids future brighter. Public square.com. We are honored. We are proud to have them as a sponsor of this show. Look, what we don't know is how common those were. We see we saw so little of them and see so little of him. And it's hard to say whether those were Abdullah to what degree. Those were aberrations. We all hoped and wanted to believe that maybe, just maybe. Yeah, he, sometimes he's, got a lot on his mind or he's tired or whatever. And, everybody has down moments. Maybe, just maybe there are times when he's lucid, and those vastly outnumber those that aren't. Now, that seems to be contradicted by everything we saw at during that same time period. From that clip from the public. But then again, he was sometimes giving speeches where he appeared to be sort of in control, not necessarily as sharp as he once was, but but, aware of his surrender. Those were all scripted. Yes. So where is so? I mean, you're the constitutional scholar. So this is a question on statement, but my understanding is that under our system, the people rule. That's the fundamental point. And they rule through their elected representatives. And so the people who are elected have all the power because the people have all the power. I think that's the way it works. Popular sovereignty. Yeah. And so if unelected, unelected officials in, in, say, the executive branch are making all the meaningful decisions, that's illegal. That's unconstitutional, isn't it? Yeah. Especially considering the fact that the way the Constitution is set up, the president of the United States is the executive branch. Yes. With the exception of the vice president, who has an independent status and set of responsibilities under the Constitution. But they're fairly narrow. The president of the United States, if we were operating in a manner truly consistent with the structure, text, original understanding of the Constitution, the president of the United States would be in charge of the entire executive branch with the ability, essentially, to fire anyone. For any reason or no reason at all. And so. Because the power resides in him, because he is the. Lord resides in him person. And so, yeah, it's very constitutionally problematic to have others who are not elected, who are not him, who are performing the executive role. And not him. No, there's no way for any of us from the outside that kept him so shielded and so insulated. No way for us to be able to assess to what degree or how many hours out of an average day he was on his A-game. He was really lucid. There's no way for us to know that. All we know is that in all these clips that we saw and then anecdotal accounts from individual members talking to him, I remember having Biden’s Scripted Phone Calls one conversation with him on the phone where he was calling to tell me about, his decision to re expand two national monuments in Utah, national monuments that together. Or, I think, larger than two Delawares. He is short. A short time into the phone conversation, I could tell he was reading from a script and not only reading from a script, but his voice would start to trail off at the end of each sentence. And so, he. Yes, he was he was scripted. So when was. That? I believe this was sometime, perhaps in the fall of 2021, also right after. But, but I'm not sure at this point. Could have been in 2022. That's I mean, I knew because his sister Val was telling other people that he had some kind of neurological impairment during the campaign, during the 2020 campaign, so I. But what's interesting and infuriating and scary is that someone had to write that script for him. So anyone who's writing a script for a boss to perform a phone conversation is obviously fully aware that that guy is impaired. Like, did you have scripts for phone conversations? Well. Occasionally, a U.S. senator will have a list of calls to make. Yeah. And the senator staff might say, here's what you ought to cover here. Total this, this and this. But the I get that. But I mean. The idea there is to to read that and then say, okay, that's the stuff I'm going to say. And have a colloquy. But you don't actually read from a script when you're having a phone conversation with a colleague or a counterpart in the house or something like that, because people can tell there are all sorts of telltale signs that you're reading the way we pronounce certain words. The word two in the middle of a sentence, spoken, colloquial English, it's going to be more of a tuh than it is AA2. You know, there are things like that that can, signal I am reading from a script, and if you do that with a colleague or somebody, you have to interact with a lot. It's not going to be a trust building exercise. They can totally nuts. I mean, where does that leave us as citizens? Were you as a senator? I mean, do we have a right to know what the hell is going on with our government? Who's running it? What's going on with Biden? Who knew for how long? This is a massive charade. It's obvious now the whole thing is fake. I mean, that's the conclusion that I'm reaching. Don't we have a right to know the details? Of course. Of course we do. Because we should be concerned, because this potentially affects our national security. This, certainly affects all kinds of policy decisions, policy decisions. The Federal Government Is Too Powerful And, you know, one of the problems, of course, is that we've made the federal government as a whole more powerful than it was ever designed or intended to be. That remember, we've got three lawmaking functions or three functions of government. Rather, you've got the lawmaking function performed by Congress. Yeah, that's the most dangerous power. It was therefore given to the most dangerous branch under circumstances where, that branch, the legislative branch, Congress, where I work, you can fire every member of the House every two years and one third of all the senators every two years, because we've got the most dangerous power. Then you've got the executive branch headed by the president, whose job it is to enforce the laws. And then you've got the judicial branch headed by the Supreme Court, whose job it is to interpret the laws and resolve individual disputes that arise about what the law put in place, either by Congress or, through the Constitution means. So legislative power is by far the most dangerous. But what's happened over the last 80 years or so, 85 years, basically since the New Deal era, Washington, DC got immensely more powerful starting on April 12th, 1937. That's the day the Supreme Court decided a case called NLRB versus Jones, a Laughlin Steel Company. I regard that as the switch in time that saved nine. Remember this, FDR Corp? I wrote a book about this couple of years ago called saving, not after a court packing plan was moving forward. Yes. And the justices panicked. It's two years to the date after they had moved into their new building. When they issued this decision, in which Associate Justice Owen Roberts joined the court's liberals and came up with a new definition of the Commerce Clause. Commerce clause gave Congress the power to regulate interstate commercial transactions and channels and interstate, channels and instrumentalities of interstate commerce. All of a sudden, on April 12th, 1937, the Supreme Court rewrote that so that the Commerce Clause also gave Congress the power to regulate anything and everything that, when measured in the aggregate, if it's economic in nature, has a substantial effect on interstate commerce. Now, Tucker, what that means is Congress can regulate anything it wants. So all of a sudden, Congress went from a limited, narrow purpose legislative body. To an open ended one, rendering the 10th amendment almost a nullity. Because if any of the 18 articles of article one, section one I'm sorry, article one, section eight, if any of those clauses are open ended and limitless, the 10th amendment means nothing. So Congress found itself newly possessed of the power to regulate labor, manufacturing, agriculture, mining, health, safety, and welfare, not just in the District of Columbia or on federal land or with federal funds, but anywhere, everywhere. As long as they said the magic words and connected it somehow to an impact on interstate commerce newly possessed. With this power, Congress realized, oh my gosh, we're going to be a lot more accountable. We're gonna have to do a lot more work. So. To a degree. They stopped passing laws and started passing a lot of platitudes. We shall have good law in area X, and we hereby delegate to agency or Department Y the power to make and interpret and enforce laws carrying the force of the full force of the federal government to enforce them, in area X. And from that moment forward, we delegated all this lawmaking power over to unelected, unaccountable agencies. This made the presidency and the executive branch vastly more powerful than it was ever intended to be. So what we've seen here, Tucker, is that the aggregation of the accumulation of power in the hands of the few. It's exactly why we have a constitution and exactly what our Constitution has a belt and a set of suspenders and another belt and another set of suspenders in order to avoid. So power has been taken away from the American people in two steps. First, from the people to Washington, DC, where we federalized previously non federal power. And within Washington, DC, we've taken the lawmaking power, the most dangerous power of government away from the people's elected lawmakers over to unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats ostensibly serving under the leadership of the incumbent president. All of whom are many of whom have civil service protections. That makes it impossible to fire them. So that's permanent. Washington it's not the elected officials. Permanent Washington. Permanent Washington, and it's literally permanent. And by the way, at a time when, you know, it's getting pretty hard to find a job in the United States, the federal government is on a hiring spree like they're expanding as everyone else is suffering. I mean, it's sad, but here's what I know. And I say this with respect, but I've never understood this. In the 35 years I spent in Washington, I saw Congress get less powerful every cycle. And the executive get more powerful under Republicans. Democrats. And you sort of wonder, like, where's the self-respect of Congress? Yes. So why don't they do something about that? James Madison didn't foresee this particular feature. James Madison predicted in Federalist 51 and, I believe to some degree in Federalist ten and 15, that power would be made to counteract power, that the natural incentives of the people serving in each branch would cause them to defend their own prerogatives. Exactly. What I what I don't think he foresaw was this, this process by which federal authority would be suddenly become open ended. Remember, state legislatures, are bound only by their state constitution in terms of what they can do. And broadly speaking, they are what we call general purpose legislative bodies. They can legislate on pretty much anything, as long as long as it's not prohibited by their state constitution or the U.S. Constitution. They can just legislate because they feel the need to. We can't. At least we're not supposed to. We're supposed to be dealing with interstate and foreign trade or commerce, immigration laws, bankruptcy laws, uniform system of weights and measures, declaring war, granting letters of marque and reprisal, laws governing the disposition and use of federal land. An Army Navy. How we coordinate National guards or militias, as they're described in article one, section eight, and so forth. But there is no general purpose legislative power. There is nothing in there that says Congress shall have the power to enact laws to make life better for the American people, or and act such laws as they deem appropriate, for national legislation, nothing of the sort. So we've drifted so far from that. And once we drifted from that which I believe occurred sort of by the threat of the court packing plan on April 12th, 1937, once we ceased to be a power, a legislative body of of limited, enumerated powers, the die was cast because Congress knew we can't keep up with all that anyway. And even if we tried to remember, Tucker, when you whenever you make a new law, a national law especially, you're going to make one group of people happy. You're gonna make a whole lot of other people very unhappy. Right. And so this was an easier way toward the interest of a drive for perpetual or long term incumbency to make it easier. So imagine, for example, you're one of the people who voted for the original iterations of the Clean Air Act, which put it in oversimplified terms we shall have clean air. What idiots going to vote against that? And we hereby delegate to the EPA the power to make and interpret and then enforce laws carrying the force of generally applicable federal law regulations, carrying the force of federal law that decide what clean air is, what pollution is, how much you can pollute, and how much you'll be fine fined if you do. Years go by and the same people who voted for that see the EPA come out with some crazy ruling. To cite one example that we've seen at times in my state, they'll identify this region or that region of the state and say, all right, here are your ozone limits in that area, and you're going to have a really hard time getting permitting of any sort if you're out of compliance with ozone, but they'll set the ozone level, sort of below or at the rate where Mother Nature herself has set them so that it's impossible to comply. Now, a Congress wouldn't do that. And if it did do that, it would be problems. People would be held accountable for that. But when EPA does it, members of Congress have this way of saying, to their constituents who come and say, this is shutting down my business, we can't operate this way. You got to fix it. They'll say, yeah, yeah, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to write them a strongly worded letter. I'm going to tell them that I mean it. Hey, guys, knock this off. It's like the Robin Williams used to just describe the the unarmed English Bobby who, being unarmed upon seeing the commission of a crime, would yell on this very British accent, stop or I'll yell stop again. Yeah. Social media are great. They're important. They're the main way we communicate with each other. They're where politics happen in this country. But one of the problems with social media is that the rules change. The people in charge don't want you to say something. They don't tell you that. And the next thing you know, you're without a platform. Well, now you have an option. Parler. It's back. The original free speech app taken off the internet by the censors has come back in full force. Parler was the first big app to be pulled off, because it was the first big app to make free speech a top priority. Now, other platforms would be relaxing their policies and they change a lot. But Parler will not change. Its distinct approach is here to stay by paving the way for other apps. 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By the way, we're on Parler at Tucker Carlson. And you can go there and find us and stay informed about what's happening in the world. So join a place that embraces your right to say what you actually think, and that fosters connections between people. Without free speech, you can't connect with other people. We're all just lying to each other. But Parler offers you that a seamless social media experience tailored to your needs. You can get Parler from the App Store, Google Play, or visit parler.com at Parler. You are valued. You can say what you think and you're rewarded for doing so. But I get maybe what Madison and the other framers never foresaw when they set up a system that has inherent power struggles. Like, that's the point, right? But I don't think they foresaw that there are people who actually don't want power because it comes with too much responsibility, accountability. It's scary to them. And they'd rather sort of pass the buck, pass the power to somebody else. I mean, that's what it looks like to me. Yes. Yeah. And I think that is an accurate description of it. And I think, Tucker, there is it's easy for that to happen once you leave the domain of limited legislative jurisdiction. And you become an open ended lawmaking body where the sky's the limit and where you've got a big country, the world's biggest economy, the world's most powerful military. There's so many things to deal with. It's easy. It can even feel like the logical thing to do to delegate out this decision making process, or at least a lot of it. You cut out voters, you cut out the citizens. Yes. When you do that. The Progressive Dream Exactly. That's the whole point. Remember the progressive dream? For us who know. For those of us who love liberty, this is a nightmare. But the the dream of the progressives is government of, by and for the experts, masterminds. Those who could come in and say, oh, we're the very scientific elite experts, and we know exactly how the people need to be governed to. Totally useless class who actually could not get jobs in any other place than NGOs and federal agents. But, Tucker, these are experts, and many of them have master's degrees and PhDs and highly specialized in their field, and they really know their stuff. You fix my air conditioner? No. You can't not. Not worth a darn. That's exactly right. So, how long? I mean, just I didn't even realize you trace us back to 1937 to the New Deal. I didn't even know that. But it makes sense. How long before the United States Senate becomes the Roman Senate and becomes just a useless appendage and then disappears? Look, we're on that path. The more we strengthen the executive branch, the more that power we take that away. A power away from the American people and from their elected lawmakers. The closer we get to that, I think we're on almost an, parabolic curve in that direction. We're getting closer and closer to it. I think there's still time to turn around, but we have to do it. Look, let me give you some examples of why. You know, in my office in Washington, you should come by some time. I'll show you my my monument to, the constitutional problems we face. I keep two stacks of documents in my office in the Russell Building in Washington. One stack of documents is a few inches tall, and it's a few hundred to a few thousand pages long, and consists of the laws passed by Congress in the last year. Some would argue that that's a few hundred or a few thousand pages too many. But, regardless, those are the laws passed by Congress last year. Then there's the other stack, the other stack, which is printed on double sided paper, very thin paper, very small print is the Federal Register for for those people who are unburdened by, knowledge of what the Federal Register is, I wish I didn't, I wish I weren't burdened by it. The Federal Register is the annual cumulative index of federal regulations, as they're announced. First for notice and comment. And then once they're finalized, they go out. You know, peasants, prepare to be regulated. Give us your thoughts on this so as to replicate some sort of feeling of a democratic import process. They don't really care at the end of the day. What the public comments in response and then they finalize those are a hundred thousand pages, more or less, that get issued every year, 100,000 pages of federal regulations every year. Well, just regulations. They sound softer than laws in some cases. Maybe they are, but those 100,000 pages are replete with a lot of things that are just law. They, they, they have all the incidents of law other than that they haven't been enacted by Congress, but. They're enforced with firearms. Yes, they're enforced in almost every industry you can think of. Almost every aspect of human existence has a federal agency, sometimes more, regulating that area. Really interesting story. A few years ago, a few of us on the Judiciary Committee, on which I submitted a request to the Congressional Research Service to help us answer a question. The question was essentially tell us how many federal crimes are on the books? How many provisions of federal law create a crime? Well, you want to know that that the that more or less the universe of federal crimes that exist. The answer took a while and when it came back it was stunning and said the answer is unknown and unknowable, but it's at least 300,000 crimes. Crimes. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that this Byzantine labyrinth of federal regulations about 100,000 pages a year, or which initially go into this massive document about 100,000 pages per year, called the Federal Register. Ultimately, they'll be codified into a larger, catalog known as the Code of Federal Regulations. There are so many criminal. Provisions of those regulations that it makes it very difficult to count, but it's at least 300,000. And these are devised by federal employees who are not judges. Correct. And they're not elected lawmakers. Correct. So, I mean, again, you're the constitutional scholar, but I don't see where they have the authority to do that. But, Tucker, they're experts. How could you not trust experts? Well, leaving aside the fact that the unwashed. Masses in Congress, I mean. They're like some of the elite. I mean, I've spent a lot of time around them. My dad ran a federal agency. I'm certainly very familiar with them. But even if they were impressive, which they're not, that still seems like an end run around democracy. It is. Yeah. And that's the whole point. That's the whole point is that you don't trust governance to the peasants. You've got to trust the government, governance to the experts. That is the progressive dream. So ultimately, while progressives tout themselves as being incredibly democratic, they're actually quite the opposite. Yes, they're the most anti-democratic species you'll find in America. No. Well, they just they just prosecuted a coup against a sitting, a supposedly elected president who got like several billion votes. They've told us for the past four years. And they just took him out because they didn't like his polling. Right. And and they'll be the first How to Fix the Problem ones to defend this. Now, I there is a fix to this, and it's one that I've been pushing the entire time I've been in the Senate. I've now made it my single most, top priority. The closest thing there is to a silver bullet fix to this problem of lawmaking by executive branch agency is a proposal known as the Reins act. It's RPI, and it's an acronym that stands for regulations from the executive in need of scrutiny and what it says it would require us to follow, essentially, that the existing requirements of article one, section seven, remember article one, section one, and very first operative provision of the Constitution says that all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in Congress. Article one, section seven makes abundantly clear that there is only one way to make a federal law. You have to have bicameral passage of the same bill. Text. House and Senate. Most of the time it doesn't, matter in which order? Unless it's a, a revenue building, it has to start in the house. But other than that, it doesn't matter in which order the House and the Senate have to pass the same tax. And then you present it to the president for a signature, veto or acquiescence. That's the only formula by which you can make a federal law. We've been disregarding that for a long time. So what the Rains Act says is that if there is a federal regulation, on the one hand that, operates internally doesn't have it's not a major rule, meaning it doesn't impose affirmative legal obligations on the part of the American public and is an economically significant. Maybe it determines what time the lights go on and off. And the Department of Commerce, the Rains Act wouldn't worry about that. But for the outward facing, affirmative legal obligations, economically significant or otherwise qualifying is what we call a major rule. Those rules, those regulations wouldn't be self-executing. They couldn't take effect automatically. They couldn't take effect, in fact, unless or until Congress affirmatively enacted that regulation into law. And so that that way we you know, for those who are concerned about me making sure that we preserve the expertise that we've got in these federal agencies, we're not discarding that. We're actually giving them probably more of an advantage than they should have, even under the Raines act, by virtue of the fact that these things would be considered, on a fast track basis. But the American people would be in charge because they couldn't become law unless both houses of Congress enacted it into law. I've been trying to get this passed for a very long time, that when when Trump took office in 2017, I, I put it into overdrive and went to a bunch of my Democratic colleagues, member by member, saying, I know you must be concerned about this presidency because it's all they talk about, and if you are concerned about it, you really ought to look into the Rains Act, because look at all the control that this president has over regulations. This is something that should not be. Partizan should be just a Republican thing, even though almost everybody who supports the Rains Act happens to be a Republican to a person. They all said essentially the same thing, Mike, we need the expertise of those agencies. To which I say, we still have it. We still have it. It's just we would be the ultimate. Has anyone ever became a federal employee? And there's some. Again, I'm the son of one, but there are some good federal employees. But in general, you know, people can't be fired. Don't perform as you'd hope. I mean, imagine that it's pretty mediocre. So what? Okay, so Biden's now or Biden Biden takes and he exists. The people who are controlling Biden are making noises about reforming the Supreme Court. What is that? That is a bald faced attempt form to end run. What he himself said in the early 1980s as a US senator, it was, I believe, 1982 or 1983 when he describes. On the Judiciary Committee. Yes, on the Judiciary Committee. I think he was chairman at the time. By then, he said, it was a boneheaded idea. When FDR proposed packing the court. He appears to be going back on that now. And and he's he's kind of, soft pedaled his way into court, packing, little by little. He's getting there. He keeps talking about Supreme Court reform. He's been increasingly flirtatious with the idea of court packing. He's trying to impose this new set of ethical standards from one branch to another. What is can you define court packing? Yeah, court packing consists of something that is technically allowed by the Constitution, because the Constitution doesn't prescribe the size of the Supreme Court that is set by statute. What for? You know, over 150 years, we have had nine justices on the court. There have been times when that number has been higher. There have been times when the number has been lower, but we've had more than a century and a half where it's been consistently at nine justices. My view and the view of of most people, including Joe Biden, until a few years ago, including, the late, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Just, not too long before she died, acknowledge that it's a bad idea to change that number, even though constitutionally we're allowed to do it by statute, because what you'd end up with, Tucker, is you'd end up politicizing the court. Whatever administration that decides to do this would only do it most likely with, a Congress and a Senate, willing to put in and a president willing to put in justices of that party's political ideology such that people would stop to, stop seeing, the court as an adjudicating body and much more as a political one, especially since once we start this, it'll set off a nuclear chain reaction. Now, I've always been opposed to court packing. I think all Republicans have, all Democrats have until very recently. But if Democrats take this step, let's let's imagine. Yeah. Knock on wood. Let's hope this doesn't happen. I don't think it'll happen. But if somehow in this year's election, Democrats were to win the white House, keep the majority in the Senate. And perhaps even expand their majority and win back the House. I have no doubt but that they would pack the court, meaning expand the court. They would increase it probably by four justices taking it from 9 to 13. Now just imagine the next time when political forces are such that Republicans take it back. You think Republicans could possibly decide now? That's fine. We're not going to do this. There would be immense political pressure on us at that point. Republican lawmakers to add an additional four, five, 6 or 7. And the pendulum would swing back and forth. And as it swung, each time it swung, you would see additional appointments made to the Supreme Court. And before long, it would start to look like the intergalactic Senate on the Star Wars movie. Or the Brazilian Supreme Court, you know. But can I ask? I mean, if Kamala Harris gets elected president and the Senate in the House fall, two Democrats Senate majority is expanded. I mean, they're never they're never going to be another Republican government after that. I mean, that's a one party state at that point. They're not going to go through this again, are they? Well, that that is of grave concern, because if that were to happen, there are some changes to the law that I fear they would put through, these voting rights bills that they keep talking about wanting to pass, are among them. So they pass these voting rights laws already. Have voting rights, don't we? We do. But, they keep touting them, you know, under the banner of, the civil rights and making, all American civil rights to vote. They want to subject any state law decisions regarding legislative redistricting within the state to pre-clearance by political appointees within what they envision as a Democratic presidential administration. So they would have to come to the federal, political appointees and say, mother, may I, adopt this, legislative redistricting plan? Or this or that. A set of reforms to the way we conduct our elections. And those would have to be pre-approved. They also want to, essentially divest the power to draw legislative, boundaries, from the state legislatures and give them to nonpartizan independent commissions, thus further taking away the power from elected lawmakers and putting it in the hands of unelected and unaccountable experts. These sorts of things, coupled with what I fear they would also do, they would enact another law, bringing the District of Columbia into the, family of states, making D.C. a state and perhaps Puerto Rico as a state. If they conclude that Puerto Rico and D.C. would be reliable. I mean, as long as. We're picking Democratic seats. We'd lead dysfunctional territories incapable of governing themselves. Why not? Haiti two? Why not? Well, Haiti isn't currently, you know, a U.S. territory. So that that would be the biggest mistake. In a lot of your life in the District of Columbia. A lot of good things to say about it. I spent my whole life there. But there's no self-government. They're not capable of self-government. No end of the city. I mean, that's crazy. And more to the point, Tucker, it's it's really small. It's geographically compact, but perhaps of most importance. The Founding Fathers set aside, this idea of an independent district. What became the District of Columbia for the purpose of wanting an independent, neutral place that could serve as the seat of our national government. And so they they had land donated, roughly half and half, from Maryland and Virginia. I think the Maryland side was a little bigger. Decades later. Maybe a century or so. Later. Sometime in the late 1800s, I believe they decided that the Virginia portion of it wasn't necessary for the seat of national government. So that was given back to the state of Virginia. That's now Arlington. Right. And, and then what remains of it was the Maryland contribution. So the remedy here, if they want to be a state, if they want to have representation, voting, representation in the House and two senators in the Senate, the way to do that is to give the Maryland portion of DC, or at least that portion of it. That's not deemed necessary to the independent functioning of the national seat of government. Back to Maryland. You this was part of a state from the beginning, and it should not be its own independence. It's just a. Pure power grab. It's a power grab because they want to pick up for of what they would regard as consistently, reliably, Democratic senators. So if they adopt those reforms and then these voting rights reforms, we could see the Democrats finally achieving their goal. I've never heard them articulate it like this, but I think they look at other countries and they crave what other countries have been able to do. Take, for example, our southern neighbor, Mexico, for close to a century. Mexico was governed lock, stock and barrel by one political the party El Partido revolutionary so institutional. Exactly right. It's interesting when you think about it. By the way, how can a party be at once revolutionary and institutional, but, you know, progressive, right? What do they do? I have noticed that most of us well, actually all of us, go through our daily lives using all sorts of quote free technology without paying attention to why it's, quote, free. Who's paying for this and how? Think about it from it. Think about your free email account, the free messenger system. Use to chat with your friends, the free weather, weather app or game app you open up and never think about. It's all free. But is it? No, it's not free. These companies are developing expensive products and just giving him to you because they love you. They're doing it because their programs take all your information. They hoover up your data, private personal data, and sell it to data brokers and the government and all of those people who are not your friends are very interested in manipulating you and your personal, political and financial decisions. It's scary as hell. And it's happening out in the open without anybody saying anything about it. This is a huge problem, and we've been talking about this problem to our friend Erik Prince for years. Someone needs to fix this. And he and his partners have. And now we're partners with them and their company is called unplugged. It's not a software company. It's a hardware company. They actually make a phone. The phone is called unplugged, and it's more than that. The purpose of the phone is to protect you from having your life stolen, your data stolen. 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So it is a great way, one of the few ways to actually protect yourself from big tech and big government to reclaim your personal privacy without privacy. There is no freedom. The unplug phone. You can get a $25 discount when you use the code Tucker at the checkout, so go to unplugged.com/tucker to get yours today. Highly recommend it. That party governed Mexico with an iron fist for the better part of a century. And I suspect that something like that is what they would like to do. And something like that is what they would be able to achieve if they swept the House and the Senate and the white House this year. I think they've got ambitions to go in that direction. That's why there's no question. I mean, they're genuine. I mean, they Steve Bannon is in jail right now. A bunch of people I know have gone to prison. You know, while fentanyl dealers remain and tens of millions of illegals. I mean, obviously that's their goal is totalitarian rule. But I wonder if it's possible Could Kamala Harris Win? this cycle. Like, what do you think could Kamala Harris win? A she could win. There's no question about it. And Republicans would make a huge mistake by discounting her. If by discounting her, there are some. We don't have to work that hard to defeat her. Few things we know about Kamala Harris. It's the I mean, technically, the head of the body you serve in. Yes. She's the president of the Senate. Kamala Harris, despite her gaffes that we've seen when she's operating on script and she's got good word, when she's got good staff preparing her material and she sticks to that material, she's actually pretty good. Now, I disagree with almost everything she says, of. Course. But when she stays on script, she can be a compelling speech speaker, far more compelling than President Biden. I mean, Biden of yesteryear, did a better job than he's done in the last few years, but, she's a much more compelling speaker, than others. And I think she's going to be very carefully scripted over the next few months. So, yeah, I think we should be very worried about it. We've already seen the media sponsored. Apotheosis of Kamala Harris. I always think about this. The great. The great mural. I guess it's a fresco, technically, at the top of the, Capitol rotunda. The inside of the dome. You've got this, beautiful painting by Constantino Constantino, an Italian born American immigrant. And it's called The Apotheosis of George Washington. It shows George Washington, ascending into heaven following his death. And he's surrounded by these 13 angels, each representing one of the original colonies, and is surrounded. And then there are two other angels right next to him, one of which represents liberty, and the other one represents the majesty of government or something like that. And it's he's been glorified and almost deified. There is a very familiar ring. The connection between that painting and what the media is trying to portray of Kamala Harris. In the last few days, you've seen the complete erasure of any reference to Kamala Harris being the borders are, which didn't go well. There's been an effort, a sustained and fairly successful effort by the media to erase the fact that she was widely regarded as one of the most, if not the very most, progressive liberal, member of the United States Senate. There's been this, rebirth of Kamala Harris as this, great warrior who is, ready, willing and able at a moment's notice to take the reins as America's chief executive. And they're scrubbing things she has said in the past, crazy statements she's made from defunding the police, to aggressive, radical climate change policies. Green New Deal stuff. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. They're papering over all of that. So, yes, Kamala Harris is a threat because she's got this media industrial complex that's completely behind her. How much? Since she is the president of the Senate and you've been a senator for 30.5 years. How much contact? Well, of course, she served in the Senate with her. Yes. What's she like? She's. She's a lot like, how she seems on TV. She's got a funny, playful side to her. She's. When she is on script, she can be very, emotionally compelling in her speech. But she is very, very liberal. And especially when she went off script in the Senate Judiciary Committee, you could tell that, you could tell. And often you. Served on the committee. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Served on the committee with her. We we worked together in the Senate for four years. So she was elected in 2016, and she remained in the Senate until she became vice president. So, so. What was she like in committee? She was feisty. Definitely one of the most far left members of the committee. She did not hesitate to take what I thought were very aggressive attacks against, Trump era. Remember the the entire time that she and I were in the Senate at the same time? The entire time she was in the Senate, corresponded, precisely with Donald Trump's time as president. She was, one who never hesitated to take really aggressive and sometimes cheap pot shots at President Trump's judicial nominees and to read Tom Smith badly mischaracterize them. Donald Trump, his positions and his personnel. Did you get a sense that she regarded the Constitution as sacred or even important? Well, she's certainly one who would. Pay lip service to the Constitution. To channel the inner Isaiah, the draw near to the Constitution with her lips. While her heart may have been far from it because she didn't seem to acknowledge key core limitations, on the Constitution, I never saw from her, an acceptance or, understanding of the the twin structural protections, the Constitution, the vertical protection that we call federalism, leaving most of the power at the states and localities where the horizontal protection, that we call, separation of powers. I never saw that from her. And I saw, hyper obsessiveness on focusing on certain rights that were invented out of whole cloth by the. Why Is Kamala an Abortion Fanatic? She's an abortion fanatic. And I think even if you think of yourself as pro-choice, which I definitely don't. But, you know, a lot of good people do think of themselves as pro-choice. It's hard to understand the fanaticism, that sort of crazed, wild eyed enthusiasm for abortion from her. What do you think that is? Yeah, well, part of this, I suspect she may be, a product of her training, her education, her upbringing and her political coming of age. American law schools, with very few exceptions, tend to indoctrinate for whatever reason, you know, Roe versus Wade, into things. It's like, more fundamental than Magna Carta. To me. It's more fundamental than the Bill of rights. I mean, these are people who don't think you have the right to say what you think, travel where you want to travel, associate with who you want to associate with it, the core human rights bestowed by God. They do not acknowledge, defend yourself, but you do have a right to kill your child. Like what is that? What is that? Yeah, it's a weird thing. I've never seen anything like it. And whenever you have a chance with, with a progressive colleague, if you ask them, what exactly is it in the Constitution that does that, then they'll then they have to go through. Why are they so obsessed? It's like, look, if you make the case that, you know, 13 year old girl raped, you know, wants to have an abortion, even people opposed to abortion, like, I kind of get why you feel that way, you know? Right. But the idea that abortion makes you happy, that it's the. Only. In a country that doesn't we're not at replacement birth rates. So like the one thing we need to do is like, have more abortions. Like, where the hell does that come from? Yeah. It's weird. It's become instead of being safe, legal and rare as the, you know, sort of the Clinton era Democratic Party solvent abortion should be safe, legal and rare. It's now a sacrament. And you've got people being encouraged now to share their stories. Women who have had abortions are being encouraged to share their stories of, why it was such a good thing that that they had one which seems really awful. So awful. Well, it seems to me, just like your conventional human sacrifice cult, that every civilization has had. More like luck. Well, it does seem that. I mean, I never thought that because I grew up in a world where people made up arguments in favor of abortion or opposed to abortion on the basis of science for their understanding of it, or on the basis of your extenuating circumstances, like rape. You know, minors being pregnant. Okay, I get it. But I never imagined a world where the Treasury secretary would be like, the one thing you can do to help America and its economy is have more abortions, as Janet Yellen said. Like that's just religion. Yes, yes it is. And they're asked to accept it as if a religious article of faith. I still remember the first time I learned about Roe versus Wade. I was ten years old. My dad had just been, appointed by President Reagan as the Solicitor General of the United States, as the chief appellate advocate for the US government before the Supreme Court. And I was asking him some questions about his job. And he mentioned Roe versus Wade, and he said, do you know what that is? And I just finished the fourth grade, and I said, no, not really. What what's that? And he explained it to me. And he said, what do you think of that? And I said, well, I'm not sure that I see this as, seems like a legislative decision rather than a judicial one. So that's one problem. The other problem is, I don't see anything in the Constitution that makes this a federal issue. This seems like one that maybe ought to be ironed out more by the States. I don't think I'd ever see my dad more happy, to know that one of his children had listened to his his discussions about federalism and separation of powers and that sort of thing. But if that was evidently. Kind of funny, you were having this conversation in fourth. Grade. Well, all families have that conversation about that age. If about separation. Allowance. Exactly. Because over potatoes and like. How are the Bengals this. Season. I think it was 30 before. I realize not every family talks about that. But anyway, yeah, it's that was evident to me as a fourth grader. And it's not like we were talking about that all the time. We talked about it more than other families did. Because my dad was a professor of constitutional law and then the solicitor general of the United States. But but that was evident to me just based on the face of it, this was never something that should have been shoved down the throats of the American people. This is a fundamentally legislative decision because it's a policy choice, and it's a policy choice that is no where directed, required or commanded by the Constitution. And because there's nothing about it that makes it federal, it is the kind of policy decision that needs to be made, with some exceptions, like for, you know, where federal funding is involved on federal territory, federal personnel or whatever, by state policy makers rather than national ones. And yet when they undid row. Two years ago, you had all these people. One of my favorites was Prince Harry, of all people. Prince Harry came out with this statement, oh, this is so bad for democracy. And my response to that was, number one, it's rich being lectured on democracy by an actual prince. A a literal lineal descendant, both from his mother and his father, of King George the Third. But secondly, there was nothing Democratic about Roe versus Wade. It was one of the most anti-democratic things we've seen. Could we deport Prince Harry. In theory, if he does something. Wrong? Well, that's. Yeah, I mean, I think he's crossed the line just with. Just how annoying. Yes. So did you, detect in Kamala Harris just in the extensive time you spent with her? As a colleague? Like a set of principles, things that, you know, red lines that she really cared about authentically. Look, she's a progressive. Progressive. If there was an opportunity to expand the size, scope, reach, and cost of the federal government, she supported those things. If there was an opportunity to expand what she would describe euphemistically as reproductive rights, she was in favor of those things raising taxes, making the heavily graduated income tax system even more graduated, sticking to the rich. She was in favor of those things. So, yeah, her consistent threads, she was somewhat predictable in that regard. She had a fairly coherent legislative strategy. She would always do the thing that that, progressive Democrats were. Suspended their power. The Hostility Towards Christianity Yeah. So, you're Mormon, part of the LDS church. I heard joking before, right? That you're really party related. Everybody know everybody? And so you've been in that which is a religious minority in this country. And so you've been an advocate, I think, for religious liberty, you know, since you got there. Do you notice this hostility toward Christianity increasing at the in Washington? It's interesting. I think there is increased hostility toward Christianity, toward organized religion in general in Washington. Within the Senate itself, there is a, a. Pretty healthy culture of respect of, individual religious beliefs and backgrounds. And weekly Prayer Breakfast brings together Republicans and Democrats of every political stripe you can imagine and every religious stripe you can imagine. In those contexts, there's a very much an atmosphere of respect. But I've started seeing a couple of things that are disturbing that I never thought I would see just in the last few years. I remember during the Trump administration, we started to see, for the first time ever, a couple of my Democratic colleagues, including some on the Judiciary Committee, who would say things like this. I'm not comfortable with this nominee because I fear that. The dogma lives loudly within her. This was, I believe, Senator Dianne Feinstein. Speaking of then circuit judge nominee Amy Coney Barrett. She was afraid that she was too Catholic and that that because the dog with the Catholic dogma, as she put it, lives too loudly. How dare she? Yeah, I thought that was a little unsettling. On another occasion, my friend and colleague Mazie Hirono, Democratic senator from Hawaii, made a comment during a, judiciary, committee markup that she was concerned that, we were seeing too many judicial nominees coming through the committee, who had extreme religious beliefs. And I think there was at least one other member of the committee, who chimed in. Christian. Beliefs. Yeah. I mean, there were typically Christian beliefs. She wasn't saying I'm worried that they're two Buddhist or two or a Rastaman. It was almost always, I think, in the context of someone who was a Christian of one stripe or another. And so I felt the need to weigh in at that meeting, because sometimes we need to do that in order to set the record and to give the member an opportunity to to pare it back. So I thought, I'm not sure she meant I'm not sure she realized exactly how far she went in saying that. And that's a very collegial way of doing it. And so I jumped in and I said, just I need to set the record straight here. We need to be very careful when we talk about this. There are at least two, maybe three, maybe more provisions of the Constitution that I think caution us against and more appropriately prohibit us from imposing this kind of filter, from imposing a religious test from discriminating against someone based on their free exercise of religion. And so we need to not do that so you can find the religious beliefs unusual, or you might find them, to be candidates that you don't want to support for some other reason. But I don't think their religious beliefs should be on trial here. In fact, constitutionally, they can't. I thought at that point she would back down, or at least clarify or narrow her statement, and instead she said, no. Why? I meant what I said. I said what I meant. A lot of these, lot of nominees were just too extreme in their religious beliefs. And I'm going to call them out. I'm going oppose every one of them if I think their religious beliefs are too extreme. And a lot of these famously, you don't have to comment because she said she's your friend. But Mr. Brown was not considered by the outside world a genius. But I wonder, to put it mildly. But I wonder if they see their self-aware enough to know that they're the religious fanatics? Well, yeah. Yeah. And by the way, I, sometimes we get a, to enter the rhetorical flourish that we use on the Senate floor. My friend. Yeah. Colleague the distinguished. So I don't want to put you in a position to attack your. But yeah, low workers. Look, relative to, not just the founding generation, but pretty much all generations of Americans until very recently. Those who are hostile toward. Christian beliefs work toward any belief system when it comes to somebodies worthiness to serve in government. That's historically aberrational. That's extreme. And it's culturally also, throughout most of our history, we have been a religious nation. We are still a religious nation. In fact, yeah. I don't think you get away with saying the person's too Jewish for me. I don't think that it works. Exactly, exactly. How the hell do you get away with saying something like. I, I really don't know. Other than that the the media won't go after you. Because they share the view. If the media shares that view, which in many cases they do. Now, I, friend, mentor and and church leader of mine, a guy named Neil Maxwell, died a few years ago. I had this great line that stuck with me over the years. He said, if if India is the world's most religious nation and Sweden is the world's least religious nation, then America can adequately be described as a nation of Indians governed by Swedes. Sometimes those in our government don't necessarily reflect the religious beliefs and the religious sensitivities of the people as a whole, and that's one of the many reasons why I often distinguish differentiate between America. America, the country, and the United States government. There are two different things. It's one of the reasons why I bristle every time when anyone of either party refers to the president of the United States or to Congress as, quote unquote, running the country. We don't run the country. The president, the United States certainly doesn't run the country. The president of the United States happens to be the chief executive officer of the United States government, and the commander in chief of the U.S. Armed forces runs a large organization with immense power. To be sure, I don't want to denigrate the office, but he doesn't run the country. The country itself consists of the American people. He's not running the economy. That's why presidents shouldn't go too far in over promising, what they're going to do for the country. I'm going to create this many jobs or to create to claim credit for jobs that have been created. Presidents can't do that. We've we've got to get back to a proper understanding of what government is and more importantly, what it isn't. Government is not there to be your rich uncle, your best friend, your fun aunt. It's not there to make everything fair. No government exists for the purpose of protecting life, liberty and property, making sure that, we don't fall victim to those who would take that which belongs to us or do us harm, either from the inside or the outside. Preserving our freedoms, preserving our enemies, foreign and domestic. Right? Exactly. Life, liberty and property. The further afield you get from that Tucker. The more you run into problems, the more removed anything in government is from the protection of life, liberty and property. And within the federal government's even narrower foreign governments, job is to protect life, liberty and property in specified, enumerated, limited ways immigration, bankruptcy laws, weights and measures, trademarks, copyrights and patents, interstate and, foreign trade or commerce, and so forth. We've gotten so far afield to that that we've tried to make government the all powerful, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipotent, benevolent decider of all things that is wrong. That's always going to set that government up for failure, and it's always going to sow civil discord among the people, because we've assigned two government attributes that are incompatible with the mortal human condition, right. In a world increasingly defined by deception and the total rejection of human dignity, we decided to found the Tucker Carlson Network, and we did it with one principle in mind. Tell the truth. You have a God given right to think for yourself. Our work is made possible by our members. So if you want to enjoy an ad free experience and keep this going, join TechNet Tucker carlson.com/podcast Tucker carlson.com/podcast. The Failed Leadership Class Yes. And one of the hallmarks of a dysfunctional government and an illegitimate democracy, in my opinion, is a leadership class that doesn't represent the people who elected them. So I want to ask you about two specific cases. One in, you know, where you work and the other where you live. So first, where you work, the United States Senate. It doesn't seem like the leadership of the Senate. You know, in some cases, Mitch McConnell specifically doesn't seem like he shares the views of Republican voters, which is a huge like a legitimacy problem. Like, how did that happen? Okay, so first, if Mitch McConnell were here, he would tell you that he does that. He very much is on board of this. And then he would describe all the things that he's done, all the ways in which he, you know, really resonates with the words of Ronald Reagan and the objective of limited government and lower taxes and softer regulations. He'd say all of those things. But Mitch McConnell, who's who's been the Republican leader in the Senate now for a record period of time, going. Double century. 18 year, couple century since then, at least since the William Howard. War of 1812, in that range. He would say, very, very much, on board with all Republican Party principles. But it misses a few points in that when you're the leader for that long, you've consolidated and taken every opportunity to accumulate power. We've already seen this accretion of power. Remember, the only reason why we have the Constitution, the only reason for any constitution is to limit government. And the purpose of our US Constitution in particular, is to protect the American people, protect their life, liberty and property by. Preventing the protecting against the excessive accumulation of government power in the hands of the few. So it does this along two axes, one vertical, which is federalism, the other horizontal, which is about separation of powers. But we've messed with both of those since the late 1930s. Then there's been a corresponding accumulation of power within Congress, within each House of Congress and within each caucus, Republican and Democratic, of each House of Congress, where there's been an accumulation of power. Now, this is especially poignant and impactful in the United States Senate, where the whole thing was designed around the principle of equal representation among the states. It's the one constitutional amendment that is preemptively itself unconstitutional and therefore, impossible to bring about. You cannot amend that part of the Constitution that allows and requires equal representation among the states. In theory, you could adopt a constitutional amendment giving every state, different number of representatives, but every state would have to be equally representative. And our Senate rules reflect that understanding. And our traditions are precedents reflect that there isn't a vast distinction under the Senate rules as they're written, and as they've historically been applied between any other member and the current minority or majority leader under our precedents, even though the only technical distinction is that the what's called the right of first recognition, if multiple members are seeking recognition at the same time and one of them is the majority leader, then the majority leader gets recognized. But we've built this up just over the last couple of three decades, started maybe when, LBJ was in the Senate. Prior to LBJ, the, the floor leader, as it was once called, I believe, but the majority minority leader of each party wasn't that significant. LBJ started building up the position, but it's really blossomed over the last 20 years or so, where they've now got all this power in each caucus built up behind the law firm of Schumer and McConnell, respectively. And so once that happens, I call up the firm, the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson and Jeffries. Once they get into that position. If they share this mindset. The accumulation of power within their conference within Congress is a good idea. They start to operate as their own constituency. As with a hive mind, particularly on spending bills. So the law firm of Schumer, McConnell, Johnson and Jeffries will get together and they'll figure out what's going to be in the next spending bill. The release it predictably foreseeably, with only, days, sometimes hours before the expiration of a spending period. It'll be a couple thousand pages long. Contain hundreds of earmarks. Often a lot of things, that bear a faint but distinct resemblance to the home states of members of the firm. Special benefits for this or that state and industries that are popular with their. The firm then becomes the proxy, the leader of what I call the unit party. They bring that to the floor. And what happens? The spending bill is brought forward with too little time to amend. They tell members, look, you got to take or leave this. We don't have time to amend it because we've made sure of it. You can vote against it, but if you vote against it and it doesn't pass, the government going to shut down, we will blame you for a shutdown. So we recommend you just vote against it. Now, I've done this. Voted against it. I've voted against them. Basically every time they do this. And on occasion it's resulted in the shutdown. I've been blamed for shutdowns. It's not pleasant. But this is what happens. They become much more about the accumulated power and, and about maintaining the prerogatives of accumulated leaders. So infuriating. I mean, you get elected statewide in Utah every six years, three times now, I guess. And I don't know, that's not a small thing. Right. And then you show up in the Senate and you can't even get a copy of the spending bill, like a month out, like it's so insulting. Right? Right. And I drive you insane. Absolutely insane. It is the single most frustrating thing. You know, when I was running for the Senate and, it was a live matter, but to be talking about Nancy Pelosi's reference to the Obamacare bill, you got to pass it to find out what's in it. I assumed that that was an aberration, that that was unusual. What I found is it's not terribly unusual. It doesn't happen all the time, but it happens. But for one leader to do that to you. Yes. Yes, exactly. Do you ever say to him, hey, Mitch McConnell. Hey, snapping Turtle, I why don't you why can't I what are you doing to me? I have you're more loyal to Chuck Schumer than you were to your own Republican members of what. Lost count of the number of times that I've raised the issue with him and with the conference, as a whole, with Senate Republicans and, you know, for the first, six years I was in the Senate, we were always told this feature or that feature is not in line yet. So we're going to have to go along with this meaning, we don't control the majority in the Senate. Other Republicans control only the House and Obama's in the white House, finally. But once we get more power, everything will be great. Right? And then we got the majority in the Senate and in the House. We still had a Democratic president, but a lot of us made the case. Well, we're driving the ship now. We should be able to write our own bill. Yeah, but the Obama well, so finally we get to 2017, and I really amped up the discussions internally within the conference and said, all right, at this point, from this point forward, the spending bills need to be on the floor. I don't you know, you're supposed to have 12 different spending bills, each according to a different function of government so that not everything can be tied together. And we haven't done it that way in a long time. I said that would be ideal. But even if you can't do that, if you want to do it in one bill, then you've got to give us at least a few weeks, maybe a month or so to debate it, discuss it, and most importantly, in the Senate, the opportunity to amend it. Unlimited debate and amendments are supposed to be the norm and historically were the norm in the Senate. That's collegial, and it's how our rules operate. And those rules reflect back what the Constitution contemplates. And we were told my mom, yeah, you'll have an adequate opportunity to do this. You'll have opera. And we operated with continuing resolutions, more or less for the first year of the Trump administration, just punting the ball forward every couple months. Finally, it wasn't until I think it was, March 23rd, 2018, when we were finally at about that point where I knew we would have to pass something, but we had a few weeks left. But this, Wednesday night, maybe 835, 8:36 p.m. on a Wednesday night, we got this email from our majority leader colleagues. My pastors are responding. My lord may come up sometime and you ought to become familiar with it. Every alarm bell in me went off right then. I opened the thing up instantly and my heart was pounding, thinking, okay, this is our big opportunity. We got to make sure that we're ready for this. To my surprise, this was 2232 pages long, so I immediately scrambled the jets within my office. I got every available legislative staffer on my team, pulling essentially all nighters, because we wanted to make sure we were ready. We had no idea what the schedule would be. I really hoped that, as we had been promised, we'd have the opportunity to debate them, discuss them, offer amendments, pull out this or that, earmark or special benefits for thoroughbred racehorses or, distillers of of Kentucky Bourbon or whatever it was. Tucker. The House of Representatives. Passed that bill without a single amendment. Before lunch the next day. The Senate, despite my protestations, passed it. At about three in the morning. Later that night. It was too late. Right then to call President Trump. I didn't want to wake him up, so I called him first thing in the morning to advise him to veto it, because this was quite contrary to, you know, what he thinks is good government. His staff, the white House staff at the time screamed out the call. They didn't give him the message until after he had already signed the bill. By that time, it was a Friday night. I got on the plane. Friday evening was flying back to Utah, maybe half an hour into the flight. I'm in no seat. 43 Fox trot. A very back of the bus. Flying back to Utah was the one part of the flight where everybody was quiet. And, my secretary texted me saying the president's trying to reach you. And I said, well, I wish you'd call me earlier, but I'm on a plane now. I obviously won't be able to talk to him. I'll be on the ground in maybe four hours. And the next thing I knew, I saw these Delta flight attendants looking, sort of disheveled, walking down the center aisle with a bright. A sort of neon orange headset with an equally bright neon cord that stretched the entire length of the fuselage of the plane. They walked all the way back to row 43. Back of the plane where I was and said, excuse me, we have the white House Situation Room on the phone. The president of the United States would like to speak with you. It's looking at me like, what are your seat? Were you doing this and brought me back to the galley and showed me how to work and push the button when you're ready to talk? I still thought this is an elaborate practical joke, but I got on. Hello, Mr. President. Mike, how are you? Listen, I had decided Congress had left, and there was no other way around it. There would have been a shutdown, would have caused all kinds of problems in Congress, wasn't there, Mike? And I said, Mr. President, with all due respect, your staff is not shooting straight with you. They're lying to you. If they told you that we were still in town, we still could have done something. We still could have passed a short term stopgap measure to keep us funded for another, I don't know, 70 to 96 hours or, perhaps a week or two as we debated it and discussed it. The the, the the connection wasn't stable and cut out a short time later, they sent back a message. Okay, we'll call you when you get on the ground. I thought that'll never happen. He'll. He's busy. Sure enough, as soon as I landed in Salt Lake City, I hadn't even gotten to the curb yet. Or to my car before I got a call from him, and he wanted to talk. We talked for, like, an hour, and I explained to him what had just happened to him and that it couldn't happen again. I said, if it does happen again, if your staff tricks you into this again, and if what I now refer to as the firm does this to you again, I fear what it could do to our base that expects something different out of us. And I fear what could happen in the November 2018 midterm elections. We could lose the majority if we lose the majority. As sure as the sun will rise in the East tomorrow, they're going to impeach you. I don't know what for, but they'll make something up. And if that happens, it could really cause problems for you. So let's just not do this again. Well, that turned out to be Prussian, didn't it? It did it did it. Prescient in a way that I had hoped it wouldn't be. But. Why would Gingrich ask? Why would his staff? Block your message. Why would they want him to sign something like that? Well, they think about it this way, Tucker. They face a lot of the same pressure that convinces most members of Congress from both political parties, to go along with it. Nobody wants to be accused of causing a shutdown. But the firm, the firm gets together and decides what is an acceptable bill. What about the total destruction of the United States, which this is bringing about? We're bankrupt, and that's going to be very obvious. And if we lose our status as issuer of the world's reserve currency, which is on its. Way, well on its. Way, well on its way, thanks to some very specific missteps by the Biden administration. Well, we've brought Russia into the loving embrace of. Literally the second we kick rush at a Swift. I was like, we're done. The Usdc is done. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. But anyway, the point is, when that happens, we're going to be impoverished and all the things that we take for granted will be gone. And the people who signed bills like that and voted for bills like that are responsible. Is there anything it does? Anyone in our governing bodies, like, acknowledge that in private. We talk about it a lot in private, those who feel like I do, and there are a number of us who do, including some who sometimes vote inexplicably for these things. Many of us do talk about it in private, and there's usually some type of general agreement, but it's followed up by sort of a cognitive dissonance. So it's like alcoholism and it's like you wake up hungover, you would know because you're Mormon. But like those of us who used to drink too much, like you wake up on Sunday, you're like, I got to stop this shit. This is terrible. You're doing gin, right. Baby? It's like that, right? Right. Perhaps it's that. It's like. My wife hates it when I use this term, but it's a biblical term. I think it originally came from the book of Isaiah. And like a dog to its vomit. Yes. A dog to its vomit. It refers to what happens when people return to that which is familiar, even though it's not necessarily a good thing and maybe a bad thing or a disgusting thing. You do it because it's there. It's it's the decision before you. And unless you decide in advance, I don't always quote rush lyrics, in in media interviews, but, to quote free Will by rush, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. That's right. Unless you decide at the outset I'm not going to vote for something that I have not read or had the opportunity even to read, that I have had no opportunity to vet with my staff and get input from constituents. I will vote no every time. In fact, that was a, a campaign promise that I made from the first time I ran for the Senate and was the first. Office I ever ran for the first public office I ever saw in 2010, and I've stuck with that. If if they don't give me the if. Only I'm part of my ignorance. I didn't realize that you've only run for one office. Yes, it was the US Senate. You won. Yes. Never expected by almost anybody to win. That is crazy. Actually, I don't think I've ever. Was challenging a three term incumbent, remember? I remember him very well. And so, people were shocked, when I won. But here, anyway, unless you decide in advance, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to vote for a bill that I haven't had the opportunity to vet. At a minimum, it needs to be something that I'm able to, consider with enough time to have, few staff members pour over it and help advise me on what provision means, what you've got to remember, Tucker, these bills, that bill back in 2018, March of 2018, 2232 pages long. Yet remember, these do not read like a fast paced novel. They're full of cross-references, and it takes an army of very well-trained people who know what they're doing, to recognize where they're going. And in order to understand it, if you don't have the opportunity to at least, meet with your staff and scrutinize this thing and then have the opportunity to amend it and then have the opportunity to, to improve it, and get feedback from your constituents. You have no business voting for it. But here's what's happening. Here's what is frustrating to me most about the firm and the unit party that it generally manages. I've explained what the firm is. The unit party, as I conceive of it, is that apparatus which manifests itself most obviously and frequently in the form of these massive omnibus spending bills, it that blurs the distinction between the two parties in those areas, which is, again, most acutely observed in the spending bill context. The firm puts the bill together. The four of them are the only ones who have really seen the whole thing. Maybe a couple of appropriators from both houses and their staffs, but most of the members have seen nothing about it. But then when it comes forward, something quite consistent usually happens. Most or all Democrats will tend to vote for it. And then enough Republicans in both houses will join most or all Democrats in order to get it over the line, to make it look bipartisan and in the Senate to make sure that it passes the 60 vote cloture standard. Remember, takes a simple majority to pass legislation, typically. But, most legislation, in order to get to final passage on a simple majority, you first have to satisfy cloture. You have to bring debate to a close, which takes takes 3/5 or 60 votes to get there. And so Republicans end up supplying the difference to over and over and over again. Even sometimes we're in the majority. You have spending bills that unite most or all Democrats. And then anywhere from, oh, 10 or 12 to maybe 1920, as many as 25 or so Republicans will join with the Democrats. So then I guess what you're saying, the term Unity Party, which I use all the time, isn't really accurate. It's probably more precise to say you have the Democratic Party, which is being served by a lot of powerful Republicans as well, because this is a I mean, this what they're doing is consistent with the values and views of the Democratic Party. It's inconsistent with those of the Republican Party. So you just Mitch McConnell is working for the Democrats. So that's what it looks like to me. Yeah. And insofar as the Democrats tend to want to spend more money than Republicans, I think that's that is a fair assessment. Have more wars. And sure, you know, just the the signature, the signature aims of the Democratic Party, he's on board with them. No. If they were here, members of the Unity Party or of members of the firm were here, they would say, well, look, but these also had our earmarks in them. He's also had some of our priorities, and we had to take the bad to get the good. There are things in here that, really help defense in ways. Republicans are all about defense. And we need to get that, the defense part of it, the military industrial complex. And it's a lure. It's the gateway drug for Republicans to join the party. Can you say that one more time? Just. I just want everyone to. Right. Who's listening to this? If you made it this far in the conversation, this is the key. Please write this down and put it on your fridge. The military industrial complex is a highly addictive substance that serves as the gateway drug to progressive spending bills. In other words, they throw in, special handouts for the Pentagon, and bring in the, you know, I'm pro national defense crowd. And that's how they get them to vote for spending bills that help perpetuate the $2 trillion annual deficit. And that's why we're $35 trillion not working. We're not safer at all. Remotely is not stronger. We can't even subdue the Houthis, whoever they are. And so it's actually having the opposite, as things often do, the opposite of the advertised effect. Right. And no one notices that. Does anyone think the military stronger now? It's got more funding than ever? Is it stronger? Of course it's much weaker. A lot of people think that it's stronger, and there are some metrics for that. We've got more sophisticated weaponry than we have in the past. But on the other hand, our end strength seems to be suffering by virtue of the recruiting impairment that this administration has inflicted upon itself. The way they're presenting themselves, the way they're running the the Pentagon to pursue woke ideological, agenda items, is itself a turnoff to a lot of the target audience. Well, sure. But even just judging by its effects, judging the tree by its fruit. We went to war against the Taliban in 2001. Were they better armed then or now? They. Meaning the. Taliban? Yeah. They're better armed now. Yeah. The Houthis, most Americans, including me, had not heard the term Houthi five years ago. And now they're closing a key shipping lane with, like, childish drones against the US Navy. So, like that is not success. It's not. And I remember the exact moment in 2015, I was speaking at some event in Iowa when I heard about what was going on in Yemen. And immediately I thought, oh gosh, I really hope that we don't get involved in a proxy war here. And we did, and it's it's now bled into three different presidential administrations, and it has led to, Yemen being even more of a leverage point for Iran. Exactly. Being able to arm the Houthis and having incentive to do so. This is one of the things that happens when we get involved in proxy wars generally. Yeah. One of the reasons why, you know, in Federalist 69, Alexander Hamilton comments that one of the distinguishing character or model for our government really is based on the British system in many respects. We've got a bicameral legislature, we've got the chief executive. But under the British system, as Hamilton points out in Federalist 69, the king, the chief executive, had the ability to take the country to war. Independently. Unilaterally. The Constitution, by contrast, requires a declaration of war by Congress. Now, we never passed an AMF or a declaration of war. With regard to Yemen, they regard all kinds of other existing authorities, from the 0102A AuMf to inherent article two power and the presidency. It's all, unpersuasive in my mind. But to authorize all this. So I've been opposing this ever since 2015, because I believe that this was first and foremost about benefiting the industrial, military industrial complex and that it would tend to be one of these, entangling affairs that gradually escalated. And it's been exactly that is interesting. I've found some unlikely allies on that. Here's a picture from a couple of years ago of me and Bernie Sanders, arm in arm, just after, passing one of the first successful efforts at using the War Powers Resolution, to get us, uninvolved in the conflict in Yemen. It was vetoed, and we weren't able to override the veto at the end of the day. But that's how we get involved. And we get involved by degrees. And they've redefined what war is to the point now where, in effect, the executive branch has the ability to get away with fighting war without anyone ever authorizing it or declaring it in Congress. And, because we've redefined what war is. I just wonder, without again calling any of your colleagues out by name. But I know a lot of them super nice people, some impressive people, you know, varying degrees. But there's definitely some smart people in the Senate, on both sides. But do they ever just stop to say the effects of what we're voting for are not good? Our fiscal situation is really dire. The the military that we fund is not achieving the desired outcomes. Do they ever, like, look at the results? Sometimes, yes, but you don't understand one feature, Tucker. That. The military. Issues. Or to us, kind of. It's our own microcosm of what Progressive's experience everywhere else. So for Republicans, we regard Republicans. Far too many have concluded that this is conservative, like, making sure that we have a military strong enough and foreign policy dedicated enough to ensure that the world is safe for democracy and transgender. And that's what it's about. I mean, do they ever, like, do they know what the State Department does? Republicans don't like that part, but they like the making the world safe for democracy. And they like the, so-called rules based international order, in effect, more or less since the end of World War II. They love that stuff. And so you'll actually find Republicans, without realizing it, parroting the same reasoning as progressive generally progressives generally, when the particular government program doesn't work. Their instinct is always to say, we just didn't give it quite enough fuel. If we had just given a little bit more money, more resources, if we had invested more in it, then it will work. Communism is a great idea, just hasn't been tried. Right. Right. This is my tried. We got to do it a little bit. Okay, so they're all about I mean I'm not going to lecture just in one one question. So like the rules based order thing I couldn't be more for rules based order. I think all orderly people are for rules based order. I used to live in a country that had one, but the rules based order advocates supported the theft of billions of dollars in personal property of the so-called Russian oligarchs, many of whom were opposed. Putin had nothing to do with the invasion between zero, and we sat back and allowed the administration to steal all their stuff because they had Russian last names. That's not the rules based order. That's theft. That's right, that's right. And we've delegitimized the very rules based international order that we claimed to be protecting. Made everybody cynical about the American project. And in the meantime, we have really presented the first major threat that you and I have seen in our lifetimes, to the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. Yes. Because, you know, in all of this, we've driven, we've driven Russia and in some ways Iran into the loving embrace of China. And you now have. Turkey, the Gulf states. Exactly. Malaysia, like the the parts of the world are getting richer and stronger, are fleeing from us. That's not good. I know a guy who, who is a lawyer who works in the petroleum industry, and he's the guy who handles all the legal implications of the the contracts, the rapidly developing contracts that are written when there's a, petroleum supertanker. Yes. Traveling. He irons out the details of how things are going to be denominated. He just like 20 years ago, he's explaining to me that these are all no matter where you are in the world, these are pretty much transacted in U.S. dollars. Yes. That's just one of the, unifying forces behind it. It's starting to not be the case, I know anymore. And that's very chilling, because that we've all benefited from that to a very significant. Our prosperity hangs on it. So in the name of, protecting the rules based international order with weakened it in the name of maintaining economic and military security for the United States, we've made ourselves more vulnerable. And so one has to ask, at what point will the American people, and more importantly, their elected representatives in Congress, get wise enough to say, we've been listening to the wrong voices. We've got to stop deferring to the military experts, who will always have incentive to tell us that they need more cowbell. Liz Cheney and Toria Nuland don't know what they're talking about. Okay, so speaking of curious ironies, my my last question, I think about this all the time, but I'm not an expert. You are. And it's about your state, Utah, which is an amazing place, a lovely place most conservative state was always thought to be just because of its population. Heavily LDS, inherently conservative people, prosperous, family oriented, just great in my opinion. How did a state like Utah wind up with a governor and lieutenant governor who were just, like, open out of the closet liberals? Like, what? Is that. Right? Let me let me speak broadly. I mean, I, I don't know that I would characterize them the way you did, but I understand the point. Well, that's just the way it looks to me from afar. But, first of all, well, I believe that the people in my state, the state of Utah, I think we're one of the most conservative states. I think we're naturally skeptical of government. Yeah. We're naturally inclined to respect the Constitution and understand the need for limitations on power. We're actually the only faith that I'm aware of that has, as a matter of of doctrinal belief, the fact that the US Constitution was written by wise men, raised up by God to that very purpose. And our constitutional interest. As an observer of Mormons, my whole life was on a basic level, they're conservative like. They believe in sobriety and faithfulness. They don't like debt. Working hard is like a precept of the religion. It seems like they're in on the most basic level, they're conservative. Yes. So getting back to the Neil Maxwell quote that I gave you a minute ago. Yeah. About America being in charge. Yeah. Nation of India. Led by Sweden. Governed by Swedes. You top for being one of the most conservative states. Culturally, economically, historically, we have no conservative media establishment to speak up. We've sure we've got some great, people on, radio station or two who provide competing voices, but as far as our two statewide, print media outlets, Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune, both very liberal. How can the Deseret News, which I think was always owned by the LDS church, is it still? Yes it is. Well, how does that work? Well, the Deseret News seems to be defining deviancy downward, defining how it is. And in reference to where The Salt Lake Tribune goes. And as the Salt Lake Tribune is moved further and further to the left. The Deseret News, from my vantage point, is more or less tracked with it and gotten by by saying, look, we're not as bad as they are. We're the conservative ones. And in many respects, they they still maintain elements of conservatism. They are, they're conservative in the sense that they will always advocate for the benefits of, rule of law. They're not going to call for the defunding of the police. They are pro religion, pro God, pro-family and that sort of thing. And so in that respect, they, they, they're able to portray themselves and I think generally view themselves as Utah's more conservative paper, but they ignore the fact that, outside of those areas where, consistent with the Deseret News ownership and the also the ownership of the broadcast media entity that, is also owned by the church, KSL even though they, are themselves defenders of religion, of families and of some conservative values, they're run by the journalistic profession, the Guild, so to speak. And the Guild, as you know, journalists by and large, are liberal. Now, there are a lot of professions that are like that. My profession. I'm a lawyer. Lawyers lean left also, but I'm not aware of any profession that leans more consistently to the left than journalists. And so these journalists maybe still see themselves as the more conservative paper, but in their heart, in their writing and in their broadcast messaging, they lean left, at least far to the left of where most of Utah's population goes. But Spencer Cox, really your governor? But he just seems again, you know him. It's your state. I don't know him, but just looking at it, it's like that guy should be governor of Vermont or California or New Jersey or some sort of failed state like that. Why are you. Yeah, I wouldn't put him, in that category. Certainly. But there are those who have concerns with him. There certainly policy decisions that he's made, and that I haven't agreed with. But I think what you're getting at is that sometimes Utahns tend to elect people who, on their first elected, speak more like conservatives and then behave a little bit less like conservatives over time. And some of this goes back to this point that, while we are a conservative state, we have no conservative media establishment to speak of other than that, you know, a small cadre of very effective, radio personalities. But the print media statewide and the statewide broadcast entities, radio and television leaned pretty consistently to the left. And that has an impact. So, too, we've got a lot of universities in Utah, know like but ten of them. And they, like most academic institutions have tended to lean left now, not as far left as what you see it, you know, Harvard and, Princeton and and frankly, most universities in America, but definitely much farther left than they used to be and much farther left than most Utahns are. Those things are having an effect and it's causing problems. It does cause me concern. You wanna hear my theory? Yeah. I think you chose too nice and has been too nice for too long. And the people who live there. I say this as a native Californian, so I saw this happen. They've lost sight of the central truth in life, which is it takes a long time to build something functional and beautiful, and it can be destroyed very, very quickly, very quickly. California, obviously the greatest state this country ever produced. And now it's in some ways the worst. And it happened in a generation, in my lifetime. And I just don't think the people of Utah understand how quickly their state could become a swamp. California's become a slum. And that could happen because, you know, you're like, you're comfortable, you're prosperous. You're like, you know, we've been too mean, like putting people in prison for rape. Like, maybe we shouldn't do that. Like, and you don't understand that the second you allow disorder, slovenly ness that, like you, the whole thing can disappear. In ten years. Right. And and in a place like Utah, where the Republican Party has been dominate, dominant for most of my lifetime. Not all of it, but most of it. There is sometimes an assumption that if they're Republican, they are going to do conservative things now. But in the meantime, there are a lot of people who will push agenda items that are themselves, very carefully disguised, progressive dream pieces. For example, there was a voter initiative pushed through a few years ago that tried to take away some of the redistricting, legislative redistricting authority from the Utah legislature and put it in an independent, bipartisan or nonpartisan commission. You see where this is going? I mean, any time you put it in the hands of unelected, unaccountable experts, the way this thing works, particularly in conservative state, it's going to move you further to the left. So it passed. It's one of the reasons I'm not a big fan of voter initiatives. I we've got a Republican form of government. We shouldn't dilute it with these. But you've got legislatures for a reason. I think it's better to have them do it. But regardless, it's allowed. Under our state constitution. It passed well, our legislature as well. It needed to modified what they did so as to keep the legislature more or less, you know, still in charge of the ultimate product are Utah Supreme Court five members on it. All five of those members have been appointed by Republican governors and confirmed by our Utah State Senate. Republican dominant for many decades. All five of them recently agreed that the legislature's modification of the original, redistricting reform, was unconstitutional under our state constitution. This is how we get brought into a progressive system, bit by bit by bit, by the appeal of the, the, the allure of the, scientific expertise and the use of the left's touch. Words like the partizan gerrymandering and the rigged legislative districts. That's the whole point. It's since the founding, it's been understood that this is how it works. The legislative body, it's a. Political prop. Alone can make this law. But I mean, suit Utah is successful and conservative because of its population, because of its this is my view. It's the dominant religion in the state. Isn't, in my view, is inherently conservative in a, you know, nonpolitical, nonpartisan way. But just. Work hard enough. Don't accrue debt. Stay married, has it? There were some people who said, when California begin to collapse. You guys need to build a wall on your western border to keep the Californians out. You didn't do that. I think it was a mistake. But now that you've been flooded with Californians, is there any discussion of. Instituting a probationary period before you let them vote. You know, you come to our state from your failed state. It's almost like we import criminals from Venezuela. You can't vote right away. Why do you allow Californians to vote right away when they come to Utah. Why not a cooling off period of a couple decades? Yeah. I don't know that constitutionally, we could get away with that much about the contours of that have not been entirely clear. But generally speaking, there is an understanding of the under the Constitution that U.S. citizenship means that you can move from one state to another. It's California. You're moving. Literally from, you know, West L.A. to Salt Lake, and you get to bring your values with you. What? That can't be. Some of that happens, but some of it has been surprising. Now, I was last reelected just a year and a half, close to two years ago now. And we did a lot of polling during that debate, during that, campaign and that election process. And when we drilled down on the crosstabs and we evaluated those who had moved in from out of state, including a whole lot who had moved in from California, we were shocked at how conservative they were. Many, if not most of them were more conservative, more supportive of me, then, than a lot of people who had lived in Utah for many decades. They were like. Cuban exiles then. Yeah, I think they the birds of a feather flock together. And if if you've seen the failures of California. And you see that, some of those failures, some of those problems are related to the fact that the California's been intoxicated, by the progressive, lies the false promises of a progressive nirvana. You're not necessarily going to choose. Utah's your next place to live if what you're seeking is another progressive nirvana. And so they tend to be self-selecting. They're voting with their feet and those who choose to go there. Obviously there are exceptions, but by and large, those who have chosen to move to Utah from California recently, I believe, lean more conservative even. That's right. You've seen in a bunch of other places Jackson, Wyoming, for example, Dallas people who leave California liberals because honestly, they hate diversity. That's part of it. They want to live in a whiter place. That's just a fact. I know some of them moved to Bozeman. Funny how that works, right? Well, it should be illegal. By the way, you vote to defund the police, you should be required to live in Oakland for the rest of your life. But. But then they do. They they come with their creepy white guilt, their, you know, terrible attitudes about government, just the kind of decadent nihilist views like that does happen. Yeah, it does. And it reminds me if you ever if you ever read a book called The Naked Communist. No, I read this recently. So it's written by a guy named Cleon Scales. Oh, well. Utah famous guy. Yeah, yeah, a friend of my wife's family, and he was actually at our our wedding. I didn't even know until our wedding day that they were Marx cousins. Father. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Marx. He hasn't. Father. Great man as his mark. I somehow I didn't realize my wife's family was really close to Cleon Scales until our wedding day. And he introduced himself to me in the temple just before a ceremony started, and I was like, wow. The Cleon scales on us here was asked recently by the scouts and family to speak at a at a, gathering of clan scales and fans and family members, honoring his life. And in preparation for that, I read one of his books that I hadn't previously read. I've read a bunch of his other books. But I read The Naked Communist, a book that he, he wrote, I think first back in the 50s, and then continued to update it, periodically until around the time of his death. But he outlines the he outlines the plan by which, those who wanted a more progressive form of government were influenced by Marxist philosophy, generally, and wanted to sort of inculcate a lot of that into the United States. I think we underestimate, as Americans, the extent to which we have been marinating in progressive messaging, which has elements of Marxist philosophy built into it from the time we could crawl, from the time we entered kindergarten, whether you went to public school or private school, even many religious schools, and regardless of whether you where you attended university, unless you went to Hillsdale or a couple of other places, more likely than not. You received a lot of conditioning with progressive ideology. So much so that we almost don't have adequate language as part of our lexicon to communicate the true purpose and function of government. And I think that's how we end up with this mess where we're $35 trillion in debt, adding to it at a rate of $2 trillion a year, with no plan to get out of it because we bought lock, stock and barrel. This idea that government's job, the federal government's job is open ended. It's there to, write all the wrongs, to make everything fair. And that's all a big lie. And that's how we get stuck in it. But if we can reinvigorate this idea that the Constitution and the limited government it guarantees us is our This Election Is Critically Important birthright and that liberty is good, that government expands only at the expense of individual liberty, we'll be better off. We've got a real opportunity with this election. People love to say every time this year's election is critically important. I think this one is especially an especially important inflection point, in addition to the presidential election, where we've got one of the most liberal, progressive and frankly lawless presidential administrations in U.S. history, the Senate's on the line. I think Republicans have a real shot at recapturing the majority. That's happening at the same time when our. Current the Senate Republican leader who is in his 18th year and world record, in the Senate for either party, is going to be stepping down as leader, will have the chance to elect somebody else. And I hope I expect I'm pushing, and messaging to my colleagues constantly. Let's focus before we get to the Who, let's focus on the what. Let's talk about what it is that we envision for this position. We want somebody who will foster, and promote the kind of atmosphere in which individual members and the states they represent, their respective voters can have a voice. Because that voice has been narrowed. It's been narrowed to a very small choke point, and it has not inured to the benefit of the American people. And it's frankly, one of the reasons why we're $35 trillion in debt. Well, I just really, really hope that you're driving the reforms. I know you will be. Senator Mike Lee of Utah, thank you for spending all this time. Thank you.