Feb. 21, 2024 - The Benny Show - Benny Johnson
35:47
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| And so it's interesting for me is, whatever it is about the policies, and I don't know how many of you saw the debates, but I did have my share of differences with Nicky on the debate stage. | ||
| Did you guys like those debates? | ||
| Savage Vavake! | ||
| We had some fun up there. | ||
| Dick Cheney in three-inch heels? | ||
|
unidentified
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That's right, that's right. | |
| Oh, man! | ||
|
unidentified
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See, the thing is, people said you were so gutsy to ask her those three provinces in Ukraine. | |
| I had no doubt in my mind that this woman who was fighting for sending our military equipment to places like Ukraine instead of defending our own border had no clue what province of Ukraine she wants to fight for. | ||
| There was no doubt in my mind. | ||
| She had no clue what she's talking about. | ||
| But I think one of the things you're seeing here is this should be the place where the race ends as of this Saturday. | ||
| I mean, this thing's done. | ||
|
unidentified
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Saturday night, right here. | |
| She made an announcement. | ||
| They did a couple days ago. | ||
| She did a press conference where the announcement was that she would not be dropping out after the South Carolina primary. | ||
| So I have a novel idea, actually, for her. | ||
| She should drop out before the South Carolina primary. | ||
|
unidentified
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And we can add this thing, too. | |
| So I think that works for me. | ||
| But, uh... | ||
|
unidentified
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But, uh... | |
| But regardless... | ||
| I think it's important to people to see what's going on here, right? | ||
| Macro picture. | ||
| It's easy to dunk on a given candidate. | ||
| It's almost not worth the time picking on Nikki individually because she doesn't matter. | ||
| She's a symbol of a deeper cancer in American politics that exists in both parties, by the way. | ||
| This is not a Democrat versus Republican thing, really. | ||
| Basically, there is a system that has long wanted to narrow this down to a two-horse race between Donald Trump and a puppet who they could control, eliminate Donald Trump, And then trot their puppet into the White House. | ||
| Puppet number one is Nikki Haley. | ||
| Now, one of the ways you avoid a problem, and Benny and I have talked about this actually over the course of this campaign, is when you see a problem that's lurking, the best way you solve that problem is first, name it. | ||
| Name it unsparingly. | ||
| Then it makes it very hard for them to enact their plot. | ||
| And so now that became harder when that's hiding in plain sight. | ||
| I mean, this is an example. | ||
| Again, this is not specific to Nikki Haley. | ||
| It's about the system. | ||
| She didn't even compete for delegates in Nevada. | ||
| Ron DeSantis, myself, Donald Trump, we're all in the Nevada caucus. | ||
| She's not even in the Nevada caucus. | ||
| She's going to get basically zero or close to zero delegates here. | ||
| Fewer than five delegates coming out of South Carolina. | ||
| The game isn't to win the delegates, it's to eliminate Trump and then trot her in. | ||
| If they don't want to do that, the backup plan is put her up on no labels, take votes from Trump in the general election, and then, mark my words, we're here sitting around talking about beating Joe Biden. | ||
| It has nothing to do with it. | ||
| It's beside the point. | ||
| Joe Biden's not going to be the nominee. | ||
| And so one of the things we've got to do better as a movement is we've got to skate to where the puck is going. | ||
| One step ahead. | ||
| And then, you know, Benny, you're good at this. | ||
| I think it takes people who are a little bit unshackled to say in public what they'll say in private at the dinner table. | ||
| You've got a lot of other people that agree with things you'll say, but they're not as brave to be able to say them out loud. | ||
| Saying it out loud is important, though, because it actually forces the system to acknowledge its own hypocrisy. | ||
| And so that's what's going on with Nikki. | ||
| The people who are putting her up are the same people who have been paying for the lawsuits to keep Donald Trump off the ballot in a game where they're not even collecting delegates. | ||
| The obvious game is to eliminate Trump from the ballot. | ||
| But once you say it, it then becomes a lot harder for them to act out the plot. | ||
| And that's why our side needs to do, I think, a lot better of a job than we have in staying one step ahead in whatever small way I can. | ||
| I've been doing it in this race, and I'm going to do it for the rest of this year until we get Trump elected. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
|
unidentified
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You... | |
| The night that you decided to suspend your campaign, you endorsed Donald Trump on stage. | ||
| And now, ever since then, 24 hours later, you joined Trump on stage. | ||
| And everybody starts yelling VP, VP, VP at you with Donald Trump on stage. | ||
| Since then, Trump calls you a dynamo. | ||
| Trump says, Vivek, he's perfect, he's perfect. | ||
| You've clearly become close because y 'all are strolling in as a couple with Melania and Aporva into Mar-a-Lago last weekend. | ||
| And Trump speaks really highly of you. | ||
| Trump doesn't speak very highly of a lot of people who ran against him for president. | ||
| Just look at Chris Christie, see Chris Christie, right? | ||
| Donald Trump says that Ron DeSantis should be manning a pizza place or something like that. | ||
| And Donald Trump is obviously going really hard at Nikki Haley right now. | ||
| What's your relationship like with Donald Trump? | ||
| How has that changed since you decided to suspend your campaign? | ||
| What's that ongoing process? | ||
| Because I want to ask a question probably for the people here in the room right now, and certainly for my audience, which is everyone wants that energy, that Vivek energy that we saw on the stage. | ||
| We want that energy infused into the party, right? | ||
| Like, we want that infusion, not the kind of infusions Joe Biden gets every night, okay? | ||
| Different. | ||
| We want that young, energy, quick-witted, spry. | ||
| You're sitting there going, Christian Welker, you're a Russia collusion gate hoaxer. | ||
| Why are you asking questions at a Republican debate? | ||
| Right? | ||
| Why isn't Tucker Carlson asking a question? | ||
| Why isn't Elon Musk asking a question? | ||
| And why is Ronald McDaniel hiring these clowns to actually run our party and run our party's debates? | ||
| But I'll tell you this is... | ||
| So the Donald Trump I've Rent from The Donald Trump I've Rent from The Donald Trump I've Rent from The Donald Trump I've We've gotten to know each other much better over the last year, and even much better over the last month and a half or so. | ||
| And I will say that I have been most impressed. | ||
| I mean, there's a lot of everyone knows publicly about his policies, and he was successful in the country, and that's why he's the runaway likelihood to be the next president. | ||
| What impressed me the most about him is he's also actually very receptive to the best ideas presented to him in the right way. | ||
| He's not a guy who's just dogmatic, doesn't want to list other people. | ||
| To the contrary, I think he's actually really open-minded to any idea that's going to make this country a greater country. | ||
| And so I think that that's actually the mark of a true leader. | ||
| And one of my goals for this year is to do whatever small part I can to make sure the public that's voting for their president sees who that actual president is. | ||
| Rather than the filtered nonsense that much of the mainstream media has created for the American public. | ||
| And if we do that in the next 10 months, I think this could be a Reagan 1980-1984 style landslide for the country. | ||
| And I think we're going to do our homework and deliver it. | ||
| So that's why I think it's happening. | ||
| You've been a surrogate. | ||
| It doesn't seem like... | ||
| I mean, maybe you can say this to your fans in the room. | ||
| You're not going away. | ||
| No, I'm not going anywhere. | ||
| We're sticking around. | ||
| Do whatever we can for this country. | ||
|
unidentified
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I say this often. | |
| I said this to the room in Aiken earlier. | ||
| I was so impressed with this manufacturing facility, by the way. | ||
| People working hard throughout, came out, true patriots, proud of what they're doing for this country. | ||
| It's basically the only source of having these glass fibers that are actually made in the United States, not in China, that our defense industrial base depends on. | ||
| But I'll tell you what I told them, is this country isn't going to be saved. | ||
| By some messiah coming from on high from the White House. | ||
| Not Donald Trump, not me, not anybody else. | ||
| It doesn't work that way. | ||
| We each have our own role to play. | ||
| And so I can tell you, I've gotten to know Donald Trump. | ||
| Donald Trump is going to play his role. | ||
| I promise you I'm going to play mine. | ||
| You're playing yours, man. | ||
| I think there's an important role for the media, especially outside of the corporate media, to play its role in highlighting what those who live in the confines of corporate media are unwilling to touch. | ||
| But it's going to require... | ||
| Every one of you in this room to play your part too. | ||
| And a hard thing to do is look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, what are my unique God-given gifts? | ||
| Every one of us has our own unique gifts that nobody else has. | ||
| The hard part is figuring out what that is. | ||
| But once you figure that out, then you have a duty to say, how am I going to use those God-given gifts to do what is right, including what is right for this country? | ||
| In the short time that we have, and I do think it's a short time that we have. | ||
| I mean, we have kids of similar age. | ||
| If our kids are in high school before we get this right, I don't think we have a country left. | ||
| And if we screw that up, we'll be the generation that squandered what our founding fathers gave us 250 years ago. | ||
| That comes with a sense of responsibility. | ||
| And so that's when I tell you I'm not going anywhere. | ||
| That's what guides me. | ||
| I don't know what position it's going to be. | ||
| I don't know if it's going to be in the government, out of the government, whatever it is. | ||
| I'm going to do my part to use my God-given gifts to help save this country. | ||
| And if each of you do, too, I'm confident we're going to be better off. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| There was an audible gasp in the debate stage. | ||
| There was a... | ||
|
unidentified
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a couple of times. | |
| But the one that was so visceral from the left-wingers that the RNC inexplicably hires to put on our debates was when you said, Joe Biden's not going to be their nominee. | ||
| Joe Biden's not going to be running for president in 2024. | ||
| You need to shut up and tell us the real game plan here. | ||
| Because you're pulling a fraud on the American people. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| It seems like you were ahead of the curve. | ||
| Because now there's reports out that Joe Biden can't even put himself to bed at night, right? | ||
| That Joe Biden couldn't stand trial because he's mentally incapacitated. | ||
| That Joe Biden, they wouldn't even bring charges. | ||
| Because the jury wouldn't convict because they'd be like, this guy's dementia he's wearing depends. | ||
| You know, his applesauce dribbling down his face, right? | ||
| And his son's the smartest guy he's ever met. | ||
| And the guy who is mentally unable to stand trial as a witness is somehow fit to run the United States. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Which doesn't make sense, which is what they want us to see. | ||
| And so when I said this, Benny, on the debate stage that night, the media hit me for it. | ||
| I've earned this label a couple of times late in the campaign, conspiracy theorist. | ||
| I'm not a conspiracy theorist. | ||
| I'm a conspiracy realist. | ||
| Which is to say that I observe incentives. | ||
| What are the incentives hiding in plain sight? | ||
| And then do the behaviors you see in a system match those incentives? | ||
| Here's the incentives right now. | ||
| Joe Biden has stopped serving as a useful puppet for the managerial class that once wielded him as a pawn. | ||
| So they've chewed him up, spit him out. | ||
| Now it's time for the next puppet. | ||
| Initially, his cognitive deficits, when they were... | ||
| Relatively of a milder form, those are actually not a bug. | ||
| They were a feature. | ||
| That's convenient if you want to wield your puppet. | ||
| But eventually, if the puppet has a system malfunction, like at this point, the thing is actually just a total reboot, now they need to actually move him to one side. | ||
| They have a Kamala Harris problem. | ||
| That's the one thing. | ||
| It's probably the smartest decision that Jill Biden ever made. | ||
| I don't think Joe Biden made the decision, but that his wife, Dr. Jill... | ||
| With that Ph.D. comes some intelligence there. | ||
|
unidentified
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Not a real doctor. | |
| That was the insurance policy. | ||
| And so if they move Joe Biden to one side, they're saddled with Kamala Harris, which they understand is even a worse albatross. | ||
| So that protects Biden to a degree, which predicts where they're actually going to go with this. | ||
| It has to be somebody who allows them to sidestep the allegations of racism and sexism while actually still serving as a puppet who they can control. | ||
| That narrows down the field. | ||
| So who is it going to be? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Again, I'm not theorizing it's one person. | ||
| Michelle Obama fits the bill. | ||
| To a more limited degree, Hillary Clinton checks the woman card. | ||
| But whatever it is, it is going to be another puppet who they can control. | ||
| And I worry that our side, we fall into this. | ||
| Why did I say it on the debate stage? | ||
| I mean, Ronna McDaniel, among the many, I would say... | ||
| Interesting choices she made over the course of running the party was naming the pledge to be on the debate stage the Beat Joe Biden pledge. | ||
| And I had extensive conversations with her. | ||
| I said, I don't think, I mean, it seems like a silly pledge to make because I don't think we're going to actually be running against Joe Biden. | ||
| She said, we're not changing it. | ||
| It's a Beat Joe Biden pledge, which is why I was on the stage. | ||
| I said, this whole thing is a farce that we're actually even going to be competing against a guy who they've lulled us into submission. | ||
| So right now we're feeling pretty good. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| Most of us are, at least about how things are going to turn out in November. | ||
| That's where they want us, actually. | ||
| Then they're going to wait for the trials to start. | ||
| Then they're going to wait for the lawfare to mature a little bit. | ||
| They're not taking their chances with one case. | ||
| They're not taking their chances with two. | ||
| It's like five. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right? | |
| With multiple extrajudicial removals from the ballot. | ||
| Playing out into the spring. | ||
| Once the Nicky thing doesn't play out, the next step is going to be, in the thick of those trials, find a new puppet. | ||
|
unidentified
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If they couldn't do it in the Republican Party, do it through the Democratic Party. | |
| That's what's actually coming this year. | ||
| So this is going to be a very complicated year. | ||
| When I tell you I think that this can be a Reagan 1980-style landslide, I mean it. | ||
| But it's not going to be on the other side of the mountain. | ||
| It's not going to be on this side of the mountain. | ||
| It's on the other side of climbing a very steep mountain that we get there. | ||
| And I think if we fall into this trap of complacency, that's actually our biggest risk, is to think that, okay, Joe Biden's senile. | ||
| Most of the country doesn't like his record. | ||
| Get ready for a swap-out that could come quite late in the cycle, precisely when they have tried every bit they can to clip Trump's own wings with his unconstitutional lawfare. | ||
| That's what's coming this year. | ||
| So if you think 2020 or 2016 was a mess, wait till you see what's happening in 2024. | ||
| But if we're ready for it, I think we will still emerge victorious on the other side in a way that we frankly weren't in 2020. | ||
| And now's our moment to get our act together. | ||
| So, thanks. | ||
| Based on what you just said right there, please, Democrats, I'm begging you, anyone watching or listening inside the DNC, run Hillary again. | ||
| Please. | ||
|
unidentified
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Please. | |
| I beg you, run the Hildebeest. | ||
| I personally think it's going to be Michelle Obama. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Yep. | ||
| You think Michelle Obama? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And people say she doesn't want to run. | ||
| She doesn't have any choice in the matter, really. | ||
| I mean, the idea that her choice actually matters. | ||
| It doesn't matter. | ||
| These people are puppets. | ||
| They're pawns. | ||
| Most of them are coin-operated, indirectly or directly. | ||
| And so that allows the donor class to play. | ||
| I mean, Nikki Haley is the same thing. | ||
| It's not just Democrats. | ||
| But I think that the people who control their puppets know what they're doing. | ||
| And they will pick the one that maximally sidesteps their Kamala Harris problem while also maximizing their odds of pulling a short-term stint that rushes their puppet over the finish line. | ||
|
unidentified
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So if I had to pick today, I think that's who it's going to be. | |
| But the way we prepare for that is, We have to stand for our own agenda. | ||
| I think we Republicans, we sometimes have fallen into this trap of criticizing Biden. | ||
| Well, if that's all our vision is, then they remove Biden, switch him out, we've wasted six months, versus actually standing for our own vision that the people we elect to run the government should run the government, not the bureaucrats. | ||
| That the moral duty of U.S. leaders is to this country's citizens, not another one. | ||
| That you shouldn't be making money or profiting off your time in public service. | ||
| It's called public service, not self-service for a reason. | ||
| These are not Democrat ideas or Republican ideas. | ||
| It's the foundation of America First, which is far bigger than one political party. | ||
| But that's what I want to see us level up and do a little bit more of, is embrace what we actually stand for. | ||
| And then it matters less when they swap one puppet out for another. | ||
| We've made that less relevant because it didn't matter who we were running against. | ||
| What mattered were the values that we were actually running for? | ||
| And one of the best remarks I heard from President Trump, actually, I think it must have been last night. | ||
| It was last night, yeah, at the town hall he did in South Carolina, was towards the end, people were asking about vengeance. | ||
| He said, no, no, you know what my vengeance is going to be? | ||
| Success will be my vengeance. | ||
| Success is unified. | ||
| And I think with that mentality, it now matters a lot less who they run, and that's what I want to see more of from our side. | ||
| I think Trump is bringing that, too, and has leveled up, even relative to where he was a few years ago, that I think the Donald Trump we're going to get in the second term is going to actually, in a good way, make the first pale in comparison. | ||
| That's what I've seen from him, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that's what happens. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Shh. | ||
| So, you hear it from the audience. | ||
| This is a two-parter. | ||
| Tough one. | ||
| One, how is Donald Trump aging in reverse? | ||
| You know him better than many. | ||
| Two, you heard him on stage last night, not too far from here, in this state, and the host on Fox News, on the top of her list, her VP, she goes, And the crowd goes wild. | ||
| And in this crowd, we hear nothing but VP being chanted in this brewery. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| For those on the live stream, they're not chanting Nikki, I assure you. | ||
| You know it's a good question you're going to get, and I know you get it three times a day. | ||
| What has that conversation been like? | ||
| Has there been any conversation? | ||
| But more importantly, you personally, on like a... | ||
| On a physical level, on a spiritual level, on a family level, would you even be wanting that type of responsibility? | ||
| Would you be prepared for that? | ||
| What's your gut say? | ||
| So I'm not going to go into this out of respect to President Trump and his ability to lead, going to go into any conversations or anything like that, but I will say this is, there's many ways to drive change in this country. | ||
| But the person who leads the executive branch deserves to actually make those decisions for himself. | ||
| So I think what matters much less is my gut. | ||
| I think the gut of the person who's actually setting his vision for his next administration, that's what matters most. | ||
| Because if some way, you know, whoever's in that spot, but it wasn't quite the right fit, but you did it because you thought it was going to be more electorally successful or whatever, no, that's not going to work. | ||
| So I think that part of the mistake is we've, with the exception of Trump, mostly had presidents who didn't actually run the executive branch. | ||
| They themselves were puppets. | ||
| I think what's unique about Donald Trump is he is going to be a president who actually runs the branch of government that he's elected to run. | ||
| And that means these decisions should be made exclusively by him. | ||
| And I think the VP is not the only important decision that he's going to have to make when it comes to staffing this next administration. | ||
| Every cabinet position. | ||
| It's not just the cabinet positions. | ||
| It's even positions, certainly ones that I'm not going to be the person to take, but are really important. | ||
| Who runs the Office of Personnel Management? | ||
| Who runs personnel selection at the White House? | ||
| Who runs the Office of Management and Budget, the budgeting process, at a moment worth $34 trillion in the hole? | ||
| And so I think, you know, if you're the news media or if in the context of, obviously, the VP selection is the next big selection, there's a temptation to latch on to that. | ||
| I think that's an important position. | ||
| I think that there are many important positions. | ||
| And so my commitment is, I'm going to do whatever I can maximally do to have a positive impact on this country. | ||
| And respect the decision that Donald Trump makes and how he wants to run that administration. | ||
| And whatever form that takes, I'm ready for it. | ||
| That's my honest answer. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| I think I speak for everyone in this room that regardless of whatever position that you have, we all want you to fire at least 50% of the federal government. | ||
| Let's up that a little bit. | ||
|
unidentified
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We're shooting for 75. He says we're shooting for 75. Come on! | |
| Come on! | ||
| So, we see these problems on our border. | ||
| We see the problems with our budgets. | ||
| We see the problems with our elites wanting to fund every border in the world except for our own. | ||
| Wanting to rob from our children, our grandchildren. | ||
| I see some little children, like some... | ||
| Some parents actually holding their... | ||
| Any parents in the audience tonight? | ||
| Mothers, fathers, grandparents? | ||
| God bless all of you. | ||
| Do you have the same fear that I do, having kids? | ||
| They're like, we might not have a country, right? | ||
| If we keep messing around with the future of this nation, then we are going to be the first generation in American history. | ||
| What a curse to leave this place worse for our children. | ||
| What an awful thing to hang around our necks. | ||
| And so we see the root of the problem being the federal government and the elites who run it. | ||
| What a behemoth. | ||
| What a giant to carve up. | ||
| Talk us through. | ||
| It's a great talking point, right? | ||
| Oh, that'd be great to fire him. | ||
| How does it actually happen, right? | ||
| So I'll talk about the technical piece, but there's a philosophical piece that's actually even more important. | ||
| The technical piece is actually pretty simple. | ||
| So the thing that stopped most presidents, even President Trump in the first term, Was a lot of the bureaucrats who said, you can't fire employees because they have these things called civil service protections that stop them from being fired. | ||
| And it's true there are civil service protections. | ||
| I can't fire you because I disagree with you on gun control if you work at the FTC. | ||
| Okay, fine. | ||
| Agree or not, even if I'm the president, that's what the rules say. | ||
| I can't do that. | ||
| There's about 4 million employees in the federal government, except for about 3,000 of them. | ||
| Who are in policymaking positions. | ||
| The other 3.7 million can't be fired that way. | ||
| However, read the law. | ||
| That does not apply to mass firings. | ||
| It only applies to individual firings, because think of the logic. | ||
| The logic is I shouldn't be able to discriminate against you for your views. | ||
| But if I'm just saying, eyes closed, there's too many people in this room, and we need to cut about 75% of them. | ||
| Hell or high water, we're getting that done. | ||
| Not bringing a chisel, but a chainsaw. | ||
| A, that's what needs to be done, and B, that's what the law already permits you to do. | ||
| And so I think it's with that depth of understanding of the Constitution, combine that with a chief executive who's been hardened by that experience, and Donald Trump, I can tell you, has been in a good way hardened by that experience. | ||
| Combine that, and that second term is going to make even an excellent first term look modest in comparison to what I think is about to be delivered. | ||
| Now, the philosophical part underlying this is important to understand, right? | ||
| Because we fall into this trap, I've fallen into this trap, of thinking, you know, the deep state is run by people who wish to oppress us because they hate us and they're antithetical to us. | ||
| I'm going to ask you to see it a little differently. | ||
| If you're going to get to the truth of the matter, they believe they're doing what they're doing, not out of malice. | ||
| But out of benevolence, actually. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| So the people in the so-called deep state, the deep state means the people who we did not elect to run the government, who are actually exercising political power, the millions of unelected bureaucrats in D.C., they believe that we the people can't be trusted to act in our own interests. | ||
| Or else we would have a planet that's burning itself on fire. | ||
| Or else we'll have racial injustices and other intolerable inequities. | ||
| And so we the people can't actually be trusted. | ||
| So we can tell ourselves the myth that we the people create a government that's accountable to us. | ||
| And the people need that myth. | ||
| They need that noble lie. | ||
| That's what the people need to be told. | ||
| Feed them their mana from heaven. | ||
| But it's a false mana because what really is happening is that we're doing what's best for them. | ||
| Once you see it that way, you realize that's actually far more dangerous, but far more consistent with human history. | ||
| So we fought the American Revolution in 1776 to actually defeat that attitude. | ||
| So for most of human history, Old World Europe, Old World England, King George, on before, they believed the idea that we the people could create a government accountable to us was crazy talk. | ||
| The agreement that we, the people, would cast a ballot at the ballot box every November. | ||
| That's a wild idea, that you get to speak your mind as long as I get to in return. | ||
| The belief for most of human history was you can't run a country this way. | ||
| And so, the thing to understand, not in an angry way. | ||
| Sometimes when you're angry, you lose your clarity. | ||
| So this is not for or against, not anything. | ||
| Just seeing what's going on. | ||
| What we're actually seeing is a reversion to the norm of human history. | ||
| See, what happened in 1776, that was the exception. | ||
| So we have to embrace that we're the weird ones, actually. | ||
| That's what makes America great. | ||
| That's what makes America itself, is that we stand up to the current of the entirety of human history that is, for better or worse, important part. | ||
| because... | ||
| We people still say hell no to some monarch, even if you want to get it right for us, even if you start with the best of intentions. | ||
| You can take your best of intentions and go back to the old world, because in the new world, in the United States of America, on this side of 1776, this is how we do it, through self-governance over aristocracy. | ||
| And so what we're seeing in that deep state today is actually that ugly old world King George mentality rearing its head again. | ||
| And that's why we live in a 1776 moment right now. | ||
| And it only took a few people at our founding. | ||
| I mean, it was, you know, a room full of people, fewer than the number of people in this room, who wrote the plan, the operating manual, it's called the U.S. Constitution, at the Constitutional Convention in 89, that set into motion a country that 250 years later is still the greatest country known to all of mankind. | ||
| And so it doesn't take that many of us, but it takes a few of us at least, Willing to step up and actually get it right. | ||
| That's the moment we live in right now. | ||
| so thank you I promise you I'm not paying them. | ||
| These guys were young too. | ||
| The founders were young. | ||
| I'm 37. These guys were younger than me. | ||
| Jefferson was 33. We're younger than both of us. | ||
| You're younger than me. | ||
| I'm 38. Jefferson was 33, wrote the Declaration, invented the swivel chair. | ||
| He actually invented an early version of the polygraph test, believe it or not. | ||
| Thomas Jefferson, not a lot of people know that. | ||
| So these guys, they were... | ||
| Today, what would you say? | ||
| A guy who's writing the Declaration of Independence but also says, hey, I feel a little tired the way I'm sitting around in one chair. | ||
| I want to invent a swivel chair. | ||
| You say, you're not an expert. | ||
| You didn't get a degree in swivel chair engineering at four years in college tech or whatever. | ||
| So you can't do that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Shut up. | |
| Sit down. | ||
| Do as you're told. | ||
| That's what we teach people today. | ||
| We just got to break the boundaries, man. | ||
| We have this class of this culture of expertise that didn't exist in our founding. | ||
| These guys believe that if you want to figure out something and do it, you figure out and do it. | ||
| Robert Livingston, actually, he was actually an ambassador to France. | ||
| Part-time inventing one of the key components of the steamship. | ||
| We wouldn't have ever had the steamship if it wasn't for Robert Livingston, who was one of the co-signers of the Declaration of Independence, who was an ambassador to France who did it as a part-time hobby. | ||
| And so I think we want that culture of people who tinker in their garages a little bit, while working at an insurance company or whatever one does during the day. | ||
| And I think that that's part of that inner animal spirit. | ||
| That we've lost in this country, but it's not permanently lost. | ||
| It's just been tamed a little bit, right? | ||
| That inner sheep has taken over, and the inner lion has gone dormant. | ||
| And I think we just need to wake up that inner lion, that inner animal spirit. | ||
| That's what Make America Great Again is all about. | ||
| It's not just about the country, it's about the spirit, the American, that resides in each of us. | ||
| And, you know, I think it starts with Donald Trump, but it ends with you. | ||
| That's who it starts with. | ||
| I'm pumped up for it. | ||
| Is that going to be your next slogan when you run for president? | ||
|
unidentified
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Awaken your inner animal spirits. | |
| Come on! | ||
| Come, America, Hark! | ||
| Awaken your inner animal spirit. | ||
| Who would be down with that? | ||
| I would totally be down with that. | ||
| So, you're talking about entrepreneurship. | ||
| You're an entrepreneur. | ||
| Donald Trump's an entrepreneur. | ||
| Elon Musk is an entrepreneur. | ||
| Elon Musk is one of those guys who knows what a broken, failed society looks like, because he came from one, and who immigrated here and has now become the richest man in the world based on American principles and what this country could give to him. | ||
| And you know Elon very well. | ||
| He communicates with you, talks to you, talks about you publicly, you do spaces together on X. Tell us about Elon. | ||
| Where he's gone from being very politically agnostic, I would say, to suddenly being super-based and just very common sense. | ||
| Still doesn't seem like a party man. | ||
| He's just like, this is what's happening in the world. | ||
| And how do we get more of that? | ||
| How do we bring Elon more onto the field? | ||
| He's the closest thing I've met to a founding father in today's environment. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Wow. | ||
| I actually believe that as I've gotten to know him. | ||
| He just doesn't believe in constraints, right? | ||
| And I think that that's part of what, you know, why he and I think have gelled really well together, but what he's achieved at a scale that's far beyond even what I've achieved, it's part of that spirit of just believing that whatever is necessary is possible, right? | ||
| If it's necessary, then humankind's going to figure out a way to get there. | ||
| And there's two kinds of problems that one might tackle. | ||
| There's problems of nature. | ||
| A lot of those are the problems that Elon's tackling. | ||
| How do you actually get a vehicle from here to Mars? | ||
| Call it what you want. | ||
| How do you actually solve some of the greatest problems with this planet? | ||
| It's not Elon, but nuclear fusion. | ||
| That's something that actually could be important to the future of this country. | ||
| Problems of nature are tough nuts to crack. | ||
| And sometimes we get them and sometimes we don't. | ||
| But the problems we're talking about tackling are actually man-made problems. | ||
| And every man-made problem has a man-made solution. | ||
| And so I think part of the role of the guys like Elon is, you know, I don't think he should be the president. | ||
| He won't be the president. | ||
| He wasn't born in this country. | ||
| I don't think he wants to be the president. | ||
| But it brings me back to the point. | ||
| It's our president or vice president or whatever. | ||
| Everybody has their own unique God-given gifts awarded to them by God. | ||
| And everyone has their role to play in reviving this country. | ||
| And I think Elon's role as I see it, and he's already doing it, I think he's really coming in his own, and I think his best days and best years are still ahead of him, is to provide that founding spirit and inspiration that just because somebody told you at an early age of your life that you couldn't do something. | ||
| Has nothing to do with whether or not you're actually going to do it. | ||
| And he was going to succeed at some of his challenges, and he's going to fail at some of his challenges, because he's taken on problems of nature. | ||
| But if he can do that, then we have no excuse not to tackle the man-made problems in our own government and our own country right here at home. | ||
| And those are the problems I'm taking on. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| They're giving me the sign. | ||
| Are you red-pilling Elon Musk? | ||
| You know, we're having good conversations, is what I would say. | ||
| We have good exchanges. | ||
| And he's... | ||
| And like I said, compared to the problems he solved, he's the one person who pushed me. | ||
| Most people say I want to cut 75% of the federal government and they'll say you're crazy. | ||
| Elon also says you're crazy. | ||
| He says that's not enough, right? | ||
|
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And so I think that that's the direction that people like me need to be pushed. | |
| And so I'm grateful for him on that. | ||
| And you know what? | ||
| I think that I'm much more interested. | ||
| I'm less interested even in the current Elon Musk. | ||
| I want to find the next Elon Musk or the next five or the next ten. | ||
|
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In this country and create the space for them to spread their wings. | |
| That's how we get this country back. | ||
| So, final question, because it's important to put a marker down and say that you actually have accomplished a very important firing. | ||
| Because Ronna McDaniel is going to apparently resign. | ||
| We're the South Carolina primaries. | ||
| And the first person to publicly call for that from the RNC stage was Babay. | ||
| And so before we get to 75% of the federal government, the guy's already fired someone that we all wanted to lose our job. | ||
| That's pretty based. | ||
| Parting messages to Rana, but more importantly, I mean, more importantly, all that salt aside. | ||
| The future of the Republican Party. | ||
| How do we fix it? | ||
| What is that future? | ||
| What does it look like? | ||
| Because you're going to be there to help craft it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So I think we as a Republican Party have grown lazy. | ||
| And I don't just mean lazy in the Ronna McDaniel sense of lazy, though that applies too. | ||
| But I mean lazy in a deeper sense of... | ||
| Defining who we even are and what we actually stand for. | ||
| We cannot anymore just be running from something. | ||
| We have got to be running to something. | ||
| And the left is very good at this. | ||
| You've got to give credit where credit's due. | ||
| They'll give you a vision. | ||
| It's not the right vision, but they'll give you something. | ||
| Race, gender, sexuality, climate. | ||
| And we're sitting here criticizing that vision. | ||
| Without offering an alternative vision of our own, what do we stand for? | ||
| Individual, family, nation, four-letter word called God, right? | ||
| I think that beats race, gender, sexuality, and climate if we have the courage to stand for something. | ||
| And so that's what I'm leading us to. | ||
|
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That's what Donald Trump is leading us to. | |
| The people we elect to run the government should run the government. | ||
| They owe a moral duty to the citizens of this country. | ||
| Public service is about serving the public, not yourself. | ||
| And national pride, nationalism, I'll say it, doesn't have to be a bad word when it's grounded on the greatest ideals of a nation known to man. | ||
| That's what we stand for as Republicans. | ||
|
unidentified
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And with that, we're going to dominate this thing. | |
| So, that's where I'm at. | ||
| Thank you guys for having me. |
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