🚨Mexico in Collapse: Americans HOSTAGE Warning As Cartel Rampages, Trump Demands: GET OUT NOW!
Donald Trump’s State of the Union will spotlight Mexico’s cartel-driven collapse, where 1.6M Americans face kidnapping threats amid road blockades in Puerto Vallarta and a State Department warning against travel. Senator Lily Tejas calls Mexico a "narco-state," accusing President Claudia Scheinbaum of cartel ties, while Trump-backed lawmakers like Mike Lee push the Cartel Mark Act to authorize private anti-cartel operations. Chip Roy’s Texas AG campaign ties border failures—citing murders like Jocelyn Nungre—to state sovereignty, opposing federal asylum policies and "Islamification," even as Baltimore’s Jimmy’s Seafood gains fame for defying left-wing media. Meanwhile, Harris’ past with Willie Brown and Newsom’s alleged complicity fuel attacks on Democrats, framing the speech as a clash over "liberty" and economic dominance. [Automatically generated summary]
The President's State of the Union speech is the last to take place before the midterm.
So, expect him to address topics that will define elections across the country.
So, we're talking about the economy, trade and tariffs, and immigration.
This comes amid the backdrop, of course, of the Supreme Court's ruling against his sweeping tariffs last week and the looming threat of potential military action against Iran.
The president has been facing more pressure to focus on domestic issues, but he feels confident about his record.
A handful of Democrats have already indicated they won't be attending tonight.
Last year, you'll remember several Dems held protests, shouted objections, or simply walked out, prompting Democratic Senator John Fetterman to urge his fellow lawmakers to show better decorum this year.
We may, though, see the USA men's hockey team at the speech.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said yesterday he was trying to figure out logistics to accommodate them.
The president invited the team to D.C. as they celebrated their historic win against Canada on Sunday.
You know, it really is hearing from the president of the United States, you know, hearing that he was supporting us and supporting us and all the other athletes and wanting us all to bring home as many gold medals as we can.
So, we're definitely honored to represent him and the millions, hundreds of millions across the country and bringing a gold medal back.
Later this morning, Fox and friends will be speaking with Zach Berensky, the hockey defenseman who dished out the assist that won Team of USA the gold medal.
Has this been the most insane start to any year in human history?
Probably, I think, right?
Probably, maybe since the Civil War.
What could possibly be more life-changing than what's gone on in 2026?
We are just in the last week of February, but 2026 has already been the single most bonkers year of my life.
I just can't, I mean, everything from the Maduro blackbagging, you got the Epstein list that dropped the millions of files, sort of changed the world over.
A guy on the Epstein list arrested last night, Peter Mendelson, he was the ambassador to the United States of America.
This is like the architect of left-wing ideology inside of England.
He was arrested.
A Finnish or Swedish prime minister tried to kill himself last night because he was on the Epstein list.
The change is obviously the world over, the entire resetting of the global order.
It's insane.
AI, America winning, the America winning and defeating Canada, the men and women.
And we're excited to see them tonight, whether in person or here from our humble studio.
So either way, it has just been a rowdy couple of weeks.
And my goodness, what's going to happen next?
Mexico is in total and complete collapse as a bit of a contrast to America.
Mexico is in a state of total lockdown terror.
And we're going to cover that today on the program because it's critically important.
And if you're planning on traveling there or if you have a loved one there, then we're just going to ask you to please like pay attention and heed these warnings.
We're going to go through the potential kidnapping threat and a senator saying that Americans are being hunted and for good reason, obviously, not for good reason that they're being hunted, but the cartels are going to try and exact vengeance.
El Mencho, the most powerful, arguably cartel leader, was killed and killed with the assistance of American special forces, according to the White House.
And so now they are going to look to obviously seek revenge against Americans.
And we are fearful for our fellow Americans.
And so we say all of this as a major warning.
We want all Americans to be safe and sound.
Trump will hold the State of the Union tonight at 9 p.m. sharp.
So get ready.
Join us live.
We'll be live at approximately 7 p.m.
We have a stacked show for you.
Senator Mike Lee and Chip Roy will join us today, as will the owner of Johnny's Seafood that responded to the Huffington Post.
Go F yourselves when they posted a America hating tripe.
And they went thermonuclear viral in ratio of the Huffington Post.
So we're happy to have some Seafood Patriots on the show.
They've had a rowdy 24 hours and so have we, ladies and gentlemen.
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We've been following this very, very closely, what's happening in Mexico, because what happened yesterday was sort of our biggest fear was that this is going to descend into an all-out war on American soil.
We have long warned, and, you know, I have very, very mixed feelings sort of about Israel and Gaza.
And, you know, we talked through it on the show.
It's like, it is what it is.
But here's the thing that I can empathize and sympathize with because I've been down to our border many, many times.
You don't want terrorists living across the border from you.
And this is how close we are, and arguably we are currently right now experiencing major cartel violence all throughout America.
And of course, it just doesn't get covered enough, but we've all seen the rampages and scourges of cartel violence throughout our nation.
Nonetheless, this is how close we are to the cartels waging war on our soil.
Arguably, they already are.
There are millions and millions of pounds of fentanyl that moves into our country, hundreds of thousands of fentanyl deaths, along, of course, with the total wholesale takeover of blocks, cities, and towns by cartels and their agents in our country because Joe Biden opened our border to these people.
It's bad to live next to a terrorist state.
It's something that, again, going to bleed over into your country and harm your people.
And look at this.
The cartels are setting the roads ablaze because El Mencho, one of the most powerful cartel leaders, was yeeted.
And they're going to start exacting revenge and vengeance on Americans because the White House claimed assistance in this killing.
How many Americans live in Mexico?
1.6 million Americans live inside of Mexico.
They're American citizens.
They reside in Mexico.
How many Americans visit Mexico every single year?
Well, there's 40 million outbound trips from America to Mexico every single year.
That is a ton of Americans that are putting themselves in jeopardy that are putting their lives at risk right now.
And so we're here to say a couple of things.
One, maybe Trump will talk about this, but President Trump was right.
Here's what Donald Trump said.
I wonder about Claudia Scheinbaum, the very mysterious and nefarious president of Mexico.
You remember she gave some whinging speech when Donald Trump claimed it was the Gulf of America, not the Gulf of Mexico.
When Donald Trump, when he blackbagged Nicholas Maduro, said Claudia Scheinbaum is not a real president.
And the government is straight up saying, like, and they go through a whole list of how you can be kidnapped in Mexico because they're very, very nervous.
Caroline Levitt, I think we have that clip just moments ago at the White House was out saying, yeah, like, we're really excited.
We're really proud of the fact that we helped target and lead to the apprehension.
And then he died under the El Mencho is his name, the cartel leader.
He died under mysterious circumstances.
He was being taken in a plane.
He died on the plane trip.
So I don't know if he sustained an injury or something when they took him.
Who knows?
These people are incredibly violent.
A lot of these gangs are satanic gangs.
Anyway, like Mexico is just in an absolute state of collapse.
The reason why they want American hostages and the reason why they're taking Puerto Vallarta, for instance, and taking that, taking over the entire city.
I mean, scenes of just absolute terror and horror at the airport.
I mean, look at this.
Insanity.
Just a couple of like, just a couple of clips here.
Like, tourists stuck on the beach, post-apocalyptic scenes everywhere.
Setting the cars ablaze, digging up roads.
And look at this.
This is a map of the terrorist attacks that have taken place across Mexico.
Don't go to Mexico right now.
We're going to have the State of the Union address on America tonight.
America's doing great.
Don't go to Mexico.
Mexico's doing really, really bad.
Absolute and total chaos.
This dude said he did a documentary on the cartel leader.
This is the cartel leader.
Last known photograph.
I once spent five days Mexican cartels to make a docuseries.
They were the scariest, most ruthless people I've ever been around.
Their value of life, their value for life was non-existent.
This guy was the most ruthless of them of all.
Americans fleeing, running on the tarmac.
This would have been Klein and I yesterday as our flight was canceled.
Again, we'll see if we make it today.
Who knows?
Who knows?
Every flight was canceled.
Everybody that I know is in DC had to drive, had to effectively drive to DC.
And some of those people are within driving distance.
We are not.
So whatever.
Flights are being turned around.
The vast majority of flights, thousands of flights were turned around, heading from America into Mexico.
Again, these people are on the other side of the border.
They're setting buses on fire, and now they're using heavy earth movers to dig up the roads.
The reason why they're doing this is they are trapping millions, hundreds of thousands at least, inside of Puerto Vallarta.
This is a famous and very popular tourist destination.
They are creating no way in, no way out.
They're now digging up the roads and blockading the entire city.
What do you think happens next?
It's horrifying.
I think what this will possibly resort to is Vietnam-style evacuations via military helicopter.
We'll see.
Mexican cartel is literally blowing up shit, and people wonder why we want secure borders.
That's exactly right.
And this is what the views look like from the resorts there.
It's horrifying.
Obviously, there have been some great independent journalists who've been capturing this.
Dan Dix is one of them who've been capturing sort of what all the people trying to flee.
But at least they still got their club music and margarita machine still working.
They say that they're running out of food.
People are saying that there's no way out of Puerto Vallarta right now.
They're closing down all of the roads.
I think what happens next, like what could happen next would be very, very scary.
The Mexican military needs to get in there and reconquer the city right now.
Obviously, we are very, very concerned about this.
I did want to make a note because I know that we made a production mistake last night.
We produced a short video where I used a video from Tracy Lane in this account that I was not familiar with at the time.
Tracy Lane is somebody who is an awesome content creator.
I followed her this morning and I incorrectly used a video of her talking about the irony here that liberals.
And I just want to apologize to Tracy Lane.
I sent her a message this morning.
Sorry that I incorrectly used that video and I took down the content, but there are tons of people who clearly are left wingers who are trapped in Mexico next to the cartels.
And I just, I'm struck by the irony of the fact that these people who are, this is the view out of their resort window, that left-wingers, not Tracy Lane, who's an awesome patriot,
but left-wingers will scream for help, demand help from the U.S. government to get the hell out of this cartel violence.
And as soon as they head back to Minnesota or California or Massachusetts, as soon as they land back home, they'll immediately post ICE out propaganda on their social media pages.
They'll immediately fight Trump building a border wall to keep this out of your neighborhood.
I was just struck by the irony of it all that these leftists and libs and people from blue states, people from New York, I'm seeing a lot of this, that are screaming for help right now, are going to immediately return and then do everything that they possibly can to prevent the Trump administration vote against it, donate against it, march in the streets, give up their lives in some circumstances in order to keep the cartel members here in America.
It's the cognitive dissonance that I can't figure out.
This is the thing I can't understand.
And the more you reduce modern day leftism and leftist ideology to its common denominator, it is just total cognitive dissonances holding two ideas that are competing and countervailing and that can't be both true at the same time in your mind.
If you don't like the cartels in Mexico, you shouldn't like the cartels in America.
How about taking a moment and being thankful for ICE and our administration and like saying a prayer for the people that have to live like this every single day?
You know, there are Mexicans that are real.
You know, Mexicans are real, right?
And they have to like live under this threat all the time.
And that's probably why there's so damn many of them in America because that's this threat is reduced, but not zero, based on you and your policies for open borders.
I was like furious about that yesterday.
Anyway, We made a production mistake and used a video and read that in a short video that was not that.
So, okay.
We want to be accurate and we also, you know, sucksteed crow sometimes in humble pie.
And but we always want to apologize when we get them when we make a mistake.
We make plenty of them.
So anyway, but this isn't a mistake.
Like what it is, is an accurate depiction of what every left-winger will do as soon as they get rescued and back home from this.
They will immediately go back to posting about how evil ICE is and how all of the cartel members that live in their neighborhoods are newcomers that we should welcome.
Secretary Rubio and the State Department are absolutely on it.
We hear from Americans directly who are in Mexico because the State Department immediately set up 24-7 phone lines and they're taking hundreds of calls a day, providing Americans on the ground with travel support and advice.
The State Department also has issued new travel advisories and they'll continue to update those as the situation progresses.
So we encourage all Americans in Mexico to, of course, adhere to the guidance provided by the State Department.
Right now, we are unaware of any reports of any Americans being hurt, kidnapped, or killed.
And the Mexican drug cartels know not to lay a finger on a single American or they will pay severe consequences under this president.
And they already are.
This operation, which was carried out successfully by the Mexican authorities, was, of course, supported by the United States, would not have happened without the leadership of President Trump.
He has made it a day one priority to target and go after these vicious drug cartels that have shipped deadly poison to our country for far too long.
He signed an executive order to rightfully designate them as foreign terrorist organizations.
We've seen the president take unilateral lethal action against drug boats sailing through the Caribbean.
And now, of course, we are coordinating and cooperating and pushing the Mexican government to do more to end the scourge of deadly drugs coming through our United States southern border, which, of course, is now secure, thanks to President Trump as well.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is a pro-life administration, the strongest of my lifetime, and something that you should take extremely seriously.
And certainly I do.
And that's why we're doing a whole show.
Warning people, don't travel to Mexico.
We have some more very, very disturbing news about Claudia Scheinbaum and who she is and who controls her.
A massive bombshell last night was dropped live on Fox News by a Mexican senator who decided to take her life into her own hands and come out and expose Claudia Scheinbaum as being a puppet of the narco-terrorist, matching effectively what President Trump has said for a very long time.
Anyway, we are pro-life.
We want you to have your life, to keep your life.
We obviously want dignity throughout all of life, including at the moment of conception, something that my wife and I are going to see on our first ultrasound for our new child tomorrow.
Have you ever gone to one and seen your child's heartbeat?
You know, science still doesn't actually know how it all happens.
There's still no explanation as to how life is formed in all species.
There's no true explanation.
There's no true binaries ones and zeros explanation.
It is a miracle of God.
It just is.
It's amazing how the people that get into the sciences, whether it's Galileo or Max Planck or Albert Einstein, how they always come to the conclusion that the mathematical beauty of the universe can only be described in a creator.
And that creator wants us to create more life.
It's the first thing that he tells us, in fact, in Genesis, the first order from God, the first time God spaketh to Adam.
Go be fruitful and multiply.
Tend to my garden.
Be fruitful and multiply.
Help people multiply with pre-born, ladies and gentlemen.
Help young women who may be in tough situations get their first ultrasound.
You don't pay for one.
With pre-born, they provide tens of thousands of ultrasounds for free every single year.
80,000, actually, just last year.
80,000?
It's amazing.
I mean, that's a genocide.
If you lose that number of people, you can save that number of people.
You can be part of it.
These ultrasounds are an image.
It's the image of God because we are made in God's image.
Two things that God says when he makes us, that we're different from the animals.
He made us like God.
He made us like himself.
We are made in God's image and that God wants us to make more and to create more.
So anyway, I'm just, it means a lot to me, obviously, going in for our ultrasound.
Give the gift of an ultrasound to a young mother who might need to hear her baby's heartbeat for the very first time.
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Let's make this year the biggest for baby saving in history.
I'm just, I actually become overwhelmed with emotion when I think about we're on our fifth child.
It's like so awesome.
It's not the greatest, great, like you could lose everything.
And if you have, like, if you have your kids and your family, like you are the richest man on earth.
And I feel like that, quite frankly.
I'm just profoundly thankful.
And this is why, like, we don't want anybody to obviously have an unnecessary and needless loss of life.
I did want to jump on over here very quickly here and cover that this corrupt, like deeply corrupt Mexican president, Claudia Scheinbaum, who talks about how killing cartel members, who again are vicious, satanic, demonic.
A lot of these gangs like MS-13, they're satanic gangs.
I mean, it's like well documented.
It's like, this is like the Epstein stuff.
A lot of people read between the lines with Epstein.
Like this stuff is like extremely documented.
These are the most evil people on earth.
Anyway, Mexican leaders around the country stand up against the cartels.
They get killed.
President does absolutely nothing.
I'm not a criminal Mexican politician suspected of being in bed with the cartels.
If you're in power in Mexico, there's no doubt that you are in bed with cartels.
And it's a system that it is a system that needs to collapse.
Trump administration is planning a new mission in Mexico against the cartels.
U.S. officials say, you can't stop me.
Trump has chilling warning to Mexico.
And now today, well, less than 24 hours ago, you have on national TV a senator from Mexico straight up detailing precisely how the current president is owned and operated through these evil organizations.
It makes a ton of sense if you look at the way that the government is actually approaching these cartels.
And it makes a ton of sense if you look at actually what's happened to Mexico when you kill one cartel leader.
Mexican President Claudia Scheinbaum responding saying, quote, it's not a minor issue that a senator gave an interview to a foreign media outlet calling for intervention.
Yes, the party has finance, has given, the cartels have given so much money to these politicians, narco-politicians of Morena to get into office, to get the power.
So they protect the Mexican government, protects the cartels.
That is why President Scheinbaum doesn't want the strong American leadership to help Mexico defeat the cartels.
And also, Scheinbaum doesn't want the rest of the world to know what is happening here in Mexico.
We are on the steps to be the next Venezuela.
She is aligned with Venezuela's dictator, with Cuba, and we are losing our country.
They have destroyed our Republican institutions, the Democratic state.
And we must, I think we all Mexicans want and welcome the support of the United States to assist Mexican people against the cartels that have us all in this crisis with the traffic on fentanyl and migrants.
One of the enumerated powers of Congress is found in Article 1, Section 8, gives us the power to grant letters of mark and reprisal.
That's why I've introduced a bill called the Cartel Mark and Reprisal Authorization Act.
I'm the Senate author and sponsor, and my counterpart in the House is Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, fantastic individual.
Look, letters of mark and reprisal have since the American founding allowed the United States through the Congress to authorize privateers to go after organizations, criminal organizations, take loot, whether on land or on sea, return to the United States and receive a premium from the United States for their capture.
So this is a way that the United States could do more with less by harnessing the power of individuals to act when authorized to act by the U.S. Congress.
So, you know, ever since Mexican security forces were able to kill El Mencho, the head of the murderous CJNG gang cartel in Mexico, we've seen our southern neighbor plunge into this awful chaos of violence and terror attacks, all kinds of retaliatory activity.
It's really scary that we share a border with a country that's in the thraws of this awful disruption and under the grip of narco-terrorists who were responsible for the deaths of many, many Americans and for immense suffering throughout their own country and Mexico.
And so it's one of the many reasons why we need letters of mark and reprisal now more than ever.
Yeah, so it's been a very long time since we've used it.
It's fairly common at the American founding.
We've hardly used it since then.
But the point is, we allow people through a letter of mark and reprisal issued by Congress, they can go and they can take their assets.
And insofar as they're able to return to the United States with them, they can receive a reward when they get back to the United States with those assets.
So then this sounds like a perfect opportunity for like an Eric Prince or for some other operator to go and solve a problem across the border of Mexico.
Because I see these guys, like they're flexing with all their gear and they're flexing with all this tactical gear.
Like they have no training.
They have no tech.
They have no AI.
They have like no discombobulator.
I think that you could actually, I think you could actually defeat the cartels relatively easily with a properly trained force.
We got to be clear about the fact that these are sophisticated entities.
Many of them do have training.
A lot of them do have pretty sophisticated equipment.
I don't doubt but that they were able to use all kinds of high-tech tools, including but not limited to artificial intelligence to do what they need to do.
Remember, Benny, the United States government from 2021 through 2024 enriched these cartels to the tune of many tens of billions of dollars through Biden's open border policies.
They brought in 10 to 15 million illegal immigrants into this country for every single one of those individuals.
They got paid many thousands of dollars.
In some circumstances, it was into the tens of thousands of dollars per head.
And that's why we know that they reaped this huge windfall.
With that windfall, they were able to further escalate on the human trafficking front and simultaneously dual task it as part of their drug trafficking operation.
So we have enriched them.
We, our government, through the Biden administration, helped them get very rich and very powerful.
And with that wealth and power, they were able to acquire a lot of what we would call weapons of war.
And so these are to be taken very seriously.
I'm not going to pretend that any effort to defeat them would be easy.
But if we were to pass this legislation, the Cartel Market and Reprisal Authorization Act, I think it would be a step in the right direction toward weakening them, defending our own shores and seizing cartel assets.
I'm just still sort of hopped up on the discombobulator.
I'm sorry, Senator.
I mean, I don't pretend.
I didn't serve in the military.
I don't pretend to be an expert on these things, but it was just really exciting to read now some very detailed long form on what happened with the capture of Nicholas Maduro.
I mean, it's just some of the most badass stuff I've ever read in my life.
It's just really impressive.
It makes you proud to be an American.
We're defeating the Canadians in hockey, both men and women's teams.
It just makes you proud to be an American.
Most gold medals that we've ever won in the Olympics.
It's just like, you know, I know a lot of great athletes, obviously from Utah and from your state.
It just makes you proud to be an American.
And I just kind of like, and this is really selfish of me.
I want to see the discombobulator in action, right?
Like I'd like to see it, you know, I'd like to see it in the daytime.
Yeah.
You know, so it's a kind of anytime you can get a look at that.
Yeah, I just want to, you know, it's time well spent.
Totally.
Okay, so let's move forward here to the SAVE Act.
I mean, obviously, you got what you promised us last time you were on the show live in DC.
You said we are going to get 50.
And here's 50.
And so Susan Collin comes around.
And who knows, you know, what might happen next.
But like, you have the 50 votes.
Now we push to the talking filibuster.
You've sort of detailed exactly how that would work, but perhaps you could give us a status update on where the Senate is right now in initiating that process.
Because if you have 50, that's great, but it still won't, of course, beat a traditional zombie filibuster.
That's something that we have to affirmatively do because it won't occur by default.
So look, the biggest thing that we're facing right now is uncertainty.
And we've got to get Republican senators, ideally all 50, if not more, but at least those 50 who are now supportive of the Save America Act, need to become comfortable with the idea that we need to take to the floor.
We need to make the Democrats who want to filibuster this bill speak.
It shouldn't be that complicated.
It's not that complicated.
It just takes a fair amount of time.
And it's something that hasn't been done in several decades, but it can be done.
Remember, Benny, when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, they had to overcome what I call a cloture deficit that's much bigger than what we're facing here.
We are right now 10 votes shy of achieving cloture.
In the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the day it passed the House of Representatives, it had a cloture deficit of about 26 votes.
They closed that on a bill that's much more complicated than the Save America Act, on a bill that, while it was growing in popularity at the time and had a simple majority of Americans behind it, it wasn't nearly as overwhelmingly popular as the Save America Act is today, where we're at 85% of Americans who support it.
So I think it should be easier to close that gap by putting it on the floor, making the senators wanting to filibuster it actually speak.
Nothing focuses the mind quite like having to speak day after day in order to delay and oppose an overwhelmingly popular piece of legislation as to which there are no legitimate public policy arguments.
So that's what we want to do.
We are expected this week to be voting on some legislation to keep the Department of Homeland Security funded.
The Democrats defunded that.
It's understandable why we'd want to address that right away.
But as soon as we're off of that bill, I hope and continue to ask my colleagues that we turn next to the Save America Act, we put it on the floor, and we make the Democrats filibuster by speaking.
So I think he is speaking truthfully when he says that he will bring it up on the Senate floor and it will get a vote.
He has not yet spoken with any degree of conclusiveness as to whether he will enforce the talking filibuster, whether he'll require the filibustering senators to speak.
But he is looking at it.
And I think in looking at it, he's trying to figure out whether we've got enough of our Senate Republicans who are willing to stand up for this, to defend it, to aggressively debate it while the Democrats are engaging in the talking filibuster.
So the more senators we can get on board with that, the more senators who support the Save America Act, who are willing to say, yes, I believe we should make any senator wanting to filibuster this bill doesn't have to commit us on every bill, but on this particular bill, the Save America Act, we want every senator who backs it to come out and say, let's make them speak if they want to filibuster.
And if they hadn't done this in the context of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which would have been easy for them to do, if they had just said, well, we can't get to the closure.
We're 26 votes shy.
It would never have happened.
But they did do it.
They said, let's make them speak.
It took them a number of weeks to get it done, but sure enough, it sharpened the mind, sharpened the minds of the senators having to filibuster day after day against a bill that was growing in popularity among the American people.
Now, that looks like something, one of my first experiments with AI, with Grok-assisted image generation that I posted on FaceMike Lee a few months ago.
Obviously, one of the most important accounts you can possibly, the most important account I think you can follow in the Senate, and one of the most important accounts in the entire federal government.
And thank you, Senator.
700,000 followers for Based Mike Lee right here.
And we'll see you tonight, one way or the other at the State of the Union Center.
Mike is one of my best friends in Washington, one of my best friends in the world.
Mike and I obviously jointly introduced the Save Act, now the Save America Act.
And you already summarized that.
I don't need to repeat it, but the Senate is the question.
Look, I think we are in a very good spot if the majority leader will put it on the floor.
Mike's already laid it out.
That's the issue.
We are not asking for the rules to change.
We're not asking to nuke the filibuster in this instance.
That's worthy of a debate in and of itself.
But let me say one thing I'm not sure Mike addressed because I didn't see the whole interview.
We actually think it's a really important prophylactic to lean into the talking filibuster against the Democrats' almost certain efforts to nuke the filibuster, right?
They were two votes away before Kirsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.
They held the line.
But Democrats are going to do it to make DC a state, to pack the court.
We think if we engage the talking filibuster, that it will not only help us with the Save America Act, it might assert for the American people that that's the way to handle the filibuster and not let Democrats nuke it.
And so I think it's an important step forward to restore the Senate, but also actually pass the Save America Act.
With one critical component here, that if I want to give some courtesy to the leadership to figure out how to do it, there's two variables.
Number one is the HFC.
I'm sorry, the DHS funding bill.
Because if once we move to the Save America Act, then we have to ride that horse, right?
We got to force out the time, exhaust them.
We got to go through the whole process.
If we've done that before we do the DHS funding bill, and then we need to do the funding for TSA, for the Coast Guard, for FEMA, Border Patrol, and ICE to the extent we're not using big, beautiful bill money, then we'd have to go back and it resets the clock.
So that's a strategic question.
The second part about having 50, we have 50 who support the bill.
Do we have 50 who are absolutely in for the fight to be there on call, to show up when we need to present a quorum, to stick through the fight through the bitter end?
Look, that's not clear.
We, the people, are going to have to demand that and force them to actually stand up and fight.
I think on an 85% issue like this, where the American people want Congress to stand with the president to deliver substantive change, to defend our sovereign nation, to make sure we have faith in our elections and to reclaim our country, I think it's worth the fight and we need to force the senators to do it.
I mean, not to be unnecessarily cruel here, so I'm not going to name any names, but I mean, there are a lot of senators who can't even stand.
So like if you're saying like stand up and fight, like there's a lot of senators who like constantly trip and fall and look just like Joe Biden, frankly.
And it's like an embarrassing rebuke of how our federal government operates.
And this is one of the reasons why we believe we should force them to work.
The Senate for, I mean, the better part of four or five decades has been in this position where they sit in a quorum call saying we don't have 51 on the floor.
And then they sit around and cook up the bill behind closed doors, bring it down.
And if they have 60, great.
That's usually a pig of a bill that spends money and expands government.
Or if they don't, they'll have a show vote.
Hey, we tried.
We had 51 Republicans who wanted to pass it.
And those damn Democrats, they stopped us.
Let's go campaign.
And then nothing changes.
So put it on the floor.
Have a debate.
The Senate used to be called the greatest deliberative body.
Benny, when was the last time you saw true deliberation in the United States Senate?
I like I, in college, I would nerd out and watch on C-SPAN 3 prime minister's questions.
And I thought it was like the most wonderful thing that the government leaders of England are dragged down into the well of their legislative body and debate.
Like, if you'd had that kind of a system, you wouldn't have a president, Joe Biden.
That's just a matter of fact.
We kind of had that during the 20, like they tried to reduce Kamala's runtime as much as they could in 2024 because they knew she would never survive something like that.
Well, Scott and I did a great podcast with the Republican Study Committee.
I hope you saw it.
It's 25 minutes back and forth explaining the Scotts have been doing great work in the Senate, great work in the House.
And really, frankly, to the extent that we have 50 in the Senate, it's heavily to do with Scott's work and beating the payment, which shows you that if you go work it and if you apply pressure, they respond.
I've seen it over and over again on amnesty questions and other things that the people step up.
Like, here's the secret.
People in Washington who aren't stupid like me, who, you know, go down and say whatever they think and get themselves in trouble for it.
Most of them hold on to their election certificates with a death grit.
Their whole reason for being is I'm a congressman.
I'm a senator.
And, you know, for those of us who are like, look, I like to, I want to be in Texas with my family.
I'm here because I want to save the republic.
I'm not here because I want to chum around.
But if you go challenge the fact that they might lose their election certificate and the people say, no, you're not going to do that.
You're not going to do amnesty.
You are going to go fight to ensure that only citizens can vote.
Whatever the issue is, they listen.
I assure you they listen.
And I hope the president tonight in the State of the Union makes an explicit call for this to be pulled up, called up, debated, and passed on the Senate floor.
I expect the president will, number one, regale our great and glorious hockey team after their wonderful win on this weekend against Canada.
I expect him to give a shout out to angel families who have lost loved ones to remind the American people what it was like under Biden and my orcas and how things are now different.
And I think the president should and can take an enormous victory lap of the last 14 months.
And we've been undoing decades of damage, certainly the four years of Biden, but goes way back before that.
And Republicans that have been selling our Republic out like a pack of bologna one slice at a time.
The president has secured the border.
The president has removed dangerous illegal aliens.
The president has restored dignity to our military, strength to our military.
Recruitment levels are up.
The president has got our economy moving in the right direction with strong economic growth.
We worked together to pass the big beautiful bill.
We got tax cuts put in place.
We put Medicaid fraud and a lot of protections against fraud before everybody was talking about fraud.
We were leaning into that fight.
We cut back half the green new scam subsidies.
We put money in place for the Department of Homeland Security for ICE and Border Patrol because we knew Democrats would play games.
So we now have the money in place to do it while they've got DHS shut down.
We have been working to restore order in this country, stand up and establish our position on the world stage.
He engaged and he knocked out nuclear capability for Iran.
He went in and knocked out Maduro and demonstrated this hemisphere is an American hemisphere, the Western hemisphere.
This is leadership.
If we can have four years of that with a Republican Congress standing alongside the president, and look, credit where it's due.
I've been a critic at times of our leadership in the House and the Senate, but we have a two, three seat majority in the House.
We've got the Senate dealing with the filibuster issues, and we still got the big beautiful bill done.
We still got the Lake and Riley Act passed.
We still passed the Sioux Act to allow states to sue the federal government when they fail to secure the border.
I can go on and on, but I don't want to consume the entire time.
The president should make that clear.
He should regale that, and he should say the one obstacle to you and the American dream are the Democrats who refuse to make this a sovereign nation where you are free to achieve your dreams and your kids' dreams because they're so beholden to wanting to hold on to power as Democrats, they're willing to sell out their country to do it.
The president should stand up and make a clear line in the sand about what he's going to do going forward for the next three years and carry that legacy forward.
So Texas Attorney General, this is something that is the trend, the show, the packaging of the show today is the horror that is happening in Mexico.
The U.S. State Department saying that kidnapping is a huge threat that could happen right now.
Please, Americans, be safe.
Effectively, most of Mexico, the State Department says don't travel to, including some areas that border Texas that are in total and complete cartel control.
How would you, as Attorney General, help ensure that that cartel violence doesn't spill over into the state of Texas as the longest border with Mexico?
And what do you think should be happening right now in order to put down these terrorists?
This is Mexico and the rest of the Western hemisphere.
They are funneling fentanyl in our country.
They're endangering Americans.
And now, once you see what happening in Mexico, you see how dangerous it is.
The president was right a year ago to do an executive order to declare them as terrorist organizations.
I was proud to lead that effort.
A lot of that language set the stage for the president's order.
I fully support it.
And look, as Texas, we have to be vigilant.
We need an attorney general.
Look, the reason I'm running for attorney general is because Donald Trump is not going to be president forever.
And he was the president in 2020.
And guess what happened in 2021?
Joe Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas destroyed or tried to destroy our country, set our border on fire, endangered Americans.
People like Jocelyn Nungre in Texas got murdered.
Rachel Morin, Lake and Riley, all of these people that suffered the consequences of that.
We need an attorney general who's going to set the stage and fight, no matter who the president is.
When you have a different president, a Democrat president in the future, God forbid, we need to hold the line as Texas declare an invasion, work to secure the border, fight in courts, but also use the bully pulpit to stand up and say, Texas is not going to allow our state to be run over by a president and a federal administration that doesn't do its job.
And let me be clear.
I inserted, I personally worked to insert the Sioux Act into the Lake and Riley Act and my position on the rules committee, because of what we fought for in the speaker's fight three years ago.
I'm on the rules committee.
We got the Sioux Act in place, which now gives explicit power to states to have standing to sue the federal government if they're failing to secure the border.
That is a big damn deal.
So as attorney general, I will use that.
Now, I hope not to use that if, you know, under the Trump administration, of course, we're working as partners as we should.
I will also force our local governments in Texas to use 287G programs, engage with ICE, engage with DHS to secure our state.
And I want to make one final point about returning home to Texas on a slightly different note.
My guests tonight at the State of the Union are going to be two of the parents of one of the little girls that we lost at Camp Mystic last year in the floods in Kerrville.
I represent Kerrville.
And I bring that up because it's also one of the reasons that I'm running for attorney general.
I love the state of Texas.
I love the people.
There's a big cross that stands on the hill in Kerrville.
And when all that happened, everyone rallied around the cross.
And these two individuals, I sat next to them when they sat next to President Trump and Melania, the first lady in Kerrville.
And they were professing their faith in Christ a mere week after they lost their little girl, an eight-year-old, beautiful little girl in those floods.
That's the future of our country, Benny.
We have got to stand up against the Islamification of our country.
We have got to stop this march.
We've got to stop the epic cities.
We've got to stop 300 mosques and growing in Texas.
This is a war against the culture that built not just this country, but Western civilization and this world.
And that's why I'm running for attorney general.
I'm proud to have them as my guests.
I'm proud of their profession of faith.
There's no purpose to living free, Benny, if we're not spreading the gospel of Christ and living under our Judeo-Christian principles for the betterment of humanity.
So I know that's a lot, but I feel strongly about it.
Yeah, I mean, 100% working with the governor to make sure, look, the president's doing a great job.
But you know what?
We were starting to build the wall, but Texas should work with the federal government to get the wall built.
If they won't do it, we should.
But importantly, Texas has to draw a line in the sand and say we're not going to allow the federal government to use asylum and parole and blatantly disregard the law and abuse the law to flood our state with dangerous individuals.
We will stop the flow at the border.
We need to make that clear that no matter who the president is, that will never happen again to Texas.
Zip Recruiter, ladies and gentlemen, will help you make great hires like our next guest.
Ooh, man.
Our next guest is the owner of Jimmy's Seafood in Baltimore that went thermonuclear viral in ratioing the Huffington Post this week.
It's this great.
I just love this show.
I love having guests like this.
Anyway, Jimmy, and the man's name is John.
John has a great spirit and a great sense of a wonderful way to run his business.
It's been an incredible moment for Jimmy's Seafood.
And John obviously knows what he's doing.
Maybe John uses ZipRecruiter.
If you want to run your business and get skills-based hiring that emphasizes capabilities over education or letters behind your name or indirect experiences, you know, or people who are just straight up lying on their resumes to sift through all the garbage resumes you get, right?
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Well, ladies and gentlemen, you need ZipRecruiter.
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You can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash Benny.
Anybody that watched that game is just one of those moments where you know exactly where you were, you know, exactly who you were with, and you just remember it forever.
It's a core memory, no matter your age.
It was just a special moment, not only for sports, but for our country.
He came over here in the late 60s, worked in PA in DC as a bus boy and a dishwasher and other blue-collar jobs, obviously, that immigrants were able to do back then because he didn't know the language, didn't have a dollar to his name.
And then he in 1974 purchased this where I'm at right now, known as Jimmy's Famous Seafood Now.
We lived on top of the restaurant and the bar and the carry-out were downstairs and he built on it, a dining room and catering halls.
And then in 2003, actually, he passed away from throat cancer.
And that's when myself and my brothers took over.
We were 20, 18, and 16 at the time.
So, as you can imagine, a lot of growing pains along the way, but we stuck with it.
My father led by example, not a man of many words, and we just took that hard work and try to live it out.
And every day, you get a little bit better and figure it out.
So, we've been blessed, obviously, to make it this far.
And 52 years in business now, we don't live on top of the restaurant anymore, but myself and my brother, we're still here, you know, pretty much every day, just loving it.
Man, I saw somebody said it should just be a big kegger.
And I agree.
I think, you know, but those guys pulled off.
It's going to be a movie one day, many, probably many movies.
I wasn't around for the Miracle One Nights, but I would imagine this is what it felt like.
This an overwhelming sense of love and patriotism and everything that makes this place great.
You know, sport unifies people, as Mike Tarico mentioned during the broadcast, the way that they won, the three-on-five power play, Jack having his teeth knocked out.
It's just, I can't, you know, I am Greek American and winning the Euro Cup in 2004 is the only time that I've enjoyed a sense of pride like this.
People that people that sort of like brush off these things don't, I don't think, understand what actual cultural war is, how important it is to have victories and wins and to be uplifted as a people and to have stories like you and your family.
We're still, we're still in, we're still, who knows?
Who knows?
You know, who knows?
I'll explain what happened.
So yesterday, they were canceling all these flights.
And we thought there was going to be a blizzard that hit DC and shut down everything.
It's a blizzard that hits everywhere.
A blizzard hit ALX.
You know, Danny's a producer.
He lives in DC.
He can't get back.
So we were just like, well, you know, instead of forcing the whole issue, we might as well just like cut our losses early and just say, if it's going to be FUBAR, we're just going to do the show from here.
Now, today, they've reopened up flights.
And so we're working with the speaker's office to see if we can't go there and do our show from inside the Capitol.
Either way, we'll be live.
We'll be live at 7 o'clock tonight for the State of the Union.
Let's go ahead and check the markets.
What is President Trump going to say at the State of the Union?
Let's go. Here we go.
President Trump, 84%.
He says the word America 50 times.
25 times is 96%.
Jobs, million, billion, trillion.
Biden, I'm not sure he's going to talk about Biden that much.
President Tump has been talking about Gavin Newsome.
He said that Davin Newsom's career is effectively over after multiple hilarious blunders.
I felt kind of bad.
I actually talked to my pastor about this because I made naughty jokes about Kamala Harris and her history with Willie Brown.
And the reason why I did this yesterday is they're like, there's a clip of Kamala Harris being played and she's on a pulpit.
She's on a pulpit and she's like quoting scripture.
Like these people, like they like, check your fruit, it says in the Bible, right?
They actually believe the things that they're saying.
They believe the things that they're saying.
Well, they wouldn't be for abortion up to and after birth.
You know, they wouldn't be for like these demonic practices.
It wouldn't be for open borders.
They'll let these cartels come across, rape, pillage, and plunder our nation.
You know, it's like terrible.
And so I was like angry about it.
And I was like, well, you know, Kamala Harris, she wouldn't have a career without Willie Brown.
Willie Brown was her boss.
This is well documented, by the way.
Willie Brown was her married boss.
Now, Kamala was, while he was married and the mayor of San Francisco, Kamala was his girlfriend.
That's just a matter of fact.
And Kamala was, look, given all these, was lavished with all these gifts because Willie Brown, who was like in his 70s and Kamala was like in her 20s or 30s, you know, Kamala Harris was lavish with all his gifts, given all the semulicures, given all these like special promotions, given all this stuff, because, well, well, Willie Brown's girlfriend while he was married as the mayor of San Francisco.
There's this hilarious clip of Kamala Harris being asked about this.
Like, are you his daughter?
There's this really funny moment where Kamala Harris, like this old clip, Kamala Harris is like wandering around on his arm.
And people are like, are you his daughter?
And she's like, no, I'm his girlfriend.
It's like, Jeff, you have it.
It's really humiliating.
Anyway, I just want to let you know, I'm not trying to be, you know, maybe I am trying to be mean.
I'm just like, this is the story of Kamala Harris.