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March 12, 2026 - The Benny Show - Benny Johnson
01:27:32
Iranian Drone Attack on America!? False Flag Incoming…

Congressman Tim Burchett and Benny Ginn condemn Senate Majority Leader John Thune for blocking the SAVE Act, which they claim represents 300 million Americans. The discussion covers FBI warnings of potential Iranian drone attacks, speculation on false flag operations involving Mexican cartels, and legislative gridlock over voter ID laws. Later, Callie Means details administration reforms targeting ultra-processed foods and SNAP guidelines, arguing obesity stems from systemic incentives rather than genetics. Ultimately, the episode critiques media bias and political obstructionism while advocating for aggressive messaging against perceived threats to national sovereignty and public health. [Automatically generated summary]

Participants
Main
b
benny johnson
42:24
c
calley means
15:50
t
tim burchett
rep/r 13:30
Appearances
w
william la jeunesse
fox 01:35
Clips
b
bill melugin
fox 00:12
d
donald j trump
admin 00:17
|

Speaker Time Text
Iran Revenge Plot in California 00:06:26
unidentified
President Trump, what have you heard about this bulletin that some law enforcement put out about a possible Iran revenge plot in California where there would be some kind of a boat offshore launching drones towards the investigated, but you have a lot of things happening and all we can do is take them as they come.
bill melugin
The FBI warning police on the West Coast that Iran could potentially launch an attack there using unmanned drones.
William Langeness joining us live from Los Angeles this morning with the details.
William, this had a lot of people talking yesterday.
william la jeunesse
Yeah, they are and here as well, of course, Bill, you know, but no agency that we spoke to yesterday, about a dozen here in California, nor the governor is treating this as an immediate threat.
However, the memo was sent out a week ago by the FBI to multiple police agencies here in California warning of a surprise retaliatory attack from Iran on the homeland.
Now, in some respects, police are treating this as a routine bolo.
Be on the lookout for something suspicious that might meet this type of criteria.
Multiple agencies told us, however, the first they heard about this was on the news, ironic because the memo said, don't tell the media.
On the other, it does contain some unique intel, right?
Reportedly from the U.S. Coast Guard, a surprise Iranian attack, it said, a water-launched drone against targets in California, specifically in California, but from an unidentified vessel.
Governor Newsom says officials are not aware of any imminent threat.
unidentified
We are aware of that information and we transfer that information in real time to our local partners.
Drone issues have been always top of mind.
william la jeunesse
And that's because anti-drone technology is neither widely available or terribly effective.
And we're not necessarily talking about those large Sahid drones that you're seeing in the Middle East or in the Ukraine, but maybe store-bought drones available for hundreds of thousands of dollars that are capable of carrying explosive payload weighing several pounds.
benny johnson
Local law enforcement still does not have the authority to take drones out of the sky.
tim burchett
And if the threats like this are coming, then Congress has to act.
william la jeunesse
So experts are worried about an attack on, say, an airport, a refinery, a sporting event, something like that, that could cause casualties.
It could cause damage, but also fear.
unidentified
Down 9-1-1, tell the police to get up here quick.
Somebody's about to get killed.
benny johnson
Jerry.
Jerry.
Come on.
Jerry.
Jerry.
Okay, fine.
Whatever.
I'll let it slide this time.
The cardboard Ayatollah is probably my favorite story of 2026, without question.
Will we get to it today?
I'm not sure.
Today is Thursday, March 12th, 2026.
And we are back, baby.
We've decided here in the studio, me, Killer Klein, and ALX, that we are going to start with a moment of levity.
This morning.
We're going to start by laughing.
Maybe we should just bring up some of the cardboard Ayatollah memes.
Maybe that's what we should do because we have memes for you this morning.
We have a dark news cycle.
I went on Jesse Waters' show last night and I was like telling a couple jokes and everyone's screaming at me online afterwards this morning.
Like, ah, how could you, how could you be, because I'm an American, because I'm a father, and because I'm a Christian, and because like God's in control, and because look, shut up, like you don't have to be miserable.
Being miserable is a choice.
And so we're going to roll with it.
We're going to be plan trusters.
Let's just call it what it is.
Like I'm fine with it.
I'm a three-time Trump voter and I have to be a plan truster and we have to fight where we feel like we can fight and we have to defeat what we believe is our true enemy.
And I don't want the left to come back into power.
And so that's what we're going to fight.
Went on Jeffy Waters last night.
I was just telling a couple jokes.
Everyone's lost their minds.
Everyone's lost their minds.
We're going to have a little fun.
I'm going to laugh again.
unidentified
Okay.
benny johnson
Now look, Klein's loading up the memes.
This is awesome.
unidentified
Okay.
benny johnson
Ladies and gentlemen, is Iran planning a drone attack on America or is it just going to be a massive false flag?
We'll see.
We heard about it yesterday.
Donald Trump was just asked about it and he says they're monitoring it.
Could Iran have already attacked America with a drone attack?
Very interesting.
If you know your news, then you know that this may have already happened, in fact.
Very curious.
Save America Act sabotage continues in the Senate, but we have some really exciting updates from our friends inside of the Senate.
And they'll tell us how President Trump could actually get the Save Act passed personally in the Senate.
Very interesting with some executive privilege.
You know, Donald Trump has the right to go address the Senate whenever he wants.
Isn't that fascinating, ladies and gentlemen?
Could Donald Trump be the one to actually get this passed after all?
Very interesting times.
Talking with Tim Burchett on the show today.
So he'll be able to answer some of these questions, I'm sure.
Callie Means as well to talk Maha and major accomplishments for America's health.
Remember, whatever Trump is for, Libs will be against.
So if Trump's for making America healthy again, Libs will immediately want to look like Chris Christie in Espeedo at Country Buffet.
It's not going to be pretty, ladies and gentlemen.
We're going to have a great show.
My name is Benny Johnson, and this is the Benny Show.
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unidentified
I don't know.
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Okay, Klein, let's jump around just a little bit.
Uh, because we're, we ain't gonna get to we ain't gonna get to everything today.
I mean, it's like a stacked, absolutely stacked show.
Okay, awkward moment.
Bill Clinton shoves Hillary Clinton into traffic.
We're just gonna start with this.
We're gonna start with this.
Here's from yesterday.
Uh, why not?
We're just gonna have a couple laughs.
We've been having some dark shows.
Oh, some bombing, war, death, straits of Hormuz.
Can we rename the Straits of Hormuz the Straits of America, please?
Are we there yet?
We should be there.
Fave act, Republican betrayal.
Let's have a little fun.
Let's just have a little laugh at the expense of the Clintons.
Come on, man.
Here we go.
America's favorite first family.
For real, though.
Like, how many memes have been spawned by these two?
We have the American First Movement because of these two, actually.
Because Hillary Clinton's bloodlust to run for president.
And Bill pushing her buttons.
Check this out.
Here's the footage of Bill Clinton shoving Hillary into traffic.
They're just wobbling around the street.
Now, let me tell you something.
Before you play the clip here, before you play the clip, there's something.
This is called a PR tactic.
This is a classic, old school PR tactic.
The Clintons have access to the biggest and oldest PR companies on earth.
And this is a very specific tactic called getting it out there.
People think that you are on the rocks.
People think that you are having a bad time.
People think that you are about to divorce or you've just gone through a really tough Epstein news cycle.
You got to get out there.
You got to show the people that you are what you say you are.
A strong, dynamic woman, a affirmed husband and president, a power couple, Secretary of State.
You got to be locked in.
You're getting out of the go and show it for the cameras.
There's no reason for Bill and Hillary Clinton to wobble down the streets of New York City.
They're doing it on purpose and they're doing it for the cameras and they're doing it in order to flip the news cycle.
The news cycles on them has all been about Hillary Clinton screeching and losing her mind.
The Epstein interrogation that she went through.
Bill Clinton oogling himself in a hot tub, a young chick, having like the time of his life.
Clearly nostalgia, clearly reliving his glory days.
You can see it in the clip.
Having a ball, Bill Clinton.
So you got like a problem in the press.
You have a PR issue.
And so you flip it on its head by doing something like this, you know, and buying a puppy.
You know, get them out there.
Get out there.
Show people you're normal.
Show people you love each other.
Show people you're the strong power couple that can unite and save America.
Let's see how that worked.
So, okay, so far, so good.
You got Secret Service here.
You know, they're flanked by Secret Service, so they're not exactly like Johnny Q Public walking down the street.
But hey, you got Bill and Hillary.
Hillary is dressed exactly like Kim Jong-un.
Bill Clinton is sort of wandering Biden-esquely behind her.
Okay, but still, it's fine.
Everyone knows that they're old.
They're kind of cute.
Oh, no.
Oh, wait.
Oh, no.
unidentified
Oh, no.
benny johnson
Oh, no, Bill.
Don't push Hillary into traffic.
Bill.
You can see there, beyond a shadow of like, like, not only does Bill push her once, he pushes her twice into oncoming traffic.
And Hillary Clinton has to brace against him and push back on him.
She has to yell, no, and then wander back to the safety of to get away from her leering husband.
Like, how, by the way, like, Hillary Clinton feels your pain.
How many young women have actually felt this from Bill from behind and had to escape to the curb?
Many of them were trapped on a plane, Hillary, over Africa.
So they didn't get a chance to go run to the security of their secret service.
Bill, you animal.
But that's not how it's supposed to work.
You did it wrong.
This is called doing it wrong.
And now there's a lot of memes.
And now the meme, like, so this is supposed to inspire.
We have some other clips, AL.
Can you give me that other clip of like Hillary Clinton?
Bill tries to like hug or like put his hand in Hillary Clinton.
She like runs away.
Every dad, everybody, like every husband or boyfriend knows like this vibe when you, you know, he's Bill putting his hand on Hillary and she's like you're supposed like this is doing the opposite of what it is intended to do from a professional PR perspective.
If you're getting out there, then you should at the very least, while the cameras are rolling, like hold the side up, keep a straight face, not push each other into traffic.
Okay, here we go.
We got some memes.
Climb, we got some memes loaded up.
There's some like, like, the problem with this is that it's not the 90s anymore.
And so now the internet can take this moment and make, well, make memes of it.
Here we go.
We got a couple here.
unidentified
When you've been in trouble and you don't know where to go, just you and I can find a wider road and let's try.
Okay.
benny johnson
Guys.
unidentified
Such a nasty one.
benny johnson
Hey, we're going to get in trouble for that.
Here we go.
unidentified
I don't know.
benny johnson
Let's do one more, please.
unidentified
I'm not what you need We got another one.
benny johnson
Oh, no.
unidentified
Oh, no.
benny johnson
All right.
I need to laugh.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are not doing well.
And I think that Hillary Clinton is obviously Hillary Clinton's one of the most evil people to ever exist on earth.
Bill Clinton, will he ever see the inside of a jail cell?
Well, he should, but he already has.
We have proof of it right here.
This is what Bill Clinton's life is.
Bill Clinton's life is listening to Hillary.
Is this a fate worse than death?
unidentified
Yes.
benny johnson
We have, look, this is the dude's life.
We found out actually during a Zoom call during COVID.
Look at this.
Will he ever see time for Epstein crimes?
I don't know.
I'm not sure.
I don't know.
I don't have a ton of high hope for it, sadly.
But this is this, I think, is penalty and perjury enough.
Purgatory enough.
Like, look at the look on his eyes.
You can see his soul leaving his body as Hillary Clinton just ransom out.
Could you imagine waking up to that?
Going to sleep to that, seeing that waiting for you.
That's waiting for you in the kitchen every morning.
Look at Bill.
Look at that.
unidentified
Okay.
benny johnson
You know what?
Some of us, some of us get what we deserve in this life.
Some of us get what we deserve.
Okay.
Oh, here's.
Just because I, just because I asked for it.
unidentified
Here we go.
benny johnson
You can see that Bill Clinton putting his hand on Hillary.
Yeah, there you go.
From now until the cows come home.
That's right.
Look at this.
Bill puts his hand on Hillary.
Hillary Clinton runs as far and as fast away from Bill as possible.
Doesn't respond with loving kindness.
Doesn't hold his hand or anything like that.
Just does her best Kim Jong-un impression surveying the nuclear weapons in Pyongyang.
Yeah, too bad.
Okay, so we played a meme of Joe Biden.
Joe Biden would have probably had a better presidency if he was replaced by a cardboard cutout.
Apparently, that's what they've done with the leader of Iran.
The leader of Iran, our second story for the morning, is in a coma.
This guy's named Mujatabi.
Komeini.
Mujatabi.
Is, well, he's lost a leg, and he's in a coma.
He's the son of the Ayatollah.
Ayatollah's dead.
Until, I mean, he's dead until a left-wing district judge reverses the death, actually, and orders him to be reinstalled as Iran's supreme leader.
He's been hit during an airstrike.
It's revealed that he is obsessed with the end days.
Oh, boy.
Okay.
Supreme leader is in a coma and lost leg.
This is why he hasn't made any public appearances.
He's 56.
He's in intensive care in a university hospital.
City's historic quarter surrounded by security officials, according to a source in Tehran.
Oh, boy.
A section of the hospital has been sealed off to guard Iran's supreme leader.
It's unclear whether Mojataba was injured in airstrike or whether he knows that he is the supreme leader.
Got it.
The Telegram account, his official Telegram account, says the first message of Ayatollah Mojataba will be released in a few moments.
The message will address the martyred leader of the revolution.
unidentified
Okay.
benny johnson
The source says, who does not want to be named out of the fear for his life, that the new Supreme Leader is under the care of Iran's Minister of Health, one of the top trauma surgeons in the country.
Now, this has led to Iran having to take extreme measures in order to try and show that their leader is not like the fake Western leaders who many say have cardboard personalities and are very flat, like think Mitt Romney.
But unfortunately, Klein, you're not going to, that sounds right asset.
You're going to need the actual asset of them installing the cardboard guy.
So please grab me the cardboard, like the actual video of them with the cardboard Mujitaba there.
That's it.
Yeah.
You can put that up on screen.
What that's led to is them deciding, and I'm not sure why they decided this, to create a cardboard Mujitaba.
I mean.
Do you know what the internet's going to do with this, boys?
I'm not here to give Iran any advice, but you know what's going to happen.
So cardboard Mujitaba is like the most trending meme in the world right now.
And I'm actually really funny.
Why don't we go through a couple of them?
I just, we want to have a little more of a light-hearted show this morning.
Let's roll through.
unidentified
Let's see.
benny johnson
Cardboard Mujitaba.
This is Marco Rubio when he finds out he's the new Ayatollah.
Okay, let's go.
We have a pizza box.
All right.
Okay.
Sure.
unidentified
There you go.
benny johnson
Okay, Trump meeting him for the first time.
unidentified
Okay.
benny johnson
This one's pretty.
Oh, no.
unidentified
Okay.
benny johnson
Iran's Air Force is coming home.
unidentified
Here we go.
benny johnson
Like, this is great.
unidentified
Okay.
benny johnson
I could use some home alone lore.
That's right.
Very good.
Cardboard, Ayatollah.
It's your own cardboard Ayatollah.
You can get one.
Whack.
Take that.
Infidel.
That's right.
It is a South Park episode we are living through.
Here we go.
Donald Trump meet the new boss.
It's been a long day.
It's been a long day.
unidentified
Okay.
Yeah.
benny johnson
All right.
Ladies and gentlemen.
This is a very serious show.
unidentified
Okay.
benny johnson
We're talking about Iran potentially attacking America.
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Potential Drone Swarms Over Cities 00:14:53
benny johnson
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Ladies and gentlemen, what is the top line news of the morning?
Something that is trending right now is a strike from Iran against potentially California.
Now, because we cover the news and because we cover the news so very much, we know that just a couple weeks ago, approximately three weeks ago, they shut down a massive airport in El Paso because drones were flown in from Mexico, really close to El Paso, and were buzzing the airport.
Now, why is this of particular concern?
Well, because these drones were flown by the cartels, and I say that in quotes because of something that we just learned actually yesterday, these drones would very easily be able to take out a commercial airliner or extremely damage a commercial airliner.
Here's why.
If you were to fly a drone with skill and hit one of the engines of a commercial flight, you'd be able to do horrible damage to it.
You may be able to take the plane down.
And you could do it relatively cheaply.
You wouldn't have to carry in any type of weapons of war.
And you would be able to cause extreme panic, chaos, and cost the American government, and the FDA, I'm sorry, the FAA and commercial airlines billions of dollars.
Mexican cartel drones breach U.S. airspace prompt El Paso airport closures administration sense.
The Trump administration says Mexican cartel drones have entered U.S. airspace on Wednesday, causing a closure of the El Paso International Airport, a massive airport, also an airport that's right next to a bunch of military bases in El Paso.
It's massive, massive.
Air Force base is there, military base is there, and tons of people in and out.
El Paso is a lovely city.
I like it a lot.
The Department of War took action to disable the drones.
The administration officials said Federal Aviation Administration and Pentagon have determined that there's no threat to commercial travel at this time.
But the airport was shut down for hours.
The El Paso airport is located 10 miles away from Briggs Army Airfield on Fort Bliss.
Leadership at the installation remained in the dark about the decision to shut down the airspace around the base, was not informed to the restrictions until the restrictions were lifted.
Leadership found out in real time.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said they acted swiftly to address the cartel drone incursion.
The threat has been neutralized.
There's no danger to commercial travel.
I am still 100% under the opinion that, and I have some very actually smart reporting on this from like good reporting and intel from inside the administration, that the reason that Donald Trump's inauguration was put indoors was because of fear of drone attack and the potential to have absolutely no protection against it.
And that drone attacks could, drone swarms and drone attacks could really have paralyzed and potentially harmed or killed the American president during his inauguration.
And so this is a moment where you should really like be focusing on this.
And in fact, the Americans who were killed abroad in our incursions into Iran have been killed by these suicide drops, these Shaheed suicide drones, which have been really effective, frankly.
They cost $20,000 to make.
You can launch them from pretty much anywhere.
And they do a lot of damage if they hit correctly.
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, but they only cost $20,000.
And it costs a lot more money to actually shoot them out of the sky.
And so the math ends up working actually for the Iranians.
Well, here's what we have as a massive breaking story from yesterday: that there are now potentially revenge drone swarms plated for large American cities.
How would they be fired?
Well, they wouldn't be fired from Iran.
They'd be fired from mobile vehicles, boats, potentially.
Trucks is typically how they're fired in Iran right now.
And as you can see, the cartels, of course, operationally right across the border from America would be able to fire these things because they've already been doing it.
Iran revenge terror attack plot in California, army of drones revealed in terrifying FBI memo.
Let's read.
FBI issued an urgent warning to cops across California, the potential Iranian drone strike on the Golden State.
Tehran was looking at deployment of unmanned aircraft in the region as the country reels from the U.S. wiping out its supreme leader.
The Bureau said earlier February that agents had intelligence that drones could be sent from unidentified vessels off the American coast.
You can see here what the Iranian Shahide drone looks like.
Again, relatively easy to manufacture, very, very deadly if it strikes its target correctly.
California has the highest concentration of Iranian dissidents in the U.S., up to 500,000, but it's not clear if that's why the state could be targeted.
The FBI alert says, we recently acquired information that as of February, Iran aspired to conduct a surprise attack using unmanned aerial vehicles from an unidentified vessel off the coast of the United States homeland, specifically events, unidentified targets in California in the event the U.S. conducted strikes on Iran.
Look at that.
It added, we have no additional information of the timing method and target of the perpetrators of the alleged attack.
The alert was sent to police departments across the region, but it did not clear, it was not clear where specifically it could be targeted.
The FBI declined to comment when approached by the post.
So I could completely see this as something that happens.
I mean, listen, I can see two potential circumstances here.
One is a false flag.
Let's just be perfectly honest here.
You know, one is if the war goes really south, you know, could there be bad actors that blame it on Iran?
I'm not saying particularly, like specifically our government.
But could there be other world governments, could there be other agencies like the cartels in coordination with the Iranians, in coordination with terror cells, just to sow terror to use this conflict as a cover?
Because nobody wants to be the ones who are left holding the bag for this.
You fly a drone into commercial aircraft or into a skyscraper in downtown LA.
America is going, especially under President Trump, is going to vengefully look for who to kill immediately for that.
Do you really want that heat if you are a cartel?
Could you blame it on, could you commit acts of terror and then blame it on the Iranians?
I mean, is that exactly what happened during 9-11?
You know, seeing this yesterday really made me think, like, we got to wrap this up.
Made me think we just got to wrap it up.
You know, destroy Iran's capacity for offensive attack, which it seems like, and if you're tracking, it seems like that's virtually been done at this point.
There have been some, obviously, some mining and/or bombing of the Straits of Hormuz.
This would not be good.
There were some vessels attacked yesterday.
There was an American ship attack yesterday.
ALX, can you grab me that, please?
And so clearly, like, it's not completely done yet.
But if you're tracking, and there's plenty of war trackers, the number of attacks from Iran against its neighbors, the leader in a coma, the amount of bombs that have been dropped, 5,000, 6,000 different bombs that have been dropped on Iran just utterly cripple their capacity to make these drones and to wage any type of offensive war.
Planes can fly with absolute impunity and total command over the Iranian airspace.
There is no more Iranian Navy.
There is no more Iranian comms.
You're seeing mass defections.
Okay, great.
But it causes me great fear that we're hearing so much about sleeper cells.
We're seeing such a psychotic uptick in attacks.
Speaking of commercial flights, I mean, let's just go off the top of the dome.
And this is not like completely and totally conclusive list here.
But you have the ISIS attack in New York this weekend.
You've had now multiple commercial flights that have had to be grounded because Muslim terrorists jump up in the middle of the flight saying, I'm going to blow up this plane.
That's what happened with the Southwest flight three days ago.
That flight supposed to land in Nashville.
It was emergency grounded in Atlanta.
And then tactical forces went and pulled a young Muslim man off the plane who was allegedly screaming that he was going to bomb the flight.
That he was going to bomb and blow up the plane.
That's an act of terrorism.
You have the property of a law killings in Texas.
You obviously have the National Guard shootings in the streets of Washington, D.C. by refugees.
You're seeing massive upticks.
I'm probably forgetting like four or five things.
You're seeing massive upticks in these attacks throughout the country.
I don't want to see this war used as a proxy, a cover for something that's much bigger and much more horrifying to the American people.
And it seems like we're like spiraling towards that.
So I want it to be wrapped up.
It's obviously where, like, it's obviously the tenuous situation that we've been in with the war in Ukraine for such a long time.
Are they going to bomb the nuclear power plant?
Are they going to blow up the dams?
Is it going to pull America into a ground war with Russia?
It's horrifying.
I pray, given the fact that Trump is apparently talking, based on the fact that Trump is allegedly talking with Vladimir Putin with regularity now, that what happens here is that the Iran wars use this leverage to end the Iran war and the Iran war, please.
This just breaking.
It looks like, is this just breaking, Klein?
Crazy.
Right as we're talking about this, 9 a.m. Suspicious package were located in the break room.
The airport authority established a perimeter for safety until it can be cleared.
The incident included moving passengers out of the concourse.
We'll let you know when we have an update.
So it looks like Reagan airport has been shut down.
Right now, or at the very least, a terminal has been cleared, which of course is going to cause further delays and travel chaos.
So, like, and Democrats have defunded DHS during all this.
They've defunded the Coast Guard.
So, to keep your head on a swivel, train, carry, as I do every single day, everywhere, and make sure that you are staying frosty.
Be frosty and salty.
President Trump's salty on the drones from yesterday.
unidentified
Here we go.
What have you heard about this bulletin that some law enforcement put out about a possible Iran revenge plot in California where there would be some kind of a boat offshore launching drones towards the big investigator, but you have a lot of things happening, and all we can do is take them as they come.
donald j trump
And the war itself is being prosecuted as well as anybody has ever seen.
And this is other countries telling me to big countries, powerful countries.
They said they've never seen anything like it.
And they also agree with what I'm doing.
They say it's an evil country, and it's been for 47 years that way.
unidentified
And if they try to.
benny johnson
President Trump is aware of this.
Iranian media has released a video of what they could potentially do here.
Here's the newest out of Iran's run.
Seems like authentic critics, right?
It's not AI or anything.
Like, we've seen this stuff.
Yeah.
Apparently, they do have like an absolute ton of drones.
So you should take these kind of things seriously.
You should not defund the Coast Guard.
Who would be the ones to catch a vessel that is off the coast of America that has the potential?
And it wouldn't really be hard because these aren't particularly large drones.
And LA and so many California cities are right up on the coastline, San Francisco, San Diego.
Yo, you could absolutely run a vessel, run just any fishing ship, you know, any little box boat you could run with these drones up the coastline of any American state.
You wouldn't be able to fire them from Iran.
Iran is 6,000 miles away.
The drones can't go that far.
America has the ability to launch rockets into space.
You'd have to have a rocket in space effectively go into orbit and come down.
You'd have a ballistic missile hit a target from that distance.
Iran does not have that capacity, but they would have the capacity to fly a drone in, and we've already seen it.
We've seen it happen.
We saw it happen just a couple of weeks ago.
Was that a test run?
I don't know.
I'm not trying to freak anyone out about against false flags.
I'm just saying in the fog of war, which is what happened during 9-11, it is.
In the fog of war, you know, Afghanistan didn't attack us, but like people lost their minds.
And a lot of people lost their lives.
And so you want to eliminate the fog of war and have clear, rational understanding and not the ability to pull like what, what did we pull?
Like the Nord Stream pipeline blowing it up?
Oh, Russia blew up their own pipeline.
No, they didn't.
Stupid Assassination Attempts Explained 00:02:16
benny johnson
It's so stupid.
It's like Ukraine's now claimed credit for that along with our CIA.
We blamed it on Russia at the time.
Russia blows up their own pipeline to Europe.
It's so stupid.
But these are kind of like dumb acts that you can pull off when you're in the middle of an actual hot war because people are so distracted.
So that's why I want it to end.
I just want it to end.
Anyway, President Trump is out talking about the assassination attempts.
President Trump, I got him before he got me, saying that Iran had multiple assassination attempts on Donald Trump.
I 100% believe this.
They're finding deer stands in Palm Beach Airport.
They're finding mysterious packages that they have to divert Trump's motorcade.
They're finding drones that actually followed President Trump.
They had to shoot drones out of the sky during the 2024 campaign.
We have no idea if this is a Ryan Routh or Matthew Thomas Crooks op.
We don't know.
Here's what I know about Matthew Thomas Crooks.
I know this from the top levels of federal law enforcement, that President Trump has gotten a full briefing on what was on that dude's phone, that it shocked those at the top levels of law enforcement to the core.
And that Donald Trump had decided, has made the decision, since it was him who was shot in the head, to keep the contents and the connections of Matthew Thomas Crooks secret.
I know that.
There is something else going on there.
Was it Iran?
I don't know.
But President Trump has now routinely described multiple assassination attempts on his life.
And Iran has straight up released, you know, anime about how they want to kill Trump with a drone.
And, you know, we played this before.
Shockingly similar to the Ryan Routh plot to shoot Trump from the bushes of his golf course.
This is an Iranian-made movie.
It includes a drone that goes and kills Trump.
So I don't know, man.
You know, it's like a mix, frankly, between keeping your head on a swivel and being smart and not being dumb and falling for absolutely everything.
And that's life.
Yo, that's just life, right?
Holding Republicans Accountable Now 00:15:06
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I believe we have the great Tim Burchett on and ready to go.
calley means
Yes.
benny johnson
Fantastic.
Oh, man.
This is the only, this is the only dude that I wanted to talk to today.
This is it.
The only guy that I wanted to have on the program.
Donald Trump was campaigning in Tim Burchett's backyard yesterday.
I don't think he was at the event.
But nonetheless, the man himself joining us always a pleasure to have the congressman from the great state of Tennessee and Knoxville on the show live right now.
Hello, Congressman.
How be that government?
tim burchett
It's cold here in Tennessee.
What happened?
I was all ready to walk out to the mailbox in my underwear, and here it is cold again.
Man, hey, but that song y'all played, the dad gum song, my wife loves that.
If you could just hold that up, that's your meme, Jerry.
Like a backup singer, one of those, she would be like all in on the Benny show.
All right.
But man, I've had people all over the freaking country say, and I was just leaving the police department visiting their ICAT folks.
Wonderful people, internet crimes against children.
We're able to give them a little funding.
And some guy says, that gum, that's Tim Burchett.
And I thought, right on, right on.
Appreciate you, Benny.
I really do, brother.
benny johnson
Oh, yeah.
tim burchett
No, I wasn't at that event.
That was in Kentucky.
Ain't no votes for me in Kentucky.
And then the Republican Party all went down to a big retreat down in Florida somewhere again.
Love them, but there ain't no dad gum votes for me down there.
They're all here in the district.
benny johnson
So, well, I'm not going to take credit for what God's done, right?
It's the best way to live life is to not take credit for really anything.
All of it's gods.
And God, God puts you together, Congressman, as somebody who's just plainly honest.
And that's why you become aware of that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You don't have a lion bone in your body.
And so I want to ask you about what the hell is going on today and what's happening right now through the midterms.
The war in Iran is something obviously that a lot of people, I think, were really hot and bothered by up front.
And then I think now people just kind of want an off-ramp.
Sounded like the president maybe does.
Could you give me like just a little update?
Like, you know, what exactly is going on there?
tim burchett
I think we've dropped like 20,000 missiles or bombs or something on them, and we probably got 300,000 we could hit them with.
I think Trump's plan all along was to do what he's done.
And we got to get that straight opened up again, where there's a question of whether it's open or not.
But I think it's time for the folks in the Middle East to fill in the gap right now and go in and take care of business.
Trump will say it's not off the table, you know, take putting Americans in harm's way, but Trump's a negotiator.
You know, he's not going to show all his cards.
He leaves himself good wiggle room because he negotiates.
He negotiates.
And I've said many times, they said, Oh, Trump can't handle that.
And I said, Dude, Trump can handle Teamsters in New York City.
I think he can handle some of these third world thugs out here.
So he, um, I think that that's part of the plan, too.
But obviously, everybody's freaking out over the price of oil or gas, which I think they're totally ripping us off.
Benny, do you know how much gas or oil we get from Iran?
The beautiful United States of America.
Zero.
benny johnson
Yeah.
tim burchett
Z-Row.
And I know, oh, it's, Bertie, you don't understand economics.
It's fungible, man.
It's fungible.
Well, if it's fungible, then why the heck is the gas and the pumps going up and down at the time with it's already paid for?
And why doesn't that court of oil, if it's fungible, Benny, why doesn't that cord of oil over here at the auto parks place go up and down with the price of it if it's fungible?
It's just greed.
And the shame on these goddamn oil companies.
I'm sick of them.
I don't get, they don't send me any money anyway, so I don't give a rip.
They're not for me anyway.
I've never, and because you know, and I'm a motorhead, you know, I'm gas and oil and I'm an internal combustion kind of guy, but I work on all my motorcycles and cars and trucks and stuff.
So I get it.
But, you know, they're just playing, they're just, they're just taking advantage of a situation right now.
And Trump has got us in the best, in the best energy situation.
We're getting, we're starting to use coal again.
We've got it in the ground.
God, put it there.
Let's use it.
I just think people get, and we're victims of the liberal media because they want Trump to fail.
They want this country to fail.
And I feel like there's people in our own party that want Trump to fail so they can assume a leadership position.
calley means
Oh, yeah.
tim burchett
And they want us to lose the majority.
So they see a path for them to the promised land.
And to me, you're going to wreck our dadgum country so you can ride around in a suburban with a security detail.
That's why I'm very unpopular in Washington, D.C. when I say stuff like that.
And I know they're going to come see me.
They'll send their guy to me in Congress and they'll say, Burchant, man, you know, about what you said on the Benny show.
I go, and I'm going to tell them.
I say, but it's the truth, right?
And they're going to say, yeah, it's the truth.
We just don't need you saying it anymore.
So, and I get that, but I'm sick of it.
And I appreciate you.
You're a real patriot.
And I dig, I dig your show.
So sorry, I talked.
I've already had two cups of coffee and I'm not supposed to do that.
I'm jacked up.
So anyway.
benny johnson
So let's talk.
Let's talk about the Save Act.
So you talk about like people betraying Trump and betraying the Republican base.
tim burchett
They're betraying our country, Benny.
It's ridiculous.
The Senate needs to go.
Oh, we don't want to work two hours a day.
They don't want to do this, you know, the standing filibuster or whatever, filibuster.
Mike Lee, God bless him.
He is, he's my second favorite Mormon in Congress, right?
And I've told him that.
And he's moving up to my first one when Andy Biggs leaves and goes back to Arizona to become the governor.
But that gum, I love him.
He is a freaking street fighter that never curses.
And so, I mean, he's a straight arrow.
And him and the rest of those guys and gals.
And here's what bothers me about it, Benny.
The whole thing that bothers me about it.
You got all these people that are waiting.
They're holding out.
They're holding out to get something.
And I get it.
I get it.
That's how you get all these bridges to nowhere.
And then what'll happen?
We'll embrace all those people after this is over with it that roll at the end and decide to do it.
And we'll give them a pass until the next time.
And that's why it takes so long to get something done.
And honestly, that's why nothing gets done.
benny johnson
So that's what Murkowski and Collins and Tillis, McConnell.
You must know McConnell a little bit.
I mean, he's in your neck of the woods.
Like, what's the game?
What's the game theory there?
I can't conceive of something that's more of a fundamental betrayal.
I mean, if you want to destroy the Republican Party, if you want people to never vote Republican ever again, just take a sledgehammer to the actual pillars of the reason we sent Trump to office and we gave Republicans a trifecta.
Republicans are always bitching.
Oh, members of Congress are always, oh, we can't do anything without a trifecta.
Well, here's your second trifecta in eight years.
And Republican voters still get nothing.
We can't even get voter ID.
And so can you talk me through like what's going on behind the scenes in Congress when it comes to like a squishy, like a Republican senator who refuses to back this 80-20 issue for Americans?
tim burchett
It's beyond belief.
Again, the Senate, you're elected every six years, and our attention span is, you know, I always say we want our pizzas in 30 minutes or less.
And that's about our dad gum attention span.
And I'm guilty of that as well.
They move on to the next shiny object.
And this right now is the shiny object.
But we need to remember that.
And we need to, that's why we've got primaries, Benny.
And we don't ever, everybody's like, we're going to primary him or her.
Well, the deadline's already passed, dadgummit, for most of them.
And you're not going to primary them.
And, you know, these keyboard warriors that are allegedly on our side are not helping and they don't understand the system and they need to educate themselves on how this thing works.
And we need to start holding people accountable.
And we need to start asking these questions in a primary and holding them accountable.
And we don't do it.
And we're terrible at it.
And we just keep electing these people.
I mean, you know, Alaska, Trump won that by like, what, 18 points or something?
I mean, he's the energy president and they can't, and the other people up there don't want it.
That's just not true.
And they, and we've got to start lighting these people up on the internet and on their, and calling their office.
But they got to be people in the district.
That's another thing.
You know, as all these people say, you need to do this, Burchett, you need to do that, Burchett.
And I click on their thing and they're not even from Tennessee.
They're not even from East Tennessee, the second congressional district, which I represent.
So part of it's education, part of it's the arrogance of office.
And the other part is, of course, accountability.
And we've screwed it all up.
And the Republican Party is terrible at messaging as well.
I want to reel on that a little bit, rail on that if I can.
benny johnson
Yes.
tim burchett
The week of the State of the Union address.
You know, it'd have been a perfect time to roll out a bill saying, hey, illegals, you can't, we're not going to fund give money to the transportation dollars to these states that let illegals drive these 18 wheelers.
Case in point, the little girl who almost lost her life that President Trump had at the State of the Union with her daddy, the sweet little girl, you got kids.
You know, that touched my heart.
That little girl, I adopted my little girl.
My wife was a widow and married her.
And Isabel was about that age when I got her, that little girl was.
And I just thought, wow, that could have been my little girl.
And, you know, the Democrats didn't even stand up for that.
And they looked with disdain at the president and the little girl and what the trauma she'd been through.
But my point in all that was, we should have had a bill that week dealing with that.
But what was our main focus that week?
Deregulating appliances like refrigerators and commodes and washers and dryers, very legislation.
And people say, Oh, that's Steve Scalise's fault.
unidentified
He should have scheduled.
tim burchett
No, it's not.
It's not Steve Scale.
He can't schedule a bill if it's not there.
And I'm tired of these committee meetings.
We have all these hearings and we don't have legislation dealing with what we found.
And we go through a markup and we lump, oh, we're going to have an 18-hour markup.
Well, that's poor, that's poor scheduling on the chairman's part.
Or they just want to say, We've had an 18-hour markup.
Look how hard we're working.
unidentified
You know what?
tim burchett
When I was in the state legislature, every committee started with a little bit of a hearing and then we went into legislation.
We had bills to vote on every dadgum week.
And that's what we ought to be doing in Congress.
Instead of lumping everything together, because that's the way we've always done it, Burchett.
That's because the staffers are running the committees.
The committees are too dadgum big.
And we need to probably break some of them up.
But you're not going to see anybody doing that because the chairman would have to give up their power and they've raised a whole lot of money to become a chairman.
And that's the bottom line.
The system's broken.
It needs to be fixed.
And, you know, I rail on it in committee and conference.
And then the next person comes up right behind me and starts telling about how the, you know, how much hard work they've done on these appropriations bills.
Walk down the street of any major city in the country and ask about appropriations bills, and nobody's going to say one word about it.
All they're going to do is say, that's Save Act.
You need to pass that SAVAC.
I was eating yesterday at a little restaurant near my house, the Chow Hall.
It's not a veteran.
It's run by veterans, kind of a veteran-centric kind of thing.
Not a veteran, but I go there and eat some.
And a guy sitting beside me with a tie-dyed t-shirt.
I remember it had Scooby-Doo on the front.
And I thought, what in the world?
And he leans over and looks at me and goes, Congressman, you've got to pass that Save America Act.
And I thought, you know, they did it.
He's not a paid influencer.
And we just can't seem to message that.
benny johnson
John Thune is purposefully, purposefully keeping a simple majority vote away from bringing this question to the floor.
We went deep into the actual parliamentary procedure yesterday.
The House passed it as a preferred question, right?
A privileged question.
Sorry.
And then sent it back to the Senate.
And all you would need is 50 Republicans to vote for it.
And there's 50 co-sponsors of the SAVE Act.
And so John Thune is actually trying to lie to the American public, to the American, to the base.
And I say the American public, Congressman, because people say, well, 77 million Trump supporters support it.
Bro, it's 80% of the country.
Separation of Church and State 00:05:29
benny johnson
This 300 million people support the SAVE Act.
300 million Americans want the SAVE Act.
Democrats, Republicans, Black, White, Hispanic, whatever.
unidentified
Okay.
tim burchett
Let's go say that.
benny johnson
Want the SAVE Act.
So John Thune is not just betraying Republicans.
He's betraying a huge portion of the country.
And he's trying to hide this thing in failure theater because he's trying to protect the rhinos in his own caucus.
I mean, it really is a betrayal.
And it makes me angry.
What are you, Ann Palina Luna saying the House will not do any further work until the SAVE Act is actually brought to the floor?
And John Thune could do it today.
He could do it this minute with just a simple majority vote.
But it would expose, of course, the rhinos who don't want to vote for this.
And so he's not doing it.
Will you commit to halting the business of the House until the SAVE Act gets through the Senate?
I mean, what should the House do in order to effort this?
tim burchett
Yeah, I think what they're what their effort is to stop any bills that come over from the Senate.
My only caveat to that is if we have a national emergency or something and we have a tornado or something or a major event that needs funding that we need to take care of, we've tied our hands.
So, yeah, but the reality is the Senate's not doing anything anyway.
Nobody's doing anything.
We got to get to work.
We got to get to work.
That's what I voted for.
Whenever I see Trump out there busting his ass on something and then he does an executive order, the reason he does that is because he knows Congress doesn't have the will to do it.
And he knows that clock is ticking and we don't have time.
So anyway, I'm very frustrated with the whole thing, as you can imagine.
Pray for our country, dude.
Hey, I want to tell you something.
I got to get off here.
I was at an event in Williamson County, not in my county, a while back.
And this little girl comes up to me and says, I mean, she was like my little Isabel when I got hurt and says, I got it, dude.
My guy's sitting here.
He's like making me nervous.
And this little girl said, Congressman?
And I said, yeah.
And I got that on one knee and I was talking, I could barely hear.
And she says, I just wanted you to carry Jesus around with you.
And I want you to have that.
And I said, well, thank you, sweetheart.
I said, I carry him around in my heart all the time, but I'm going to, so I keep that in my pocket.
And I just, and I, I just think how much God has given this country and how we're just going to blow it because we don't get this SAVE Act.
We'll get this is it.
This is it.
You can shut the door on the majority.
You can shut the door on this country because the Marxists are at the gate and they're and they're in the United States Congress.
benny johnson
Just really quickly, because you brought that up, and I know you got to go, but like these photos from Mamdani yesterday doing a Muslim religious ceremony inside of the New York mayor's office is exactly what you're talking about.
You know, Lynn, they're like, everybody's barefoot and sitting on rugs and like doing religious, doing Islamic religious ceremonies inside of, I think it's Gracie Mansion or potentially the New York mayor's office, either way, an official office with the official flags.
And it's like, you know, what is this?
You're exactly right.
The communists are at the door.
This is the party that screams like separation of church and faith, separation of church and faith.
It's clearly, obviously just separation of our country from Christianity is what they're after.
tim burchett
Absolutely.
And I don't want all my Christians to get angry and think we're going to, you know, we're going to start killing people.
I hear some Christians say some things that are pretty unchristian, but we need to get involved politically.
9-11 happened.
Muslim extremists, and we've got some that are in our government now.
And it's just, I see it.
They are at the gate and we better pay attention.
And you talk about the Muslim faith and Sharia law, throwing gays off of buildings, hanging little kids that do mean tweets, poking the eyes out of little girls that wear makeup.
A woman has the audacity of getting raped and then they stone her to death because she's guilty of something.
That is the Muslim faith.
Beheading Christians, journalists.
benny johnson
Again, throwing bombs, throwing bombs at peaceful protests in New York.
That just happened this weekend.
tim burchett
If that had been on the, shoot, if a group of Southern Baptists had done that, buddy, it'd have been headlines everywhere.
Every editorial and the internet would just be jammed with all their paid influencers to doing that.
And the national media, shame on them.
That $15 They spent on their journalism school.
I think they need to get it back because they have just, this is just unbelievable.
And that's the kind of thing we should be messaging, Benny.
We should be messaging this, but we've got no the Democrats and the national media you watch, though, you've seen those split screens where they all say the exact same thing just over and over and over again.
You know, that's messages sent out.
We need to have an apparatus to do just that, send a message out that's true and concise because that's what America responds to.
And we need to do that.
Shame on National Media Today 00:02:04
benny johnson
That's why we do what we do every single week, day, morning, noon, and night, and why we bring you on, Congressman.
Thank you so much for always being somebody who's really ready to tell the truth to the American people.
I never sugarcoating nothing.
And you got to follow the Tim Durchet right there.
He's got half a million, half a million followers, Congressman.
tim burchett
I get the Benny bump every time my mom was.
benny johnson
Holy moly.
Well, ladies, okay.
Fight for the people who's fighting for us.
And those are very few, sadly, these days.
tim burchett
Thank you.
How do you go sweet babies and love your wife?
See you, brother.
unidentified
God.
tim burchett
God bless you.
Pray for our country.
benny johnson
Thank you, brother.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we have a very special guest.
unidentified
We're excited.
benny johnson
We're very excited to have back on the program, Callie Means, who is here to talk about Whoopee Goldberg and the fact that she doesn't eat masa chips.
Masa chips is exactly what you would find on my household table virtually every single night.
I have a bag of them.
They're what my kids love to eat.
They're so good.
They're so maha.
My wife is very picky about what hits the table in my house.
These have three ingredients: corn, salt, beef tallow.
Man, and they are delicious.
They are good for you.
They leave you feeling incredible, as will a Maha life, honestly.
If you just like re-lock into the way that God made food, God is perfect and he gave us what we need.
Ladies and gentlemen, go try Masa.
Give Masa a try.
MasaChips.com/slash Benny.
Use the code Benny for 25% off your first order.
Simply click the link in the video description, scan the QR code right here.
And you can pick them up at your local sprouts market if you don't feel like ordering online.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, joining us now, I would argue the undisputed king of Maha, Callie Means.
Ultra-Processed Food Crisis Hits Hard 00:16:05
benny johnson
we go all right Okay, Callie.
unidentified
What's up?
benny johnson
Making kids healthy again.
You guys have been on a, you guys have been on a rampage.
I think that there's been perhaps some other large news cycles that sort of overshadow what's been going on at HHS and what's been going on with RFK and your team.
But you guys have been like operating as your own Delta Force, frankly, to execute on some of the worst toxins in our food supply and some of the things that like kind of just poison our kids and make America so sick.
And it's been awesome to see your wins have been unbelievable.
You inverted the food pyramid.
You got rid of these dyes and foods.
And we're coming up on the Easter holiday.
And so it's like going to be, I think, like a heyday for you guys.
Maybe just an opportunity for you to spike the football and some of the major wins over the last 18 months.
calley means
Betty, you and Kate have been just the best allies and supporters here.
And I think you really see what's happening.
But the way I've seen it being in the administration is there's a seat at the table for American children in these policy discussions around food.
And that's been channeled by President Trump and Bobby Kennedy.
And the voices of those millions of Maha voters is heard and they're at the table every single day.
So what does that mean in practice?
You talk about ultra-processed food.
This is not a partisan issue.
And I think that's what Bobby Kennedy and President Trump have helped educate the political system about.
This isn't an annihilate.
This isn't left-right.
We just have a problem where 70% of our diet for a child is ultra-processed food.
And that is 10% in other countries.
And then we have substantially higher rates of obesity, diabetes, cancer.
Actually, we lead the world in pediatric cancers.
So our food is very different.
And we have much sicker kids.
Super common sense.
So what's happened there?
There's clearly, I mean, you were just talking about it just before I came on.
There's clearly a movement of moms to question what's in our food.
There's actually dramatic change happening in the free market already.
People are questioning what they're putting in their child's body.
And I think what we're asking at the Trump administration is how do we, you know, in a common sense way, put pressure on that continued momentum.
So the two areas we've really hammered on is where the government's spending money and transparency.
On where the government's spending money, we have had more successful victories over the past year than at any time in modern American history.
You actually have food prices changing because so much less money is going to ultra-processed food because we cut that funding from SNAP.
I mean, this is the most no-brainer thing ever.
We just actually saw a lawsuit today arguing that we need to take soda and candy back to SNAP because whoever funded this lawsuit, I'd love for people to figure out who funded it.
I think we can probably make some assumptions.
They're actually arguing it's against American health to take soda and candy off of SNAP.
unidentified
But that's a big deal.
calley means
SNAP is a $120 billion program.
This is the fourth largest entitlement program in the U.S. government.
And we had the top item on that program being soda for kids.
It makes no sense.
We took that off.
The food pyramid was a revolution.
Everyone was talking about it.
We even had agreement from major medical groups that are usually disagreeing with Secretary Kennedy on things.
But the real power of that is we're now asking how do we get those principles into school lunches.
So we're going to have dramatic reform to the 45 million school lunches served per day.
We're going to have dramatic reform to military meals.
You know, our soldiers are not eating good food right now.
And it's not a budget issue.
We spend $20 per soldier per day.
We're asking common sense questions of how that money, and this is hundreds of billions of dollars when you add it up, can be incentivizing good, whole American local food instead of ultra-processed junk food.
And then we're driving a lot of transparency.
We're revising various regulations at the FDA to actually know what's in our food, to study it.
And that's led to things like the food die phase out, where it hasn't just been government cracking down.
We've been meeting.
I've had over 100 meetings with retailers in the food industry.
And we're able to use the Trump administration's political power here to force and kind of prod the industry along to make common sense decisions.
So when you have Target and major food companies removing the food dyes, that's been voluntary because they frankly agree and they've been able to use this moment to agree with President Trump and make our food better.
So we're cranking here, Biddy, and we're only getting started.
We've got a big list of things to get done for the midterms.
And I think, you know, we have a very clear argument to the American people that I think two years ago, you could not have imagined the type of cultural change that we've had in our country on health and the policy victories.
We have done a lot, and I think this movement is really worth continuing.
benny johnson
Here we go.
Shared by Caroline Levitt, who I know you work very closely with.
Target eliminates all synthetic dyes eaten cereal.
Latest Maha win.
I'm pulling it up right now.
I keep texting my wife like, I can't believe this.
All throughout my feed, Callie.
All throughout my feed, I see all these people like going to Costco and they're like, wait a second, in Costco, it says just beef tallow chips.
That's it.
Like these huge maha wins, and they're not like making a huge show of it.
It's just people noticing on the on the shelves suddenly in the front of the packaging is not like it's it's flaming hot jalapeno mayonnaise.
It's like on the front of the packaging, it's like free ingredients.
All natural, just like just that.
That's what's front and center in the biggest retailers in the world right now.
Bro, you're winning on a, it's very, it's very subtle, right?
It's like Nicolas Maduro, Iran, there are these other news cycles that sort of like take over, but like on low-key, you guys are winning on a cultural level, unlike anything I've ever seen.
calley means
Yeah, I think, I think, um, I think you see this.
These aren't always things that are on the front page of Politico, but these are things that matter to moms in the country.
I mean, when you, when you look at what is a concern of a parent right now, there's huge anxiety about childhood chronic disease.
And I just want everyone to, I want to take people behind the scenes and how do these target things come about?
There's been hundreds and hundreds of these announcements just incrementally chipping away at our food system.
benny johnson
I'm sorry, but like, this is exactly what I sent my wife.
unidentified
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
benny johnson
I'm sharing a private text with my wife.
I'm like, I'm like, everyone's like, what is this?
Giant beef, like in the middle of Costco, just beef tallow, no seed oils.
Bro, you are winning on an institutional level that I've never seen the government, like the federal institutions win on before.
It's so remarkable.
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
calley means
No, no, no.
benny johnson
My team's just like getting all the assets now.
calley means
Yeah, and Hellman's here, full avocado oil.
The olive oil and avocado oil.
Mayonnaise used to have some canola oil in there.
They're going full avocado oil.
So this is, there's a magical thing happening where Americans are waking up.
We've channeled that awakening through the political system, thanks to President Trump and RFK.
And the White House, the day Bobby Kennedy came into office, put together this Maha Commission.
So every single day, we're working throughout government of how to spur this change more, not through command and control, not through Nanny State, but it's through hundreds and hundreds of conversations we're having with Costco, with Target, with Walmart, with major food companies.
Because behind closed doors, and I don't want to betray confidence, but I think I can say this.
Every human, when you're face to face with them, right, we all agree there's a problem.
Everyone agrees there's somehow the American food system has lost its way.
And I would argue that's not because of Americans wanting to be sick or wanting to give their kids crap.
It's because of incentives.
It's because these things are allowed on SNAP.
It's because we have 10,000 chemicals allowed in our food when every other country in the developed world has 400 because we have an absolutely non-existent safety mechanism for our food ingredients and it's full self-policing.
There's been a lot of decisions that led to this area that everyone agrees is suboptimal.
So because of this Maha momentum, we've been able to convene at the White House these companies.
And a lot of this action has been voluntary.
I mean, it's a big deal when Target says we are not going to procure items with these chemicals.
We're going to take that leadership stance.
That changes the entire market.
They're absolutely reacting to the Maha momentum, but it's also market demand.
And there's just a moment where Secretary Kennedy every day is asking us, okay, let's find deals.
It's very Trump level.
It's a very Trump energy, right?
It's President Trump finding deals on MFN, whatever leverage we can have to get drug prices lower.
It's the same thing we're doing with food, which is let's use the leverage we have.
Let's use the, frankly, I think moral authority that this movement has about our food system, about these chemicals, and let's find deals.
And every single day, you're seeing large retailers, large food companies moving in the right direction.
Now, we are admittedly, and I think very purposely keeping pressure on this conversation of ultra-processed food.
We need to lower, and this is just a public health statement.
This is HHS, where I'm at right now.
It is just absolutely inarguable.
We have to lower the amount of ultra-processed food we're eating in the United States.
Again, 70% of a child's diet.
But I will really credit the food companies for frankly realizing we have a problem and incrementally making changes.
Because if these incremental changes happen day after day, and we're 10 years from now, and this is what we talk about a lot with them, we're going to be in a different place.
I also think, Benny, we have just lost touch with food and with our farmers in this country.
You know, we recently spoke to a school board.
I think it's like over 90% of kids in America have never been to a farm.
We have no idea where food comes from.
The USDA is working on education materials for the dietary guidelines for schools.
Bobby Kennedy is going around schools.
Brooke Rowlands is going around to schools.
We're actually working and encouraging children to visit farms more, realize where their food comes from, realize the importance of eating whole food.
I mean, we've kind of lost touch with this.
People don't know how to cook anymore.
I mean, these are pretty basic things.
So I think, you know, we're getting a lot of policy victories done.
But I think the fact that we're just drawing attention to this, that around every kitchen table of America, whether somebody's a supporter of President Trump and RFK or not, we're having these conversations more.
I'll just wrap up by saying on this point, I was just, I was actually very proud.
I was with a bunch of liberal friends in San Francisco from college who are not fans of RFK, not fans of President Trump, but every single one of them is reading food labels, is looking and thinking so much more conscientiously about what they're putting in their child's body, you know, has health trackers and is thinking deeply about their health and their biomarkers.
They're on that journey.
I think that's credit to President Trump and RFK more than anyone.
There is a cultural change happening in this country.
And it is one of the biggest stories in the country that's happening because one of the biggest dynamics we face is that we are the sickest country in the world and spend more in healthcare than any other country.
And this cultural awakening that's happening is going to change that.
benny johnson
So you brought up military meals.
I did want to get your take on something that's in the news right now.
Military spends $9 million on crab legs and a lobster before I ran war.
That sounds delicious, by the way.
And it's probably like a really healthy food.
And probably went to lobstermen from America and crabfishers in America, no doubt, and steak and cattle in America, which, by the way, is a great, like a great investment.
And it's like really important to remake our cattle populations here in this country.
But I just want to get your take on this.
Like, I think they're upset that our military is eating healthy.
Now, this is the rage bait from the left.
Please, your comment.
I know you don't work on the Department of War, but like.
unidentified
No, no, no.
calley means
This is very, very analogous to what's happening throughout the government.
unidentified
Please.
calley means
This is what's very clear to me, Benny.
And it's maybe obvious, but it's visceral.
The media complex in this country hates President Trump, hates RFK, hates Pete Hegseth, and they feel like it is their civic duty to use any means necessary to diminish this administration as much as humanly possible.
And the lack of good faith is just astounding.
So when they get a budgetary document from the Department of War, which is a trillion-dollar budget, they're not looking for how we're reprioritizing money to support our soldiers.
They're looking for little line items in that trillion-dollar budget to just embarrass the administration.
And this is a great example.
Those meals are for soldiers.
It's customary to eat before they go off to battle.
And if there's any line item of the military budget That we shouldn't be mocking.
It's good food for soldiers.
This is something widely the country supports.
But it's just like today.
You have the New York Times attacking the administration for taking soda and candy off of SNAP.
You actually have op-eds in the New York Times, literally, you can't even make this up, arguing that the food dyes, the petroleum-based food dyes, which are neurotoxic, are healthy for children.
You have an article recently saying that the idea that talking about the root cause of why we're getting sick is a myth.
That was a recent op-ed.
You just have mass diminishment of these obviously true things the administration are doing.
What we are doing is the White House, HHS, and the Department of War are working lockstep right now to scour the very large budget that the military spends on meals and get delicious whole food to those soldiers.
There's nothing better we could be doing.
And it's just a fact that we have a crisis now of military readiness.
We have a disaster with veterans.
It's 30 to 40% of veterans are diabetic, are full-fledged diabetic right now.
I mean, we have let our citizens down through these broken incentives.
We're working to fix that.
And all the media will show you taking line items of the trillion-dollar budget and try to find something embarrassing.
It's shameful, but I think you have Secretary Kennedy really resonating, still has wide support.
The president, Pete Hegseth, what he's doing.
I mean, I think what the energy of what we're trying to do is coming through, but that's the dynamic we face with the media.
benny johnson
Yeah, you face a real problem with the media, which is fake news.
And it's obviously something that's become almost like a meme at this point.
And I don't know how many times CNN has had to apologize.
I've lost count of how many times CNN has had to apologize for lying to protect ISIS terrorists this last weekend, but you're constantly getting a barrage of clips like this.
This one wild from Oprah Winfrey saying that you like, it's just your genetics.
Like there's nothing you have, you have an obesity gene.
unidentified
Okay.
benny johnson
It's not your fault, right?
It's not your fault.
And this is probably the worst thing you can tell anyone, especially in our country, especially like if you're, if you're somebody who just believes in the human spirit, that you are just, you're a victim of something totally and completely outside of your control.
I view this as like, I view this as like BLM 2.0, where it's like, where it's like, you are helpless.
You should just be angry because this is just the way you're made.
And you're, you know, and all of society is against you.
And this is a system of oppression and you were designed to be obese.
And not only is that anti-Christian, like it's, it's, it's anti-science, I think.
But that's, that's what was being spoken on, that's what's being said on the view by a very, very powerful voice, Oprah.
Your take on this, Callie?
Medicaid Fraud and Obesity Systems 00:06:39
calley means
My take is that the American people should deeply understand that the Republican Party is marshaling the conversation and the serious conversation about healthcare on obesity.
Let's look at the multi-angles here.
Yes, there are these GLP1s and President Trump and Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Oz has dramatically lowered the prices of those drugs because we were paying 10 times more than we were than Europe for those same drugs.
So those are an option.
But at the same time, we're opening up a larger conversation more than any administration has done before about the root cause of why we have such obese people.
The truth is, Benny, in the United States, our teens are over 40% overweight or obese.
In Japan, that is close to 0%.
We clearly have something going on.
So the Trump administration is throwing the kitchen sink, being very clear that obesity is not a drug deficiency.
It is clearly a cultural and I would even argue spiritual problem we have in this country where we're letting this happen to our citizens and kids.
We have close to 80% of adults overweight or obese.
When you've got 80% of adults, you know, clearly, visibly, metabolically dysfunctional to a degree that is not evolutionarily appropriate in any way.
Literally, an obese person 100 years ago was in the circus, literally, and there was case reports written in medical schools because it was so rare.
Now that's an average American.
That is not because of individual responsibility or that Americans have automatically become more lazy and nihilistic about their lives.
It's because of incentives.
And this administration is unpacking those incentives in addition to trying to fix the downstream issues in our healthcare system.
I will tell you, Benny, we have reached out to Democrats time after time.
You know, with these announcements last week, where we have most medical schools in the country committing to nutrition education with the food pyramid, with things that are 90-10 issues, not one call has been answered by the Democrats.
The Democrats have not lifted a single finger.
What the Democrats do is they take a three-hour podcast that Secretary Kennedy does about the spiritual stakes of our chronic disease crisis, saying things that nobody in the country can possibly disagree with.
They look at that three-hour podcast and then put on their social media a 15-second clip trying to embarrass him.
That's what they're doing throughout the government.
The Trump administration, there's one theme across the government.
We are trying to take on every single big issue at the same time that people have ignored for way too long.
And on the health issue, this is a uniting, important conversation where you have this energy on the left to argue that we can do no better as a country than to be sick and drug ourselves, that it's illegitimate to question this system.
And they're just not lifting a finger to help.
benny johnson
It's nice to see people lift fingers and just try and just start to notice these things.
I guess in closing here, Callie, I'm not exactly sure how much about this you can discuss, but this week we saw CBS News finally a corporate news entity talk about the enormous amount of fraud waste inside of the Medicaid, Medicare system, and the reimbursement systems.
We visited ground zero hospice fraud in Los Angeles.
We were just in California, found the exact same thing with the homeless shelter fraud.
These systems, if they actually got audited, I think, would collapse.
And I think you're actually starting to see that a little bit.
Can you give us an update?
calley means
When you think about who's funding what the energy is against the Trump administration and against HHS specifically, you just need to look at these numbers.
We spend over a billion dollars comes out of the federal government to Medicaid.
You turn one knob on that with clear hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.
You are talking about, you're just talking about massive, massive money.
There are so many incentives in this country that are tied to fraud of major government programs.
And there are no bigger programs than Medicare, Medicaid, these big government programs.
When I look at that and look at the Trump administration's relentless effort to make these programs work by getting rid of this fraud, I think about the Democrats who are saying we should not be investigating the fraud and saying all we need to do is spend more money on the existing systems.
Every American should know this.
The Democratic plan for healthcare is that everything is working perfectly, but all we need to do is put more money into these same systems.
The Republican plan for healthcare is that there's massive fraud, that the definition of insanity is to do the same thing again and again and again when you're getting a suboptimal result.
We spend three times more for healthcare in the United States than any other country in the world, than any country in human history.
We are living six years less than our friends in Europe.
We have the highest rate of chronic disease in the world.
We're spending more.
It's not working.
So the Trump administration, the multi-point plan, which we are relentlessly pursuing, is cut the fraud before spending more or raising taxes.
Let's cut the hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.
And as President Trump has said, let's make healthcare prices transparent.
Let's lower drug prices.
Let's put power back in the patients' hands by giving them their own money so they can be consumers and shop and create the best system for them instead of this top-down disaster system we have right now.
The Trump administration is putting a plan forward for reform, and the Democrats are obstructing any effort to correct fraud, which is massive.
And they are simply arguing to spend more money on this same existing system, which is insane.
benny johnson
It's insane.
It's insane.
I don't get what I want, right?
But man, dude, if we could have just kept up the fraud conversation, that was a winner.
And that hit so hard over the holidays.
And everybody was sort of locked in and saying, let's go ahead and fix this.
I know there's a lot of great work that was done by HHS and inside of your organization to do this.
I hope that you keep it up.
calley means
We're pushing.
There was a great event last week with the vice president, Dr. Ross.
We are pushing on this.
It is a top priority, Benny, and the team is systematically working.
And we'll have a lot to announce on this.
benny johnson
Excellent.
Everybody follow Callie Means for those announcements.
He's got hundreds of thousands of followers.
In fact, 300,000 followers.
And he should fight with the people who are fighting for us.
And there's no better thing to fight for than your children's future.
Callie does that every day.
Faith, Freedom, and Truth Unfolded 00:02:55
benny johnson
Father himself and somebody who is truly motivated by the right things.
Thank you, Callie.
calley means
Appreciate you, Benny.
benny johnson
Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, Philippians 3.14, our verse of the day.
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
You're not going to get an easy life.
If somebody tells you that, then they're lying to you.
I do not believe in the prosperity gospel.
I believe in the gospel gospel, which says that actually life is tough.
And if you study the lives of the apostles, life is tough.
It wasn't pretty the way that it ended or the way that it went for most of them, for all of them, frankly.
It wasn't pretty for our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
But you press on, as it says here in Philippians, you keep going.
That's what makes Christians different.
We're built different because we know the truth, the true, and total truth.
Press on heavenward towards Christ Jesus, ladies and gentlemen.
We'll keep fighting with you.
Remember, in the end, we win.
It's your boy Benny.
See ya.
unidentified
Tell the police to get up here quick.
Somebody's about to get killed.
calley means
Salting all the libs, soul never sold.
benny johnson
It's the Benny Show, where the truth compete.
unidentified
Faith and freedom on your TV screen.
tim burchett
Stand up strong, battle through the night.
unidentified
The Benny Show's here bringing liberty to light.
Liberty to light.
Bringing liberty to light.
Liberty to light.
benny johnson
Liberty to light.
unidentified
From the speeches to the gates, Benny Sharp like a blade.
Cutting through the lies, watch the truth cascade with the warrior's heart.
This man never fades.
You know it's crime time when Benny invades.
From saving the nation to stories untold.
The Benny shows a storm, see the truth unfold.
Stay in the loop, let freedom take hold.
Salting all the lips, soul never sold.
It's the benny show where the truth gon' be.
Faith and freedom on your TV screen.
tim burchett
Stand up strong, battle through the night.
The Benny shows here, bringing liberty to light.
unidentified
Bringing liberty to light.
Bring your liver, eat a
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