Fight For The SAVE America Act Begins As Trump Sends Dark Warning to Senators Who Betray Him...
Benny Johnson and co-hosts dissect the Senate's impending debate on the Save America Act, championed by President Trump and Senators Mike Lee and Ron Johnson. They detail a strategy to force Democrats into an exhaustive "talking filibuster" to pass the voter ID bill with a simple majority, citing a Harvard survey showing 71% public support. The hosts argue Democrats view election security as an existential threat to their power, drawing parallels to the 1964 Civil Rights Act passage while asserting that current procedural rules unfairly disadvantage election integrity measures. [Automatically generated summary]
Senate Republicans are expected to push a test vote today for the Save America Act, which would require Americans to show an ID before they're heading into the ballot box.
But Democrats are promising to sync the bill.
Our chief congressional correspondent, Chad Pergram, is live on Capitol Hill with the latest.
They argue that the bill imposes unnecessary complications for people to vote.
Plus, the Constitution says that only citizens can vote.
unidentified
We've repeatedly made clear that the administration of elections are to be done as per the United States Constitution.
This was an intentional choice that the framers of this country made, that the administration of elections are to be done at the state and local level.
We have a little green bunny up there and our home office here in the Johnson household because my wife and I are traveling today up to Washington, D.C. for the St. Patrick's Day party at the White House.
And so we have a flight to catch right after this very quick show.
And so ladies and gentlemen, let's rock and roll.
We're excited to be with you and excited for the beginning of the end, the end of the beginning.
We're not exactly sure with the Save Act.
It's very strange moment that we're living in.
Senator Ron Johnson will be joining the show in order to give us all of the updates from inside of the Senate.
Senator Ron Johnson, just one of the all-time bests.
I even got my little, we got a little leprechauns on today, different set of glasses.
Let's freaking go.
Today is Tuesday, March 17th, 2026.
Happy September.
The Senate prepares for the Save American Act marathon.
In fact, it may start live on the show.
We may have live on the show the actual Senate debate beginning.
And the goal here, and I've been asked this by like 50,000 different people, but as best as I can tell, and I've been doing nothing but like calling and working my phones in order to try and figure all this out.
The best as I can tell, they are going to do the standing filibuster.
They're going to have an open debate on the Senate floor for this.
And there's going to be eventually a vote.
The question is, how soon will Jon Thune, who's in charge of the Senate, he's the leader of the Senate, relent?
When will Jon Thune allow that vote to be cast?
Will Jon Thune exhaust all of the senators' speaking times?
That's really the question here.
What is the actual mechanism for doing that?
Well, just freaking keeping the Senate open.
Why wouldn't John Thune want to do that?
Because senators are freaking old.
They have fundraisers.
They have tea times.
And they want to go off and party with other senators.
All the Democrats party with Republicans, Republicans party with Democrats.
Like it's so gross.
It's grotesque.
I've seen it before.
It's all fake.
It's all fraudulent.
None of these people actually fight, right?
None of these people actually believe what they believe.
I'm talking about the rhinos.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, throw up your Irish shamrocks today.
We're going to need as much luck as we possibly can get as the Senate prepares Save Act Marathon live on the show.
Nick Shirley also dropped a new banger in California.
Makes me very jealous.
Senator Ron Johnson, as I said, will be live on the show.
My name is Benny Johnson, and this is the betting show.
We will have a quick show today.
We have a flight at 11 o'clock.
Luckily, I live near the airport.
So there we go.
That's why we're live.
We're going to be, again, like going to DC.
I think I'm going to meet up with Mike Lee when I'm in DC.
Just like throw it up in the chat.
Like I'm going to, I'm going to meet up with Mike Lee and we're going to do our best to keep the energy going, keep the momentum going.
All right.
I won't take him away from the filibuster, of course.
How do you keep it going?
Well, blackout coffee.
Here's my little coffee.
Here's my coffee mug at home, right?
Got a little, we got our steer, right?
Our stag, okay?
This is my coffee mug at home.
This is my 90th cup of coffee this morning.
Blackout coffee, of course, sits inside of this hot little mug.
Blackout coffee is the coffee that powers our program.
It also powers millions of great Americans every single day.
They're celebrating America's 250th anniversary with special blends and roasts.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is, again, this and my dad official dad 2020 mug are my favorite mugs.
And they are filled to the brim with blackout coffee.
As my cup runneth over today, allow your coffee to be as full of caffeine and ready to go.
Patriots to fight the communists.
Man, we have like a little Cuba, some Cuban news too.
Trump allies plan Senate floor takeover to pass the Save America Act.
Here's our top line article.
Let's rock.
So the goal here again is to exhaust the number of times that each senator can speak.
There are 100 senators.
As far as I know, ALX, there are no vacancies for any senators.
So that would, of course, be 200 different speaking slots.
Once you're done speaking, that's one bullet in the chamber, right?
And so, and presumably, most senators wouldn't want to speak.
Most of them can't speak.
A lot of them, like Mitch McConnell, can't even freaking stand.
And so, you know, and Maisie Hirono, as we've said, doesn't speak English.
And so what will happen next is we'll hopefully get an opportunity for Jon Thun to start running out the clock.
And Jon Thun has already filled up what is called the, you know, the amendments tree here.
They're not allowing like a simple cloture vote, right?
A simple cloture vote just kind of like brings the question to the floor.
They vote on it.
They vote it down.
You don't get 60.
You're done, right?
They're not allowing that.
Jon Thune is kind of playing ball.
It's like a half and a half game right now.
Okay, let's read the top line and then we have some breaking news.
President Trump's allies are planning to take over the Senate floor this week, bid to pass the Safeguarding America Voter Eligibility Act, setting up a major test for Senate Majority Leader John Thun, who is under pressure from Trump and a MAGA base to extend his debate over voting reforms as long as possible.
GOP senators are playing their cards close to the vest ahead of this week's marathon debate over the Save America Act, which would require people registering to vote and show documentation of citizenship.
Isn't that amazing?
What an amazing line from the Hill.
Thank you, The Hill.
This is incredible.
Yes, that's exactly what it does.
It's not Jim Pro 2.0.
I'm going to go fly today.
Here's just a simple great example.
I'm going to go fly today and I'm going to use my ID.
I pulled the numbers.
90% of Americans have flown on a commercial flight, 90% of the country.
So that's 320 million.
Let's just say round numbers.
320 million people have flown on a commercial flight.
That means those are the number of people you have to have an ID to fly.
Those are the number of people that have IDs.
So it's insane to say that like having a voter ID is racist or is silly when 90% of America has flown.
That's like just one item that requires an ID.
Buying a home, getting a credit card, purchasing alcohol, other things that require ID.
It's insane to say this is anything other than absolute and total common sense.
They're bracing for long hours, possible late night, to build momentum for the bill, which is already has broad public support.
Recent Harvard survey found that 71% of American people support the SAVAC.
Trump allies, frustrated that they aren't able to force Democrats to stage a talking filibuster to block the bill, are pressing Thune to keep the measure on the floor as long as possible to force Democrats to defend their opposition.
How long it goes is going to be instructive because the point here will be exhausting Democrats.
The point is the pain.
The point of forcing the public and political process, seeing what comes out of it.
Now, of course, when a Democrat stands there to speak on the floor, this is the famous filibuster rule.
They can speak for as long as they can.
They can't go take a pee-pee break.
They can't, you know, they're going to have to crap their pants, effectively.
You cannot stop talking.
You have to stay there.
You cannot stop standing.
You cannot take a little nap, as I know the senators want to do.
So this is going to be like a huge test of endurance, hopefully.
A reminder that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed in this manner.
Senator Mike Lee, leading proponent of the bill, says Trump wants to see Republicans go all out in envisioning an epic floor fight, a two-month battle that preceded the Senate's passage of the Civil Rights Act.
What I want to do is to try and maximize the period of time for which we debate it, says Lee.
Lee recalled that during the battle over the Civil Rights Act, the Senate stayed in session for 60 straight days and used this approach similar to what I think ought to be done here.
They faced a 32-vote closure deficit at the time, and it came over from the House in March of 64.
Lee said they were able to close a 32-vote closure deficit.
That means it took them 60 days and they got there.
Debating the bill will continue to get more popular as people try to slow it down and stop it and obstruct it.
This is genius from Mike Lee.
Hopefully, I'll be hanging out with Mike Lee today, and we'll, of course, post those updates soon, as soon as we possibly can.
That's what we're looking at here, says Mike Lee.
Lee, a close Trump ally, suggested that the president will closely watch the Senate's debate.
All right.
Here's President Trump already closely watching the debate here.
Donald Trump posing this morning.
The SAVE Act is one of the most important and consequential pieces of legislation in the history of Congress and America itself.
No more rigged elections, voter ID, proof of citizenship, no rigged mail-in ballots.
No men in women's sports, no transgender mutilization of our children.
90 to 99% issues on all.
Sick, demented, deranged people in the House and Senate could vote against the SAVE Act.
If they do, each one of these points separately will be used against them in their political campaign for office.
A guaranteed loss.
Get your senator, Republican or Democrat, to vote yes on the Save America Act.
I will never, ever endorse anybody who votes against Save America.
Thank you for your attention to this matter to Donald Trump.
Okay.
Ladies and gentlemen, Mike Lee, obviously the man who's been banging the drum on this day and night, calling to action, teasing last night, Mike Lee's last post, saying here is the time to stand and deliver.
It's been about two years since Chip Roy and I wrote the Save Act, which later became the Save America Act.
Tomorrow, this is going to come to fruition as the Save America Act comes to the floor of the United States Senate.
I invite all within the sound of my voice who would like this bill to become law to reach out to as many people as possible, friends, neighbors, and especially United States senators who might listen to you.
Ask them, please get this passed.
Tell them we need to invoke the talking filibuster in the United States Senate.
No zombie filibuster will suffice on this one.
We've got to turn to this bill.
We've got to debate it.
We've got to stay on the bill until it becomes law.
Listening to too much Senate C-SPAN will put you to sleep.
Something else that will put you to sleep is your Helix sleep mattress.
The Helix sleep mattress.
No, no, no, keep that up.
No, no, no.
No, Klein.
Keep it up.
Keep it up.
This will go well together.
The helix sleep mattress is probably the number one way to get a great night's sleep.
The number two way to get a great night's sleep is to have C-SPAN senators on giving those style speeches.
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This is something that you should do today.
A good night's sleep is something that is priceless.
Take it from me, obviously.
We got four little kids under the age of five in our household.
So up and down all night long.
It's something that you need to be able to lock in your sleep when you can get it.
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HelixSleep.com slash Benny for a great night's sleep.
Not brought to you by the Center.
In fact, if you have a Helix Sleep mattress and then if you have C-SPAN senators on talking, then you will probably get like eight hours of REM sleep, no doubt.
We're going to need the luck of the Irish to get the SAVE Act passed.
Senator, you have been the leading charge on the SAVE Act.
You obviously, I know, as a matter of fact, because I've been calling around, you've been somebody who's been twisting arms behind the scenes, somebody who's been selling it, including to Chuck Grassley and others.
And so as a staunch advocate of the SAVE Act, can you give us like a landscape as to what the major news is on this debate today?
Well, Benny, what I'd like to do is take a little bit of time to explain as best I can filibusters, the culture rule, the talking filibusters, so your audience really understands what we need to do to pass Save America Act, which is end the filibuster.
But let me just start by saying up until 1917, debate in the Senate was unlimited.
As long as somebody wanted to talk, they could never call the question, vote on a piece of legislation with a mere majority vote.
That's how you pass legislation, just a mere majority.
But in 1917, they realized, well, we need some mechanism to bring debate to a close when back then, two-thirds of the Senate decided they wanted to end that debate.
The debate had gone on too long.
So that was two-thirds back then in 1917.
For the next 50 years, they only invoked that cloture vote five times because the tradition of the Senate was you debate a bill.
And one of the ways you debate a bill is you offer amendments.
You have a base bill and you take a look at it and go, well, it's not perfect or I can't support it in its current form.
But if we amend it by doing this, I can support that bill.
Again, that'd be the greatest deliberative body.
That's the way the process ought to work.
What has happened, and they watered down the two-thirds requirement down to three-fifths in the 70s.
So now it takes 60 votes to end debate on a bill.
That's the closure vote.
What that has done, though, is it not only limits debate, it eliminates all debate.
It's now been used to just snuff out any discussion, snuff out a actual amendment process.
It's not a charade.
What happens right now is, you know, once you know you have closure, once you know you have enough 60 votes to pass anything, the base bill is what's passed.
And you have to have time agreements.
And, okay, you get five amends.
We'll take these five amendments.
We'll agree.
They all fail.
So it's a great big charade.
And we're not the world's greatest deliberative body.
The fact that since I got here, we've gone from $14 trillion up to almost $39 trillion in debt.
We've had countless shutdowns, countless continuing resolutions.
And I'm going to be writing an op-ed and I'll lay out the numbers, but it's shocking.
It just shows you the dysfunction of this place.
But I have colleagues who just believe that, oh, the Senate has to have a 60-vote threshold, or we will destroy the tradition of the Senate.
Again, for over 100 years, we had no cloture vote.
This isn't some sanctuary sanct element of the Senate that's not in the Constitution, and it's not working.
So what the talking filibuster is, and how it possibly could have worked prior to 1986, is there used to be what they call the two speech rule that senators could only speak twice during any legislative day.
Now, again, a bizarre thing, a legislative day can actually actually end or last weeks.
A legislative day is what we say a legislative day is.
So you would limit senators to only two speeches on a particular piece of legislation.
The problem is in 1986, Robert Byrd, with a, you know, only needed a majority vote, but got over 90 votes to change the press in the Senate where things like offering motions or amendments were no longer counted as speech.
So now to do what they call a talking filibuster, in other words, make the other side exhaust its ability to speak to prevent a vote, just a mere majority without a cloture vote, you can't limit the number of amendments.
So there's an infinite number of amendments.
So as long as the other side is determined, let's face it, when it comes to Save America Act, Democrats view any election security, any controls over our process to make sure that your legitimate vote isn't canceled out by a fraudulent one.
They are opposed to all that because Democrats want it to make it easy to cheat.
They view the Save America Act as existential.
And my belief, and I could be wrong, but my belief is there's no way you're going to exhaust them in terms of the number of amendments they would offer in a true talking filibuster.
So what we should, what we would probably be doing this week is we're going to hopefully move and we'll have enough votes to just get onto the House message, which only requires a majority.
And then we're going to control the amendment process.
We're not going to allow Democrats to offer nasty amendments that are just a bunch of poison pills.
We're going to take the Save America Act and we're going to hopefully debate and offer amendments that the American people support.
Things that aren't necessarily to do with the elections.
For example, let's make sure that you can't mutilate a child without certainly without parental notification.
Uh, let's make sure that biological males can't compete against our little girls in sports.
Okay, we'll offer those kind of amendments from my standpoint to improve the legislation now.
At the end of that, we'll never get to the point where you can call the question, take a vote at just a majority level.
We'll have to have a culture vote.
My guess that'll probably fail, And here's the next vote we ought to take is we ought to take a vote on a rule change to end the filibuster.
Now, that would require a 67-vote threshold, but the divide right now in the Republican conference is between those of us who believe that Democrats, the next time they have a chance to end the filibuster, that they will.
And we want to beat them to the punch so we can pass Save America Act.
There are other people in our conference, and I understand this, the filibuster or the cloture vote, use the words right, the closure vote, that 60-vote threshold has prevented all kinds of awful radical left legislation from being passed over the decades.
America would be in far worse shape had we not had a culture vote, but Democrats have signaled they're going to end it, right?
The only two people to vote against it have been purged from their party.
So the split in our conference is those of us who believe they're going to end it and we want to beat into the punch versus those that are just hoping against all hope.
The Democrats, oh no, they're going to maintain the filibuster, even when they have the power to do so.
And even when they have the power, the House, the Senate, and the presidency to pass all this rotten radical left legislation.
Now, is it a risk?
Sure.
But again, I'm just very certain that when Democrats have powder, they'll do it.
They'll turn DC, Puerto Rico to states.
They'll pack Supreme Court.
That's what we're going to do.
The best chance we have of preventing them from doing that is get control over our election system by passing Save America Act, by requiring voter ID.
So they can't cheat, so they can't steal elections, and we can prevent them from running the table, gaining the presidency, the Senate, and the House.
Again, it's a risk.
There's nothing guaranteed there.
But I think doing nothing right now, we're just going to look back three or four years when they have that opportunity, and we're going to be schmucks as they go ahead and turn this nation into one party country.
So that's a long filibuster itself, but I tried to lay it out as best as concisely as I can.
The way to pass the Save America Act is get the public pressure to do so.
And again, right now, 80% of Americans think they should have voter ID.
They're maybe quibbling a little bit with the citizenship requirement and what you need to prove that.
Fine, we can work that out.
Again, we can use the amendment process to make sure that that's not a problem.
But Democrats, again, it's existential to them.
They are utterly opposed to it.
The mainstream media, which is the communication arm of the Democrat Party, they're not pointing these things out.
For example, my wife is telling me about, she heard a story, you know, kind of a reporter on the street of these TSA lines.
And like nobody in line realized it's because Chuck Schumer refuses to fund DHS.
The TSA agents aren't getting paid.
That's why you're sitting here waiting for hours in line.
People don't know it because the legacy media doesn't report it and make the American public at large aware of these things.
So unless we hold a debate and we make Democrats defend why they are opposed to what 80% of the American people support.
So again, we shouldn't be bringing up controversial issues here.
We should only bring up pieces of legislation that have broad 70, 80% support by the American people and put Democrats on record.
Now, if we do that well, and there's no guarantee we will, if the media covers it, If the public gets outraged at their Democrat senators who are voting against what they want, maybe there will be enough pressure to actually get enough Democrats to vote at the 60-vote threshold and pass that piece of legislation.
Again, I've got grave doubts that will get that public pressure.
But what I'm very certain of is that the public, by and large, holds Congress and the Senate with scorn.
And Democrats, when they're in power, their Democrat supporters, they want them to end the filibuster.
I think Republican supporters and voters want us to end the filibuster.
And in the end, it'll be that public opinion, that public support to end the filibuster so we can actually pass from Republican standpoint, what we think is good legislation, or from Democrats' standpoint, what they think is good legislation.
Eventually, the filibuster or the closure vote will be, it'll be reduced to 50-vote threshold, where you can pass things with a majority vote.
You'll still have a closure vote, but it'll be a majority vote rather than 60-vote threshold.
I think public pressure will cause that to happen.
The question is, will that happen in the next couple of weeks to pass Save America Act?
Will it happen while Republicans have the power to use it?
Or will it happen when Democrats have the power to use it?
Hopefully, we don't let it go that far.
Hopefully, enough of my colleagues will see the light.
There'll be enough pressure.
And if you want to understand the public pressure, take a look at what John Cornyn, how he switched his attitude toward the filibuster when he's up in a primary of Republican voters.
He realized in order to win that primary, I have to be for ending the filibuster.
It'll be public pressure that'll end it and hopefully pass the Save America Act.
It depends on how well Republican leadership, you know, the strategy they create here.
I will say right now, kind of hearing what I'm hearing and the strategy is not set, I'm a little concerned.
The way I think we ought to do it is just bring up the House bill, the Save America Act as written, and then we start offering amendments to improve it.
And we offer the amendments.
What concerns me is if we have just one great big substitute amendment that puts all these things in that some of our members have a real concern about.
I mean, listen, I am all for reasonable restrictions on mail and ballots.
But if it's too restrictive, there are states that, you know, Republican states that really rely on mail and ballots.
If it gets too restrictive, we'll lose those votes.
So we need to make sure that we can, you know, whatever we do in terms of restricting mail and ballots, it actually can pass the Republican conference.
And that'll take some time.
It's not necessarily what President Trump is demanding.
Might have to be modified.
We should take our time to get that right.
You know, those senators have a concern.
They ought to have a voice in this.
They ought to be in the room.
We ought to do everything we can to accommodate them because Democrats will just vote no.
But if we do this thoughtfully, if we actually use the Senate the way it was intended to be used, the greatest delivery body offer a piece of legislation and then use the amendment process to not only improve it, but to get the votes to pass it.
What a concept, right?
It's such a foreign concept because that's not how the Senate operates today.
It's why the Senate is so broken and so dysfunctional.
Election integrity is the bedrock of a functioning democracy and republic.
Without it, we're toast.
And of course, that's what Democrats want.
They don't want election integrity.
They want to cheat because they want to turn this into a one-party nation.
That is their goal.
That's why they opened up the borders, allowed millions to flood into this country, going to sanctuary cities, going to sanctuary states.
It's their game plan.
And anything that would disrupt that game plan, like controls over elections, so that they can't cheat, so that the illegal immigrants that they let in this country flood in this country, that they can't vote, they're going to be absolutely opposed to it.
In fact, this has been something that has been part of the Senate's culture since 1789, since the moment the Senate was created and it sprang into existence.
This is something that we can do without changing a single rule or a single precedent.
And it's something that we must do in this instance.
Look, the zombie filibuster, as I refer to it, is the filibuster that we allow that allows people to have the benefits of the filibuster without doing anything.
They could be asleep.
They can be in a bar.
They can be on some Caribbean island drinking drinks with umbrellas in them.
But that is not a procedure that we ought to allow here.
Not on this bill, not where the fate of the republic is on the line.
Not where the will and wish of 85% of the American people are aligned with this.
We've got to do it.
No, as of last week, I don't doubt that he had doubts about his support for the talking filibuster.
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Ladies and gentlemen, we do not have time, but I encourage you to go check out Nick Shirley's new expose.
It's up on his X account and his YouTube.
Obviously, go follow Nick.
It's amazing.
It's 40 minutes.
So again, we don't have time, but it's an incredible, just a remarkable piece of fraud exposing in California.
We are heading to a place, maybe as bad as California, Washington, D.C., totally and completely corrupt, but we are going there to give some luck to the senators that are trying to pass the Save America Act.
Again, we'll be posting from the White House later this afternoon.
Our verse of the day today from James 1.
Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial, having stood the test, the person who receives the crown of life the Lord has promised to those who love him.
That's your luck today.
Persevere and trust in God.
It's your boy Benny.
March with us on to victory.
unidentified
See ya.
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