BACKFIRE: Trump Deployment of ICE Fixes Airport Lines, Illegals ARRESTED as Libs SCREAM
Congressman Tim Burchett and host Benny Johnson analyze ICE deployments at airports under DHS Secretary Mark Wayne Mullen, claiming reduced lines and arrests of "criminal aliens" while condemning Democratic sanctuary policies. They discuss TSA funding shortages, Delta Airlines suspending congressional perks, and alleged election fraud in California. The conversation expands to criticize internal party gridlock over the SAVE Act, speculate on sabotage at Valero's Port Arthur refinery, and link disappearing UFO experts to withheld classified aerospace data, urging a shift from foreign entanglements to domestic balance. [Automatically generated summary]
A massive explosion rocking a West Texas oil refinery, sending thick clouds of black smoke into the sky.
Officials say the blast was likely caused by an industrial heater at Valero's Port Arthur refinery.
Witnesses say the blast could be heard up to 11 miles away.
A shelter-in-place order remains in place for folks who live nearby to protect them from potentially dangerous smoke.
Thankfully, no injuries have been reported and all personnel are accounted for.
And President Trump taking a detour on his Memphis trip to visit Elvis Presley's historic home, Graceland, where he revealed his favorite tune by the king of rock and roll.
Donald Trump dancing through an ice line at the airport in an Elvis costume.
Thinking Elvis, I'm not.
I'm not sure we would actually get there in this show, but thank God, after six years of doing this live stream, we finally gotten here.
This is the meme.
This is this is the meme that brought us all into the singularity.
This is enlightenment.
This was what we've all been working towards.
Try explaining that, by the way.
To somebody, time travel back 10 years and be like, Donald Trump's going to be visiting Graceland as president and talking about how he could kick Elvis' ass, which he did.
He's like, wondering if he could beat up Elvis, and he was asking all of Elvis' heirs whether he could beat him up because Elvis was good at karate.
Donald Trump was having that conversation yesterday at Graceland, was giving plenty of fuel to the fire for people who hold near and dear in their hearts that President Trump is actually Elvis.
There is that contingency of people.
Are you among those people?
Do you believe that President Trump is Elvis?
Do you believe that this is actually like a reincarnation or that Elvis actually like skipped off to go live Donald Trump's life?
Apparently, Trump found out that Elvis was blonde, born blonde, and dyes his hair.
I didn't actually know that.
And so maybe they have the same haircut.
I don't know.
And that we are now deploying ICE to fix the airports, which we are, by the way.
Libs are losing their minds because it's actually working.
If you deploy ICE to the airports and suddenly all the lines get fixed, how many illegals are the ones flying in the country?
We allowed to ask that question.
We'll ask it on this program.
Can you deploy ICE to hospitals or to nursery daycares in Minneapolis?
Can we do that?
Can we deploy ICE to every voting booth in America?
Would that fix the fraud?
Of course it would.
Why are we even talking about the SAVE Act?
You don't need the SAVE Act if you don't have a nation overrun with criminal aliens.
A little anecdotal story.
Do you remember flying during the Biden years and like obvious third worlders from Guatemala or from Africa or wherever would be boarded, would be taken by little minders and handlers onto the plane?
And because they don't have IDs, because they shred their IDs at the border because they're all criminals, they would have these little placards that they'd hang around their necks and they'd walk them on like chattel onto your commercial airline flights.
There was this entire secret system run by the Biden administration to human smuggle on commercial airlines criminal aliens all throughout the country.
And the government paid for it.
There's been no accounting, no reckoning for that.
These more deep state arrests, dude.
You know, we got, we got, we, we like, we just, we've got to have it.
Like what they did to this country, what they've done, this nation, can it be undone?
I don't know.
Do we have the will to save Western civilization?
It's got to start with this.
It's got to start with getting the people who are antithetical to Western civilization and humanity and our way of life and America, like the hell out of this country.
You know, you call them paperwork Americans.
Paperwork Americans is like, you know, you always stamped a paper and you're American.
You know, suddenly, Ilhan Omar's daughter is off in Cuba trying to save communism in Cuba, wearing Marxist t-shirts, talking about how she wants the destruction of this nation.
In order to have a functional society, in order to have like a society that's proud of itself, that builds itself up.
If you have too much of the other, if you have too much of someone who doesn't share your language, culture, tradition, doesn't share anything with you, then your society completely disintegrates.
It goes down to the lowest common denominator, which is survival.
And what does survival look like?
The people who can get the most welfare.
That's what survival looks like.
Survival looks like the people who can actually parasitically suck the blood out of the system as much as possible in order to make it so that you don't have a future and they don't have a future.
Then they can just move on to the next host.
You know, it's terrible.
I am like, I was disgusted.
I think I have photos in my phone.
It would have to be back in 2022, so I don't have time to look them up right now.
But I would take photos.
I'd fly and I'd see these hordes of third worlders being brought on our flight by, I don't know who, like minders, right?
Somebody from the airport, some like little, you know, some little dumpy DEI hire from the airport.
And I don't know what, I don't know what job they have, but they fly these people with these giant placards.
Can a producer try and find this out?
Can a producer try and like try and try and figure this out?
I know that Tucker once had like a report on it.
I know Miranda Devine had a report on it.
Like these massive commercial flights.
They're commercial flights.
They're not like military flights.
They're like Delta and American.
And they would fly in.
They would trot on these criminal aliens onto the flights.
I'm paying for a ticket.
You're paying $400 for a ticket.
And these criminal aliens are flying for free, flying on the tax paradigm, being driven deep into the heart of America by the Biden administration, no doubt to Red States in order to rig them.
Anyway, there has to be some special program.
There has to be somewhere.
There has to be some special program somewhere that explains what this is.
Anyway, the airport issue is popping off today.
And so am I. Too much coffee.
Tuesday, March 24th, 2026 is today.
ICE is clearing out airport lines around the country.
Sorry for my mini rant there.
Supreme Court sets rule against mail-in ballots after Election Day.
Yo, very good.
Daryl Issa and Representative Tim Burkit join the show.
It's going to be a based show.
My name is Benny Johnson, and this is the Benny Show.
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All right.
ICE arresting libs at the airport.
I love it.
Give it to me.
Fine.
I want this in my veins.
I could listen to this all day.
The criminal alien gets arrested at the airport and is shrieking and screaming as ICE throws her to the ground.
And, well, turns out that she had a deportation order since 2019.
I need that clip.
So the, you know, so this is, this is part of the benefit of having ICE at the airports, which is, by the way, also the single greatest.
I mean, this is a straight strike by the President Trump, by President Trump's administration.
Check out how the lines look now.
That ICE is at the airports.
It's incredible.
The lines are so much shorter.
It's like alleviated so many problems.
Libs have no defense.
They have no defense against this.
It's a thing of beauty.
And I was at the airport yesterday and we were giving away Chick-fil-A.
And I saw ICE agents there and we thanked them.
And here's what it looked like.
I just went and I caught a couple hundred bucks worth of Chick-fil-A.
That's what we did.
I told you I was going to do it.
I had no other way to say thank you.
I don't have enough money to pay all their salaries like Elon.
We don't have a lot of money, but I have enough to buy people lunch.
And so we got these giant bags of Chick-fil-A.
And the ICE agents that come out and walk by.
Klein, I don't know if you have this.
I don't know if you have this clip, but here, I'll send it to you.
The ICE agents that come walk out and walk by, we hand them a sandwich.
And that's it.
We got permission to do that.
We might do something bigger.
We connected with the airport.
We might have something bigger that we might be able to set up in a wing of the airport, the ability to help ICE agent, the ability to help out the ICE agents, federal law enforcement, and the TSA agents.
But here's your $6 fried chicken sandwich, right?
And that's the ability that God gave us to serve yesterday.
But let me tell you what I heard yesterday in three hours of conversations with these ICE agents.
What I heard was such an immoral cruelty.
It would make your blood boil.
It was heartbreaking.
These agents haven't been paid in two months.
They've gone 45 days without pay.
You tried doing that.
Most people in America live paycheck to paycheck.
I know I spent the vast majority of my life dead broke.
And if somebody had cut my pay for no reason other than for political theater, I would have been destitute.
I'd be sleeping out on the street.
And that's where a lot of them are.
And this is what makes me so enraged.
These guys are busting their ass to try and keep our flights safe and tens of millions of American travelers safe every single day.
And the Democrats are causing such cruel pain to them.
Here are some of the things that I heard yesterday.
I can't pay my mortgage.
I sold my car to pay my mortgage.
My wife was retired.
She has to go back to work.
I'm going to quit.
I got to quit this month.
I've been at TSA for nearly 10 years.
I got to quit.
I got to go find something else.
I can't pay my bills.
I'm going to lose my house.
I can't afford gas.
I can't afford groceries.
I work 14 hours a day.
I miss seeing my kids.
I come home.
I can't even buy them dinner.
And every single TSA agent to a man and woman blamed Democrats.
You know, and it was very pragmatic.
It's not like they're, you know, it's not like the people I was talking to were like huge MAGA.
Maybe some of them were.
I didn't ask.
But they understand how the system works because they work for DHS.
They said, yo, ICE is funded through 2030.
ICE got all the funding that they need in the big beautiful bill.
Why are they doing this to us?
It ain't going to affect ICE at all.
The allocation for ICE has already gone through in Congress.
They're just doing this as a pain point, as a pressure point to hurt us.
Who were these people?
You know, a lot of people are like, you know, TSA is a big, big agency.
The ones that I spoke with yesterday, veterans, cops, moms, dads, working in order to provide for their family.
A ton of former cops, a ton of veterans.
And, you know, it's good.
It's law enforcement, right?
So it's like an, you know, so maybe if you're getting up there a little bit and you can't go, you know, run criminals down on the street, you're still doing law enforcement.
You're still protecting the country.
It's a code of service.
It is an immorality, a moral disgrace, what they've done to these people.
It's made me very, very angry.
I think I'm going to go back to the airport today and do more interviews.
I am pissed at how Democrats are running this op and they hadn't run the op and gotten punched back yet.
Like Republicans keep putting up clean funding bills for TSA every single day.
Democrats won't do it.
Democrats are clearly hiding the ball here.
This is something that they're doing in order to spite Trump.
This morning, Delta has suspended the congressional desk.
This is wild.
I didn't even know this was, I didn't even know that this was a real thing.
Read this from Delta.
The airlines need to start pushing back and taking away the special little goodies and privileges from members of Congress.
By the way, members of Congress, Daryl Issa.
My team is telling me, Daryl Issa, set and ready to go.
Give us just 30, a few seconds here, and we'll be popping over to a great member of Congress to talk about this.
Atlanta's Delta Airlines announced this week that it is suspending its standalone service for members of Congress until TSA is fully funded.
Due to the impact of the resources, the long-standing government suckdown, Delta will temporarily suspend specialty services to members of Congress flying Delta.
There should be no specialty services to members of Congress flying Delta.
Can we get rid of this entirely?
Do you have a specialty service?
I'm a taxpayer.
Where's my specialty service?
You know, I pay the salaries of all these people.
Who's a member of Congress getting these specialty services?
Next day, next to safety, Delta's number one priority is taking care of our people and customers who become increasingly difficult in the current environment.
Spokesperson for Delta told the Atlanta Journal Constitution that the House and Senate members will now be treated like flying passengers.
Oh, good for you.
According to their Skymile says, incredible.
One big club and you're not in it.
Sick bastards.
These members of Congress go like, they skip the TSA lines.
They call ahead.
They say, oh, I'm like this glorious, important person.
I'm so famous.
I'm so important.
Oh, I control the regulations.
I control the appropriations for your industry.
Put me in the front of the line.
Feed me caviar on the plane.
I want to back rub.
I want it to look like the Lolita Express when I'm flying.
Scum.
Scum.
And they defund for the rest of us and torture the rest of us.
Just a couple of, just a couple of really quick and special owns here.
One, travelers support ICE.
Let's go.
unidentified
What that at all?
I mean, if they're there to help, that's fine.
Because you obviously need more people.
Cleveland is one of more than 10 U.S. airports where the Trump administration has deployed agents to help amid a shortage of TSA workers.
Well, Benny, you mentioned something earlier that happens to be true.
Some members have played this game of, I've got a security detail and therefore I can't go through TSA.
We're not talking about members of the leadership.
We're talking about just people like AOC.
They have this, you know, in Crockett and so on.
I've never done that.
I never intend to do it.
Having said that, I have 5 million miles and I'm a global with United.
So guess what?
I've got a better phone call, phone line than I get because the airlines, if you fly as much as some of us do, they treat you very, very well.
Having said that, look, this shutdown, I think everyone should be furious and use every pressure point they can to get it open again.
And I think the president's doing exactly the right thing by making sure that our passengers, our travelers, are not hurt and candidly augmenting TSA agents who in some cases just said, like, I can't work for free any longer.
I know I'm going to be paid in full when this is over, but I need the money now.
And so some of them are, you know, they're off doing part-time jobs and I can't blame them.
So as our safety is being impacted, the president's making sure that it's not impacted and that the consumer isn't impacted.
But having said that, you know, I watched the confirmation on an almost exclusively party line basis last night of a very popular senator who should have gone through 98 to 2 kind of a thing because the Senate has become very partisan and they're not being reasonable.
And Benny, we've got to get reasonable.
We've got to realize that every day now, people are being killed in sanctuary cities by illegal immigrants.
Some of them have been arrested 40, 50 times for violent crimes, and they're still out.
So we've got to get back to normalcy and it's not eliminating ICE.
You know, the new secretary, Mark Wayne Mullen, has said, look, I want to do everything to make it safe and effective.
If it's body cameras and so on, I'll consider everything, but I'm not going to consider just simply opening our borders like the last administration did, and I'm not going to leave violent criminals on the street.
And that's the right attitude, and that's why he was confirmed and why I believe he'll be a great secretary.
So I just really quickly hear Delta shutting down this special desk.
I mean, listen, I fly American all the time.
I'm really like, you do get status.
That's the way that every American gets status.
Nobody's arguing against that.
What is going viral right now was kind of shocking to people is to learn that there's a special congressional desk buried deep inside of Delta where members of Congress or their staff can call and get special privileges instead of Americans.
And Delta's just saying, no, we're actually going to just start treating you like everybody else at Delta, which is according to your sky mile status and rank.
And I think this comes as sort of a shock to many people, Congressman, who say, well, wait a second, this has been going on.
And many, you know, as I said, at a time when Congress is not doing its job, we on the House side would say we've done our job.
But until both bodies send something to the president that funds TSA, I'm happy to have any and all pressure used to get people to do the right thing.
And again, the right thing is not simply to capitulate to these sanctuary cities or as it's about to become.
Virginia, the new governor has not only reversed Governor Yunkin's longstanding policy to cooperate with ICE, but she's about to sign a bill that will codify a prohibition, just like California on any cooperation.
That's going to lead to more deaths, more problems.
Virginia could become like Minnesota, which is a disgusting place because they, in fact, are being un-American and they're hurting their own citizens.
And look, TSA exists to keep us safe when we travel.
ICE exists to make all of America safer by making sure that criminal aliens aren't here, by making sure that dirty bombs and munitions and all kinds of other things don't get into the country.
The idea that if the Democrats had their way, they wouldn't be funding customs.
They wouldn't be funding all aspects of homeland security is reprehensible because American people understand what's going on halfway around the world in Iran is something that will come home to us.
I was with people from Iraq who have seen their communities destroyed by Iranian militias that are retaliating in a desperate effort to save a regime that has demoralized most of the world and threatened it for 47 years.
So it is a dangerous time.
It is the right time to at least set aside the politics of the day and make America safe again in addition to, obviously, I want to make America great again.
I want to make sure that we're a world power economically in addition to militarily.
That's what we should be doing.
But if you want to cut off all travel and don't let anyone leave the Capitol building until they do it, lock them down with nothing but bread and water, bread optional.
If I were in charge, I couldn't change the Constitution as to, quote, the pay, but I certainly could make sure that nothing else happened, that they couldn't travel, that we couldn't leave the Capitol area until we voted.
If you tell people they can't go home and do that politics, and by the way, don't let us prohibit fundraising of any sort, no contribution for either side's reelection until they fund the government and fully fund it.
You see how fast the Democrats would go, wait a second here.
I've got a party tonight.
Oh, I'm terribly sorry, but you can't go to it because it's a fundraiser.
And by the way, you can't leave the ground.
So if you live out in rural Maryland or a nice area in Potomac, you know what?
You're going to have to sleep in your office until you pass.
I'm good with that.
I'm not thinking well about how it would smell, but I really do believe that we should have rules like that that do what we can do to insist that you fund the government or you don't go home.
I just, the bloody cheek of this, being able to vote for yourself, a pay raise, and then deprive and hurt tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of Americans.
I mean, how many people have flown over the last month and a half that they've shut down TSA and caused so many problems for everybody trying to fly.
I mean, you're talking tens of millions of Americans that are affected by all this.
Because I'm sure that there are so many people that are going to hear this and see this.
I want to thank, and I want to ask every one of your viewers and listeners, I want you to thank the next time you see a TSA agent working.
They are working on a deferred basis.
They don't know when they're going to get that money.
They're having to figure out how to pay their bills without a check coming in.
The one thing we keep forgetting is to thank those people who were selfish enough to pay the high gas prices, to come to work, to not be reimbursed until I don't know when.
And every time I see them, I thank them in the line because they're doing their job at a time when Congress isn't doing theirs.
Such an absolutely important and critical message.
Just really quickly, I want to zoom back to the state of California.
There's been quite a bit of fraud and quite a bit of reporting out on not only election fraud, welfare fraud, hospice fraud, and James O'Keefe out with a brand new video showing the exchange and buying of votes, the buying of petitions.
You've been around California politics for quite a while, Congressman.
Well, what's happening is that if you go there, my father said this to me when I was a young boy, and I've never forgotten it.
Son, if you go the wrong direction long enough, you'll get there.
We've been going the wrong direction for quite a while, and we have arrived at the wrong place.
We've arrived at a place in which anyone with half a brain and a couple of dollars is looking to leave.
The most productive people are leaving.
Many of our unicorn founders and executives are leaving.
People like Elon Musk, who did not want to leave California, had absolutely no choice but to make business decisions on behalf of his amazing companies to locate every new opportunity outside of California.
And now what we're finding is delusionally, the governor on his way out thinks he's going to nationalize for all of America what hasn't worked in California.
The fact is, California has gone the wrong way long enough that whether it's the sheriff or Steve Hilton, they're going to have to lead a country, lead a state to come back to be just somewhere with the rest of the country.
And right now, it doesn't look good for the legislature or anyone doing the right thing, which means we haven't just arrived in the wrong place.
We're heading to a place that's worse than that in California.
Californians just voted Prop 50.
They've changed districts to make it more lopsided one way.
Is there anyone that doesn't believe they'll do the same thing at the state legislature level?
Absolutely, they'll do it.
Is there anyone that doesn't believe that as people exit, they're going to continue to have like talk about billionaire taxes and departure taxes?
But the fact is, you cannot tax your way into prosperity.
Art Laffer lives in Tennessee for a reason.
He had enough of California and he said, look, the Laffer curve says this is what happens when you raise taxes unreasonably.
People go elsewhere.
And he walked out and he's never looked back on California.
And this is one of the greatest, smartest economists I've known.
He said the right thing, which anywhere we lower taxes and give people more discretionary money to invest, we get prosperity.
Anytime government takes it, what we end up with is government.
And, you know, Venezuela is not a wonderful place.
Cuba is not a wonderful place.
That's because government does all the decision making, and California is becoming that way.
Do they want done to America what was done to California?
And I think when they're asked the question of, will you be better off in four years with the guy that did it to California or anyone else?
They're going to pick anyone else.
So I hope he's the nominee of the party.
He's not stupid.
Like Ronald Reagan said, liberals aren't stupid.
They just know things that don't happen to be true.
And he seems to know a bunch of things that don't happen to be true and don't work.
And he's doubling down with them.
And so is his entire party, which is sad because Democrats are leaving the Democratic Party because it doesn't represent most Americans.
You look at the SAFE Act, you look at the question of something simple as voter ID.
It's an 80% issue.
36 states, 72 senators live in states that require a voter ID, and yet the Senate can't seem to get to 60 senators.
That's because Democrats in those states are so out of touch with their own people that they won't even consider having a national bill to codify what their own states do.
That's so far from common sense that you have to ask, where did the party of Bill Clinton even go?
The fact is, I don't recognize the Democratic Party, and I have friends in the Democratic Party, and some of them don't recognize it anymore.
It's one of the reasons that you look at President Trump's administration.
There are a lot of former Democrats there, including RFK.
What is to be done about the egregious fraud in California, Congressman?
You know, you can't continue on like this with the spending and with the homeless voter registration scam that James O'Keefe caught on camera, paying literally cash for fake ballots and fake initiatives.
This is a huge industry.
The governor is clearly very scared of this.
Final question here, because our audience really cares a lot about what's going on here.
The bottom line is that we are still going to go in the wrong direction for a period of time.
And the fraud, just like all other wasteful government spending under socialism, in fact, will continue until they run out of other people's money.
And as people run out of California, they're going to run out of money.
And at that point, finally, somebody will probably come in and say, if we want to keep even half of our liberal programs, maybe we should attack the fraud that's taking some of the money.
But that's not happening right now.
The governor is showing no signs whatsoever of really attacking fraud any more than the fool in Minnesota is doing it.
The fact is, the Democrats, so far, seem like that fraud is just fine.
You know, I believe in the redemption of souls, and I believe that eventually we will become so desperate that we will elect a Republican governor.
But Benny, you elect a Republican governor, and you don't give him a legislature that'll work fairly with him.
All you're really doing is putting a show horse out there that can't cross the finish line.
So I commend the people running for governor, but I ask the people of my state, my chosen state, look at your legislature, look at your representatives, and have people that represent you that'll take the state in the right direction.
And I think it's too big a majority for fraud or any of the other games to stop it.
And that's where I have faith in the voter, because every once in a while, they get a clear understanding of right and wrong and they make the right decision.
I think you're going to see 60%.
I think the governor is going to be rebuked on this the way he has on some other big issues.
You did a wonderful service for a Californian, an honored member of your district, Royce Williams, at the State of the Union, getting awarded one of America's greatest honor.
And it's an incredible moment.
Just wanted to give you an opportunity to shout out Royce here.
Well, Elmer Royce Williams, after 37 years of service and decades more of keeping a secret about his brave mission in 1952, finally got what he should get.
And he is now the only living World War II veteran who has the Medal of Honor.
He is the oldest one ever to receive it.
He waited the longest between earning it and receiving it.
And the smile on his face when the first lady put it around his neck paid me dividends and all of us who worked on that far greater than our investments.
So we're thrilled for Royce, but we're also thrilled for the effect it has on the next generation, those heroes that you haven't met yet and those you will never meet that gave their last full measure.
So I think all in all, it was the right thing.
And I want to thank President Trump because he reached out and did what previous presidents talked about but never did.
I'm going to need my coffee for Tim Burchett, who's set, locked and ready to go.
Inside of my black mug here is going to be a blackout coffee.
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And in a world of constant and ceaseless psyops, make sure that you are locked and loaded, supporting a great patriotic American company and also not getting your brain melted by the propaganda of, let's just say, some communist coffee companies.
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Support American jobs.
Ladies and gentlemen, a job that can only be done in eastern Tennessee by Tim Burchett, a great member of Congress, joining us live right now.
Congressman, I got to tell you, man, Daryl Issa said that what we should do if he ran Congress was lock the doors.
He said I'd get some chains out of the back of my car.
I'd lock the doors.
I'd have bread and water, bread optional, until Congress actually went and passed a funding bill to keep our critical infrastructure funded.
And that's how I treat Congress until they can get their act together.
No fancy suppers, no fancy fundraising, just getting the job done for the American people.
I'm a fan of Daryl's, but until we change some of the rules and the way we do things, I was thinking about that this morning, how we did, and I always go back to more like Tennessee.
We got a balanced budget in Tennessee and everybody knocks Tennessee, but it's disproportionate the number of Tennesseans that go fight the wars compared to a lot of the other states.
And also it's disproportionate the amount of people that are moving in versus those moving out.
Tennessee is the largest repository or depository of big U-Haul trucks.
I used to be in the U-Haul business.
You never could get those big trucks.
And now that's all there is.
You go along, drive down East Tennessee, or I was in West Tennessee this weekend, speaking at an event and a little parade way out of my district.
I was invited to be a part of.
And that's what I saw: big U-Haul trucks.
And the reason they are is because they do a balanced budget and they have single-issue spending bills.
And people will say, Oh, Burchett, the old timers, we'd be here all night.
They told me.
I said, Well, I don't give a dad gum if you're here all night.
You pay us a crazy amount of money for this two-hour work week that I'm enduring this week.
So, yeah, I mean, two nights in a row, I've had peanut butter and jelly.
I don't get him by, you know, I'm kind of like Rudolph.
I don't get him invited into too many reindeer games.
So, we've learned something this morning about how fancy some members of Congress actually are.
Delta decided to give up the ghost and tell on members of Congress and their staff who use a very special standalone secret service inside of Delta where they can get ushered to the front of the line.
They can get first-class tickets, they can get treated, pampered, get their own little, you know, Jeffrey Epstein treatment on the flights, no doubt.
And Delta is saying, until you fund TSA, we're shutting you down.
Your little, your little special, fancy congressional service desk is shut down.
You're going to have to travel with the rest of the cattle.
Like, you're going to have to be a normal American.
I remember one time when we were in the minority and there was some kind of cancellation, and I had to fly get this from Washington, D.C. to Knoxville, but I had to go through Detroit, Michigan first.
I never figured that one out.
And they held up the plane because one particular member who's not, is no longer in Congress was running late and they held up the plane.
And I just thought, I've never, never seen that happen.
You know, I've missed several flights, but I got there right as they closed that door.
They closed that door, it's over.
You know, they can't open the door up for you for anything unless it's an emergency.
Apparently, it's a rules for, you know, we don't, we don't go by the same rules.
And that's unfortunate.
I just think unless it's a safety issue, then it shouldn't, shouldn't even be a question.
It's ridiculous that TSA is being, is the scapegoat for this crazy, it's because the Democrats want our border agents to have, to not wear masks and those that are apprehending illegal people in this country because they've been had their lives threatened and their families' lives threatened.
It's, you know, to me, it's just, it's, and it doesn't have anything to do with TSA agents or the Coast Guard.
And here we are in a, we're in a, we're in a fight overseas.
And we know, I mean, I was told by a ranking, the former, the last Democratically elected president of Afghanistan, they think there's probably 500 members of the Taliban in our country right now that came over during the Biden years over our southern border.
So, yeah, to me, it's, it's, again, it's all about what this town is about.
It's about staying in power.
It's not about doing what's right, brother.
And it's, you know, I want the suburban.
I want the entourage.
I want the posse.
I want my butt kissed everywhere I go.
I want to sit in the front row.
I want to sit on the 50-yard line.
You know, I want to go backstage at the concert.
Has nothing to do with governing and about what's doing what's right.
And I'll tell you this too.
There's people within our own party, I think, that are trying to wreck this speaker to get into power.
And they are, and they'll wreck our country doing it.
We'll be like the Israelis going through the Jews, I guess, not the Israelis, the Jews going through the wilderness for 40 years.
And we'll lose our country as we know it because the Marxists, they're not at the gate, brother.
They're over the gate.
And they want to disrail this president at all costs, at all costs.
I would be leadership and I would call out those individuals that chose not to.
I would not protect them.
That's why we have a weak majority right now.
We need to start as I like this.
So let's take that majority out for a walk and see how it goes.
When I was elected mayor of Knox County, I got 85%.
I got 80, 80, we were on with 85%.
And that wasn't by any small measure running against a former popular sheriff.
And, you know, it's all that the big boys didn't play ball with me.
They didn't contribute.
You know, they always did the day after the election.
And I, and I often stated when we were up against a fight on something, I said, let's take that 85% out for a walk, boys.
Let's do some things.
Let's stop paying.
Let's stop trying to raise taxes on people.
Let's pay down some debt.
Let's do some of the stuff we said we're going to do.
And then the next time I ran, guess what?
You know, all the big boys, oh, they hate.
I mean, I remember these editorials and stuff.
You know, Burchett, you know, needs to govern now.
You know, I did something a little crazy.
I continued governing on what the heck I ran on.
And that's what we need to do.
And again, it goes back to Donald J. Trump, won overwhelmingly across this country by all standards.
And Congress did not.
The Republican Party and Congress did not.
And the reason they did not is because they did not embrace the Trump agenda, the things that he's talked about that resonates with America, that the boys at the Chamber of Commerce and the boys at the labor union agreed with patriotic Americans, things like that.
And I just think we're missing our mark and we're going to lose.
We're going to blow this country up so somebody can stay in power.
I remember when I first got elected, I went to a committee meeting and they gave us a piece of paper and told us how much we needed to raise and all this stuff.
And what it was in the Republican, not in the actual committee.
And they talked about how when we get in the majority, we'll get to decide on the Codells, you know, the trips, where we get to go and who gets to go.
We'll be the ones that, you know, get the big office.
We'll be the ones with this.
And I was like, and I don't give a dadgum about all that stuff.
I didn't, you know, we need to worry about our dadgum country, Benny.
God's given us an incredible gift and we're just getting ready to burn it in these midterms because our messaging stinks.
And to this day, if I could get three minutes alone with the president, this is what I'd tell him.
I'd say these people are trying to ambush you.
Look at the week, the week of the State of the Union.
What was our address?
What were we messaging that week?
Appliances.
Granted, the Biden administration had, you know, it hurt working people.
It hurt Americans.
It put people out of work.
It cost billions of dollars.
But America's not focusing on appliances right now.
We should have been focusing on that little girl who got run over by that illegal because we had legislation in the hopper, but for whatever reason, it wasn't up.
We should have been focusing on these border agents and the garbage that they're going through.
We should have been focusing on some of these criminals out there that we keep rattling our sabers about.
We write them tough letters, but we never do a dad gum thing to them.
And those are the things that Trump ran on.
That's why he was so strong.
And that's why I think we're barely hanging on.
And we better get that messaging off.
Again, I go back to those executive orders.
I'm sorry, I'm ranting.
I've had two cups of coffee.
I'm not supposed to do that.
But those executive orders.
Why did Trump, so why didn't he run them through the system?
Because we're gutless.
That's why we don't have the guts to follow through with these things.
You've got the K-Street lobbyists that get associated with these staffers.
And these dad gum committees are too big, Benny, and they cover too much stuff.
And the chairmen are all, most of them are good people, but their staffers run the show and they run the bills down or they'll kill great legislation or they'll water it down or they'll add it on to a bunch of garbage that you have to vote for if you want your bill to pass.
And so many times bills that I voted for out of committee, I don't vote for them on the floor because they've loaded them up with garbage.
Single issue spending bills.
If we did that, we would change the trajectory of this country because the people in power could not defend the garbage that they put.
Every dad gum bill I put on the floor, if I'm fortunate enough to get there, I can defend.
And I would love to go on the floor and defend it.
If they're going on a fun trip somewhere, but they're going on a government.
Well, you know, I'm going to get that.
Here it is, Benny.
This is going to air in a few days.
I'm going to be sitting back there on senator's row on the House floor, and somebody's going to come up and give me the word, or they'll just give me the sneer.
I guess, you know, I guess the final question maybe for this conversation is how do you, how do you, what's it going to take to reorient to get back to the policies that people want and passing the SAVE Act and getting legislation through that people actually care about that serves Americans.
Americans are just getting bloody sick of it, Congressman.
And it's like every, you know, every news cycle is an Epstein news cycle or not, you know, or a news cycle surrounded around a foreign country.
I feel like people like you, though, are a godsend.
You may not feel it all the time, but people pay attention to what you say.
And we've got to, and we've got to hold them accountable.
I say, get your grandkids to show you how to use that dad gum computer and find out what people are voting on and put them on the spot and then hold them accountable.
We always do that.
And let me tell you with the SAVE Act, if they pass it, all those people that held out and drugged their feet and kept all meaningful.
I still can't even get my bill on defunding the Taliban out of the Senate.
We send them $40 million a week.
Monday morning, boom, they hit another 40 mil of your money, regardless.
If they pass the SAVE Act, everybody that voted for it, people are going to forget that they drugged their feet or they wanted some crazy funding for some garbage.
They're just going to say, oh, they voted for it.
We're good.
No, they're not good.
We need to.
We need to hold people accountable.
And there should be some retribution.
And that retribution comes on election day.
But the problem is everybody says, oh, we're going to primary them.
And the primary dates already passed.
We're not educated.
We do a terrible job of messaging in the Republican Party.
The best friend the Democrats have is the Republicans' messaging.
Yeah, as I constantly bring up to members of the Senate, you know, if you guys were for mass deportations or for not bringing in or stopped so many criminal aliens from coming into this country, we wouldn't have to worry about illegal voting because it'd just be Americans living here.
We wouldn't need a save act if you hadn't have broken the system in the first place by letting 30 million criminals and foreigners come into our land.
And why aren't Democrat people in their wards or their hometowns saying, well, wait a minute, if they're not voting, if Eagles aren't voting, then why are you worried about this bill then?
I usually don't discuss out loud too much what I say.
But we just talked about family mostly.
He knows where I'm at.
We're good.
I think he's going to, whatever Trump says is what's going to happen.
That's another thing.
You know, TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority, he's kicked people off that board that he's put on that board because they didn't understand who was the boss.
So you're telling me that right after President Trump said to declassify all the UFO stuff, that the UFO experts that you have personal knowledge of and that you have personal connection to, they've gone missing or wound up dead.
Like, you're telling me that Independence Day is like the scene in Independence Day where the president walks down in Area 51 and they're like, oh, this was just a need-to-know basis.
Well, I know that makes me sound like a nut, but you know, Benny, I just wish the president could release everything that myself and Luna and a few of the others have seen.
You know, Mark Wayne, that bro is on our show every single damn day.
And we have a special little clip for you of Mark Wayne.
If you're OG, you'll remember a year and a half ago, Mark Wayne Mullen's office, we spiked a football at the – there you go.
There's your – You get it.
You're actually – There's your brand new TSA.
I'm sorry.
Well, TSA is in charge of TSA, actually.
Here's your brand new DHS secretary.
Man, Mark Wayne Mullen confirmed.
54, 45.
Generally, well, somewhat bipartisan.
John Fetterman voted for him.
And Martin Heinrich of New Mexico also voted for him.
Rand Paul voted against.
Rand Paul hates Mark Wayne Mullen.
I haven't really done enough investigation as to why, but they hate each other.
They really hate each other.
Anyway, maybe we'll ask next time.
Maybe we'll ask.
The Valero refinery has exploded.
It's a massive explosion.
Apparently, it rocked the houses throughout West Texas.
Smoke billows through the air.
Is this something that was an attack?
Is this sabotage?
Is that what's going on here?
You can see the massive oil refinery bursts into flames and smoke billowing through the air on Monday night.
Emergency crews rushed to the scene.
The Valero refinery in Port Arthur, Texas.
Multiple people and neighborhoods.
Oh, I'm sorry, Port Arthur.
Okay, so it's not exactly West Texas.
People heard the boom.
What was going on here exactly?
I'm not sure.
Emergency crews rushed in.
Let's go ahead and read.
It doesn't look like, you know, it doesn't look like there's any note as to why this exploded.
But infrastructure sabotage is obviously a wartime tactic.
And could this be that?
You know, this is a refinery that processes nearly half a million barrels per day of oil.
Gas, average price of gas is $3.19 around the country.
It's a terrible time to have oil shortages and to have refining shortages in the country.
So it does make me, you know, makes me really wonder.
Hey, Alex, Danny, Klein.
Anybody know?
Like, have they have they said what this was and what happened here?
Have they said like what you know what the cause was here for this?
Yeah, still being investigated.
I mean, it just makes me, you know, my funny bone pops off here.
It makes me uh worried a little bit because it's wartime and you worry about infrastructure sabotage.
We've, of course, seen it plenty of times before.
Port Archer, it looks like, is right there, actually, in the not West Texas, the easternmost part of Texas, in fact, right up against Louisiana there in the Gulf of America.
I always love zooming out and seeing the Gulf of America there on Google Maps.