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July 19, 2025 - Bannon's War Room
47:02
WarRoom Battleground EP 811: Mask Mandate Trial Verdict Stuns Legal Expert
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Time Text
Hello, sir.
Hey, how you doing, Mr. What's your name?
Tim Hazlow.
Tim Hazlow.
Good to meet you.
Good to meet you.
Okay.
We've met before, Craig.
So, tell us all.
I'm just observing my civil rights as the observer.
Because I know they made a policy that we want to mass planning.
Which the RCW doesn't give them the authority to do so.
That's still a policy that's been set.
One section.
They've made that very clear to you.
Are you guys going to cite me for being here?
I'm going to sit here and watch the balloting, like you're saying.
I'm going to sit here and watch the balloting.
No, you're not.
Okay.
You need to wait.
Are you going to write me a citation?
If I need to, then let's go.
I'm the teacher, I think.
If I can get some type of written thing saying that I have to, let's go.
Are you going to give me something in writing?
Let's go.
That's the question.
Are you going to give me something in writing?
Sure.
I'll tell you what I'm going to do.
Okay, I'm going to escort you out of here right now.
And then what?
And then we'll decide.
We can talk in the hallway before we go outside.
And then I'll decide if I'm going to actually leave the building or not.
Okay, let's go.
Excuse me.
Come on.
I know who you are.
I'm on.
Yeah, I know who you are.
Good.
Go in this way.
To the right.
No, we'll talk about that.
Because if I need to go back, I want to go back in.
To the right.
You really want to enforce this rule that you know they have the authority not to do?
I don't know that.
I know that you're being disorderly right now, and I'm exercising your rights.
Is it not my right to observe this election?
If you go and do that, if you follow the policies that are set by the auditor, yes, you can do that.
That is not true.
I've already talked to multiple lawyers, and they've all told me the same thing.
Go in and exercise your right to observe the election.
I'm the chairman of the party.
Not only am I authorized because of the First Amendment and because I'm supposed to be here to exercise my rights, I'm also obligated to observe based on my position.
So I'm obligated.
You've been given the opportunity to observe, and you're not following the policies set by the auditor.
It seems pretty interesting to me that they can arbitrarily set a rule that has zero.
I don't have anything to do with setting the rules.
I know.
I have to do with doing what they've asked me for.
Right.
And they're saying I'm trespassing because I'm not following the rules.
And that could be where we're headed.
Well, I need a citation of some kind.
Okay.
Let's go out and we'll get a little bit more.
That's your citation for you.
Okay.
That's all.
It's a little bit of a little bit.
Should have seen you up on the north end today.
Oh, man.
I almost got hit by a Harris waltz sign driving down the highway.
This is the final scream of a dying regime.
Pray for our enemies.
Because we're going medieval on these people.
You're going to have not got a free shot on all these networks lying about the people.
The people have had a belly full of it.
I know you don't like hearing that.
I know you're trying to do everything in the world to stop that, but you're not going to stop it.
It's going to happen.
And where do people like that go to share the big lie?
MAGA Media.
I wish in my soul, I wish that any of these people had a conscience.
Ask yourself, what is my task and what is my purpose?
If that answer is to save my country, this country will be saved.
War Room.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Bannon.
Welcome to War Room Battleground.
My name is Jane Zirkle, filling in for Steve Bannon.
And what you just saw there was body camera footage from a mask mandate dispute up in Island County, Washington involving the GOP chairman there, Tim Haslow.
Tim and his lawyer, Angus Lee, join me now.
Now, Tim, last time we spoke, you were headed into trial.
The trial has since concluded.
But give us a refresher of what took place that day in Island County, Washington when you were observing the votes there.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, first of all, let me add to this caveat that the body cam adds 30 pounds, and I had orange hair because I had dressed as Donald Trump at a Halloween party the day before.
So I hadn't had a chance to cut the hair.
But basically, you know, I went in there with the intention of quietly observing the elections, which is what we're supposed to be doing.
And I feel like I'm more obligated than some because of my position.
So I went in there to watch the elections.
There had been a mask mandate on and off since August earlier in the year.
And so one day it's on, one day it's off.
In August, we complained.
They took it down.
We watched without masks on.
The week before, we complained about this fictitious mask mandate that we don't believe they have the authority to put in place.
I'm sure Angus could talk about that a little more, but we've complained about it.
And we never even heard a word back from the auditor.
Even after we legally served them with the seasoned desist letter, we never heard a word back.
So I went in on Monday.
I figured it's on and off.
It's loosely, it's a loose law at best.
And I just sat down and I signed in, mind you, signed the rules that said nothing about mask mandates on the written rules.
And we talked about that before I signed in, went in, sat down, and then shortly thereafter, they told me I had to wear a mask.
I said, I don't think so.
And then the sheriff came and you saw the rest of it.
That's pretty much how it laid out.
What you didn't see, though, is there's another body cam video afterwards where the sheriff and I were talking and we shook hands.
Everything was cordial.
And he escorted me back to the front of the building to sign back out again because I had signed in.
I had legal authority to be there.
And so he asked him where he escorted me up front.
And he Testified to that fact in the trial as well.
So that's kind of the 411, the short version of that day.
So you were given a citation for disorderly conduct, and then the prosecutor, Greg Banks, gets involved, saying that if you don't agree to a plea deal on that, he is going to upgrade the charges to felony, unauthorized access to a voting center, and misdemeanor trespassing.
Angus, if you could jump in here and explain, in your professional opinion, is this typically how something of this nature would go that Tim would be given an ultimatum like this where he's then facing a few days in jail for this disorderly conduct citation that he wasn't even arrested for?
Prosecutor to take baseless misdemeanor charges and elevate them to even more baseless felony charges.
And that's exactly what happened here.
And it creates some real concern in my mind because when you watch the video, the original charge of disorderly conduct clearly was without any basis in fact or law.
And in fact, that charge was eventually dismissed.
But to elevate it to a felony when Washington state law is explicit that the voting stations are observable by county party representatives.
In fact, the auditor is required to allow someone like him to make those observations.
It's part of our voter integrity process here in Washington.
So it's very shocking that the prosecutor would take a non-appropriate misdemeanor charge and then, because he didn't get what he wanted, to add a felony that has no basis in fact or law either.
Why do you think Greg Banks made this such a lawfare campaign against your client?
Well, unfortunately, he has become very politically motivated and biased against conservatives and Trump supporters.
Anyone who's spent any time looking at his Facebook feed can see that he has an extreme and pronounced animus towards anyone in the Republican Party or supports President Trump.
So, you know, I can't peer into his mind, but what I can do is peer into his Facebook page, which evidences a large amount of animus towards people like my client.
So Tim, you ultimately did fight this.
You brought it all the way to a jury trial, which took place last week.
Give us the rundown of the trial, particularly when it comes to the timeline, because what shocked me was how quickly this was decided.
Yeah, I mean, it kind of shocked me too.
So day one was jury selection.
Day two was all witnesses.
Day three was closing statements and jury deliberation or jury rules and then deliberation.
So day two is really kind of where it was at.
And I, to me, by the first few hours of day two, any hope that I had of getting an innocent verdict out of these people had faded because the rules of the court, Mr. Banks had put in some motions to prevent us from discussing certain items.
And those items were we couldn't discuss Mr. Banks' political bias, which is the reason why we're here anyway, in my opinion.
We couldn't discuss whether other people were wearing masks or not wearing masks, which there's luckily for luckily for us, one of the local news teams went up there and did a video shoot a few days before I went in the room without a mask on.
And they just happened to catch one of the poll workers in there working, counting ballots, not wearing a mask, amongst other people not wearing masks.
So we weren't allowed to talk about that.
We weren't allowed to talk about the legality of the mask mandate itself.
We weren't even allowed to discuss it.
And so pretty much everything that we wanted to argue as a defense was kind of swept out from under our feet.
And the judge, and I don't know Judge Wilson from any other judge.
I mean, this is the first time I've ever dealt with anything like this, right?
He approved all of Banks' motions to, I don't know what the legal term is, repress or not allow that evidence to be put forward.
Out of all the evidence that we tried to submit, I think we had one piece of evidence accepted, and that was the actual written rule form that I had to sign to get in the building, which mind you said nothing about wearing a mask on it.
Yeah, talk to me a little bit more about that because I know there was some dispute about the auditor's authority here.
Yeah, I think Angus is probably better suited to talk about that than I am.
Yeah, take it away, please.
Sure.
So today we are filing a motion to dismiss the case, set aside the verdict, and or for a new trial.
And if the judge doesn't grant those, we will be appealing the conviction.
One of the big problems in this case is the auditor simply does not have authority to impose a mask mandate in 2024.
One thing for people to keep in mind is that this case is about the 2024 election.
When you hear about a mask mandate order, you might think it was 2022 or 2021.
No.
In 2024, with no authority from any health official, no health advisories, no outbreaks, the auditor unilaterally and without lawful authority imposed this order, didn't follow any mandatory procedures under state law, and really violated the Constitution.
And one of the problems in this case, and the reason there was a conviction, is because not only was the jury not advised what the law was, they were actually misadvised on the law.
The court actually entered a jury instruction that the auditor had authority to issue this order.
That's simply not accurate.
And one of the things that happened during jury deliberation was the jury made specific requests to the judge to show them portions of Washington state law, which the judge declined to do.
So you had a jury who was deliberating this case and saying, hey, judge, we'd like to see this specific law at issue here, and the judge said no.
Had the judge actually shown the law to them or advised them on the law correctly, there would not have been a conviction and certainly cannot be a conviction when the auditor did not have any constitutional authority to effectively create felony law at a whim in this case.
So talk to me a little bit about the verdict here.
What was the basis for the jury's decision ultimately?
You know, that's a good question.
I think the basis for the jury's ultimate decision was lack of proper instruction and lack of a defense.
I mean, basically, we were not allowed to present a defense at all.
I'll give you kind of an example.
I was on the stand and my attorney asked me, had I ever even heard of unauthorized access to a polling place, which I hadn't at that point in time.
And before I could even reply to that simple question, Mr. Banks had objected to the question and the judge had upheld the objection.
I couldn't even answer that question.
So the simplest of defenses that we were trying to put forward were just being shut down left and right.
And yeah, I just kind of knew at that point in time, I could feel it sinking in my chest that I was going to be found guilty of this thing.
And honestly, if you look at the law itself, it doesn't even apply in the situation we're in, let alone the fact that the instructions were given, in our opinion, incorrectly.
That's right.
Yeah.
I mean, a jury has a difficult job in any case.
That job becomes even more difficult when they are given improper instructions on the law.
For those out there at home who have never been on a jury, one of the things that happens in a jury trial is the jury comes in, they get selected, they sit there and they listen to all the evidence.
And they try and determine what evidence is relevant.
At the end of the case, when the judge tells them now that you've sat through all the evidence, here is what I'm telling you the law is.
Now, if the judge advises the jury incorrectly on the law, then you will have an incorrect verdict.
And what happened here is the jury sat through a trial where they were not given all the information.
They did not get all the evidence that exists in real life because of some of the rulings that were made.
And then the jury was given improper instructions on the law.
And anytime you play a game with the wrong rules, you're going to get the wrong result.
And that's exactly what happened here.
It's part of the reason we're filing for a motion to dismiss today.
In your view, Tim, have you been the victim of a witch hunt?
You know, let me be real careful about how I answer that.
Let's think about it, though, and let the viewers make their own choice on this.
I've been cited for disorderly conduct initially.
For some reason, the highest level prosecutor, the elected official in Island County, decided to take it upon himself to prosecute that charge, the lowest level criminal charge a person can be charged with.
For some reason, he came down to prosecute that charge.
When I pled innocent to that charge, first of all, the judge in the district court, he was going to release it because he didn't believe there was any misconduct.
And then the prosecuting attorney's office inflated some things and he said, okay, well, we've got to move it forward.
So I pled innocent.
And then I got that letter stating that if I don't plead guilty, that he was going to add another charge, the trespassing, criminal trespassing.
And if I didn't plead guilty and take his punishment, that all further negotiations were off the table, period.
And he was going to charge me with a felony.
And I don't know if you can tell.
I'm a former military guy.
I got some lapel pins and a hat.
And so you can imagine what my response to him was.
Suffice it to say, it wasn't guilty, right?
And then just a couple of days later, we got the subpoenas or the summons to show.
And I actually had to go get booked into jail, get my picture taken in my fingerprints.
I'm thinking, this is freaking ludicrous.
And so then I saw these Facebook posts and people started sending me the things that banks did because I never really paid attention to this guy in the past.
I've never been in any trouble.
I've had a top secret clearance for 35, 38 years of my life.
I'm probably about as clean as you can get.
And I started seeing these Facebook posts about conservatives should die of COVID.
I sent you some of the pictures.
You can put them up if you want.
Yeah.
It was just ludicrous.
Tim, Tim, we're running out of time.
I want to get your social media.
Where can people go follow you and support you as you take this case to the next level?
Yeah.
If you go to YouTube, it's a TNTT truth not trash with Tim.
And then I also have a GoFundMe page.
So if you go to GoFundMe, let me get you the code for that real quick.
It's GDXEF.
So gofundme.com slash GDXEF.
If you look at those two things, you'll pretty much get most of everything.
I try to put a video up every couple of days about what's going on.
And I'm going to post your video up there as soon as you guys get it out there.
But we need all the help you can get.
We need all the support you can get.
And if this can happen to a small guy like me that's just trying to observe elections, you know, it can happen to anybody.
What's the old Marxist saying, right?
Show me the man and I'll show you the crime.
And so they're off the hook.
Tim, Angus, thank you so much for your time.
And we look forward to getting an update soon.
Thank you for having us.
Thanks for having us.
I want to bring in Marley Hornick.
Marley, what is your reaction to what we just heard there?
Well, I have to say, I'm not surprised.
If you watch the trial of Tina Peters, you can see that election officials and when it comes to elections anywhere across the country and prosecutors have the upper hand here.
You know, they just want the American people to accept the reality that our election systems are like the Titanic.
They could never fail.
There's nothing wrong, nothing to see here.
And they'll go, you know, on the warpath against anybody who dissents, even someone who's actually following the law and a whistleblower like Tina Peters.
Meanwhile, the American people, I think we're not stupid.
We know this ship has already hit the iceberg.
And that's where Unite for Freedom really comes in because our evidence, our already gathered evidence across 30 states in the United States of America shows that these election systems are broken.
They are failing us miserably.
And we have to get this under control before 2026.
We have to keep the America First agenda going and this is number one priority.
Next week, United Sovereign Americans has a big event coming up.
Give us a little preview of that.
Sure.
We're going to be at the National Press Club on Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon at 1 o'clock Eastern.
We're going to be announcing a number of new lawsuits, and one of them is actually in the state of Colorado.
The same officials, the Secretary of State, Jenna Griswold, and the Attorney General who prosecuted Tina Peters and put this gold star mom in prison for doing her job and serving the American people, they are going to be filed against again in Colorado by USA with a lawsuit showing that they have totally failed to validate and verify the identity of their voters before counting their votes.
So this is really a very basic approach to making arguments that they're breaking the law left and right.
They're counting tens of thousands of votes from unverified registrants that we have studied deeply.
We have documentation on this.
We've worked on this with attorneys, private investigators.
This is a big research project, and that's what they're going to be faced with on Monday.
So basically, the people who are totally failing to protect the civil rights of Colorado voters and went on the warpath against Tina Peters, they're going to finally be facing a reckoning here.
Marlee, where can people go and follow you and get the latest from the event?
Please go to unite number fourfreedom.com.
UnitNumber4Freedom.com to support our forensic reports.
We're the only organization that's actually measuring non-citizen voting on a forensic basis using qualified professionals to produce these reports.
We have them already for multiple states.
Maybe we have your state.
Come over to uniteforfreedom.com.
Give us a, send us a message and send us some support.
We're going to keep working on this.
We're going to get it solved.
We're also on X at United S American.
Wonderful.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
I'm joined by Callie Cooper.
Callie is the communications director over at the Republican Study Committee.
Callie, you unleashed MAGA at the U.S. House of Representatives for this new media event that I had the pleasure of attending.
It is generating quite the buzz online.
Tell me about it and tell me why you first were motivated to hold this in the first place.
Yeah, absolutely.
And thank you so much for having me on.
It was really just such an honor to host 33 creators, influencers, and conservative media personalities on Capitol Hill to really highlight all of the victories that Republicans have secured in the first six months of Congress.
We're really delivering on the mandate for the American people.
And I think this was an opportunity for lawmakers to really break it down on what we're working on here in more of a informal, conversational way and being able to kind of explain like what is the one big beautiful bill?
What are all of the provisions that went into it?
The rescissions bill last night.
We kind of previewed that with you all as well.
But the reason that we hosted it was so that we could give people not only creators and influencers, but outlets as well who aren't credentialed necessarily by Capitol Hill to be able to have unfettered access to lawmakers and be able to highlight all that we do here in Congress.
Yeah, I actually want to ask you specifically about the rescissions bill.
Do you think that this event played a role in putting some pressure on that front?
I would definitely say so.
I think we did a lot of those conversations preemptively because we really wanted to highlight, you know, keeping the House's bill intact as it was being deliberated in the Senate.
And obviously with the passage overnight, we are very pleased with what came back and what is going to President Trump's desk at 2.30 today.
But yeah, I do think we played a role definitely.
And I think it was also a really great opportunity for our members to be able to kind of highlight what is a residence package.
You know, it is codifying those doge cuts that we promised the American people and slashing waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending and being able to also finally cut funding from woke propaganda outlets like NPR and PBS.
I got so many great interviews that day.
I learned so much from the reps.
I mean, these pieces of legislation, they're so massive and complex that it's great to just get some straightforward transparency.
And it was super nice too, because I only actually had one interview set in stone scheduled and the rest were just reps coming up and saying, hey, I want to talk to the war room posse.
So we are actually going to air those interviews after the break.
And so just know that the reps that I was speaking to, they wanted to get feedback from specifically the warroom posse.
But I want to ask you, what has been the feedback so far that you have gotten from the online community, whether it be specifically from the reps that attended in their districts or just people in general who have said, oh, like, I didn't know, I didn't know this was in the one big beautiful bill.
Yeah, we've received thousands and thousands of comments, DMs, emails, et cetera, just positively speaking about the new media row that we hosted.
And it was really just such a cool opportunity for us to be able to be at the forefront of kind of a communications revolution here on Capitol Hill.
But the positive and overwhelming feedback is that, wow, this is a really great opportunity for members to kind of sit down and highlight, you know, all of their own individual legislative pushes that they've done, but also, you know, at a bigger picture, all that RSD has done, especially as it relates to the one big beautiful bill, you know, to push those conservative provisions, to push those conservative policies within it, and be able to really deliver on that mandate, like I said, for the American people.
I mean, on November 5th, overwhelmingly, Americans wanted to challenge the status quo and review the.
Callie, we're short for time.
Where can the people go follow you?
Yeah, no, of course.
They can follow us at Republican Study on X, Rumble, Instagram, and Facebook.
Wonderful, Callie.
Thank you so much.
And those interviews right after the break, be sure to check them out.
We have some War Room favorites coming up.
We have Nels and Warren and congressmen from all over this great country who are looking specifically to talk to the War Room posse.
Stay tuned.
You can follow me at JaneZirkle on Instagram, Getter, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook to take a look at the ones that have already aired after the break.
War Room.
Here's your host, Stephen K. Man.
President Trump's base of working class Americans.
How does the Big Metable Bill serve them?
Oh, this is a huge win for working class Americans, right?
So you're making the Trump tax cuts permanent, which benefits middle-class urbans.
You're adding on to that no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and some benefits for seniors who have been suffering through inflation, right?
And so I think it's a huge win.
This is absolutely a huge win for the middle class.
No tax on tips was a huge campaign promise that really energized the base.
How does this rollout work with the big vehicle bill?
Yeah, I think that the fact that, I mean, Trump immediately signed it, which I thought was great on July 4th.
I think that the good news is we pass this bill early enough that the American people will start seeing the benefits on their taxes either immediately or when they start their taxes and pay the views.
Now, there is a big focus on the bill regarding defense and military.
How does this specifically benefit veterans, though?
Yeah, so I'd have to look at the language.
There was some language that benefited veterans, particularly with the VA.
But at the end of the day, a strong military is good for security and for Western values.
I would like to see us actually, I think that I'm one of the people that would support reductions and finding savings and sending Doge into the Department of Defense because we all know there's a lot of money that we could find in savings.
We were spending a trillion dollars a year and I think that it's important that we'd be have the best military in the planet.
I just also think there's probably some ways that we can identify.
Looking towards American innovation, particularly when it comes to infrastructure and manufacturing, how does the Big Beauty Bell work to increase being made in America presently from Agenda Bottle?
Yeah, there's a lot of provisions, some of it related to giving the research and development deductions and just letting manufacturers who want to start a new manufacturing facility or come back reshore back to the United States know that they can offset a light off the cost of construction immediately.
There's huge benefits and a lot of it, a lot of some of those benefits came out of conversations from some manufacturers from my district that I was able to pull a meeting together with Congressman Jason Smith from the Ways and Means Committee to kind of get, you know, to hear firsthand what manufacturers want as they look to what we should do.
And does that have a lot to do with peeling back regulations because that is obviously a big issue for Trump administration.
Yeah, absolutely.
A lot of the energy costs, whether it's electricity costs or fuel costs, look, everything that we get has to be shipped here.
And the fact that this bill is going to unleash a bunch of opportunities for oil and for natural gas, I think it's good because at the end of the day, the cost of energy is an underlying cost of everything.
And we want to bring costs of things down.
We want to bring inflation down.
We need to do this energy.
Right, in the shipping industry, like you mentioned, the freight rail, for example, how are those specific industries going to be empowered by this legislation?
Yeah, with the freight rail.
I would have to go back and look at the language, but in general, every business is going to see that they have fewer regulations, that any kind of review, VIFA, or if they're going to add new rail lines, all of that permitting from the EPA and from other agencies is going to be extremely hard.
So what do you think the biggest win for Republicans this year, and what do you think the biggest concession was with this legislation?
I think the biggest wins are that we finally are getting control of the waste within your welfare system.
We want to make sure that we have a system of base that protects the vulnerable.
But unfortunately, Joe Biden really allowed that system to be abused and really encouraged a lot of young people to not reflect.
We need young people who are able-bodied to re-enter the workforce.
And I think that this bill not only encourages them through reforms on the welfare system, but also encourages them by reducing the taxes, reducing their tax burden should they decide to go.
And so it's both a carrot and a stick.
And I think that that's probably the biggest win in the bill.
The concession I wish we had not done was raise the professional from SALT for the state and local taxes.
That really is only going to benefit New Yorkers, Californians, people in high-tech states.
And so I'm not exactly made of that provision.
thank you so much, Congressman, for your time.
And I appreciate this event.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And I just want to start off by asking you: President Trump's base is working class America.
How does the Big Beautiful Bill serve them?
The Big Beautiful Bill does more to the health and protect and cut the taxes for your middle class working family than anything else we've done in history.
Doubling and permanently extending the standard deduction of $24,000 per couple.
Doubling and permanently extending the child tax credit of $22,000 per child.
Elimination of tax and tips, elimination of tax overtime is going to mean a $10,000 difference to the average volume for working family.
A big focus on President Trump's first term was modernization, modernization of the health care industry, of transportation, of our infrastructure.
How does the Big Beautiful Bill work to support his agenda?
Well, what we did in the SNAP reform and Medicaid reform, very, very common sense work requirements for able-bodied men and women 18 to 64, requiring them to work 28 hours a week, volunteer 20 hours a week, to go back to school, to be able to receive those welfare benefits, is the biggest historic, most historic adjustments we'd make to the welfare programs if you're going to pay for success.
When you look at the Big Bet Pool Bill in terms of innovation, what are you most excited for?
Well, I mean, wherever you can take your meetings.
The innovation that's going to come from permanently extending the 179, accelerated depreciation, the R ⁇ D tax credits, making those provisions permanent are going to directly lead to innovation and investment by American companies across this country.
And the biggest things we could have done to drive it are.
There's a big focus in the bill on defense and military.
How does this bill specifically serve armed veterans?
Well, I'm not on that committee, so I don't know the specific veterans' programs in the bill.
How about defense?
Defense, actually.
Being on armed services for any reason for investing $150 million in additional defense.
I'm not a billion dollars in the pregnancy war.
Investment programs like hypersonics.
Where are you at?
I was looking at, and I think that's my next year.
Submarine nuclear cruise missiles, reinvestment and redeveloping the nuclear tributary program.
Just anything that's in the cutting edge, autonomous vehicle for it, a built-in dome, technology, all of those medicines.
HR1.
Now set the record straight when it comes to health care because a lot of Americans are concerned what's going on with Medicaid.
Tell us about what the Big Beautiful Bill does there.
Well, we didn't make any changes to Medicaid.
And really, if you go back to 2017...
So the form that they did to Obamacare, the same people who are saying it's going to lead it to a loss in coverage, they projected 20 million Americans would lose their coverage when we got Obamacare forms in San Green.
Two years later, they dropped it 8 million.
A few years later, they said no impact, actually.
It led for more people getting coverage.
When we pass the one beautiful bill and we get job growth and we get 10 to 13 million new jobs, with those new jobs is going to come insurance for those jobs.
Requiring work to maintain their expense.
It's going to push that work for us.
The same week that we're going to lose $20 million each allison to say that the Medicaid reform is going to 5 million people losing their coverage means there are assuming 5 million people will choose not to work.
And it's just not reality.
Most people, when given the opportunity to work, volunteer, or go back to school to maintain their Medicaid coverage, will choose to do it.
Just makes common sense.
Wonderful Congressman, remind me of our, wonderful Congressman, remind me of your district one more time.
Indiana 8th.
Indiana 8th District.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Pleasure meeting you.
Thank you.
I'm sure your district has a lot of President Trump's base, Working Class America.
Absolutely.
How does Big Beautiful Bill serve them?
Well, I'll tell you what, One Big Beautiful Bill serves not just their families, but their businesses, all of which are connected and helps with the faith institutions in East Texas.
We're so proud in East Texas.
We're hardworking, we're tough-minded.
We've got some of the best people in the world in East Texas in 1980.
And what happens is we're giving them liberty.
I mean, that's what I've been talking about is restoring liberty to their personal lives and to their churches and to also the businesses that they work in every day.
Because when you give more people's money back to them, as their money, that's more liberty for them to decide what's working.
No tax on tips was a very popular campaign promise of President Trump.
How does this bill implement that?
Yeah, absolutely.
No tax on tips actually was one of the biggest things that folks talked to me about in the months leading up to your passion to MW.
Not just that, but we're talking about the taxes on overtime as well and reduction taxes on seniors.
All of those help great, hardworking people or people that have worked hard all their lives.
Because as you go through the year, you want to know, can I deduct some of this hard worth off of my taxes, off the income, and return it back to my pocket?
And the answer now is absolutely yes.
That there is a portion of that that you're going to earn as either overtime or tips or now with the additional $6,000 deduction for those that are of a certain age that are receiving their Social Security benefits.
We know the effect of that is for trying to boil that money back in their pockets.
They're going to spend it.
They're going to invest it.
They're going to do great things for their families.
Talk to me a little bit about investing in America.
How does the Big Beautiful Bill focus on American innovation, manufacturing?
Tell me about it.
Some of the big permanent provisions of the business section are important to restoring American dominance from an economic standpoint.
When you talk about allowing for immediate expensing for R ⁇ D and immediate expensing for capital equipment and being able to now have a manufacturing facility build itself here in America and be able to expense 100% of that because now you're adding more production domestically, that's a big deal for businesses and they want to reinvest here in our home in here in America as opposed to abroad.
What we did with B, Gilki and Fiti also helps with that to restore intangible property here in the United States.
So you see a lot of those provisions.
Section 199A, another big provision too, Section 199A used by all these past communities, more than 90% of those entities in East Texas are past communities, these businesses that are mom-and-pop businesses, LLCs, partnerships, just the small businesses.
They get to now have that lower effective rate in the low 20s as opposed to seeing next year a dramatic increase to almost 43%.
That would have been untenable for these families that are working hard to build these small businesses.
From a national security and economic perspective, how does this help compete with China?
The thing I want to start with on that is these FEOC restrictions, the foreign entity of concern restrictions.
Well, the Biden administration, I was just amazed through the IRA how much money we were giving away to China-related companies without regard to what it was doing to underput our own domestic businesses and our national security interests.
But in this bill, we fix all that.
We say, you know, we've got these FEOC restrictions now.
We're not going to send subsidies to companies that are tied in with China or that are Chinese-owned companies or that are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party.
We're going to keep that money here in the United States for our own domestic companies that are trying to invest in the United States.
Looking towards domestic industries like the Freightwell, for example, flex shipping industry, how do you see those transforming over the next few years of Brest Income's administration due to the flex shipping?
It's critical that we continue to invest in that, particularly shipbuilding.
Last year alone, China built more ships than the United States has built since World War II.
That is an amazing statistic that should shock and concern each one of us here in the United States.
By putting all these business-friendly provisions in place where we're going to start new manufacturing facilities and let these businesses expense it 100% in the year that they take it and to resource a lot of our supply from overseas to domestic, we're now saying to the shipbuilding industry in particular, we want you to be at market here in the United States.
We're going to find your locations for you to be able to build the ships that we need, use coal manufacturing, and have the quality and the standard that we expect here in the United States, and do it at the rate and the expediency that you see overseas.
And part of that also is the regulatory reforms that were involved in this package that we're going to see more of.
Most of what China does to us is to undercut our manufacturing by cheating and also by skipping good quality and by not having that huge regulatory burden that we see we have seen here in America on their businesses.
But thankfully, President Trump is releasing us from a lot of those burdens.
Big time, big time.
Well, thank you so much, Congressman, for your time.
Yeah, my pleasure.
Thanks.
My advice.
What is the biggest win for MAGA here?
And what is the biggest win?
The biggest win for MAGA since this year?
With the Big, Beautiful Bill.
The Big, Beautiful Bill.
I would probably say the tax cuts are the most significant portion of the bill.
And that was a must.
I agree with about 80% of the bill.
There were some things in the bill that I really didn't like, but I have to manage my expectations, right?
And that was you got the tax cuts, you talk a little bit about Medicaid and not allowing legals.
You have SNAP benefits.
So I thought we did a really good job overall with the bill, but there were some things that I had concerns over, but it wasn't going to be enough for me to tank the bill.
I voted yes for the one big beautiful bill because it was the right thing to do.
And I believe it does put Donald Trump and his agenda with the American people first.
First.
What do you think for the American worker, does this bill do?
Well, it does a lot for the small business owners, you know, providing tax relief.
And quite honestly, if you look at the American worker, how about those in the industry as it relates to food service and this and that, the no tax on tips, no tax on overtime?
I think those are big, big deals that it does.
It does help those seniors too.
It's so scary.
Talk to me about American manufacturing and innovation.
How does the Big Beautiful Bill empower that?
Well, I think the Big Beautiful Bill, it says we want to bring manufacturing and innovation back to the United States of America because it seems to be going every place but.
And so what Donald Trump is trying to do, President Trump is doing a great job with his tariffs.
Now, some people are concerned about the tariffs.
I'm not concerned about the tariffs.
The market's doing just fine, people.
The market's doing fine.
So by bringing those tariffs in and bringing that innovation and technology back to the United States in its shores, that's where it flows.
How does that work hand in hand with the deregulations?
Well, you would know how that works with the deregulation.
You can't, I mean, we try to build anything in America today, whether it's, and I'm the chairman over aviation, you try to get any type of certification done through aviation, it just takes years and years of years of bureaucracy and red tape, right?
So I think there is, I think this administration is looking, you know what, it shouldn't take us four years to have an environmental impact study and get NEPA involved and tell me we're going to offend a woodpecker.
I don't care about the woodpeckers, right?
Let's not get in the way of those things and let's start building because it costs us a lot more money with all these regulations and these delays in getting projects done because of some type of an environmental nut job trying to get involved.
Now there is a big focus on the military and defense in this bill.
Tell me about that.
Well I think that's great.
I mean we all knew that our instructions were we want to increase defense spending.
We want to do more for border security.
We want to hire more agents, ICE agents, all the border agents.
So I think we've done that.
We understood how important that was and this big, beautiful bill does that.
I think it's sad that what you're seeing now with these assaults on federal agents, specifically ICE agents and others, because the left, they'll tell you they're the party of peace.
I will beg to Differ on that part.
We got these agents that are going out there risking their lives each and every day to try to put America first and protect the American people from these very, very bad ombres, and it's got to stop.
But the left seems to just want to fuel the flames and get people all spun up and get people emotional.
And when people start getting emotional, especially a bad ombre, you're going to have assaults continue to increase, and eventually it's going to require loss of life.
And if I was a Border Patrol agent, an ICE agent, and a guy's coming at me with a knife or a gun or a stick, I'm going to shoot him dead.
As far as spending goes, we know this bill toggles some of it, but what are you looking for the future to see?
Well, this was our opportunity with reconciliation.
Obviously, you all know that the Senate, you only need a 50-seat, you know, you only need a majority.
So it's hard to do reconciliation when you don't have both chambers, right?
The House and Senate.
We have a unified government.
We have both chambers.
I thought we've done a pretty good job.
But then again, some of the same people that voted for the one big beautiful bill is splocking a little bit about the $9.4 billion we have in rescissions.
I'm like, what the hell are you doing?
We got $9.4 billion we can call back.
We did in the House.
The Senate's got till July, I think, 18 to get this done.
They better get it done.
They better get it done.
It's $9.4 billion.
And when we get all these instructions to try to reduce deficit spending and this and that, we have an opportunity to hear the Republican Party, specifically the Senate.
They better get their act together.
Big time, big time.
Well, thank you so much, Congressman, for your time.
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