| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Mike said before, I happened to listen to him, he was on C-SPAN 1. | |
| That's a big upgrade, right? | ||
| But I've read about it in the history books. | ||
| I've seen the C-SPAN footage. | ||
| If it's a really good idea, present it in public view on C-SPAN. | ||
| Every single time I tuned in on TikTok or C-SPAN or YouTube or anything, there were tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people watching. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I went home after the speech and I turned on C-SPAN. | |
| I was on C-SPAN just this week. | ||
| To the American people, now is the time to tune in to C-SPAN. | ||
| They had something $2.50 a gallon. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I saw on television a little while ago in between my watching my great friends on C-SPAN. | |
| C-SPAN is televising this right now live. | ||
| So we are not just speaking to Los Angeles. | ||
| We are speaking to the country. | ||
| This is Tim Burchett. | ||
| He is a Republican from Tennessee, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, also a member of the Oversight and Accountability Committee. | ||
| Representative Burchett, thanks for your time. | ||
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| As a Foreign Affairs Committee member, what questions are going through your mind these days and your colleagues in the committee when it comes to the events in Iran? | ||
| Well, I can't speak for any of the members but myself. | ||
| I'm curious about the containment of the nuclear waste. | ||
| If there is any, I worry about our friends like in Bahrain who've been faithful to us and been a good ally, making sure that there is not any nuclear cloud or anything that gets into the sea right there that could flow right down to them. | ||
| They're 90 miles from one of those nuclear installations. | ||
| So I guess my questions are just a little different than everybody else's. | ||
| A lot of people asking the question of whether it was appropriate or not to do the strikes in the first place. | ||
| Where do you fall on that? | ||
| I think it was appropriate. | ||
| Everybody can agree that Iran should not have any nuclear capabilities. | ||
| To say that this is for nuclear energy is just a joke. | ||
| They're raising it up to 60%. | ||
| There's no nuclear reactors in the world that operate on that. | ||
| I believe they operate from about 4% to 6% uranium. | ||
| So I think that what you're going to see is that most people around the world agree that the strikes were done appropriately and they were needed. | ||
| Nobody wants to go to war, except the lobbyists and the people that are invested in war. | ||
| Their stock portfolios are in our implement programs. | ||
| But overall, I think it was a very big success for the president. | ||
| To what degree do you think there's disagreement within the Republican Party itself, even members on Capitol Hill, whether that action should take place or not? | ||
| It's very limited at all. | ||
| There's just one or two maybe that disagree with that. | ||
| Again, you're not going to, you're trying to do something honorable with the dishonorable people. | ||
| And Iran is definitely dishonorable. | ||
| Their leadership and the fight is not with the people. | ||
| It's with their leadership. | ||
| And they've continuously sponsored terrorism around the world. | ||
| We know when we pulled out of Iraq, I mean, excuse me, out of Afghanistan that they were being armed and they've armed terrorist organizations around the world and they've taken quite a few shots at this country over the past decade or so. | ||
| And this, I think, settles that score, but it also shows American superiority in our military and our intelligence. | ||
| And also the Israeli intelligence. | ||
| You know, when they started their initial bombing, they took out their top three people. | ||
| And, you know, and I'm cautioning folks about regime change in the Second World War. | ||
| The beginning of that war, everybody wanted to take out Hitler. | ||
| But towards the end of the war, intelligence realized that Hitler was a pretty pitiful leader, militarily speaking, that is. | ||
| And they didn't want to take him out because we were winning the war and they were afraid that number two could have been much worse. | ||
| Now we've got to worry about the number four, or if we depose the Ayatollah, or if he's taken out at some point, who is the number two and could that be worse for the world? | ||
| And so those are the kind of things I think we need to be contemplating. | ||
| Is there a slippery slope that you may be concerned about concerning the actions we've taken so far and what could come next? | ||
| Yes, I don't want to see American boys and girls on the ground. | ||
| I have an 18-year-old daughter. | ||
| She shares a birthday with the president, oddly enough. | ||
| And I dare say that I don't want to see this Congress or any other Congress voting for war in Iran. | ||
| It's a country most of the members probably couldn't even find on the dot gum globe. | ||
| So I would have a lot of consternation about us going to war and putting American boys and girls on the ground over there. | ||
| Speaker Johnson talked about this effort to pass a War Powers Act that would limit the president's ability to declare or participate in military actions. | ||
| What do you think about that effort? | ||
| I think that any effort to do something like that really weakens our president in the eyes of our enemies around the world. | ||
| I think there's time to do that. | ||
| We can put a bill up in the next day if we have to declare war or enact the War Powers Act or whatever. | ||
| So I think right now doing that would be a little bit, I think it would have a negative impact on America and our fighting forces around the world. | ||
| Representative Tip Burchett is our guest. | ||
| And if you want to ask him questions, the lines will be on the screen with us until 9.30. | ||
| Again, we're expecting to hear from the president perhaps soon. | ||
| Stay close to the networks and those digital media sites for that. | ||
| Michael in Georgia, Republican line, you're on with Representative Burchett. | ||
| Hello, you're on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Congressman. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Quick question. | |
| All the fake news going on. | ||
| Why isn't the FBI's involvement with the Chinese fake driver's license story not a major story? | ||
| Christopher Wray went before Congress and said there was no foreign intervention in the election, but they covered the whole thing up. | ||
| And we as Americans are sitting here going, when are these people going to be held accountable? | ||
| Christopher Wray is a criminal. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I think we're completely compromised by the communist Chinese. | ||
| If you look at the lobbyist and America, what we're doing, turn over any article of clothing you have and look at where it's made. | ||
| Look at where our computer chips are made that are on some of our military apparatus, which we've been told that the communist Chinese could have the possibility of turning some of these aircraft literally off mid-air. | ||
| So I think, and also we have communist Chinese merchants that actually run commissaries in our military installations. | ||
| We have communist Chinese buying farm property, which controls our commodities. | ||
| We have communist Chinese buying property near our military installations. | ||
| And this body, either party, will not stop them. | ||
| And the reason they don't is because the lobbyists are in our pockets. | ||
| We talk about all the horrors going on in Ukraine and all that. | ||
| Well, what about China? | ||
| The reason we don't do anything to China is because of the money. | ||
| Follow the money, folks. | ||
| And we are in bed with the communist Chinese and the lobbyists on K-Street know it and they laugh about it. | ||
| And they're just getting fat. | ||
| And we're going to sell our country down the road if we're not careful because they are in our, as I stated, our military institutions, but they're also in our colleges and universities of higher learning, our research institutes. | ||
| They've completely infiltrated those. | ||
| And all we're doing is chasing money. | ||
| We have communist Chinese students in our country because they pay a higher rate. | ||
| And every one of those that's in our country that's going to school is taking the place of an American. | ||
| And Chinese goods are flooding our markets continuously because we are gutless and don't have the willpower to do anything. | ||
| If you remember recent history, when Harley Davidson was about to go out of business, they're about to do it again, unfortunately. | ||
| But they, before, because the Japanese were dumping thousands CC motorcycles and above, and Ronald Reagan put a tariff on them. | ||
| And Trump, that's why Trump put a tariff, started talking about putting a tariff on the Chinese because he knows he knows Congress. | ||
| They'll write a tough letter or something and they'll bow up and put a letter out to their chambers of commerce about all they're doing. | ||
| But that's a joke because we are totally in bed with the Chinese and we need to clean up our act. | ||
| Let's go to Maryland. | ||
| This is Jack, Democrats Line High. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning, guys. | |
| I wanted to ask the congressman: how did he reconcile the 2017 tax cut and its impacts to the deficit? | ||
| If your highness, and if you recall, when Trump left office, the first time he left with almost $8 trillion increase in our national debt. | ||
| And now we're hearing the same talking points with this reconciliation bill, which you guys are saying, oh, well, we'll grow our way out of it. | ||
| You know, we won't see deficits, deficit neutral. | ||
| It's just not true. | ||
| The math just doesn't add up. | ||
| So I'm wondering, how do you reconcile that? | ||
| You said you're a physical conservative. | ||
| You care about the debt. | ||
| You care about the deficit. | ||
| But yet we keep passing these bills that increase our debt, and we never grow our way out of it. | ||
| So how do you reconcile that? | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| I agree. | ||
| And that's because we're in such a small majority. | ||
| We have a three-person majority. | ||
| I think the Republicans do. | ||
| We're, as I like to say, one flu season away from not being in the majority anymore. | ||
| And so the president, if you look under Joe Biden the last four years, he was every hundred days we added a trillion dollars. | ||
| And now the Democrats are pitching a fit about over the next 10 years we're going to raise the deficit $3 trillion. | ||
| Well, if you look at that, we've incredibly slowed the rate of growth down. | ||
| If you look at just the math of that, and you know, we have this train of debt running at us. | ||
| We're at 36, almost, we're about at 37 trillion dollars right now. | ||
| And you've got to stop it at some point, and then you've got to turn it in the other direction. | ||
| And this budget and this big, beautiful bill, if you will, is going a long ways towards that. | ||
| Does it do enough? | ||
| Heck no. | ||
| I would cut the Pentagon. | ||
| I would cut a lot of these other programs, USAID, all this stuff, get it out of there. | ||
| But the will is not there in either party. | ||
| Again, because members of both parties are compromised, let's just be honest. | ||
| They've got a wife and/or a girlfriend that works for some of these agencies, and they don't have the guts to do it or the political wherewithal to make those tough votes. | ||
| And that makes me very unpopular up here when I say that. | ||
| But, Dad, Gummitt, it's the truth. | ||
| Representative Birch at the Senate has telegraphed that changes to the version you sent from the House are forthcoming. | ||
| What does that mean for you when it goes back to the House? | ||
| It doesn't mean a whole lot until I read that final version. | ||
| They float a lot of different things. | ||
| Reporters were asking me yesterday, what if, what if, what if. | ||
| And I just don't devote any brain power to any of that until I see the final version because that's exactly what they're doing. | ||
| They're floating out trial balloons. | ||
| And a lot of times they'll float out something that's just horrendous, and then everybody freaks out. | ||
| And then they bring it down to another level that normally would be horrendous, but compared to their first version is not. | ||
| So I just don't get too hung up on it. | ||
| I'm hoping for some real savings. | ||
| I'm hoping for some deficit reduction. | ||
| But my belief is that we'll probably be going right back down that same path if we're not careful. | ||
| And we've got to have some restraint. | ||
| Let me rephrase it a little bit. | ||
| What would you be comfortable with? | ||
| What would you not be comfortable with? | ||
| Whatever comes back from the Senate. | ||
| I would hope that we'd look at Medicaid and the fraud, waste, abuse there. | ||
| I think that if you're an able-bodied American and can work, and I'm not talking about a single mom who's got a couple of kids at home, that's off the table, but we all know it. | ||
| We've seen it. | ||
| We've been in line at the grocery store and seen folks get in line and load up on the food stamps or whatever you want to call it, and the ability to do that. | ||
| Things like buying soft drinks with food stamps. | ||
| I'd like to see those stuff like that eliminated. | ||
| Just common sense stuff that shows America that we're serious about this and that we're just not a total fraud. | ||
| From New York Republican line, this is Peter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, good morning, Congressman. | |
| I'm glad to see you on C-SPAN. | ||
| You are one of my favorite congressmen because I believe you're an honest and ethical and moral man and who's trying to really do the right thing for the country. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Prior to the last election, President Trump and Republicans were talking constantly about ending chain migration and making E-Verify permanently. | ||
| I know you guys in the House last year passed a bill addressing that issue, but ever since the election, I haven't heard a word on that. | ||
| And I don't know where they're going with that because we all know that by the time the term ends for President Trump, if the Democrat is elected, we could go right back to where we were before. | ||
| And so hopefully something is in the works, but I haven't heard a word about it. | ||
| And I don't know if it was possible to put any of that legislation in the reconciliation bill. | ||
| I'm assuming not, but you know better than I do. | ||
| So can you please speak to that? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Yeah, the Senate has different rules. | ||
| I just wish we'd have single-issue spending bills and single-issue. | ||
| That's what we do in Tennessee. | ||
| It's called a caption bill. | ||
| You can't have a dog catcher's bill and give you a pay raised. | ||
| I actually had a long conversation with my friend, Senator Marsha Blackman from Tennessee, who has been a stalwart fighter in the trenches on that very issue. | ||
| She knows she's forgotten more about that issue than probably most of us will ever know. | ||
| And she agrees with everything you're saying that we do need to get that forward and we need to pass that because that is that chain migration thing. | ||
| We have these tourists that come over here and have kids and then they fly back to their home countries and then when they're 18 they come back and then all of a sudden they're getting all these benefits and that that is just wrong. | ||
| They are gaming the system. | ||
| That is not what the founders intended and we've got to straighten that thing up. | ||
| And I wish we could just put a single issue bill on that and put it on the floor and make people vote. | ||
| I'm sick of the studies. | ||
| I'm sick of the committee meetings. | ||
| I'm sick of us writing strong letters to somebody, which is gutless. | ||
| And the lobbyists just laugh because they get paid to get up here and get us to write these strong letters on these issues just like that. | ||
| And then everybody goes home thinking they've done something. | ||
| They haven't done a dadgum thing, and it's pretty worthless to me. | ||
| And I'm getting kind of sick of it myself, and I know America is, so I hope we have the guts to do something about that in the future because America is tired of that stuff. | ||
| This is James in Georgia, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yes. | |
| Trump ran up $8 trillion worth of dollars in four years. | ||
| You Republicans go along with it. | ||
| You're big spungers. | ||
| You just say you're for debt when Democrats get in office. | ||
| That's just how you get with them. | ||
| But just one thing you need to remember. | ||
| Everything that you're agreeing with with Trump, that you Republicans are doing when the Democrats get in office, they can do it right back to you. | ||
| You know, this is what you need to realize: that when your king, we're going to have a king. | ||
| Do you understand that? | ||
| You're letting Trump do anything. | ||
| You're running rough. | ||
| You don't care nothing about the Constitution or none of that. | ||
| And so when we get back to the United States. | ||
| Tell me what part of the Constitution that he's violating. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me finish. | |
| When the Democrats get back in office, just remember that. | ||
| All those arguments you got. | ||
| You're killing your own argument. | ||
| Okay, James. | ||
| What part of the Constitution is he violating, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a white supremacist. | |
| James in Georgia, he's asking you a question to answer. | ||
| Let the congressman ask you a question. | ||
| Representative, go ahead. | ||
| Yeah, what part of the Constitution is he violating, sir? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look, is that going to be all right? | |
| Everything Trump doing when a Democrat get back in office. | ||
| Okay, James in Georgia. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| No, I don't agree with all that. | ||
| I think if you look at my record, if you look at anybody in the Republican Party, I have more friends across the aisle than anybody. | ||
| One of my dearest friends is Jonathan Jackson, who's Jesse Jackson's son. | ||
| We're in a bipartisan prayer group. | ||
| We worked on legislation this week together. | ||
| You know, the press likes to throw out all this stuff about it, but they never focus on the things we agree on. | ||
| And so am I going to agree with everything that everybody says? | ||
| No. | ||
| I represent a very conservative area. | ||
| As a matter of fact, I wouldn't tell President Trump this, but I actually did one point better than he did in my district. | ||
| And if he were here, I'd say that he carried me. | ||
| But the truth is, is that I represent a very conservative area. | ||
| But I always say I'm conservative. | ||
| I'm just not bitter about it. | ||
| And I'm sorry you're angry, sir. | ||
| But I wish you'd call my office and we could have a conversation. | ||
| Representative Birchip, being a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, there's a debate going on today as far as the impact, the extent of the damage done in Iran, the leak of this defense report. | ||
| Has anybody, including yourself on the committee, seen any information about the level of destruction that was done in Iran due to the bombings? | ||
| Yeah, we've seen some, but we'll have a confidential briefing on Friday. | ||
| And I'm sure five minutes afterwards, it'll be leaked to the press what was in that meeting. | ||
| I caution folks sometimes about going to these confidential briefings because you're not allowed to speak on what they talked about, even if you already knew what they were talking about. | ||
| So we're going to get some answers, and there'll never be all the answers, and people will be angry, and they will immediately come out and tell exactly what was told in that confidential briefing, which is unfortunate. | ||
| But we'll know by the end of the week, pretty much. | ||
| But I think we realize that this is what's bringing Iran to the table, and we need Israel to back off a little bit, like President Trump said, and let peace work a little bit. | ||
| The president says obliteration, he uses that term. | ||
| The Defense Intelligence Agency says limited. | ||
| Who's more correct then, if I may ask? | ||
| Well, I guess by civilian terms, obliteration. | ||
| You know, if you saw a B-1 bomber dropping one of those bunker busters on you, you'd probably wet your pants if you lived. | ||
| So it's a little different than a military explanation, but I think it did its job. | ||
| It did what we needed it to do. | ||
| I don't see nuclear waste out in the creeks and streams and in the air. | ||
| And I see Iran at the table wanting peace. | ||
| And I'm just in the gym this morning with several Democrats. | ||
| Were, although guarded, were very positive about what the president said and that's why yesterday, when Al Green brought his, his bill to the floor to impeach Trump, that you only had about 70 Democrats that voted for it, and I think that's a big change. | ||
| That shows that, that it is working, that America sees it and their polling data is showing it. | ||
| So they are everybody's kind of backing off of Trump right now, which I think is a pretty smart idea. | ||
| Kevin in DC Democrats line, hi hi, uh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks for taking my call. | |
| I have a question about the Chinese industrial accident in Wuhan that has been covered up by the echo chambers. | ||
| There's a Ukrainian, British American, Israeli scientist, Peter Dasak, who lied to Congress and Congress people said they would hold him accountable, and they never have. | ||
| He is the one who contracted with the bat lady in China and Fauci wasn't the middleman, it was Dasak. | ||
| So why do they keep talking about Fauci and they don't talk about Peter Dasak from ECHO Health Alliance? | ||
| Please tell me when people are going to be held accountable. | ||
| Even the James Bond movie they changed the the. |