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March 16, 2023 - Triggered - Donald Trump Jr

01:15:02

Congressman Jim Banks on His Senate Run | TRIGGERED Ep. 16

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	you Guys, welcome to another episode of Triggered.
	Thank you for joining us, and thank you for all of the support that you've been giving us as we go through this journey of actually bringing people real news.
	Tonight, we have a great show.
	We have Congressman Jim Banks, soon to hopefully be Senator Jim Banks, but someone who sits on the Armed Services Committee, someone who served in the military and understands what's going on, and someone who also started the Anti-Woke Caucus in Congress.
	This is something that if I was in Congress, I would probably try to be the chairperson of because it's so important.
	But we have a little bit to talk about, namely the environment.
	Guys, apparently Russia dumping some fuel on a drone of ours is bad for the environment.
	Yes, a Russian fighter jet apparently dumped some of its fuel to knock a drone out of the skies around Ukraine, and the CNN response is that it's bad for the environment.
	Check it out and see for yourself.
	This after a Russian warplane collided with a U.S. drone over the Black Sea earlier today, forcing the U.S. to bring down its unmanned aircraft.
	The U.S. Air Force says the Russian attack was, quote, reckless, environmentally unsound, and unprofessional.
	Guys, you know what's really bad for the environment?
	World War III. You know what's even worse?
	A nuclear World War III. But who cares if it would be devastating to millions and millions of people and it would be death and mayhem all over the place?
	It would be bad for the environment, folks.
	We're at a point where we risk that.
	Right now, we're starting a fight with one of the world's largest nuclear powers.
	We're in a proxy war and have been for about a year to the tune of 130 billion.
	We're not sure if we can backstop Social Security, but we got 130 billion to keep this never-ending war going so that DC bureaucrats and the military industrial complex can get rich.
	But we're worried about the environment.
	The video, I'm sure all of you've seen it, was released, and it's the interaction between a drone and a Russian fighter jet.
	It's stunning, but we're also clearly very close to real war.
	Check it out. Yeah, guys, we need to get to a peace deal.
	We need to not be talking about the environment.
	We need to not be talking about insanity, but we're living in an absolute insane world.
	This week, we saw the start of a banking crisis, okay?
	We have a major bank, Silicon Valley Bank.
	Uh, just get wiped off.
	The face of the earth. And, amazingly enough, you'll be shocked to find out that Silicon Valley Bank had one person who was actually a banker on its board.
	They had an improv actor.
	They had some Hillary Clinton donors.
	One person who's actually a banker.
	I mean, I get it, guys.
	We want diversity, equity, inclusion, so who really needs bankers on the board of a bank?
	Our priorities are so screwed up, guys.
	Again, they had no chief risk officer for the last eight months.
	They were obsessed with diversity.
	And yet again, folks, when you go woke, you go broke.
	It's happening every day because their priorities are screwed up.
	There's no checks and balances.
	It doesn't matter.
	Here's how the New York Post described one member of the board.
	One is a Hillary Clinton mega-donor who went to a Shinto shrine to pray after Donald Trump won the White House.
	Another worked for President Barack Obama before her own political career spectacularly failed.
	A third is a prolific contributor to Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, who owns a Napa Valley vineyard just 15 minutes from the former speaker.
	There's even an improv performer.
	No wonder, folks, with leadership like that, of course it was going to go broke.
	You know, the number one person you'd want on a banking board would be bankers, but that's not how it works in the world of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
	You need everyone but the most logical and important characters.
	But... There is some good news out of all of this.
	Despite not meeting any of the criteria of most of the serious banks, at least it's Silicon Valley.
	But now, of course, the big people, the billionaires...
	They got out before leaving all the other people in the lurch.
	The regular depositors.
	Now, there's going to be a bailout, but there's also going to be no consequence.
	So I want the regular little guy to be taken care of.
	But when all the big investors get there, pull their money out before the collapse, I want some accountability.
	Don't we all? Because it feels like every time this happens, It's always the big guys that get taken care of.
	Always the big guys that get rescued.
	Always the big guys with their golden parachutes.
	While the little guy was just hoping for a place to bank is the person that gets screwed.
	And the U.S. taxpayer will foot the bill and nothing will change.
	You know why? Because Silicon Valley and their Democrat donors, no one's going to let anything happen to them.
	Why would they? But...
	In good banking news, finally, there may be some accountability from House oversight on the Biden crime family.
	The money trail, folks.
	Always follow the money, and it's looking like the trail is leading right to Hunter Biden and a bunch of other Bidens that we don't know.
	In breaking news, GOP oversight releases bank records showing that the Biden family associate, Rob Walker, used his company...
	To, quote, transfer money from a Chinese energy company to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Haley Biden, and a fourth unknown Biden.
	Because, you know, all of the Bidens have all of this banking experience.
	They must, they must be making money from the Chinese, right?
	They have a lot of international businesses, especially Haley Biden.
	Who's the unknown Biden?
	I mean, there's just Bidens all over the place.
	But... Rather than going direct, they had to go through an intermediary to make it seem like nothing shady was actually going on.
	There was apparently suspicious activity reports issued.
	These things are unusual.
	They're sort of like a once-in-a-lifetime event for shady banking deals.
	But apparently, Hunter Biden had over 150 of them from five or more banks.
	Think about that, folks. Now, there's more Bidens.
	We knew about James, Joe Biden's brother, who's in the mix of all of this stuff.
	Seems like perhaps just as corrupt as Hunter to me.
	But I can't keep track of all the Bidens that are making money from China.
	But no one's going to ask in the media if anything's happening from all of this.
	No one's going to ask the question of like, hey, do you think maybe our China policy, which has been, let's just say, to the left of extremely weak, Is influenced by the fact that their family is pocketing $3 million from these transactions?
	And who knows what else, by the way, right?
	There was the handful of diamonds and all these things.
	I have a feeling that if it was Donald Trump Jr., it would be a big deal.
	And yet, nothing seems to happen.
	You know, Haley is, Haley Biden, I've heard she's a serious, serious banker, just like Hunter was an international oil expert, finance expert.
	You know, I think the only thing Hunter's an expert on is probably cocaine and hookers, but you know, that's just me.
	What do I know? Maybe I'm missing something.
	But... They're all international energy experts and international finance experts, and because they're a Democrat family in power, no one in the media is going to question it.
	Again, imagine it was me.
	Imagine it was any Republican, any conservative, what they would do.
	Frankly, imagine what they did to my family and me with nothing.
	Turns out nothing after millions of $50 million investigation and all of the nonsense that they went through and five years of Russia, Russia, Russia.
	Here, it's literally there.
	Bank records prove that half the Biden family has been getting paid by the Chinese communists for no freaking reason.
	Of course, the Washington Post is going to bat for them.
	It's hard to believe.
	The things that they prioritize, the things they talk about.
	And so it's really nice to see...
	House Oversight Chair Jamie Comer actually tried to get to the bottom of this stuff because it's mind-blowing that this could be happening in 2023 and there's no accountability, especially after what we went through from, let's say, 2016 through, well, I guess they're still talking about Russia, Russia, Russia, but none of that matters.
	Well, we have bank records.
	We have bank records from one of the 13 banks in hand that were used by the Biden family members in these business schemes.
	So these bank records prove that the Bidens did receive money through a shell company from the Chinese Communist Party.
	So this is the first link.
	Hopefully, within the next 48 hours, we'll have more bank records from another bank.
	And we're just going to keep following the money.
	We know from our sources that have come in, the whistleblowers, where the money trails are.
	And, of course, the Democrats have denied it.
	The White House has denied it.
	There's no denying it now with the bank records.
	And now Treasury's forced to have to give us the suspicious activity reports because they acted all along like there was nothing there.
	Well, I can assure you there's something there, and everyone knows it now.
	Mexico. The Mexican president says that apparently Mexico is safer than the United States.
	And while that would seem asinine, Maybe it's not entirely crazy.
	Mexico's president is now saying that Mexico is safer than the United States.
	And he does have a point. If you look at places like Baltimore, which has a murder rate of 56 people per 100,000 residents, that is higher than Mexico's murder rate.
	That's higher than Guatemala's murder rate.
	That's higher than Honduras' murder rate.
	And even though all those countries come to our country and claim asylum, We have cities in America that are worse, and yet nothing happens.
	Nothing changes within their political systems.
	They're still gonna elect Democrats for a lifetime.
	And how does that work exactly?
	How does that continue? Shouldn't people of Baltimore perhaps be getting asylum from Mexico?
	Anyway, guys, America is not at least losing fights in the streets.
	Like the Mexican army is to the drug cartels.
	America is still doing that.
	And yet our open border policies, as evidenced by the chief of the border patrol this week, saying that we have no control of our border, calling out Secretary Mayorkas, who's supposed to be in charge of these things, but is apparently doing nothing, just like borders are.
	Kamala Harris is doing nothing.
	But our own people that are down there patrolling it, risking life and limb every day of the week, Are saying, we don't have control, and that's a problem.
	Our next guest is going to be really important on that because he is talking about how we have to take action against the cartels, about the fentanyl crisis, the scourge that is killing so many Americans, so many of our youth, indiscriminately.
	Rich, poor, young, old, every race imaginable.
	It is a true crisis.
	And Jim Banks wants to take it to the cartels.
	We're going to talk about that and so much more coming up with our guest.
	It's going to be really important.
	Guys, there's so much going on right now.
	The insanity is insane.
	I think what I've got to do is maybe just do an episode just ranting about the insanity of what's going on.
	Right now, because every time I open up the news, I feel like I'm being pumped.
	I feel like it's a joke, and yet it's happening daily.
	Whether it's improv actors on the board of billion-dollar banks that are going out of business, whether it's the insanity of an open borders policy while Democrats stick their head in the sand, whether it's agitating Russia over another corrupt Ukraine, a nation like Ukraine, To start a nuclear crisis, but being predominantly concerned about the environmental consequence of a drone getting hit out of the sky.
	We're not serious people anymore, folks.
	We're not a serious nation if these are our leaders.
	So I hope that Jim Banks will bring a little bit of logic, a little bit of reason, and a little bit of insanity.
	But before we do that, I do have to thank our incredible sponsors.
	Guys, you've seen the turmoil in the banking sector.
	I've been talking about it since the start of the show, okay?
	Because I've been talking about it for like six months.
	You see the funny money going through our system.
	You see how stupid it is.
	You see the people who are in charge.
	And it's why diversification of your portfolio is so important, right?
	Do you know who's on the board of your band?
	Do you think it's an improv actor or someone who's just a Hillary Clinton donor who has no business in banking whatsoever, but they check a bunch of woke diversity points and...
	They're making decisions that are affecting you, your family, your credit, your bank account, your livelihoods.
	Honestly, these days, can you be too sure?
	That's why I want to make the time to tell you about Goldco.
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	Again, you see what's going on in the markets every day.
	You see the insanity.
	You know that the dollar has lost 85% of its purchasing power since 1971.
	So owning tangible, physical, and inflation-hedging gold and silver can help diversify your portfolio.
	Guys, now more than ever, it's the time to do that, in my opinion.
	And now more than ever is also the time to support companies who support you,
	your beliefs and your values, instead of supporting woke companies
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	If you're looking to diversify your portfolio, and if you've been paying any attention whatsoever,
	it's a really good time to check it out.
	Go to DonJrGold.com to learn more.
	That's DonJrGold.com.
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	Make sure you at least understand what's going on, guys.
	Learn. Take the time to read about it.
	The guys at GoldCo can take you all through that.
	And at least you have a chance.
	Looking at what's going on right now, it feels like 2008 all over again.
	We're about to hit a wall going 1,000 miles an hour.
	So check out DonJrGold.com.
	And again, You can get gold and silver at other places, but support those.
	Take the time to support those who support your values and beliefs.
	And honestly, if you're supporting a show like this, I imagine they believe you because you're taking a big risk with whatever I may say at any given moment.
	Now, there's also, by the way...
	Tax time. The tax deadline is fast approaching, and it's why I also want to tell you about the Tax Network USA. At taxnetworkusa.com, you have access to a whole host of different tax services, from tax preparation to getting your settlements approved, even audit representation.
	Their experienced staff will provide everything you need to make sure that this tax season goes smoothly and you get everything filed on time.
	Let them know how you find them by going to TaxNetworkUSA.com slash Don Jr.
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	Again, support those who believe in freedom of speech.
	Support those who share your values.
	Obviously, there's a lot of places that can do tax preparation.
	Most of them are going to go woke.
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	Let them know where you're coming from to learn more.
	And with that, guys, look forward to talking with Jim Banks.
	Check it out. Okay, guys, great to be back with you.
	We're here with Congressman Jim Banks of Indiana, soon to be, hopefully, Senator.
	DJT endorsed, by the way, and obviously DJT Jr.
	endorsed. That'd be interesting if we had separate endorsements, but make Thanksgiving sort of an awkward, you know, family time.
	But it's good to have you here, Jim.
	Thanks so much for everything that you're doing out there.
	I think one of the first questions I want to ask is, how did you beat me to the idea of an anti-woke caucus in Congress?
	I mean, tell us about it, because this is the most brilliant thing ever, especially when you see what wokeism is actually doing I mean, you see that with Silicon Valley Bank.
	I mean, multi-billion dollar bank, like a top 20 bank in the country and it's, you know, improv actors on a board.
	How is that sustainable?
	So what made you come up with the idea and what are we doing?
	It's everywhere, right?
	Corporate America, it's being pushed all over the federal government, pushed on our troops in the military, pushed in our schools.
	Every university in America is woke and has been woke for a long time.
	So we started talking about it on Capitol Hill.
	What can we do to begin a process to develop a strategy?
	Because there's not a strategy.
	And the Anti-Woke Caucus sort of was born from that.
	Let's get members of Congress together in a room and talk about it.
	Most members of Congress can't specifically define wokeism.
	I think they know what it is, but they can't define it.
	They don't know how to talk about it.
	And we don't have a way to go about beginning to legislate on offense
	or put together a legislative strategy.
	So we had our first meeting last week and it went very well.
	We had a dozen members of Congress around a table for dinner.
	We had a couple of experts, Arthur Millick and a guy that you know, Stephen Miller, came and we talked about where do we go from here?
	How can we begin a process in this Congress where we have the House majority to begin pushing back?
	We have a majority, but we have a slim majority.
	Four votes, basically.
	And I'd say the Republicans are pretty good at being weak most of the time.
	There's guys like yourself, there's plenty of others that are the exception, but if you
	only need four weak ones, how do we do that?
	We saw that this week with the Senate, confirming Eric Garcetti with all sorts of allegations
	against him.
	It didn't matter.
	He's going to be our ambassador to India while being a soft on China person.
	I feel like India is sort of the great blocker for China and their ultimate hegemony, or
	what they'd love to be.
	Hegemony is a world power.
	And yet it doesn't matter.
	Seven Senate Republicans voted to confirm this guy.
	Even a few Democrats broke ranks.
	How do we handle that aspect of it?
	Because I feel like, you know, we'll fold or someone will be pressured by, you know, their woke local paper calling them, you know, Racist, even though it has nothing to do with racism, or maybe reverse racism, frankly.
	How do we handle that?
	You've got to force a vote. And with the majority, we can do that.
	So Republican majority, even though it's a four-seat majority, put bills on the floor and make Republicans vote on it.
	And I think you'll get a groundswell of support.
	Almost every Republican at this point is going to vote against wokeism in our schools, teaching our kids critical race theory, anti-Americanism.
	Uproot wokeism out of the military.
	It doesn't belong there. It's not sustainable to teach our kids or men and women in uniform that America is anything but the greatest country in the history of the world worth fighting and dying for.
	Doing what I did, raise your right hand, take an oath to defend the Constitution, knowing that when you do that, you might pay the ultimate sacrifice for this great country.
	It's not sustainable to tell our kids anything but America being the greatest country in the history of the world.
	So force... Members of Congress to vote on it.
	Democrats are going to have a hard time voting to sustain critical risk.
	Will they though? I almost feel like there's no consequence for that.
	Meaning, I've seen them take some hills to die on that are insane.
	Whether it's allowing three-year-olds to mutilate their bodies in the transgender movement, which just seems to be all the rage and the latest Hollywood accessory as a trans child.
	It feels like so. You know, I get what you're saying in the military, certainly.
	I mean, you're a veteran. You served in Afghanistan.
	You would know this, but I don't know that the very logical thing that you're saying actually matters to the Democrats.
	I don't know that there's a consequence for them.
	You might be right. I mean, at this point in partisan politics today, Republicans are the party who stand on the side of Americanism, on that notion that this is a great country, the greatest country in the history of the world.
	And Democrats, you never hear them say that.
	You don't hear any Democrats say that.
	So you might be right about that.
	But where I'm going is what the anti-Walk caucus is going to lead.
	When we get to the appropriations bills, and now we have, because of Speaker McCarthy, we have an open rules process where when we get into the meat of those appropriation bills, You're going to see hundreds of amendments voted on on the floor of the House where all 435 members of Congress have to vote yes or no.
	And we're going to push amendment after amendment to defund wokeism in the federal government all across the board, so across all of the appropriation packages.
	I dare the Democrats to vote against it because if they do vote against...
	I'm going to go to their district and use that against them, run it against them, and beat them on Election Day for it.
	Again, the hills to die on are so ridiculous.
	The things that feel like they're the leading, the thought leaders of the Democrat Party, what they're pushing, does not align with anything that I've seen around the country in terms of blue-collar Democrat votes.
	And maybe that's why it's disappearing and the Republican Party has sort of taken over that.
	But what are some of the most egregious examples?
	I mean, did you witness this in the military even when you served?
	Was it just the beginning of that?
	What have you seen since then?
	Yeah, I think it's come about really in a full force, full frontal way since Biden became commander-in-chief president.
	I mean, remember his executive order on DEI forcing every department of the federal government to have an equity plan, including the military.
	So that's where it became...
	I think some of this ideology was always there, but it became in your face the day that Biden became president.
	Get back to a point that you just made.
	Your dad did more...
	To bring lifelong Democrat, blue-collar voters to the Republican Party than any president of my lifetime.
	My dad is an example. I remember on election night when President Trump won in 2016 was the same night that I won my congressional race.
	My dad was more excited that your dad was becoming president.
	But he was your lifelong blue collar, a guy who most of his life considered himself to be a union working man's Democrat.
	Now he says he's embarrassed that he ever called himself a Democrat, ever voted for a Democrat, and hopes the Republican Party continues down this path.
	But wokeism is a big reason why.
	Because the Democrats have shifted so far.
	To the radical socialist left, betraying the greatness of what America is and who we are.
	And that turns off a voter like my dad more than anyone in the country.
	Someone who worked hard all of their life.
	Who understands that it was his hard work and the factory making axles that got him ahead to make something to try to provide me and my brothers a better shot at the American dream than what he had.
	DEI programs are a direct attack on what my dad stood for every day of his working life.
	And that's why working people, blue-collar Americans, are going to vote with us and why it's a very dangerous path for Democrats to continue to embrace that ideology.
	Well, you mentioned equity.
	So talk about, just to the viewer, who may not understand, some of these terms just get thrown out.
	It's like, oh, equity, it seems so wonderful.
	I mean, talk about what it actually means.
	Because it is very different.
	I mean, it sounds wonderful.
	I mean, the Democrats are good at one thing, which is sort of marketing, right?
	They make things sound so flowery that what they're actually pushing has nothing to do with The words that are coming out of their mouths.
	The Inflation Reduction Act was a big climate change, trillions of dollars spent for nonsense.
	We saw a US drone get run out of the sky by basically a Russian fighter jet dumping fuel, like in a fuel dump, in its wake.
	It wasn't that we could be on the brink of World War III. It wasn't that we're escalating a war with the country that has the most number of warheads, nuclear warheads, in the world.
	It was that the fuel from the fighter jet is bad for the environment.
	I mean, these aren't serious people.
	So, you know, explain, you know, equity as you understand it and as sort of as you're hoping to fight back against it.
	Right. Let me think about diversity, equity, and inclusion.
	Great. Wonderful.
	So DEI across the federal government.
	President Biden signing now two executive orders to advance his DEI directives in the federal government.
	Almost every federal department now has a chief diversity officer paid for by taxpayers like you and me.
	So what does that mean?
	That means go hire someone who...
	Might not be the best qualified person for that job.
	Someone like my dad who, again, worked in the factory all of his life, made axles, worked very hard, showed up to work every day.
	Maybe not hire somebody based on skill or excellence, but instead...
	On a political agenda.
	And at the end of the day, that's what I see the DEI movement as...
	Equality of outcome, not of opportunity.
	That's right. Well put. You know, I always feel like, yeah, women...
	I grew up as a construction guy, right?
	We built buildings. Women seem to be grossly underrepresented on a construction site.
	But is that...
	Because there's discrimination?
	What's the end objective of some of these things, and how does it result in success for our country?
	If there are jobs that were traditionally occupied by men, could it just be that the best people happen to be that because it's been 50 years or 100 years of churn and our family traits, whatever it may be, that allows those people to succeed?
	That's what America is all about, right?
	I mean, the American dream.
	My mom and dad, my dad, factory worker, my mom was a cook in a nursing home.
	Their American dream was that they could work hard, make a little bit of money, put it away, raise their three boys, that we might have a shot at something better than what they did.
	And this left-wing woke agenda by the left is a direct attack on that.
	And there couldn't be anything that's more anti-American, I believe.
	That's why we have to fight back against it.
	We have to root it.
	It's taken hold in all of our institutions now, especially in the federal government.
	We have a chance to do that with the Republican majority by defunding it.
	And that's the objective of the Anti-World Caucus.
	I mean, that's what people also have to understand, right?
	We don't control the Senate.
	And again, with Republicans like we have in the Senate, you know, who needs Democrats, frankly?
	Like, you know, there's a couple that are great.
	You know, J.D., Vince.
	But, man, it's a very slim group.
	The rest just, you know, give up and fold pretty quickly, as we saw this week in the Garcetti vote.
	You know, you want to go there.
	What are you going to bring to the Senate that is lacking?
	I want to take the fight to the Senate.
	In the House, you've seen almost a total turnover in the House since 2016 to today from old school Republicans to the new Republican Party.
	And you see a fight. You really do.
	Speaker McCarthy leading the way.
	The House Republicans were fighting back.
	We understand what's at stake.
	I think it's a virtue of the two-year election cycles in the House.
	The wheel turns and spins a lot slower in the Senate.
	So in the Senate, you're beginning to see J.D. Vance and some others with him in the last couple of cycles get elected.
	I want to join that crew.
	I'm tired of the go-along to get along Republicans who roll over every time there is a fight.
	Look at the omnibus spending bill right before the new year, which could have been pushed into the new Congress with a House Republican majority where we could have done something about spending and address a lot of the woke Spending initiatives in the federal government that was planted in the omnibus, but instead you had enough Republican senators go along to get along, vote with the Democrats, pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus bill that just continues us down the same path that we're on, thanks to Republicans.
	So remember this, guys. If you're in Indiana voting in the Senate and the primary and whatever rhinos they're going to throw at you, disregard the insanity.
	I think one of your biggest contenders already decided it probably wouldn't be great for him to get into that race.
	So it's good, but I know the pro-China factions of the Republican Party, I know they're looking for people to put in there to run against you, and they'll run all sorts of marketing and be funded incredibly well.
	That's perhaps the thing that's most disturbing to me, is the pretend Maybe they're not pretend Republicans.
	They're just that old-school Republican.
	They would rather be in the minority and lose, but still maintain a little bit of that power and have the righteous loss, or they're just corrupt, and they don't care.
	It's hard to tell at this point with so many of them.
	We're going to hold into Wall Street corporate interest.
	Oh yeah, I say it all the time. Well, you know, this billionaire isn't supporting Donald Trump anymore.
	I was like, yeah, you know, like they want their widget a little bit cheaper from China.
	You know, they want someone when they call that needs their money.
	You know, people don't understand, I mean, the influence of money in Washington, D.C. politics, and maybe talk about it a little bit, but, you know, what you're sold and the bill of goods that were given on a daily basis and the sound bites oftentimes have nothing to do with reality.
	You know, we're so, yeah, we're this way as Republicans, and this is what we're going to do.
	And it's, well, we're going to do that, but not go really all the way in.
	We're not really going to do these things.
	We still have those interests.
	And I don't know that people fully even appreciate it.
	Maybe they're starting to get it.
	But, you know, the influence of that money and what it does.
	And again, I think you'll be up against a lot of that as someone who's Starting, you know, the anti-WO caucus in Congress, there's going to be plenty of that old-school establishment Republican billionaire class that, you know, they want to be tough on China on TV, but not actually in Washington.
	You know, they're going to be tough on the border, but, you know, let's not go crazy here.
	Yeah, I think China has a lot more to do with it than...
	Most people realize. But this is why after the debacle of the 2020 election, I put a lot of thought into the legacy of your father, I think, again, is that he made the Republican Party the party of the working class.
	His legacy for the Republican Party.
	I wrote a memo to Minority Leader McCarthy a few months after the election and sort of posed this question, how do we keep it that way?
	At that point, we were having the debate over Liz Cheney's role in the party.
	Presidential hopeful! My dad has a powerful voice in my ear saying, if the party goes down the path to Liz Cheney, then I'm out.
	You've lost me. But how do we keep my dad and voters like him in the party that replace the corporate interests, the rich billionaires, and the Wall Street funders who want to continue to sell America out to China and replace them with voters like my dad, because there are a lot more of them. It's making sure the Republican Party stays rooted in the America First platform that was also brought to our party.
	And the biggest part of that, the one thing I noticed about my dad was He's not college educated, but he intuitively understands that China's been wrecking our economy for years, stealing jobs like his.
	He goes to Walmart and buys a Made in China appliance that he used to buy that was made in America and it lasts for We're good to go.
	And if we stay rooted in a platform in that, then we can keep our party rooted in a place that's going to make us much more electorally popular on Election Day than what it was before.
	In Indiana, that's hit home for me, and I think the path that we need to take headed into 2024 is going to help us win back the White House, win the Senate majority, and grow the House majority, too.
	So we've seen a lot of turmoil this week.
	Obviously, sort of the banking sector seems to be collapsing.
	You know, what are your thoughts on sort of, you know, the Biden response, you know, with, again, Silicon Valley Bank, you've seen Credit Suisse go under.
	I mean, it feels like we're on the cusp of 2008, to me.
	Like, I'm old enough now that I've lived through one of these cycles, and I'm like, Man, it looks sort of the same.
	What do you think about the response, and what do you think we have to do to sort of ease people's minds to be able to not have that collapse?
	And again, it feels like it's been good for a while, and then they pump a few more trillion, and a few more trillion, and a few more trillion, and eventually you've got to pay the piper.
	What do you think about the response?
	What do you think we do to ease that?
	What can Republicans do to prevent the disaster I see unfolding by sort of just the lunacy?
	Well, first of all, the president lied about it.
	He says this isn't a bailout.
	The taxpayers aren't on the hook.
	The bank fees by others are going to pay for it.
	And it's just a bold-faced lie.
	I mean, his reaction is a bailout.
	The taxpayers are on the hook for it.
	And by the way, I'm okay in a certain way.
	Some guy that put, you know, his life savings, he's got 10 grand in the bank account, you know, because it was the closest bank.
	Like, I get that. What about the billionaires that pulled their money out a week in advance knowing that this was coming down the line and just...
	Yeah, they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior.
	And that's what the Biden reaction totally misses.
	It rewards bad behavior.
	It rewards a very woke bank.
	I mean, look at... I mean, this bank was as woke as any bank in America.
	And it was poorly managed.
	And they should be rewarded for that behavior.
	Other banks shouldn't look at that situation and say, I can get away with that, too.
	We're going to get bailed out. It doesn't matter.
	We can act just like the...
	The Silicon Valley bank and get away with it.
	You can't reward that kind of...
	Yeah, well, just like the people of East Palestine, you know, they did nothing.
	They could use a little bit of help after the train derailment and the toxic explosion in their town.
	But, you know, they're not Democrat mega donors, so, you know, fuck them.
	Right, right. So that's my first response is just understand that Biden is flat out lying to you about what he's going to do about it and taxpayers are on the hook for it.
	So what are your thoughts so far on how Kevin McCarthy has handled everything going in?
	I know there were a lot of people that were pretty skeptical, and I've been pretty pleased with how that's doing.
	Do you think he's going to allow you to exercise that sort of power of the purse strings to be able to push against and fight back against the wokeism, against the insanity that's also making this problem so much worse, right?
	If the top 50 people for a job are just being, you know, Just frankly, just overrided right off the bat because they don't check X number of boxes and we need the trans banker making these decisions.
	How can you end up with a favorable result for our country?
	Well, Speaker McCarthy's off to a great start.
	I mean, think about the pledges that he made last year that he's never going to allow a bill, any bill that comes to the floor that would provide for amnesty of illegals.
	He's focused on the big threats to our country, the new Select Committee on China, I'm a part of it, might be the legacy of this Congress.
	And it's his, he's fully responsible for it.
	He's been talking about it for years.
	He made it happen. And he's reorienting the Congress and the federal government to do what the president's not doing.
	And that's addressed The China threat.
	He's focused on the debt and spending.
	You're going to see House Republicans come out with a true balanced budget proposal that will get not just broad support but full support for the Republicans in the House addressing the biggest domestic threat, I think, that we face.
	And he's also changed the process, allowing for open rules, more amendments, so that my vote from Northeast Indiana matters just as much as someone in leadership's vote when I can go down to the floor and offer an amendment, have it heard and voted on by the whole House.
	The 72-hour rule, which is something that he agreed to long before the Yeah, well, there's a lot of gamesmanship in that whole process.
	And I mean, I know I got a lot of, I had a lot of crap, you know, for supporting him pretty early in the process, because I also understand the realities of Washington, D.C., and you have to do that.
	But, you know, I had known for months that he was planning on doing a lot of the things that people were like, we got this win!
	I'm like, that was a great deal, like, six weeks ago.
	Like, that was a great deal. He was saying he was going to do these things right off the bat.
	And so, you know, there's always some nuance in D.C. in what you're sold versus what's the reality.
	Yeah, he's off to a strong start.
	I'm proud of him. He's going to go down history as a great speaker.
	We have a long ways to go in this Congress.
	We have a lot of work to do.
	And the political reality is the Senate is still led by the Democrats and others.
	But you can do a lot with that, again, the oversight role of the money.
	Right? Because it's all about the money.
	And again, I think you're there.
	I mean, talk about China. You just brought that up as the biggest threat.
	I mean, the Democrats, you know, we're seeing news today, you know, a few more members of the Biden family also got millions, you know, because they're all China experts.
	I'm sure, you know, The wife was wonderful and very influential in China and banking or energy or...
	Does it matter anymore?
	Who cares? I mean, it's the biggest farce in the world.
	Like another Biden getting rich from China with no experience, no business acumen, no nothing, but no one cares.
	Yeah, I'm sure you take comfort in knowing that if you would have done...
	I'd be in jail right now.
	If Biden has done, you would be behind bars.
	Yeah, you know, I don't know if you got the pleasure of sitting through any of my, you know, congressional testimony, all 50 hours worth, but, you know, it turned out that was all big zero.
	here's their smoke and more smoke and more smoke and actual fire and smoke and
	evidence and this and it's like like not even an acknowledgement of it, it's almost like a
	you know, so maybe I do take it a little bit more personally than a lot of people
	because I'm like wait a second, like they wanted to try me for treason,
	like I take that seriously just because of the notion
	of what that means uh... and what it says about me and you know my beliefs as
	an American and a patriot
	uh... that pissed me off in and of itself the other minor detail of that is you know treason is a
	crime punishable by death you know
	just another tuesday for me these days But that there's been nothing on all of these things.
	When we knew it was smoke, when they have the full backing of the media, of big tech, of the intelligence community coming in to save this 50-year-old corrupt crackhead.
	I mean, I take it personally.
	Among many others in his family, as you're pointing out.
	It's not just Hunter, it's his brothers.
	And the sister has something.
	And the ex-wife.
	Any one of the things that Hunter did would have been disqualifying from my family.
	The laptop proved all of it.
	Without a shadow of a doubt, the laptop had all the proof that all of these activities were ongoing.
	The family's as corrupt as any family that's ever lived in the White House.
	It's saying a lot after the Clintons.
	So the proof is there and that no one is ever held accountable for it.
	We have a moral duty to make sure in this House Republican majority that they are held accountable for it, that we do shine a bright light on their corruption so the whole American, all the American people can see it for what it is, to make sure something like that ever happens again.
	But given what you're up against, right, again, full force of the mainstream media.
	It's still not an issue.
	I mean, there's literally, like, here's the paperwork, here's the money.
	Like, there's no question.
	Like, well, do you think maybe, you know, our foreign policy and our, like, America Last Soft on China policy is being dictated or governed by the fact that, like, they've been making this money and everyone knows it, and it's just like, okay, well, just like there's no one asking the question is, is our involvement in the Ukraine-Russia conflict likewise?
	Is our response different than it would be if they didn't have all these potential things over someone's head?
	And again, maybe the answer is no.
	But the fact that no one's even bothering to ask the question is truly scary to me because, you know, I know they asked a lot of questions with a lot less evidence than us and we had to deal with that for five years.
	Yeah, so true.
	I mean, think about, what have you ever heard Joe Biden say that was remotely tough on China?
	Nothing. I mean, I've seen him on numerous occasions addressing the nation and being much harder on, let's say, let's call it 50% of the voting populace.
	Than he ever has on a dictatorial regime that has, you know, running child slave labor camps all over the world for their lithium batteries.
	And, you know, that will fund the green movement of probably people who are on the board of Silicon Valley Bank.
	But, I mean, no, but again, the irony of all of that, it's like we're pushing for these things.
	It's like, well, is that really ESG? Or...
	You know, Apple avoids ESG by subbing out the batteries to a third party.
	And so they're not really responsible, even if all they're using the batteries that are using the child slave labor in terrible conditions, done in an environmentally unsound fashion, owned by the Chinese government, who's enslaving Uyghur Muslims in the western part of the nation.
	Eh! No big deal.
	As long as we're subbing it out, it's not really us.
	You know, we're just, we're hiring the hitman.
	We're not actually pulling the trigger ourselves, right, folks?
	I mean, it's different. Yeah, it's pure insanity.
	And they get away with it.
	The media lets them get away with all of it.
	Well, and big tech and the censorship there, right?
	You'll never see that.
	They'll never promote the article.
	It's probably written, but the suppression of that ability to get it out, right?
	The New York Post wrote the Hunter Biden story, but it was disinformation.
	It was off of all social channels.
	If you spoke about it, you were canceled.
	So even if you believed it to be true, you couldn't talk about it.
	Because if you talked about it, you yourself were deplatformed, demonetized, canceled, or whatever it may be.
	So people, I think, have the faulty assumption that we're in this fair fight
	of ideals.
	It's like, no, no, no, we're up against multi-trillion dollar industries that
	seem to be the marketing department for the other side, good, bad, or indifferent.
	Yeah, that's why this matters, right?
	Going directly to our voters, our people, and communicating the truth.
	That's how we break through it.
	You're doing it as well as anybody.
	And moving into 2024, we have to make sure that we don't allow them.
	I mean, I think people are more skeptical than ever before in the mainstream media, for good reason.
	They've always been skeptical, but more skeptical than ever before.
	Because every allegation that they've made about COVID or about your family, all of them have been proven false.
	Well, literally everything they told us was the gospel.
	Not just about us. Literally about anything has been proven to be a lie.
	I mean, you know, the uneducated conspiracy theorist of the Wuhan lab leak theory.
	I'm like, I don't know. When was that ever not the most plausible answer?
	But if you said it and you were a doctor and you said, like, of course that was the answer.
	Done. You lost tenure.
	So I guess what people, even if they understand that, even if they're skeptics, there's still sort of a consequence to being vocal about the obvious.
	And, you know, I hope that you're able to do something in that Congress and really also not let them run out the clock.
	They're phenomenal at that, right?
	And I think, you know, we're bad at that, we comply, we do this, we do whatever it is, and they'll take it to the last minute.
	Oh, there was a misspelling, so we have to start over and buy another two weeks and another two weeks, and eventually you get nowhere.
	How are you going to stop that?
	Because you know it's coming.
	And I think we also, like I said, I'm as guilty of this as anyone.
	We can't chase a hundred shiny objects.
	Like, what would be the five things you pick to say, hey, let's go after this and make sure we have results by, you know, November of 2024 on this issue, not just sort of scatter our energy, because, you know, time is not infinite, right?
	You have a busy schedule.
	You have other things you got to do.
	Everyone does. You know, what are the things that you would prioritize in your time in the next two years to make sure that we get something across the finish line so that we can actually deliver real results for the people and not just, again, chase things that seem like they're great, but not sort of get anywhere on any of them?
	Yeah. So you probably have, you know, you have, what, a House Republican majority of 222 Republicans, and you have a lot of different opinions about what those five issues would be.
	That's why we elect a speaker, be the quarterback, to move us forward, and I think you have Jim Jordan, right guy, right place, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
	Jamie Comer, Chairman of Oversight Committee.
	Those are the two tips of the spear of the oversight agenda.
	What do they go after?
	I mean, DOJ oversight, well-deserved.
	FBI. FBI, COVID origins.
	We have a new select committee on COVID origins to sort of expose the truth about what the left did to really...
	To really harm America in such a significant way?
	What China's role in all of it?
	How do we hold them accountable?
	How do we hold Dr. Fauci accountable?
	All of that, I think, is under the purview of the oversight agenda of McCarthy, Jordan, and Comer.
	My focus has been China, because I think it's the biggest, the greatest foreign threat that we face, and then wokeism, the biggest domestic threat that we face.
	And the weakness of the Biden administration and corruption to boot within all of that would be where I would focus my attention.
	So you're on the select committee as it relates to China.
	You have another big one, obviously, what you want to do regarding Mexico.
	Talk about both of those threats.
	Mexico obviously being more, you know, the cartels, not necessarily the government.
	But the government seems impotent to do anything about what's going on at the cartels.
	You know, they're run by the cartels.
	I had a friend, you know, I'm a big outdoorsman.
	I used to go down to Mexico all the time, go hunting.
	And a couple months ago, a friend was like, hey, come down with us.
	We've got a place, a ranch. I'm like, yeah, we're going to go.
	I started speaking to a couple other friends.
	Like, you realize, like, you can't go to Sonora, Mexico.
	You'd be what you call the largest target in the world.
	I was like, man, that sucks. But yeah, they totally control that.
	I was like, no, we could come in and go subtly.
	I was like, no, no, no. Everyone's on the payroll.
	If you're clearing customs, which you're obviously doing, because apparently you only have to clear customs one way.
	Fact check, true. It's a problem.
	So talk about what you want to do with Mexico.
	I know you want to, again, pull back some of the aid given to that country until they sort of get their act together as well.
	Well, let's start with China. So fentanyl, a leading cause of death of Americans, Mai, your age.
	Working age, age of eligibility to serve in the United States military.
	Over 100,000 Americans dying of fentanyl poisonings since Biden became president.
	That's more than all of the Americans who died in the Vietnam War.
	So when are we going to hold China accountable for the precursors, all of the chemicals, all of the ingredients of fentanyl that's killing a large Well, and everyone has a connection.
	I mean, I have friends that have been lost to it.
	You know, it's sort of an indiscriminate killer, right?
	It's not rich, poor, Young, old, obviously productive, but to me it's clearly like a psyop.
	This is designed to destroy, sort of like TikTok is.
	They're running all of these things concurrently and they're just chipping away at just our spirit and our soul on a daily basis.
	So what does that do with Mexico?
	Wide open border, right?
	I've been to the border many times.
	You mean, unlike borders are Kamala Harris?
	Unlike her and Joe and so many others, so many Democrats who refuse to go there and see what's really going on.
	You talk to Border Patrol agents, who, by the way, I notice a large percentage of Border Patrol agents are first generation Americans who came here legally from Mexico, now wear a uniform.
	To serve our country and protect us at the southern border.
	They're not partisan.
	Almost all of them will tell you this was under control under Trump.
	It's wide open and out of control under Biden.
	And the situation at the border is that because of the Biden policies, The Border Patrol agents are spending most of their time processing migrants and not spending any of their time stopping drugs from flowing into our country, brought over the border by the Mexican drug cartel.
	So one, hold China accountable, sanction them, get tough on them for producing fentanyl.
	Two, declare war on the Mexican drug cartels.
	Use the military.
	Send the military to the border and take them out.
	I mean, Trump suggested stuff like this, and they're, oh my god, you're gonna invade a sovereign nation.
	I mean, they're actively killing our people.
	The drug cartels, when I interviewed McCarthy, he was my first guest on this show, Speaker McCarthy, he was talking about, they knowingly sent cartel members to assassinate people in the United States, and they killed a baby in the process, and it's like, ah, well, you know, there's nothing, there's not really a threat here, I mean... How can they not be treated as a hostile faction to the United States of America?
	They control the border on both sides of the border.
	Mexican drug cartels do.
	So that's the fact of it.
	Your dad also talked about building a wall.
	And now that the wall, the construction of the wall has been Now all of a sudden fentanyl-leading cause of death of Americans my age.
	So you're right. He did something about it.
	The Biden administration did the opposite.
	The result is deadly.
	Killing over 100,000 Americans from fentanyl poisoning.
	And the president deserves a lot of the blame for it.
	Along with the Mexican drug cartels and China for allowing it to happen.
	So we got to get tough on Mexico.
	The Mexican government is controlled by the drug cartels.
	So use the military to go after the drug cartels and then stop sending foreign aid to a country that's killing and poisoning Americans with allowing all of this to happen for drugs to be trafficked here.
	So it wasn't like this just three years ago.
	It's so obvious. Will that actually happen?
	Meaning, will it actually happen in Congress?
	Meaning, of course it should.
	But, like, Congress isn't like the real world, right?
	Just like Twitter isn't the real world, right?
	It's like, wow, this is, you know...
	How do we make that happen?
	How do you get Democrats to vote for this?
	How do you get accountability?
	Because I think that's the one thing I think Americans want now.
	They want accountability for these things, but there doesn't ever seem to be that.
	It's like, again, if you're a political elite, you can kind of get away with it.
	If you're, you know, connected, that doesn't really matter.
	You don't have to do your job. I think it was the Border Patrol Chief, I think it was today, literally called out Mayorkas.
	Like, it's just, this is yours.
	We have no control whatsoever.
	And these are guys, and I've been down there myself, and I see these people all over the place.
	They come up to me. We don't know how to, it was so simple.
	It was so dumb. We have $130 billion for Ukraine, but we couldn't spend two, three more billion dollars to complete the border wall.
	Save American lives.
	Three, four billion dollars to complete construction of the wall to do it.
	So then at the same time, I don't know if you saw this, the president of Mexico mocking America last week.
	I talked about it in my intro.
	Yeah. And by the way, there are parts of the United States where he's probably right.
	If you took Baltimore, or probably Chicago, or some of these Democrat-run cities, he's probably right.
	They are more violent than Mexico as a whole, and yet the general notion is still insane, right?
	That's not representative of our country.
	That's representative of the failures of Democrat policy.
	Weakness And lack of accountability.
	There's an excuse for everything that someone does wrong.
	We saw it during the Summer of Love.
	Those people are social justice warriors and therefore, exempt from prosecution, they can murder, rape, pillage, It doesn't matter.
	Take over government buildings. That's not an insurrection.
	That's none of those things. You can loot a Gucci store because, obviously, Gucci sleds in the name of social justice is different than just theft.
	But, again, we have to get there.
	And, again, I think the American people see that.
	And yet it doesn't seem to translate in our election process.
	How do we fix that as well?
	Because it seems to me that there's no way that people, even the average Democrat in Philadelphia,
	thinks that these are great things and that the cartels are wonderful people
	and they should be left alone.
	And yet you don't see sort of an overwhelming turnout.
	At the ballot box, frankly, you see the opposite because of the way, frankly, election systems
	are run, in my opinion, whether it be through ballot harvesting or otherwise.
	How do we fix that as Republicans?
	Because I think it's going to be critical.
	It's going to be critical in your race, even in Indiana in the Senate, because of the amount of
	money that will be spent to make sure that people are knocking
	on doors and people voting in the major cities for someone they've never heard of, wouldn't know who they were,
	couldn't pick them out of a lineup, wouldn't understand their policies.
	And I believe that's happening all over the country.
	I mean, to some estimates, the number of illegals who have come into the country more than the entire population of Indiana.
	Oh, yeah. Well, and in New York and other places, they want them to be able to vote.
	And, you know, they don't have to pay taxes.
	They don't have to contribute in the system.
	You have the privilege of paying for them and you.
	So then I'm asked by my constituents every day, well, why...
	What is the motivation for this president to completely leave the border wide open, not say anything about it, pretend like it's not happening.
	Over 100,000 Americans die of fentanyl poisoning.
	Just pretend like that's not happening.
	What's the motivation for that?
	I think the answer is obvious.
	So what do we do about it? We've got to use the leverage of the House majority.
	Even though it's a four-seat majority, we still have a majority.
	We still have leverage.
	We can still force the Democrats to vote on bills that they don't want to vote on, like securing the border.
	And then leading up to the election, we have to take a page out of their playbook.
	Go out and while some of these processes are allowed and legal until we can ban ballot harvesting and some of these egregious acts, we've got to go out and play by the rules like we did in California last cycle where we learn how to do some of these processes better and we're able to get out the vote and win back a number of House seats to the Republican side to help us win the majority.
	What made you get into this to begin with?
	You talked about your father's blue-collar roots.
	What made you run for Congress to begin with?
	He hated politics and politicians.
	I'm not sure how he feels about me.
	I'm sure he'll watch this so I'll get some feedback.
	It didn't come from a political family.
	Again, we grew up in a trailer park.
	We came from very humble beginnings.
	My dad worked hard all of his life to give us a better shot.
	And eventually I just felt called to it, drawn to it.
	The first time I thought I'd go to college, met my wife in the College of Republicans, and we got involved, volunteered on campaigns, and here we are.
	I never thought in my life that I could serve in the United States Congress or even run for the United States Senate.
	And there's some people who along the way told me I couldn't do that.
	Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of people.
	I imagine there's plenty of people that would still be betting against you because it's not convenient for them or their motives or beliefs.
	Exactly. But I love this country like you do.
	I wore the uniform. I love America and what it stands for.
	I have three daughters who are 13, 11, and 9.
	I'm sorry. But I want them to inherit a great America, too.
	And I'm worried about that more than ever before.
	When I see that the radical lefty into our country is not going to leave this country better off for them in a place like it was just 20, 25 years ago when I was growing up there.
	Yeah, no, I sort of feel the same thing for me.
	It's like, you know, trust me, it was much easier being a real estate developer from New York City.
	I got invited to cool person parties.
	It was a little different.
	And yet, as someone who believes this stuff, as a lifelong conservative, it's so important to To engage, to get involved in that fight.
	That's why I love seeing guys like you step up to do that.
	I always encourage people, what can we do?
	We may not be able to run for Senate.
	I'm like, run for your school board.
	Stop supporting companies who are taking your money and using it to fund Causes that hate you.
	I mean, and we are at that point.
	You don't want to overuse the sound bite, but the other side would gladly put you, certainly me, in the gulags just for having the opinions and the belief systems that we have.
	You know, I think they've proven to be right.
	I think the other side, there's lunacy, but we have no choice but to continue this.
	So that's where politics today comes down to that.
	We have to recognize that this is a war.
	This is a battle for the future of our country.
	We still have a lot of Republicans who don't see it that way.
	They still think you can go to Washington and You can get along with the other side and negotiate and get things done, not recognizing that the left doesn't come to play along.
	They come to defeat us, to kill us off, to reinvent America into the socialist America that they wanted to be, to cancel our founding fathers and change this country in a significant way.
	So we have to have fighters in Washington, I think more than ever before, to fight for this country, to fight back against the radical left.
	That's why I stepped up to the plate to run for the Senate.
	As you mentioned before, we had some big names in Indiana politics who were also thinking about it.
	Had some powerful people tell us that you need to back off.
	You're too MAGA. You're too young.
	You're not as well known. You've got to defer to the establishment Republicans.
	And with your backing, we got into the race.
	Eventually they backed off because they hadn't yet realized...
	They got a foreshadowing of...
	Some of them had some stuff in their records that I was like, I don't know that they want people like me yakking about it every day for the next 18 months, but minor details.
	The question the voters are asking, are you going to Washington to fight?
	Yeah. To fight for America, to fight back against the radical left.
	Because if you're not, we don't have time for you anymore.
	And yeah, but there's plenty of people that, I mean, we see them every day, and it's like, you know, they'll get on, you know, some major talk shows, and they'll, we should be doing this, and we should be doing that.
	I'm sitting there being like, wait a minute, like, you were the chairman of the committee that could be doing those things, so you're saying, like, we're manipulating our own voters.
	You know, we have plenty of guys that go out there, it's like, we should be X, Y, Z, but you have the power to actually do that, why don't you just do it?
	Instead, it makes it seem like they're actually fighting.
	I think that's one of the biggest things.
	We're lying to our own voters by having people pretend they're fighters when they're not.
	You mentioned MAGA. How'd you meet Trump?
	What was that like?
	What was the first experience like?
	Any good stories there for the viewership?
	I have lots of good stories. I didn't get to know the president really well until after he left the White House, unfortunately.
	I was chairman of the largest conservative caucus We took a group of Republican Study Committee.
	We took a group to go see him.
	2021, kind of middle of the year at Bedminster.
	And that was the beginning of a relationship that is very meaningful to me today.
	But when he was in the White House, it was during the health care fight, my first visit to the Oval Office with Republican Study Committee.
	I was a freshman in my first year in Congress.
	Walked into the Oval, a pinch me moment.
	I mean, one of those moments, I can only imagine what it was like the first time you walked into the Oval.
	Oh yeah, no, it's incredible. You see it on TV, but when you're there for real, it's overwhelming.
	And then to see the president behind the desk in the Oval Office.
	We were there to meet with him and talk about our ideas to make the healthcare bill stronger.
	And I remember introducing myself to him, and his first question was about Bobby Knight.
	By the way, amazing story.
	So he wanted to know if I love Bobby Knight, if Bobby Knight was the reason that he won Indiana.
	You better if you...
	If you want to win in Indiana, you've got to love it.
	And by the way, he's an incredible dude.
	But I didn't know this.
	And in 16, Indiana was going to be, that was the firewall.
	That's where Ted Cruz was going to come through.
	And then Bobby Knight comes out and endorses Trump.
	And I'm with a buddy of mine in Indiana.
	We're going around doing, like, small town, like, meet and greet, like, just proper, like, just on the ground, you know, politics.
	And I was like, well, what does that mean exactly?
	Meaning I know who he is, obviously, a legendary coach and all this stuff, but, like, what does it mean?
	And he goes, oh, it's over.
	I go, what do you mean? He's like, no, no, you just won.
	I go, no, no, no, but this is the firewall.
	It's going to be really close. He goes, no, no, no, it won't even be close.
	And he goes, we're literally driving.
	I think we went turkey hunting that morning.
	We were driving from one place to another.
	We stopped in this little town with a small intersection.
	There was a diner there. He goes, come with me for a second.
	We walk in and three-quarters of the diner was dedicated to a shrine of Bobby Knight.
	And I was like, oh, yeah, it's over.
	And it was. They were perfect for each other. To have them on the campaign trail was amazing.
	So that was my first experience at the Oval Office.
	Then I had a chance to ride in the Beast with them.
	I never did Air Force One, but I got a private tour of the private quarters, the Lincoln Bank.
	What I was struck by when he was in the White House, I got to go to Camp David.
	Yeah, that's a cool place. That was my favorite sort of experience.
	What I was struck by, though, about him, and maybe you can give us some color to this as well, is what other presidents would have thought was I think that's the unbecoming of a president to share those experiences with regular people like me, even though I'm a member of Congress, or truly regular people who come to the White House.
	I remember when I got invited, every year they gave the NASCAR Championship Trophy, whatever they call that now.
	Yeah, like the Winston Cup. And Roger Penske, it was his team that won every year.
	The whole team was there.
	The mechanics and the business guys.
	The driver, the crew team.
	The pit team. And he said, you guys want to see the Lincoln bedroom?
	And they all kind of like, oh my god.
	The Secret Service wasn't prepared for it.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, come on.
	And then he pointed at me and a few other members of Congress who were there and took us upstairs and gave us that experience.
	What I've always been struck by that is he wanted to share the whole four-year experience with normal Americans, regular Americans.
	I guarantee you, Obama, any president before him, they wouldn't have done that.
	They wouldn't have shared those private experiences.
	He was like that always, actually.
	I always say he's sort of like...
	He may have been Donald Trump billionaire, but he was always sort of the kid from Queens.
	Does that make sense? You know what I mean?
	So he related to those guys.
	That's why I think sort of...
	How is the brash billionaire from New York able to relate to working-class, blue-collar Americans?
	is because at heart, that's probably more of a comfort space than anything else for
	him.
	So, yeah, I've seen that myself, and I always thought it was sort of an amazing way to do
	it, and frankly, the way the president probably should conduct himself.
	I mean, he is representing the people, not the billionaire class.
	He is fighting for those values, not the elite who are doing just fine on their own without
	And that's why I think this is such a big fight, you know, ongoing.
	Because, you know, that elite, they want that power back.
	They want that sort of control and that snobbery.
	They don't want it to be about the people.
	That's a great soundbite, but it's bullshit.
	You know, we're not going to really do it.
	We're just going to talk about it. I mean, for me, that's one of my biggest takeaways.
	Just that the way that he treated all of us, the way he welcomed us into the experience, something I'll always be grateful for.
	But there was one experience, to me personally, what I call the Trump rule.
	There was one day that he landed Air Force One, Indianapolis, met him at the airport.
	There was a tragic shooting.
	I think it was the synagogue in Pennsylvania.
	There was a shooting. He had a long schedule.
	He was speaking in Indianapolis to the Future Farmers of America Conference.
	But then he was going on the campaign trail.
	It was midterm campaign with members of Congress who had tough...
	Tough campaigns. He was going to do rallies with them and trying to help get them over the finish line.
	So the media...
	He landed in Indianapolis.
	It was an hour or two after the tragic shooting.
	And the media was piling on him.
	You've got to cancel your schedule.
	You can't go speak at the FFA to these kids.
	You can't go to a political rally with a candidate for Congress.
	So we greeted him.
	He comes down the steps of Air Force One, the steps that Biden falls up.
	President Trump walks down.
	If Trump touched the banister, he's having a mental breakdown.
	Biden can fall down the stairs every week for the last two years and all is well.
	Walks down, greets me and other congressmen, a few other people who greeted him.
	Then he comes back and says, you two congressmen, get in the beast with me for the ride, which was, again, a pinch me moment.
	We had about a 45 minute drive from airport to downtown Indianapolis.
	spoke for about 43 minutes.
	Yeah, it checks out.
	Powerful moment when he hops in the car, the media was there,
	they're beating up on him.
	And he looked at me and the other congressman, he said, make this a lesson for you two.
	Don't back down to these guys.
	Never give them an inch.
	If you give them an inch, they own you for the rest of your life.
	I'll never forget to tell me that.
	And that's a political lesson to me that is learned over and over and over again.
	I see so many of my colleagues fail at that test.
	Once you back down to the left, the media will own you.
	That's the start, right?
	When you back down and you apologize and you try to do the right thing, that's the validation for them.
	Oh, see, we were actually right, because they're usually throwing BS on a wall, right?
	That's what starts. So, yeah, I agree.
	You can never back down.
	And I think if you bring that to the United States Senate, we can go a long way.
	It wasn't that he was diminishing the tragedy.
	He even called a rabbi to come and pray in Indianapolis that day.
	That didn't matter. The narrative was going to be whatever you could spin it against Trump, right?
	Yeah, powerful moments.
	So many powerful moments. That's awesome.
	Well, Jim, I know we have to run.
	We've got to go raise you some money for this Senate campaign.
	You guys also got to contribute to a real MAGA candidate for the Senate.
	Again, we have... Far too few of them, and I think we need more.
	But with six-year terms, it's a little harder to come by.
	You had a tough map, and it's going to be crazy.
	So I look forward to doing whatever I can to help get you in that seat.
	And as you go further on some of these things, I want to have you back to talk more detail about fentanyl, Mexico, China.
	I mean, you're really... Getting yourself involved in so many of the things that I find to be, again, you're on the top five things that I think we need to be focused on, so it'll be awesome to have you back on, Jim.
	Alright, thank you. Appreciate it.
	Thanks a lot, guys. Guys, that was awesome.
	Thank you so much for all of that.
	I'm going to go do live locals now, so if you're watching that or if you're a subscription member there, you can come do a Q&A. Ask me anything over on the locals platform.
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