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| - Hey everybody, Michael Tracig here. | |
| Glenn is not here, as you may have noticed. | |
| Instead, it's me, Michael Tracy. | |
| Because we are at the Republican National Convention, it's the final night. | |
| I've never had more fun in my life. | |
| I guess I haven't had a very fun life. | |
| Trump is going to be speaking tonight, we're told. | |
| I have no reason to doubt that, but you can never quite predict the future, so we'll have to see, I suppose. | |
| Glenn is going to be doing a live stream, allegedly after the Trump speech. | |
| In the meantime, enjoy many of the interviews that we have conducted over the course of The Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee, to repeat myself. | |
| Lots of hotshot politicos meandering around thinking they own the place. | |
| Maybe in a way they do. | |
| We have Marco Rubio, we have Chairman McCall, one of the big chairmen in the House, asked all these people about lots of stuff involving topics that are familiar to viewers of the show: Israel, Ukraine, aspects of foreign policy, how would Trump in a second term run aspects of foreign policy, how would Trump in a second term run foreign policy, and So, uh, it's a pretty wide array of different figures, we hope. | |
| So, uh, enjoy. | |
| And again, allegedly Glenn will be back sometime later tonight. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Democratic, I mean. | |
| Senator, Senator, and your view has the strategic ambiguity policy vis-a-vis Taiwan outlived its purpose. | |
| And would you anticipate or hope for a second Trump administration to revise that policy for a more explicit commitment to defend Taiwan? | |
| That's a complex public policy question that probably doesn't lend itself to the hallway of a convention. | |
| Suffice it to say that it is on our national interest to discourage China from carrying out an invasion of Taiwan. | |
| That would be really destabilizing and not to mention dangerous. | |
| And one more question, what was your reaction to the Julian Assange plea deal that the Biden DOJ brokered a few weeks ago? | |
| Do you view that as a threat to national security? | |
| Are you okay with the outcome? | |
| I don't know if it's a threat, but unfortunately, you know, we're rewarding terrible behavior, but I mean, I wasn't a fan of it, but... Hey, Congressman, Michael Tracy with Rumble, so just a couple of minutes of your time. | |
| So we're with Congressman Mike McAuliffe, Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, correct? | |
| That's right. | |
| Didn't even have to Wikipedia that. | |
| One of the running themes over the course of this convention since the dawn of the Trump era has been America First. | |
| How is that defined? | |
| You were a staunch supporter of the National Security Supplemental that passed in April. | |
| Is, you know, being a stalwart supporter of Ukraine, of Israel, of the Indo-Pacific, is that consistent with America First as you see it? | |
| Because, you know, sometimes there's debate about that among even some of the Republican members. | |
| So how do you square that circle? | |
| Does it need squaring? | |
| Well, I think it is. | |
| Our adversary, foreign adversaries are Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. | |
| If we allow them to—and they're getting very aggressive under this administration, which is projecting weakness, and that's why you're seeing wars. | |
| We wouldn't have seen this with President Trump. | |
| But the fact is, if we allow them to take over territories, that puts America last. | |
| My dad, World War II generation, D-Day veteran, you know, they won. | |
| So that's kind of the worldview that I have. | |
| dictatorship, tyranny, for a better world America for the next generation, that's mine. | |
| So that's kind of the worldview that I have. | |
| I get the point that people care about back home, and that's 100% right. | |
| And I think J.D. Vance is right about that. | |
| But at the same time, that doesn't mean we have to be number two overseas. | |
| I think we need, like Reagan, to project strength and power overseas with our allies against our adversaries. | |
| Do you think it In a second Trump administration, there ought to be a revision to the strategic ambiguity concept vis-à-vis Taiwan. | |
| Should there be a more direct, overt policy statement on the part of the United States to come to Taiwan's defense in the event that there's some incursion by China? | |
| Has strategic ambiguity outlived its purpose? | |
| I think that's something we need to be taking a look at to provide deterrence against China. | |
| I just came back from Taiwan. | |
| I was with the newly elected president. | |
| The Chinese have circled the island with battleships and aircraft carriers in a blockade, which would be a prelude to an invasion, what it would look like. | |
| So that's something we are taking a look at. | |
| The status quo doesn't sound right, but it does keep Taiwan and China from going to war. | |
| One of the red lines that China has is if they violate the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, We have to be careful with that, but I think we need to give them—I sign off on all foreign military sales—$20 billion that Taiwan, we didn't give it to them, they bought it from us, and only half of those have gone into Taiwan. | |
| I think we need more of those to go in to provide that deterrence so we don't have to be talking about a war. | |
| There are some people in the Republican coalition who at least purport to be skeptics now, maybe newcomer skeptics of the concept of the military-industrial complex. | |
| It's a derisive way of putting it, but you're involved in that process by overseeing foreign military sales. | |
| Does peace through strength, does that require pouring endless expenditures? | |
| Some might call them boondoggles for the defense contractors. | |
| How do you sort of manage that skepticism that might be burgeoning somewhat within the Republican ranks toward the military contractors? | |
| Right, I understand that. | |
| Sentiment, but if you don't have a strong military, you know, we spent more percentage of GDP in the 1980s under Reagan than we spent today. | |
| I was with the Indo-Pacom commander, you know, the admiral talking about the threats in the Pacific, and he doesn't have the resources. | |
| A lot of these foreign military sales to our allies and countries we want to be our allies, we can't fulfill Those contracts for five years because our defense industrial base has been broken to some extent. | |
| This involves manufacturing here at home. | |
| 80% of the supplemental on Ukraine goes to manufacturing in the United States, which I think J.D. | |
| Vance would agree with, and I certainly, Tom Cotton, I agree with. | |
| That's a good... Well, J.D. | |
| Vance voted against the supplemental. | |
| Well, I know, I know. | |
| But, you know, manufacturing here. | |
| So did Marco Rubio, which was a little bit odd, but neither here nor there. | |
| I think he came back around, but Neil Cotton certainly agrees to that premise. | |
| I think that provides deterrence. | |
| He can have rhetoric, but if you don't have the means to back it up, then what good is that? | |
| Now, I'll tell you, under Trump, the rhetoric was helpful. | |
| He's told me personally, when he talked to Putin, Putin knew if he invaded Ukraine, it would come at a high price. | |
| Same thing with Chairman Xi. | |
| He knew with Trump, if he invaded Taiwan, there'd be a high price to pay for it. | |
| And this president, Biden, there's absolutely zero deterrence. | |
| What is the current U.S. | |
| policy vis-a-vis what areas in territorial Russia Ukraine is permitted to use U.S. | |
| weaponry to strike? | |
| We were told initially it was just in the Kharkiv area. | |
| Then Jake Sullivan seemed to expand the parameters. | |
| It's just not well defined. | |
| So as best you could tell, what is the current policy? | |
| What is the range that Ukraine is permitted to strike using U.S. | |
| operational coordination? | |
| And how would those constraints that have been imposed by the Biden administration be lifted under the Trump administration? | |
| Would they become more stringent under the Trump administration? | |
| What's your forecast for that? | |
| I think that President Trump's kind of guy, like, let him take the gloves off. | |
| Give them everything they need to win. | |
| You know, Jake Sullivan has been restricting the Ukrainians from day one with weapon systems. | |
| I had to write in attack him into the supplemental, and even now he's restricting their use across border where all the bases are, where these glide bombs or bombers are coming across. | |
| You saw the one that killed the children at the hospital in Kyiv. | |
| That's no way to manage a war, and that's one reason the American people They're not supportive if they see it mismanaged like that. | |
| My view has always been, like General Jack Keane's, is like, either get in to win, all in to win, or get the hell out of there. | |
| And Jake Sullivan has completely... National Security Advisor, if viewers aren't aware. | |
| Correct. | |
| And I think he's hurting the Ukrainians. | |
| I've met with Zelensky and his team, and they tell us these restrictions are not allowing us to—I think the goal here is to push the Russians out as far as they can, have a ceasefire, and a negotiated settlement. | |
| My hope is that President Trump will allow that to happen and then call for a ceasefire, and he's the master of the deal. | |
| I don't know if you saw the policy paper, final question, that was Fred Flights and Keith Kellogg, affiliated with the America First Policy Institute, submitted a policy framework to Trump, and he received the report as far as the certain accounts of it went, and I read that policy paper. | |
| It's the diametric opposite of what the conventional media narrative would be around Trump's posture vis-a-vis Ukraine and Russia, right? | |
| It calls for continuing to arm Ukraine. | |
| It calls for declaring that Ukraine will never accede to any territorial concessions to Russia. | |
| It seems like rather maximalist and not all that different from the Biden administration, at least their claimed policy. | |
| So are these supposed differences maybe exaggerated at times in terms of how the Republican and a Democratic administration would handle Ukraine? | |
| Yeah, when you look at the people around President Trump, I'm certainly one of them. | |
| Mike Pompeo is very hawkish. | |
| He's very much behind. | |
| Because if Ukraine loses, the United States loses to Putin as well. | |
| On Pompeo, really quickly, my impression is that Pompeo is one of the very few senior administration officials who Trump never had a falling out with, who remained on good terms with him all throughout that first administration. | |
| Is that accurate? | |
| He spent a lot of time with the President. | |
| And Keith Kellogg is a good friend of mine. | |
| sees it like I do, like give them everything they need to win. | |
| And, you know, we can't allow them because China's going to look at Taiwan and now, you know, Middle East is on fire. | |
| But if you look at the people around him, General Jack Keene, same thinking. | |
| Robert O'Brien, former national security advisor, President Trump. | |
| We all see this same worldview in the same way, and I think that's what's going to matter at the end of the day. | |
| Finally, what was your reaction to the plea deal that enabled Julian Assange to exit incarceration? | |
| He had been there for five years, I think, in Belmarsh in the UK, actually indicted under the Trump administration. | |
| Some deal was brokered to enable him to go back to Australia. | |
| Did you have a positive reaction to that, a negative reaction to that? | |
| I have a worse reaction to us allowing an Iran prisoner or hostage swap for six innocent Americans and six Iranian spies and then giving Iran six billion dollars. | |
| That gives me a lot more heartburn, to be honest with you. | |
| On the merits, what about the Assange development? | |
| I haven't followed very closely, to be honest with you. | |
| I know the WikiLeaks is a big deal, but I think the court of law's verdict should be followed. | |
| Alright, Congressman McCaul, thank you very much. | |
| We're with Nigel Farage, newly elected MP from Clacton, so congratulations on that. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| Yeah, it's been a busy old day. | |
| I was in Parliament this morning for the King's speech, so I saw the King this morning with his crown, and here I am this evening in Milwaukee, so it's been a good day. | |
| Have you supplanted the Conservatives officially yet? | |
| I know that was one of your election goals. | |
| Yes, it was, and we've made a start. | |
| You know, this is the first important step. | |
| I literally had a month at this and we've made a big impact. | |
| No, we are going to reconfigure the centre-right of British politics in just the same way Donald Trump has done it here in America. | |
| So I'm a bit of a connoisseur of British politics myself, and one question that came to mind as I was following the most recent campaign was you became a sensation on TikTok. | |
| In the United States, there's a controversy about TikTok allegedly being a tool of Chinese espionage. | |
| Do you see that as there being any validity to that allegation? | |
| How does that kind of dictate or not your use of that particular platform? | |
| I'll be honest with you, I was deeply conflicted over it. | |
| Deeply, deeply conflicted over it, and have been for a couple of years. | |
| I came to the conclusion that this is what Gen Z do. | |
| This is what they do. | |
| TikTok is what they do. | |
| And whilst I've got concerns about the ownership, and certainly the American authorities, of course, are looking very hard... Joe Biden signed a bill that in theory will prohibit or prescribe TikTok within a matter of months. | |
| In theory. | |
| If they don't change ownership. | |
| In theory. | |
| Whether it happens, I mean, we'll see. | |
| We'll see. | |
| We'll see. | |
| Look, I'm reaching out to young voters, young people. | |
| I've done it partly with passion, partly with humor. | |
| Do you know what? | |
| Everyone's jealous of me. | |
| So it works. | |
| There are things in the world we can't change. | |
| Finally, last question. | |
| Many Republican members of Congress who I've spoken to today believe Trump was spared the worst of that would-be-assassin's-bullet thanks to divine intervention. | |
| Did that thought ever cross your mind? | |
| I was nearly killed in a plane crash 15 years ago. | |
| I shouldn't have survived. | |
| I believe in guardian angels. | |
| Trump, last Saturday, had a guardian angel. | |
| No question. | |
| Nigel Farage, thank you very much. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Okay, so we're with Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, Colorado. | |
| Hi Congresswoman, how are you? | |
| Hi there, I'm doing fantastic. | |
| It is great to be here in Milwaukee at the RNC Convention. | |
| President Trump, the leader of our party, has been here, has been strong and encouraging, and I can't even begin to describe the enthusiasm, the excitement, and the passion from the people here at this convention. | |
| So Congresswoman, you were one of only 21 members of the House who voted against both the Ukraine Supplemental Funding Bill in April and the Israel Supplemental Funding Bill. | |
| Have you received pushback for the Israel vote in particular? | |
| Obviously the pro-Israel is a strong lobby in Washington. | |
| Sometimes they do intervene in primary races. | |
| What have been the political ramifications, if any, you just won a primary yourself in Colorado, what's the aftermath of that been like? | |
| I didn't have any political opposition for that vote and those weren't the only two supplemental aid packages that I voted against. | |
| I voted against all of them. | |
| We were working with different factions of the GOP conference and the Speaker of the House for multiple days and even up until the day before the vote. | |
| Until midnight in the speaker's office trying to get a better path forward and we had landed on a place where the GOP Conference could unite without spending 100 billion dollars that is borrowed from China this deficit spending and without connecting 9 billion dollars to Hamas in the name of Israel So Israel is our strongest ally. | |
| I stand with Israel Not because I'm a Republican, but because I'm a Christian. | |
| My God says those who bless Israel will be blessed, and I understand the covenant that Israelis have with God, and I honor that. | |
| But I am afraid that if we continue this deficit spending, if we do not get our $36 trillion in debt under control and start managing that and stop adding to it, Then there will not be an America to stand for Israel. | |
| I did not want $61 billion going to Ukraine. | |
| We're about $200 billion in, no end in sight to this war until President Trump gets into office and shows that we can once again have peace through strength. | |
| Was there any backlash to your vote of no on the Israel bill, regardless of your rationale for it, which may be sound to many, but regardless, you still ultimately voted no. | |
| So did any pro-Israel groups try to criticize you or threaten to maybe get involved in a primary or something like that? | |
| I answered your question right away. | |
| I said there was no political ramifications there. | |
| No one came against me in my primary. | |
| Of course, people have opinions and say things online or in news articles, but that wasn't enough to sway voters by any means. | |
| The voters of Colorado absolutely understand that I am for Israel, that I stand with Israel. | |
| And so, no, I answered that. | |
| They did not come after me. | |
| Got it. | |
| So when you say that there's a covenant that the Israelites or the Jews are God's people and therefore that requires or compels U.S. | |
| support for Israel, some people maybe question the logical thread there. | |
| Even if you have that theological view of Israel, does that therefore obligate the United States to send a ceaseless supply of weapons for Israel to use to attack Gaza or potentially Lebanon? | |
| How do you square that circle in terms of the theological justification? | |
| Well, I don't think Israel is straight up attacking Gaza. | |
| Moss attacked Israel. | |
| This is self-defense, and they have the right to defend themselves. | |
| And I am a Christian before I'm a Republican. | |
| I am a daughter of God before I'm a politician. | |
| And I obey what God says. | |
| I see his covenant and how he honors his people. | |
| I know that God is a God of honor and those who so honor will reap it. | |
| I want to do good by my God and by the people that he has chosen. | |
| I don't believe in deficit spending for Americans. | |
| Like I said, if we continue the deficit spending, keep borrowing from our greatest enemy, China, then There may not be an America to stand for Israel. | |
| I'm fine to supply stuff to replenish the Iron Dome, to keep them safe, and to help them in whatever way we are able to, but I have always ensured that there is a pay-for, that it is not deficit spending. | |
| I have had my own appropriations request that has funded the safety and security for Israel, and I will continue to do so, but I will not do so in deficit spending. | |
| So you were not among the eight Republicans who voted to oust Kevin McCarthy last October. | |
| You have raised some criticisms or concerns about aspects of how Speaker Johnson has run the caucus. | |
| In hindsight, do you think that was a wise move? | |
| Especially, Speaker Johnson was the one who was behind organizing those votes on the National Security Supplemental. | |
| Is it any different from what Kevin McCarthy would have done? | |
| Is it better? | |
| Is it worse? | |
| I mean, in retrospect, what do you think the effect of that move has been? | |
| As you said, I was not one of the eight that voted to remove Kevin McCarthy. | |
| I was fine to keep Kevin McCarthy in check with the rules and the agreements that we had made during the Speaker's fight in January. | |
| I nominated Speaker Johnson to be the Speaker of the House, and he is somebody that I have great respect for. | |
| He is a colleague that I know is wise, especially when it comes to the Constitution. | |
| He is a Christian. | |
| He is a man of faith. | |
| And unfortunately, sometimes there's pressure in D.C. that causes some to make poor decisions. | |
| Like I said, I was in the meetings trying to come to an agreement, bring the Republican Party together, unify the Republican Party on a good supplemental bill going forward. | |
| And unfortunately, that's the bill that came to the floor and I did not vote for it. | |
| And of course, I'm going to express a criticism of a bill that I'm voting against. | |
| You also voted against the FISA renewal and speaker. | |
| Happily, yes. | |
| And Speaker Johnson used to claim that he was opposed to FISA renewal. | |
| Then he becomes Speaker of the House and FISA renewal is passed. | |
| And he claimed that President Trump and him were of similar mind. | |
| Here's the deal. | |
| Speaker Johnson is our Speaker. | |
| This is who we're running with for the rest of the year. | |
| I did vote against that FISA bill because there were no warrants for American citizens. | |
| What's done is done. | |
| We are moving forward now. | |
| We are working to unify the Republican Party. | |
| We have President Trump who will Formerly be our nominee come tomorrow. | |
| President Trump nearly lost his life on Saturday. | |
| We are living in a different America today. | |
| And I believe that the Republicans who are elected currently are stronger and more encouraged because of President Trump's tenacity. | |
| For years, President Trump has said, they are not after me, they are after you. | |
| I'm just in the way. | |
| And Saturday proved that. | |
| He is in the way and they will do anything to take him out. | |
| I am focused on unifying the Republican Party as I always have been. | |
| During the speakers race with Kevin McCarthy, that was about empowering members of Congress to do their job, to represent their constituents in Washington, D.C., and to have more options available to us. | |
| Single subject legislation. | |
| Individual appropriations bills. | |
| So we can go through that line item programmatic spending and we can eliminate these woken weaponized programs and departments or even DEI programs and chief diversity officers so we can get our spending under control. | |
| So we can have 72 hours to read a bill. | |
| So we can have the floor opened up to amendments. | |
| So members who are not on committees of jurisdictions for legislation can amend legislation. | |
| And I can personally give a Colorado voice to bills that I don't have jurisdiction over in committee. | |
| My focus has always been to unite and bring together the Republican Party. | |
| For those who don't want to join, well, there'll be another primary coming in two years. | |
| But until then, I'm going to work with the people that we have. | |
| I'm going to work with our nominees to ensure that they are elected so we have a House majority, a Senate majority, and President Trump can execute his America First agenda that will get our country back on track. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Final question, Congresswoman. | |
| So, Congressman Smith of Missouri, one of the running, I guess, debates or themes of the Republican Convention, and within the Republican Party, politics writ large, has been America First. | |
| Obviously, there's also a strong support for Israel within the party. | |
| Do you perceive any kind of conceptual tension between this idea of being a stalwart defender of a country that's on the other side of the world, but also affirming this principle of America First? | |
| How do you process that? | |
| Alleged conflict or potential conflict or reconcile it. | |
| I think you look at what President Trump's policies are and what he's doing. | |
| He has been a huge advocate of Israel and supporting Israel, and he is the one who started the American First Movement. | |
| I think that that's a mirror image. | |
| This is the party of Trump. | |
| That's what it is. | |
| So what he has been doing shows that there's no friction. | |
| The party of Trump is therefore synonymous with being the party of strong support for Israel? | |
| Absolutely. | |
| It's in our platform. | |
| You see how much we care for Israel. | |
| America is always first in everything, but Israel is our closest ally. | |
| Do you have any theological or religious basis for your support for Israel, or is it purely a strategic question in your mind? | |
| Well, they're our greatest ally in the Middle East. | |
| The Middle East is an area that's in turmoil. | |
| That's really important in itself. | |
| My father was a minister, and so we were always taught that Israel is God's chosen people. | |
| It's clearly a multiple thing. | |
| So when everything lines up, Clearly, that's the right direction. | |
| Finally, I've spoken to many of your colleagues over the course of the convention thus far, and there are quite a few who have the belief that divine intervention was at work in sparing Trump the worst of the horrible incident that happened on Saturday. | |
| Do you buy into that at all? | |
| Do you think that there was some kind of religious providence at work that spared him from a potentially horrible outcome or a worse outcome? | |
| There's absolutely no question that President Trump was protected. | |
| If anyone has doubt that God exists, President Trump is alive because of it. | |
| Thanks, Congressman. | |
| One of the running themes, obviously, of this convention is America First. | |
| Tonight is America Strong. | |
| But concurrently, there's also strong support for Israel among the Republican coalition. | |
| Do you perceive any tension or conflict there, conceptually, being America first, but also spending a lot of money on enabling and subsidizing Israel's war effort that's been raging now for a number of months? | |
| I sense no tension here at the convention this week. | |
| We're all coming together for the party. | |
| We're all coming together for our nation. | |
| And we know that when Donald Trump is president, America is strong. | |
| And when America is strong, the world is strong. | |
| We won't have the kind of problems with other nations. | |
| We won't have the endless worlds. | |
| We won't have We didn't have Putin invading Ukraine. | |
| We didn't have Hamas invading Israel when Donald Trump was president because our enemies feared him. | |
| That is why it's more important than ever to get him back into the Oval Office so he'll keep our nation safe and when we're safe, the rest of the world is safe too. | |
| How about on a practical level in terms of the policy specifics? | |
| Many Republicans have criticized Biden for imposing constraints or limitations on Israel over the past several months. | |
| Would your hope be that Donald Trump Remove those limitations and allow them to wage their war effort with a free reign? | |
| They should be able to wage whatever war that they want to, but I'll tell you, Israel is one of our greatest allies. | |
| When you talk about those that are testing and supporting our military assets, it's Israel. | |
| And we want to support her as much as possible. | |
| Who's on stage? | |
| The crowd's going wild for Peter Navarro, I think, because he was just let out of jail. | |
| Yes, yes, yes. | |
| And he came straight here tonight. | |
| That is true. | |
| That's gangster, I guess, in the common jargon. | |
| Yeah, it's gangster. | |
| One last question. | |
| Do you have any biblical or religious basis for your views on Israel, or is it purely a matter of strategic interest for the United States? | |
| It's all of the above. | |
| It's absolutely all of the above, but the Jewish residents, the Jewish citizens of Israel have been with the United States. | |
| We need to protect them because they protect us. | |
| Alright, thanks Congresswoman. | |
| Also, they are the tip of the spear to jihad and jihadism by these terrorists who want to kill us. | |
| If Israel loses, the world loses. | |
| We have to protect her with everything we have. | |
| Alright, thanks Congresswoman. | |
| Appreciate it. | |
| My name is Michael Tracy. | |
| We're with Rumble. | |
| Okay. | |
| Ready? | |
| Congressman Cole, so you were a strong proponent of the National Security Supplemental that passed the House in April. | |
| I watched some of your floor remarks in favor of that bill. | |
| One thing I've been trying to get a better grasp on is the role that President Trump played in helping to ensure the passage of that bill. | |
| Speaker Johnson said Well, first of all, the president has been historically supportive of Ukraine. | |
| The first American president to actually send lethal aid during his first term. | |
| Did he kind of give a license to some Republicans who maybe have been wary of certain aspects of that politically to see through its passage? | |
| Well, first of all, the president has been historically supportive of Ukraine. | |
| The first American president, Dr. He sent lethal aid during his first term. | |
| I can't speak to his relationship with Speaker Johnson on that. | |
| I'm not aware of it. | |
| But I know we worked with him very closely on FISA to adjust the five-year reauthorization down to two. | |
| So if there were changes we needed to make and he became president, as we believe he will, we could do that immediately. | |
| So again, I know the Speaker and the President are working very closely together. | |
| I take great comfort from that. | |
| And what was your interpretation of Trump's support, along with Johnson, for that FISA renewal? | |
| Granted, they did lower the year down to two. | |
| But Trump had complained very often about FISA having been used to spy on his campaign, but apparently he still wanted to wield that power when he returns to office, or he viewed that there would be a national security imperative. | |
| Your last point is right, with national security and parity. | |
| Look, there's no question FISA has been abused. | |
| Everybody on both sides of the debate agreed with that. | |
| The DOJ and the FBI have admitted they've abused it, not a dozen times or a hundred times or a thousand times, but hundreds of thousands of times where they've inappropriately used a tool to surveil American citizens. | |
| Having said that, there's pretty good consensus when you talk to people like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or John Ratcliffe, who's our Director of National Intelligence. | |
| It's an absolutely vital tool in terms of monitoring non-Americans communicating into America for nefarious purposes. | |
| We even, I had one session with our current Director of National Intelligence, and she said, look, literally 60 or 70 percent of everything I'm telling you we got from the appropriate use of FISA. | |
| My understanding is that John Ratcliffe, who is the former DNI under Trump, He took part in certain briefings with Congress when the FISA renewal was up for consideration and strongly supported renewal. | |
| Was that interpreted as seeing on Trump's behalf to some degree, or was he acting in any way as a surrogate for Trump? | |
| I don't know that it was taken that way. | |
| Again, I can only speak for myself. | |
| I know John Ratt, but I served with him. | |
| And I have a high opinion of him, and he's not afraid to speak for himself. | |
| So my assumption was he was just speaking for himself. | |
| But again, he's clearly very close to President Trump. | |
| We hope he has an important position in the next administration. | |
| So he may well have been speaking for him. | |
| I just can't tell you that definitively one way or the other. | |
| So one of the running themes of this convention and of the entire Trump era really has been America First. | |
| That's the slogan that's often chanted and printed on placards. | |
| Do you perceive there to be any tension or conceptual incongruity between the idea of America First but also spending billions of dollars on supporting Israel, supporting Ukraine, supporting Taiwan potentially? | |
| It seems like there might be some irreconcilability there in terms of the philosophy that underpins No, I really don't. | |
| Look, I think, number one, every country's leader should put their country first. | |
| That's what they're elected to do. | |
| So I think, you know, Trump is stating almost a truism when he said that. | |
| Having said that, quite often it's in our interest to have partners, allies, And to support them all around the world. | |
| One of the most brilliant strokes of American foreign policy ever was probably the Marshall Plan, which helped bring Europe back, probably saved it from a communist takeover, created a lot of strong allies for us. | |
| So, again, I have no problem with saying America first, but at the same time recognizing we have partners and allies that have common interests, common values, and work together with us. | |
| That strengthens us. | |
| Frankly, that's actually one of our adversaries' great weakness. | |
| China and Russia don't have a lot of allies in the world, a lot of friends, really. | |
| The United States does. | |
| And again, I consider that a great strength, and I consider supporting our allies in time of danger and need ultimately long-term in America's interest. | |
| One provision that was inserted in that supplemental funding bill, after being promoted by some Congressional Republicans, I know especially Congressman Turner, the Chairman of the House Intel, and perhaps yourself, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, was the provision to require the Biden administration to expedite the provision of longer-range missile systems to Ukraine. | |
| Biden subsequently, at least we're told, authorized Ukraine to use U.S. | |
| weaponry to strike inside territorial Russia for the first time. | |
| Was that a step in the right direction in your mind? | |
| And where exactly are Ukrainians permitted to fire inside Russia right now? | |
| Because the parameters of that are very unclear. | |
| Well, I couldn't tell you. | |
| I was not part of that particular insistence, but I certainly don't have any problem with the Ukrainians attacking people who are on the verge of attacking them. | |
| And it's a dangerous thing to have, you know, give an aggressor a security zone where he can marshal his forces and strike you. | |
| So, again, I wasn't a part of that particular decision, but I don't have an objection to it. | |
| I think the Ukrainians are clearly the victims here. | |
| They didn't start this. | |
| It's been a brutal invasion. | |
| It's created hundreds of thousands of casualties. | |
| Probably helped us in the long term in the sense of pushing Sweden and Finland into NATO. | |
| But, again, I think they have to have the means to defend themselves. | |
| I think that's in our interest. | |
| So, final question. | |
| Thank you for your time. | |
| As you know, the NATO Summit was in Washington last week. | |
| Did you attend it? | |
| I did not. | |
| I actually was in the Baltic States and in Poland. | |
| Okay, so close enough. | |
| There's this common refrain, since before even Trump took office in 2017, that he's this antagonist of NATO, or that he wants to sabotage or undermine NATO to help Putin. | |
| Now that's nonsense, and it's belied by Trump's actual record in office, but maybe even in your discussions with people in Poland and the Baltics, Do they have a more accurate understanding of what Trump would actually do in office again? | |
| I mean, Trump even brags that he helped secure additional defense spending commitments from NATO member states. | |
| What do the Europeans, or the Eastern Europeans, anticipate in terms of Trump coming back in vis-a-vis NATO? | |
| Well, I think you hit it on the head. | |
| Quite frankly, you know, it's his insistence. | |
| And to be fair, every American president since the founding of NATO has been critical of the NATO countries for not providing burden sharing. | |
| Exactly right. | |
| But, you know, we've made a lot of progress in that. | |
| When President Trump was president, he began there were only six countries meeting the 2% threshold of GDP. | |
| Now there's 23. | |
| There'll be 28 by next year. | |
| Every country I visited, which was Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, is above 3%. | |
| Poland's almost reaching 4%, isn't it? | |
| It is. | |
| And they've pledged percentages of their GDP to Ukraine on top of their NATO commitment. | |
| So these are countries that take this seriously and they're doing their part. | |
| And it actually helps me at home when I talk to my constituents and they all think, because historically we have overdone. | |
| We're the only ones. | |
| No, there's over a dozen countries that have committed more to Ukraine as a percentage of their GDP and their budget than we have. | |
| We're absolutely critical because we're the biggest link, but don't think we're there by ourselves. | |
| So they're not panicked that Trump's going to dissolve NATO or anything stupid like that? | |
| So, I mean, obviously they watch our elections very closely, but they do remember that President Trump was the first one to send Ukraine lethal aid. | |
| They do remember that, you know, he's pushed NATO to do more. | |
| These are frontline states. | |
| Yep, these are frontline states, and they need the additional help, so they're happy to see it. | |
| So I don't see a lot of insecurity about President Trump, but they actually think it'll help them encourage other countries that haven't done as much to do more. | |
| Okay, Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma, thank you very much. | |
| Thank you, I like talking. | |
| Okay, so we're with Congressman Nick Langworthy of New York. | |
| How you doing, Congressman? | |
| I'm doing very well, thank you so much for having me. | |
| So, what was your initial reaction when the horrible event happened on Saturday? | |
| A few of your Republican colleagues who I've spoken to, Congressman Collins from Georgia and others, they are positing that it was Don Vine intervention that spared Trump the worst result from that bullet. | |
| Do you buy into that rationale? | |
| Does it align with your beliefs or what? | |
| I don't think there's any other explanation. | |
| If his head is half an inch the other way, we're in a national week of mourning. | |
| It's by God's grace that he's still here today. | |
| It's a horrific moment in our history. | |
| We haven't had an assassination attempt on a president in this country since 1981. | |
| And the fact that we've now lived through this needs to make us really make sure that this never happens again. | |
| I have far more questions than I have answers after today's briefing by the FBI and the Secret Service. | |
| I'm on the House Oversight Committee and I look forward to digging into this. | |
| We have a hearing. | |
| We've subpoenaed the head of the Secret Service to appear Monday. | |
| We need to get to work. | |
| What was it about that briefing that you received that raised questions to the extent that you can disclose? | |
| I mean, it just seems like we are dealing with utter incompetence. | |
| Not by the men and women that are protecting the protectees. | |
| It's of senior management. | |
| If there is a deficit of talent or resources, that needs to be brought to the legislative branch's attention. | |
| I don't think anyone would ever cheap out on the Secret Service. | |
| The fact that the administration tried to prevent RFK Jr. | |
| from getting Secret Service protection when, you know, here's someone that clearly is a nationally known figure who lost his father to an assassin's bullet and his uncle. | |
| He's a historical figure because of the family that he comes from and he was denied Secret Service protection. | |
| Was he just granted it yesterday, I think? | |
| In the wake of this tragedy. | |
| And, you know, we have people that just went to go enjoy a rally, exercise their political beliefs, support the candidate they're choosing, and they lost their life. | |
| This shouldn't be happening in America. | |
| Political violence has no place. | |
| And we have to make sure that we have the most secure environment for the people running for public office, because it's really the foundation of our democracy. | |
| So, in April, you voted for the $26 billion in supplemental funding for Israel. | |
| Yes. | |
| Do you see any tension between the concept of America First? | |
| I don't know if you subscribe to that mantra. | |
| I would assume that you do. | |
| Most Republicans do. | |
| Do you see any tension between America First as a concept and also spending many billions of dollars to get, one might say, Entangled in the Middle East. | |
| You could say it's on behalf of an ally or whatnot. | |
| But there are some, even some conservatives, who question whether that's a consistent offshoot of America First. | |
| How do you reconcile that tension? | |
| Do you even acknowledge that there is a tension? | |
| You can be America first and not an isolationist. | |
| Israel is the only democratic partner we have in that region. | |
| America and Israel cannot have an inch between them. | |
| It's for the safety and security of our whole world. | |
| And the fact that you have Iran through proxies funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah, the Houthis, all the various offshoot satellites that are trying to destabilize Israel, that could plunge us easily into world war. | |
| We have to stand strong with Israel. | |
| What President Biden has done, trying to have it both ways, trying to cozy up to the Hamas forces that are in Gaza because he's afraid of the radical left in his own party, that flies in the face of American strength. | |
| We don't have the luxury of burying our head in the sand and pretending it can't get across the ocean. | |
| We're now in a global war situation and we're probably closer to 1939 than we ever have been. | |
| I voted against the Ukraine package because I thought it went too far. | |
| America can't afford to subsidize the entirety of the Ukrainian government operations, which is what President Biden's package did. | |
| And I voted against it because my constituents are putting their groceries on a credit card and we're funding the pension payments for Ukrainian government retirees. | |
| So were you against, on principle, the idea of sending arms to Ukraine? | |
| So if it were a more narrowly tailored package... Narrowly tailored? | |
| I would have supported armaments. | |
| We're in. | |
| We can't walk away in the middle of the battle. | |
| You know, the question of, had President Trump been there, this wouldn't have happened. | |
| And that's why we need a strong American president to stand up on that world stage and make sure we don't have new conflicts. | |
| We need to draw that down. | |
| That can't go on forever. | |
| It can't be the next Afghanistan. | |
| There's a limit to how much American treasure can go towards a cause like that. | |
| If it was narrowly limited towards military fighting forces in providing weaponry, I would have been open to that. | |
| It was all the lard that was put in there by the Biden administration that I rejected. | |
| Well, Speaker Johnson apparently signed on to that version of the legislation, correct? | |
| Much to the consternation of many of your colleagues, so what do we make of that? | |
| Well, there's a lot of difference of opinion on international conflict within our caucus, and I thought what Speaker Johnson did by parsing the international aid into three different bills, I think, gave us a lot of ability to voice our constituents' concerns and our personal beliefs. | |
| I will steadfastly support Israel. | |
| I think that we need to stand up to China and not allow them to move on Taiwan. | |
| You know, making sure that we have prevention in place there, I thought was important. | |
| An additional $64 billion giveaway to the Ukrainian conflict, I don't think was in line for what our role should be there at this point. | |
| So prior to that vote, Speaker Johnson went on conservative media trying to galvanize support for the legislation, because obviously there are many Republicans who might be skeptical of the Ukraine aspect of it in particular. | |
| And Speaker Johnson was adamant that he and Donald Trump were on the same page regarding that bill, whether it was the Ukraine funding portion, the Israel funding portion, even the Pfizer renewal, which happened around the same time. | |
| Did Trump seeming to signal maybe somewhat opaquely his support for passing some version of the Ukraine funding within the overall security supplemental framework, did that give some of your colleagues maybe some latitude or some flexibility to vote in the affirmative on that bill or at least see to it that the bill could pass even if they might vote no but they had enough of a margin to make sure that the monies did get dispersed? | |
| There's a lot of different opinions in the conference. | |
| I mean, there's some that are just full-throated supporters of whatever the needs of the Ukraine conflict are. | |
| You know, that's not my position. | |
| That's not what I hear from my constituents. | |
| They don't want us embroiled in a long-term, decades-long war of attrition. | |
| I looked at it as if it had been just armaments, I don't want to see Ukraine fall before the end of this presidential term. | |
| I think President Trump can bring this to an end. | |
| And I want a commander-in-chief that can get the job done. | |
| President Biden has laid out no path to victory, no definition as to what the American role and objective is, and I think that's deeply troubling. | |
| He's gotten us entangled in the situation. | |
| I was elected after that war had started. | |
| I look at it as an inherited problem from my personal vantage point, but there wasn't enough there to get me to a yes. | |
| So how do you distinguish between America First and isolationism? | |
| Maybe it's a philosophical question. | |
| Historically, America First was about restraining American interventionism and being more inward focused, focused on our own affairs essentially, not having a sprawling empire or imperium or whatever synonym you want to use. | |
| So how do you, in your own mind, think through that issue? | |
| Is there a philosophical distinction between those concepts? | |
| I'm much more focused on domestic problems. | |
| I mean, my constituents are struggling mightily like they are in every district in the country. | |
| I mean, the inflation that we've seen in the last three years is swallowing up the middle class, the same middle class that Joe Biden said that he would grow the economy from the middle out. | |
| He's actually pinched the middle class worse than they probably ever have been. | |
| Their purchasing power is nil right now. | |
| But we also are stuck in these international situations because of the president's weakness. | |
| I don't believe Hamas ever attacks Israel on October 7th if President Trump was in the White House. | |
| I certainly don't think Putin would have run on Ukraine if President Trump was in the White House. | |
| Cowboy diplomacy works. | |
| Ronald Reagan proved that and so did President Trump. | |
| Finally, what have you been hearing, if anything, from your Democratic colleagues? | |
| Obviously, they're in a state of tumult right now over their prospective nominee. | |
| I was in Washington myself last week and speaking to Democratic senators as they were exiting their meeting with Biden campaign officials. | |
| And I'm not even exaggerating when I say it looked like they had just seen a ghost. | |
| They were despondent. | |
| They looked like they didn't want to talk. | |
| I mean, it was very strange. | |
| They looked dour, to say the least. | |
| And the question that I posed to them that nobody wants to answer is, do you think that Joe Biden at age 86, which is what he would be if he hypothetically were to win a second term, has the capacity to have sole authority over the nuclear arsenal? | |
| I don't know. | |
| What do you make of that question? | |
| And the Democrats' reluctance to answer it. | |
| And for that matter, what about Trump's capacity to preside over the nuclear arsenal? | |
| He would be the oldest president ever elected after Joe Biden. | |
| Donald Trump. | |
| So he would actually be older than Biden was when Biden was elected in 2020. | |
| It was fascinating to watch Democrats running from reporters on Capitol Hill. | |
| Republicans were laughing and snickering because usually it's them or behind the target. | |
| I went to conference and there were no reporters outside our conference and the reporters were sweltering in the Washington heat outside the D.C. | |
| Oh, it was awful. | |
| And to watch as the elevator doors would close and the members only elevators, just Democrat Congress members looking like their dog just got ran over because they don't know how to answer a difficult question from a reporter. | |
| And it's like, well, welcome to our world. | |
| I mean, every single day we're facing difficult questions from the media. | |
| They don't know how because the media is typically on their side, at least the legacy mainstream. | |
| I think we've all been questioning President Biden's capacity since he was running for the presidency. | |
| There's a reason he ran for the presidency from the basement. | |
| They hid his maladies very well. | |
| And I think this has been ongoing. | |
| Jill Biden's the most powerful first lady in American history. | |
| Clearly, several of his staffers or Obama holdovers are clearly very involved in the day-to-day affairs of this country. | |
| The debate flushed it out for the whole world to see. | |
| I think there's still a movement there. | |
| It's a little quieter to try to push him out. | |
| Was it frozen after the assassination attempt incident? | |
| It seemed like that, understandably, maybe justifiably, would put a damper on any political maneuvers. | |
| It looks like it quieted it down for a few days, but there's embers still burning. | |
| I don't think we've seen the last of this yet, but President Biden doesn't seem to want to go anywhere. | |
| Ultimately, he's got to make the decision. | |
| We'll see if they pull that virtual roll call vote or not. | |
| Unless Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama and all the glitterati of the Democratic Party want to come out in public and start to say what so many backbenchers are saying right now, I don't see anything moving yet. | |
| I saw that. | |
| Adam Schiff's announcement today that might show signs that this is still alive so Trump would be 82 if he served a full second term that's rather old and in the history of American the presidencies I mean Maybe we're just becoming a bit of a gerontocracy. | |
| Are there any reasonable causes for apprehension regarding Trump's capacity to wield some of the massive, awesome powers of the president within the military realm, foreign affairs, where the president exercises the most unfettered power? | |
| You look at President Trump's energy, what he brings to the campaign trail, and there's people half his age that couldn't keep up. | |
| I think you have to judge people based on their personal performance. | |
| Joe Biden, if you watch a clip of Joe Biden from when he was running in 2020 versus the Joe Biden that was on the stage cleaning Paul Ryan's clock in that debate, they're two different people. | |
| I'm glad you admit that. | |
| I'm glad you can transcend partisanship but admit that Joe Biden did win that debate in 2012. | |
| Was, you know, one of the best debaters on Capitol Hill when he was in his prime. | |
| Those were two different men in 2020 versus 2012 in an eight-year gap. | |
| President Trump has just as much vigor as he did in 2016. | |
| He's still moving with great authority. | |
| He's sharp as a tack. | |
| I mean, just every meeting I've ever had with him, I mean, he is completely with it as a man half his age. | |
| Final question, this is a bit of a pipe dream on my part, but I've been thinking through, what about a constitutional amendment to impose a maximum age limit for the presidency? | |
| You know, maybe it would transcend this current cycle so nobody's getting an advantage or disadvantage. | |
| But I don't know, we have an age minimum, 35, to become president. | |
| Could there be an age maximum? | |
| Maybe you want people in a little bit more of a prime physical and mental condition? | |
| I don't know, I'm just throwing it out there as an idea. | |
| What do you think? | |
| What do you make of that? | |
| I don't know that we're ever going to be faced with this again, because typically when you hand off to a younger generation... | |
| It sticks. | |
| Barack Obama was obviously a far younger man. | |
| We're going to be hearing about him for the next 30 years still. | |
| It's very odd that we have two men in their 70s that are the nominees of the party. | |
| I don't think we're going to see this again in the future. | |
| I'd much rather see an age limit on the U.S. | |
| Senate. | |
| I think that would probably do us much Many more wonders. | |
| They wipe out about half of the chamber. | |
| Chuck Grassley was 89, is that right? | |
| Dianne Feinstein, she died and clung to power. | |
| Bernie Sanders running again, he's 83, I believe. | |
| There's plenty of people in the Senate that have served longer than I've been alive, so it is something that is living up to its reputation. | |
| Alright, Congressman Nick Langworthy, Republican of New York, thank you very much. | |
| When the peak of the campus protest was going on around the Israel-Palestine issue, I saw you interviewed and you likened the plight of Jewish students in the United States to perhaps even blacks in the Jim Crow South. | |
| Is that a valid parallel in your mind? | |
| It's very valid. | |
| We had the same similarities with people hidden behind masks or hoods, and they were about intimidating and threatening and just violence. | |
| So it's the same. | |
| The difference is it's black versus a culture. | |
| So we do not tolerate that. | |
| This was back in the 60s, and it's time for us to get past that. | |
| Anybody who pushes this ideology of DEI, that we should judge each other based on skin color or culture, That's not the American way. | |
| We need to vote them out of office and make sure we're not funding them with taxpayer dollars. | |
| Do you really think that the Ku Klux Klan going around and legitimately terrorizing black families is comparable to college students exercising their First Amendment? | |
| It's comparable to Hamas. | |
| And anybody who supports KKK, supports Hamas, and what Hamas did to elitist Israelis, is what the KKK was doing to black Americans. | |
| So if you're here to defend Hamas... No, I'm not. | |
| Okay, well I'm not either. | |
| End of the day, I've been there before and we're not ever going back again. | |
| It is heinous, it's hatred, and it's time for us to put it aside and not fund it anymore. | |
| But is the KKK really comparable to college students? | |
| Protesting in ways that you may disagree with. | |
| Are you not understanding? | |
| Are you not understanding? | |
| I'm saying KKK is a combo to Hamas. | |
| But there's no Hamas in the United States. | |
| But there's pro-KKK. | |
| There was pro-KKK on campuses. | |
| I experienced it. | |
| The same thing with the pro-Hamas. | |
| And to be honest with you, if you don't see what I'm saying, then we need to stop this right now. | |
| This is not a conversation that you're obviously going to understand what I'm saying. | |
| I'm trying to understand. | |
| That's why I wanted to talk to you. | |
| What you have to understand is hate. | |
| Are you seeing hatred, or are you seeing acceptance? | |
| Do you think everybody who has a criticism of US foreign policy vis-a-vis Israel is full of hate? | |
| Anybody who does what Hamas did, and tolerates Hamas, and supports Hamas, and thinks Hamas is right, is hateful. | |
| What if you sympathize with the Palestinians in general? | |
| I sympathize with people who want to make things happen and do it the right way. | |
| Anybody who decides... Do you remember what Hamas did to Israelis? | |
| Raped? | |
| I was there. | |
| Okay. | |
| Is there any way that you can support that? | |
| I don't support it. | |
| I'm not defending Hamas at all. | |
| I'm defending the free expression rights of college students and not having them be maligned as being terrorist sympathizers when they have grievances about U.S. | |
| foreign policy. | |
| So, they're supporters for Hamas. | |
| Are you okay with that? | |
| Because that's what they were doing. | |
| They're supporting Hamas. | |
| To the extent that anyone supports Hamas? | |
| No, I don't agree. | |
| But if they criticize the Biden administration, which they are, for overly supporting Israel in their mind, I think that's legitimate. | |
| Are you think it's okay for them to support Hamas? | |
| I don't support Hamas. | |
| No, do you think it's okay for students to support Hamas? | |
| Well, you know, in the United States, people are allowed to support things that I find deplorable. | |
| Well, we have to respectfully agree to disagree. | |
| All right, thank you. | |
| You obviously were Kane from the WWF. | |
| Everybody is aware of that. | |
| You're probably still getting millions of selfies on that basis, I'm sure. | |
| But you've been in elected office now for quite a few years. | |
| How long have you been? | |
| You're the mayor of Knox County, Tennessee. | |
| Is that right? | |
| Yeah, just under six years. | |
| It'll be six years in September. | |
| And, correct me if I'm wrong, but you sort of started out as a Ron Paul-inspired libertarian. | |
| Now you're within the mainstream of the Republican Party to some extent. | |
| I saw you campaigning for Trump in Iowa. | |
| How has your pre-existing libertarian philosophy coexisted with the Republican Party, which is not always hospitable to libertarianism? | |
| It's interesting because here I've met a number of people from the Ron Paul years, from when I've spoken at Young Americans for Liberty events and things like that. | |
| Obviously with people like Rand Paul, Thomas Massey, Mike Lee in the Senate. | |
| There's a strong liberty movement within the Republican Party. | |
| And as we can see from what's happening here at the convention, last night was amazing because you had folks who would not be considered conventional Republicans who were talking about opportunity, the value of hard work, all the things. | |
| Amber Rose? | |
| Yeah, but that is the thing that's bringing us all together. | |
| It's one of those things that Ronald Reagan said, your 80% friend is not your enemy, and not your 20% traitor, he's your friend and ally. | |
| It's the same here. | |
| Certainly, there's some really good people within the Republican Party, and there's a very strong liberty streak now within the Republican Party. | |
| Thomas Massie, though, he's kind of on an island in the House oftentimes. | |
| Sometimes he was the only no-vote among Republicans against all these Israel-related bills. | |
| Ron Paul is often the only no-vote. | |
| My congressman, Tim Burchett, after Thomas's wife sadly passed away, said that he missed seeing that red X. | |
| Next to him when Massie would vote no on everything. | |
| But the thing about politics in general is we should sometimes be able to say, hey, I may not agree with you on this, but we're good on that, and have a civil discussion. | |
| Unfortunately, now the discourse, as we saw Saturday, has gotten so vitriolic that in some cases it's no longer possible. | |
| But I think with this convention, I've seen a lot of different facets of the Republican Party coming together. | |
| So Lillian McMahon, she was in the Trump administration. | |
| She then was in a leadership role in the America First Policy Institute. | |
| Vince McMahon and Donald Trump have a long-standing relationship, you know, on an entertainment level. | |
| This may be a slightly strange question, but how do you sort of categorize wrestling fans, and even the WWE itself, politically? | |
| Do they have a political bent that you could decipher? | |
| How do you sort of... | |
| There's still that. | |
| When I was there—and that's all I can talk about—we're independent contractors, so we would have to, four times a year I guess, write a check to the IRS. | |
| If you want to become a conservative real quick, You start writing the checks. | |
| You know, if I were to ever become president, that would never happen. | |
| But if it were, the first thing I'd do is repeal the withholding tax and make people write a check. | |
| Because then you realize, when you get that refund, it was your own money coming back to you. | |
| And it also makes you very aware of how your money is actually spent. | |
| And you become irate in the ways the federal government wastes money. | |
| Instant response to the terrible incident on on Saturday. | |
| Obviously you're maybe somebody who is unusual in politics and being physically aware Including of threats potentially although you do it on a performative level or have mostly had done as far as I'm aware In front of the cameras. | |
| What was your kind of visceral response? | |
| What do you think I'd gone wrong? | |
| How did you react? | |
| Initially, just like everybody else, it was a shock. | |
| I was actually driving home and my phone starts blowing up. | |
| I was driving too. | |
| Maybe not the most safe driver habit to have at the time. | |
| Your phone just starts blowing up. | |
| What's going on? | |
| First thing people are saying is there are gunshots at the Trump rally. | |
| So you figure, right, was someone being stupid out in the parking lot or something like that, right? | |
| Then Trump's been shot. | |
| Oh my God, right? | |
| And then of course you see the footage and you know, he wasn't killed, you know, not injured very badly. | |
| And then after that, I was actually in awe because here you have a dude that just got shot. | |
| And instead of laying there in the fetal position, covered by the Secret Service, literally pushes them off of him and gets back up and throws his fist up into fines. | |
| I've been around tough people all my life, you know, wrestling, football, everything. | |
| I ain't never seen nothing like that. | |
| And that was, you know, I mean, I liked Trump before a lot. | |
| That was when I was like, I will walk through the gates of hell with that guy. | |
| What's your relationship with him? | |
| You must have met him. | |
| How is your rapport with him? | |
| We have a very good rapport. | |
| In person he is very warm, he is very gracious, very friendly. | |
| Alright, thank you. | |
| Last thing, I can't help it. | |
| Kane and X-Pac, best tag team duo I think in WWF history. | |
| Very good charisma, very good complimentary skill sets. | |
| So that was one of the best arrows I think. | |
| Thank you, I appreciate that. | |
| I had a lot of great tag team partners, a lot of excellent people I got to work with. | |
| Alright, thank you sir. | |
| Hey, are you the Michael Tracy on Twitter? | |
| I am, yes. | |
| I'm not following you, man. | |
| Oh, do you? | |
| Cool. |