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July 23, 2024 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald

01:39:50

BONUS: Biden Withdrawal Reaction; Kamala Harris: The Reality VS The Image; PLUS: Michael Tracey RNC Interviews

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	Good evening, everybody.
	It is July 22nd.
	Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
	Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble.
	The free speech alternative to YouTube.
	Tonight, we have a very special guest on System Update, and I'm excited to announce who it is.
	That special guest is myself.
	As I think many of you know, I announced it on Friday.
	I'm actually on vacation.
	I was taking a vacation starting on Saturday for the next 10 days or so, and I announced that we would have at least one, maybe a series of guest hosts to cover the show.
	We are going to be on there every night while I'm Traveling, but obviously there was no way for me to simply disappear and not comment on an event as momentous, as historic, as bizarre, and as meaningful as Joe Biden's so-called decision to no longer seek the Democratic nomination for president, despite the fact that it recently is 24 hours before his announcement on Sunday.
	He and everybody close to him were continuing to insist that there was no chance at all that he was going to withdraw from the race.
	He continued to vow That he was staying in the race until the end no matter what.
	He even said that he had campaign events scheduled for this upcoming week that he didn't care how many Democratic elites or office holders or donors continued to try and pressure him out of the race.
	He believed, I think somewhat validly, that he was the voter's choice to be the Democratic nominee for 2024 as weird and bizarre and, uh, Manipulated that 2024 vote was that was still the Democratic Party's process for choosing their nominee quote-unquote democratically.
	He was its choice and he said he's never leaving and yet out of the blue in a huge surprise to pretty much everybody other than about three people in his home in Delaware where he is self-isolating due to COVID
	He announced on Saturday night or at least under his name was announced under his Twitter name was announced a decision in a letter written on his personal stationery and reportedly signed by him that he was had decided that he was going to leave the race after all and then very shortly thereafter.
	There was an actual tweet not a signed letter but just a tweet under the Joe Biden account announcing that not only was he leaving but that he was endorsing his vice president Kamala Harris to become the nominee in his place for the president as the president's nominee for the Democratic Party.
	Now there's a lot to say about this and because I'm on vacation I'm gonna Limit some of what I say.
	I'll probably have a lot more to say when I get back.
	If there's other major news events while I'm traveling, I will certainly do my best to weigh in, but only in that case.
	My kids will kill me if I do it too often.
	But I did want to share a few thoughts about what happened here because, as I said, it is an event of massive proportions, of historic proportions.
	And there's a lot of things that I think are it gives it provokes a lot of questions that really still haven't been answered.
	So first of all, let us just note.
	That for eight years now, we have heard from the Democratic Party, its defenders, its media allies, pretty much everyone who admits they support the Democratic Party or hides the fact that they support the Democratic Party, the same message repetitively offered over and over, which is that democracy, American democracy, is in peril.
	The survival of American democracy is in danger, and the only way it can be saved is if you Vote for the Democratic Party.
	That was their message in 2016.
	That was their message in 2020.
	It's their message again this year.
	And if you look at their behavior as a party, I would say they are the strangest guardians of democracy you could ever possibly find.
	Just look at how they've conducted themselves in their last three so-called primaries.
	In 2016, When Bernie Sanders ran against Hillary Clinton, he did far, far better than anyone expected.
	She was supposed to have a cakewalk to a coronation.
	The DNC intervened and cheated.
	In the words, not of me, but of Elizabeth Warren and Donna Brazile, the former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, The Democratic Party, quote, rigged the vote to ensure that Hillary Clinton would win and that Bernie would lose.
	And as you probably recall, WikiLeaks leaked a large amount of documents that revealed specifically how the DNC was cheating.
	And as a result, right before the Democratic Convention, top officials of the Democratic National Committee, including Debbie Wasserman Schultz and all of her minions, were forced to resign because of the embarrassment Of how anti-democratic that race was, how manipulated it was, how rigged it was, how much cheating the DNC did to deny the voters of the Democratic Party the right to democratically choose the nominee because they were scared that the voter would choose wrong, that they would choose Bernie Sanders, and they cheated to make sure Hillary Clinton got the nomination.
	In 2020, after Bernie won the first three primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, and especially in Nevada where he crushed the field, Barack Obama, by all news accounts, in one day, making secret phone calls, forced three other establishment candidates out of the race, including Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, who up until that point were getting a significant vote total from people who liked the Democratic establishment, knowing that Barack Obama did, that they were taking away the votes from Joe Biden.
	The only two candidates left, or besides Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, they allowed to stay in the race past Super Tuesday, even though our candidate issue was a complete debacle.
	She was beloved by a lot of Democratic elites, was funded by dark money, a dark money pack by a Silicon Valley fan of hers.
	But other than that, I mean, she even came in third place in her own state.
	She had no chance.
	And the only reason Obama wanted her and let her stay in the race was because she was at least going to take away votes from Bernie Sanders.
	And that is how Joe Biden became the nominee.
	In fact, when Joe Biden Over the course of the last month since the debate began ranting and raving about the quote-unquote Democratic elites who are trying to force him from the race, a lot of those Democratic elites went on television quite angry to say, I think Joe Biden is the last person who ought to be ranting and raving about Democratic elites given that it was we, the Democratic elites, who in 2020 ensured that he would win by doing exactly what I explained.
	And then in 2024, and we've showed you this video many times, They had Simone Sanders, who used to be a high-level staffer in the White House working for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, go on television and when asked how is the Democratic Party primary going to work, you have two candidates running against Joe Biden so far, R.K.
	Jr.
	and Marianne Williamson, and she announced on behalf of the DNC that there would be no primaries, period.
	So when you have a sitting president who's a Democrat and he says he wants to run for your election, that's the end of the story.
	She said the DNC will not allow any debates, It will not, in her words, quote, facilitate a primary.
	I really think that the Mealy Mouth Democrats, as I like to call them, and some of my progressive friends who would like to live in a fantasy land, they need to come back to reality.
	And the reality is this.
	The sitting president of the United States of America is a Democrat.
	A Democrat that would like to run for re-election so much so that he has declared a re-election campaign.
	In that case, the Democratic National Committee will not facilitate a primary process.
	There will be no debate stage for Bobby Kennedy, Marianne Williamson, or anyone else So we're going to have another Bobby Kennedy in an empty chair in the debate, right?
	There will be no debate.
	Yeah, no debate.
	The Democratic National Committee administers the debates, and they're not going to set up a primary process for debates for someone to challenge the head of the Democratic Party.
	And so while there was open opposition, people like Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips, who eventually joined the RFP, left the Democratic Party and ran as an independent because there was no fair opportunity to run against Joe Biden.
	The DNC foreclosed any opportunity to choose any other candidate democratically.
	So that's been the very anti-democratic means by which the Democratic Party has chosen its nominee in the last three primary races.
	And then when they decided, after that debate, that they could no longer rely on the public and pretend that Joe Biden was cognitively capable, after spending months of accusing everybody who was raising questions or doubts about Biden's cognitive capability, accusing those of us who did that of spreading misinformation and fake news, of being far-right operatives, On a dime!
	They did a 180 and said, yes, not only is Joe Biden cognitively disabled, as we've been denying for months and years, in fact, he's so cognitively disabled that we want to force him from the race.
	And over the last month, Joe Biden has made abundantly clear over and over that not only did he have no intention of leaving the race, he was adamant about staying in it.
	And yet a group of Democratic elites, massive Democratic funders, first threatened to cut off the funding for the Biden campaign and then in fact cut off that funding.
	Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama, the leaders of the Democratic Party, first coordinated in secret and then out in the open to force Biden from the race with a series of daily incessant leaks designed to force him out of that race.
	And finally, apparently, they drove Joe Biden out of the race.
	So essentially, Democratic elites pretended that Biden was selected as the nominee of their party democratically, and then once those elites wanted him out because they no longer believed he could beat Donald Trump after that debate, not only did they force him out of the race, but now they've chosen his replacement without any consultation on the part of the voters, which is but now they've chosen his replacement without any consultation on the part
	One Democratic leader after the next, including now Nancy Pelosi and the Clintons, both Hillary Clinton and major Democratic Party leaders, including now AOC.
	Have all come out and endorsed Kamala Harris, making very clear it's a United Democratic Party front.
	They will not allow any alternatives to even be considered.
	So again, they chose the nominee, their fourth in four years, in a completely anti-democratic way.
	Not just not democratically, but in an aggressively anti-democratic way in back rooms.
	Second point I think is really worth noting is the extremely strange manner in which Joe Biden pulled out of the race and then announced what is said to be his decision.
	as though they're paragons of democratic values is if you vote for them.
	The second point I think is really worth noting is the extremely strange manner in which Joe Biden pulled out of the race and then announced what is said to be his decision.
	Now there are a lot of conspiracy theories circulating around, which I completely understand given how this was done.
	I'm not in any way on board with those.
	I don't think there's any evidence for them about things like they kind of just took Joe Biden and forced his hand to sign or that he didn't really decide this or that even though even that he may be very physically ill or even dead.
	But I understand why conspiracy circulate when you have no transparency and when events are deliberately left as extremely strange.
	People have so little faith and trust in media institutions and an institution of authority generally that of course they're going to wonder if they're being lied to again, if they're being deceived again.
	One of the news stories that got so little attention because of Biden's decision was the fact that after Donald Trump was shot as part of an assassination attempt, there was a lot of stories saying coming from the Trump campaign that they had repeatedly asked for more and more security from Secret Service.
	And they were repeatedly denied the ability to have any Secret Service.
	And when that happened, the head of the Secret Service came out and denied it.
	As did other officials of Washington.
	They said, no, this is an absolute lie.
	This never happened.
	There was no request from the Trump campaign for any additional Secret Service.
	And then quietly, about two days ago, those same officials came out and said, actually, what we said was false.
	And they announced it on, I think, a Friday afternoon where no one pays attention.
	That's always the time to get bad news out.
	So they lie constantly.
	These institutions do.
	And so I understand why people rely on conspiracy theories to try and understand the world.
	But what happened here is bizarre.
	Joe Biden, the sitting president of the United States, was supposedly still governing our country, still in charge of the new court codes, who the Democrats have been saying now is cognitively unfit to run for a second term, and yet apparently no one wants to force him out because they don't care if a person is cognitively unfit, as long as he's carrying out, or able to carry out in his name, their desires and orders.
	If Joe Biden were three points in front of Donald Trump and likely to win, they would still be uniting vehemently That there's anything wrong with Joe Biden.
	They would be attacking anyone who suggested that there was spreading fake news.
	They don't care.
	They didn't care at all if Joe Biden had a second term being senile and with dementia.
	They only care that they were concerned that he couldn't be Trump.
	And so Joe Biden has been adamantly saying, as his closest aides, no, it's a lie.
	No one knew he was going to do this.
	They were leaking that he was likely to drop out.
	They were saying this is an absolute lie.
	Biden himself was saying, he even said in that interview with George Stephanopoulos, there's nobody who can force me out of this race other than the Lord Almighty.
	And already by then, it was clear that a lot of top Democrats wanted him out and said, I don't care.
	I'm going to keep running.
	I'm the people's choice.
	And then out of nowhere, no one knew he was going to do this.
	No one was consulted.
	There was a letter in Joe Biden's name posted to his Twitter account.
	Where he just wrote a generic letter explaining that he had come to believe it was better for the country for him not to run.
	Thank you.
	And then a tweet issued in Joe Biden's name, also in text form, saying that not only am I dropping out, but I'm endorsing Kamala Harris.
	Now, you would obviously expect A sitting president of the United States who makes that kind of decision, which is very rarely made, to go on television and explain it, or at least simultaneously announce a time that night when they're going to go on television and explain their decision to the country, given they're still the sitting president.
	That's what Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1968 when he was expected to run for reelection.
	He realized that he couldn't because the anti-war sentiment in his own party against the Vietnam War and therefore against him was so high that there was almost a certainty that he couldn't get the nomination.
	It was very likely to be a grueling battle.
	And of course he went on, he didn't just issue a statement in his name, he went on to television and gave an address from the Oval Office, which is indicative of the significance of this sort of event.
	Joe Biden has not done that.
	Biden, there was a statement issued on Twitter in Biden's name and then Biden disappeared.
	He hasn't been seen in public since then, let alone explained his decision in his own words.
	And yes, it's true that Biden has COVID and that's why he's in Delaware self-isolating, but his doctors over the last couple of days had told us that he was improving significantly.
	But the bigger point is if Joe Biden Is too sick to get in front of a camera and explain his decision, then he's too sick to have made that decision.
	Or put another way, if Joe Biden is mentally and physically healthy enough to make a decision of that magnitude, for him to be involved and conscious, and to have thought through the implications and made a decision of that magnitude, then he's physically and mentally well enough to go in front of a camera and explain why.
	No, again, I don't believe and I'm not saying that Biden's in some basement somewhere tied up or that he's dead.
	I'm just saying that we are owed an explanation about why Biden made this decision after swearing repeatedly that he wouldn't.
	There's some accounts in the press from anonymous aides about why he made the decision, but absolutely nothing from Joe Biden himself.
	And of course, that's going to create a climate every day that goes by of increasing strangeness and doubts It feeds this narrative that something very undemocratic took place.
	And although Biden said in his letter, I'm going to explain it to you in a few days, you can't do that.
	You can't be the president, make a decision of this significance, and then disappear from public entirely.
	Maybe he's angry about what he was forced to do.
	Maybe he's embarrassed.
	But he's still the president of the United States with all that power in his hands, and it's incredibly disturbing that we haven't heard from him.
	And every day that goes by, it's going to be even more so.
	Now, I just wanted to talk briefly about Kamala Harris, who's almost certainly going to be the nominee in place of Joe Biden for president.
	The reason I say that is because Democrats follow their leaders, every sector of the Democratic Party, the centrist and conservative part of the Democratic Party, the liberals and the left.
	Every faction is united always.
	They're always following in the footsteps of their leader.
	They're always doing what they're told.
	And so when Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama or the Clintons, Hopkins, Jeffries comes out and say, we endorse Kamala Harris, when AOC does that, when Elizabeth Warren does that, there's no doubt they're going to do what they're told and endorse Kamala Harris.
	And I think one of the things that's so bizarre about that is that Kamala Harris' path to the White House was done without really any votes at all.
	She was barely elected from a blue state to become Attorney General and then to the Senate.
	And she tried to be the president in 2020.
	She had everything in her favor, huge amounts of money from California, incredibly favorable media coverage as the first black woman who might be president.
	The media loved Kamala Harris, and yet the voters hated her.
	She could barely get up to 2% in the polls.
	She had one good debate that Democrats thought she had, when she basically implied Joe Biden was a segregationist and a racist who worked with Strom Thurmond to keep her out of Uh, integrated schools and other girls like her.
	But after that, Kelsey Gabbard destroyed her by pointing out she was a prosecutor who sent huge numbers of overwhelmingly black men to prison for low-level nonviolent drug crimes and worked hard to keep them there.
	And just in general, she was a mess and she pulled out of that race never getting really more than 2% of the vote after that first debate.
	No black support, no support from really anyone.
	And was forced to drop out.
	She was then chosen by Joe Biden after he announced he would only choose a black woman as his vice president.
	There were two or three he could choose from.
	He picked her.
	And now again, nobody voted for her to be the Democratic nominee.
	It was like a throwback to the 1950s and 60s when they used to choose the nominee in a back room.
	She was chosen by Nancy Pelosi and the Clintons and Obama and Chuck Schumer and Democratic billionaires.
	And the reason she had to drop out of the race is because she was a terrible politician.
	Nobody liked her.
	Nobody was energized by her.
	And I think the most incredible thing to watch is all of these self-identified leftists who are loyal to the Democratic Party who have spent 10 months Screaming that the Israeli war in Gaza is a, quote, genocide.
	And that the Biden administration is complicit in it, responsible for it.
	They've been arming it.
	They've been funding it.
	And now when Joe Biden leaves the race, there's all these kind of people heaping praise on him.
	Oh, it's a great patriot who sacrificed for the good of the country.
	Great, decent man, as we've gone over before.
	But also Kamala Harris was every bit as much on board with all of that.
	There was never a moment Where Kamala Harris indicated the slightest ideological political difference with not only the Biden, Joe Biden, but the Democratic establishment itself never once.
	In fact, one of her first acts in the Senate when she was elected in 2016 was to introduce a resolution condemning the Obama administration's decision To abstain from a U.N.
	vote that allowed the U.N.
	to rule that Israel's occupation was illegal.
	Ordinarily, the U.S.
	vetoes it.
	Obama didn't veto it.
	He abstained.
	And there was a Senate resolution to condemn Barack Obama for being insufficiently pro-Israel.
	And Kamala Harris was one of the main co-sponsors.
	She's spoken at AIPAC.
	She has, if anything, been even more of a pro-establishment candidate than Joe Biden.
	And the one thing I will say that I think might be a difference between the two of them, and it could be minor, but it could be significant, but it's certainly not in her favor, is that at least Joe Biden, after spending 52 years in Washington, 40 years as a senator from Delaware trying to become president, eight years as vice president to Barack Obama, and now four years as a president, built up enough self-belief, I guess you could say,
	He's constantly talking about how there's nobody in the world who understands foreign policy better than he does.
	He has a self-belief that allows him, on occasion, to buck what he's told to do by the establishment, even though he never really does it for the good.
	But at least in theory, in, like, comportment, he's willing to do that.
	Even the media, because he just believes in himself so much.
	Kamala Harris is a novice.
	She knows nothing except how to be a lawyer.
	She knows something about foreign affairs or economic policy.
	She's a completely empty vessel, a complete craven opportunist who does and says whatever she needs to to advance her career.
	She owes everything to the Democratic establishment.
	That's who led her win in California.
	That is who, after the debacle of her campaign, led to her being chosen as Vice President.
	And now it's the Democratic establishment, nobody else, who plotted to force Joe Biden out of the race and put Kamala in that space.
	And as a result, she's going to be more malleable than almost anyone to establishment interests in Washington, to the Democratic Party elite, to the deep state, to the U.S.
	security state.
	She has no confidence, rightly so, to understand any of those issues and to reject what she's being told to do.
	And I'm watching all these self-identified soft leftists who are loyal to the Democratic Party twisting themselves into deceitful contortions to pretend that she's somehow better than Joe Biden or different than him ideologically.
	She's a complete craven tool of the establishment.
	They're going to use the identity politics angle to make her seem like she's something new and refreshing.
	That's what identity politics is for, to take establishment figures like Hillary Clinton Or Barack Obama?
	And just say, look, they're a little different on the surface, but they're there to carry out status quo policies and make them seem new and different.
	Nobody bought that when Kamala Harris tried it in 2020 because she looks like the Deputy General Counsel for Exxon, who just got out of a board meeting.
	And she's tried to adapt herself to speaking differently, I just don't think it's genuine, but I'm not a political pundit.
	All I'm saying is what I understand is the substance of policy and the idea that she's somehow going to be this new progressive figure or anti-establishment figure or better than or different than Joe Biden is a complete self-delusion.
	We need to see Joe Biden and explain in his own words why he chose to drop out of the race after swearing over and over that he wouldn't, why he chose to endorse Kamala Harris, why he thinks she's the best person for the job.
	We need to appreciate how anti-democratic the Democratic Party has been in all of its conduct internally and choosing their nominee since 2016 at least.
	You're going to see a propaganda campaign on behalf of Kamala Harris to turn her into something that she isn't and has never been, the likes of which you haven't seen before.
	Already today they leaked people close to Kamala Harris and the media went and not only mindlessly wrote it down but got swooning and giggly about it that she called various Democratic allies today while wearing a Howard University sweatshirt and sweatpants.
	That's just the start of what they're going to try and turn her into.
	Because remember how desperate they are to ensure Donald Trump doesn't win.
	The media, they invented all kinds of scandal, the Russiagate hoax, all sorts of other things.
	The Hunter Biden reporting to Russian disinformation.
	They tried to impeach Trump and then put him in prison just to add to the anti-democratic bonafides of the Democratic Party and their establishment media allies.
	And so Engaging in pure hagiography and propaganda on behalf of Kamala Harris is something you don't have to have any doubt they're about to engage in in the most embarrassingly extreme, worshipful, and deceitful way.
	So those are a few of my thoughts.
	I'm sure I'm going to have some others, which I might wait until I get back in order to share further.
	But like I said, if something really significant happens, I will weigh in again.
	We are about to show you some more interviews that Michael Tracy did.
	He really did a great job.
	I hate to admit, going around the Republican National Convention, not only getting all the best people to interview, the ones who have influence in the Republican Party, but confronting them with some of the hardest questions.
	We're going to have more, and then once we have our schedule of guest hosts in place, we will announce that soon.
	So enjoy the rest of the show.
	I hope not to be back until I'm back next week from my vacation.
	Like I said, I will only in Extreme circumstances like this one.
	So it was great to be able to get this out.
	If anything, it would have been less relaxing for me if I had to keep this in and not talk about something like this.
	So I feel more relaxed now, more cathartic.
	And I will see all of you shortly.
	We're with Congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio.
	How are you, sir?
	Doing great.
	What's your impression of the convention thus far?
	Just an amazing amount of energy.
	So you know, you look at just a Horrible time for our country on Saturday when an assassin tried to kill President Trump but I think really him coming up after that you know the crowd was obviously with shots fired in a bit of chaos but you saw people just get their resolve right after Donald Trump stood up and rallied the crowd very boldly fight fight fight and yeah it's a sort of measured fight right now but people are united behind it it's the kind of energy we need to kind of get
	People moving in the same direction.
	So it's been encouraging to see kind of the various factions within GOP world come together and really unite, not just behind Donald Trump, behind a much bigger movement.
	So you are one of the few Republican members of the House who spoke out rather forcefully against the bill to ban TikTok.
	In March.
	And then that was then later packaged into the National Security Supplemental.
	Why were you such a lone voice in the wilderness in your caucus on that bill?
	Have you been able to do any persuasion amongst your colleagues about maybe the lack of wisdom of banning a major platform on the grounds of supposed Chinese control or espionage concerns or that sort of thing?
	What's the status update on that thus far?
	Well, I was very disappointed that our party wasn't in the right position.
	The more freedom wing of the Republican Party was overcome by the more government wing of the Republican Party in that issue.
	It was a very similar split with the Patriot Act.
	If you go back, we had 63 people in the House of Representatives vote no on the Patriot Act originally.
	And I think clearly that was a bad idea, but unfortunately this past year it got expanded on a Republican watch.
	You know, people said no thanks on the warrant requirement, plus let's expand it.
	And I think you unfortunately see that same kind of more government faction, if as long as it's to keep us safe.
	And when you really drill down, you go, why would you believe this is to keep us safe?
	It's about coercion and control.
	It's about regulating speech and frankly picking winners and losers in the marketplace.
	Not so much about the cover story that somehow this is supposed to keep us safe.
	And unfortunately we haven't been able to penetrate that yet.
	We only had 15 Republicans side with 50 Democrats.
	So clearly the majority keeps choosing more government.
	And then Speaker Johnson used a rather peculiar parliamentary maneuver to insert the TikTok prohibition into the broader national security supplemental as one of the separate pieces of that mammoth legislation.
	What was your Reaction to that just as a parliamentary procedural matter.
	It seemed like, you know, if you wanted to support funding for Israel or whatever you had to therefore, you know, there were some obligations to support the entire package.
	What did you make of that process development?
	Well, that's kind of how the sausage is made.
	But, you know, one of the disappointing things there was Republicans got a big fight with the Speaker's race.
	But I'd say the conservative portion of our party picked up three seats on the Rules Committee.
	And in theory, those three seats are able to influence ultimately what passes as a rule.
	And so you think that's the check against these kind of abuses and we would have to vote.
	Unfortunately, that sort of safeguard was bypassed even here in that bill.
	So what was the value added, in retrospect, of ousting Kevin McCarthy, replacing him with Speaker Mike Johnson?
	One of the initial claims, I know you weren't one of the eight who voted to oust McCarthy, right?
	You were not.
	I was not.
	One of the claims, anyway, amongst those who did oust him was that they wanted to impose more stringent requirements for fiscal conservatism and for adhering to certain narrowly tailored appropriations bills.
	That seems to have all gone by the wayside, hasn't it?
	It absolutely has.
	Look, most of us said this was a bad idea.
	Firing Kevin McCarthy isn't going to work the way that the people that want to do it claim that it will.
	Part of the reason Mike Johnson got picked is he's the one guy that four or five people didn't dislike.
	We all kind of like Mike Johnson.
	He's a great guy.
	But he's not the same kind of fighter.
	He's not as instinctive in some of these fights.
	And frankly, he got kind of outmaneuvered in a couple things because he didn't resolve around a position to fight back.
	And so we've been rolled on a lot of things, including spending.
	Right away, we had the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
	Conservatives couldn't really be happy about the number on the Fiscal Responsibility Act.
	That was the debt ceiling deal that passed in May of 23.
	And, you know, Joe Biden said it's just going to be a clean debt ceiling increase.
	And Kevin McCarthy said, no, we're going to have a deal here.
	And unfortunately, Mike Johnson bought into the idea that there were side agreements.
	And my point was, no, there were side conversations.
	If there were agreements, they would have been part of the bill.
	You don't have a side agreement if it's not part of your contract.
	Check anybody that enlisted in the Army, right?
	So the agreement is what's in the contract.
	And unfortunately, Mike Johnson, beginning with those side deals, started to get rolled, and that gave away our whole position.
	So it hasn't turned out well on any front.
	We've had more spending, more wars, more surveillance, and so much so that Democrats came to his defense.
	Speaking of surveillance, Johnson orchestrated the renewal of FISA.
	Now, what was peculiar about that is that Johnson went around on conservative media and said that he and Donald Trump were on the same page on that, also with regard to the broader national security supplemental.
	So my running question has been, to what extent did Donald Trump's seeming approval, whether it was FISA renewal or the different aspects of the supplemental funding for Israel, Ukraine and Indo-Pacific, were they instrumental in placating certain parts of the caucus or at least giving some political flexibility?
	To allow for the passage of that bill, you know, with using Johnson as his surrogate or his emissary or something like that?
	Yeah, it certainly gave cover for Mike Johnson and others to go along with a bad plan.
	All the momentum in Washington, D.C.
	for a long time was more wars in more places.
	And unfortunately, that's undermined the whole Republican Party, the neoconservative wing, kind of the Lindsey Graham now that some others are no longer there, the Liz Cheney wing of the party.
	That, you know, it's okay to decline some of the invitations to war.
	And the reality is, their endless war approach has left us less free, less safe, more burdened by debt.
	It was very disappointing to see our leadership team sign up for more of the same.
	So Donald Trump has extraordinary influence over the House Republican Caucus in particular.
	He seems like he can just pick and choose primary winners at this point.
	He endorsed against Bob Goode.
	Bob Goode has lost his primary, or at least that's the certified result.
	He claims that he's challenging it.
	And we saw some controversy within the House Freedom Caucus around that vote or around that election.
	What do you make of Trump's influence in that race in particular?
	What does it portend going forward in terms of his influence on Republican primary races in the House?
	Look, I don't agree with all of Donald Trump's endorsements, but that's when he got right.
	Bob Goode, not so good.
	Donald Trump agreed.
	And look, there's more to being an effective representative than having a good conservative voting record.
	Bob Goode had a good conservative record, but so does John.
	John's at the same event at CPI getting champion of small government award, although... John McGuire, who Trump endorsed and won the primary.
	Yeah, sorry, John McGuire, who's a state representative in Virginia's 5th congressional district.
	He's been at the state legislature and he challenged Bob Goode.
	And so the choice wasn't between Bob Goode and some, you know, barely Republican kind of squish Mitt Romney level kind of Republican.
	The choice was somebody who's also going to be conservative.
	And has proven themselves to be conservatives, literally being recognized by CPI as a champion of small government for his work in the state legislature.
	So it wasn't this sharp contrast that Bob Good's campaign tried to portray.
	It was somebody who's conservative and likable and effective versus Bob Good.
	So one of the things that McGuire actually criticized Good about was that Good voted no on the $26 billion, or was it $24 billion, in supplemental funding for Israel.
	Now you were one of only 21 members of the House who voted against the supplemental funding for both Israel and Ukraine.
	What kind of blowback have you received for that vote, if any, and does it reflect your underlying principle vis-a-vis U.S.
	foreign policy in Israel, or were you just against how that appropriations package was structured?
	Well, I'm one of a handful of people that's voted against... I've voted for no funding for Ukraine whatsoever, so I'm consistent with that.
	I've had a bill called the Define the Mission Act.
	Normally, before you give money to someone or commit any kind of resources, you want to know, well, what are you trying to accomplish?
	That way, I can hold you accountable for it.
	And frankly, then I know whether the resources you're asking for are an open checkbook, as much as it takes, as long as it takes, to accomplish what, without any definition, is something I can't get behind for Ukraine.
	With Israel, Israel's a wealthy country.
	I mean, they can afford to pay back debt.
	They have a lower debt to GDP ratio than the United States.
	And what I said is, if we give this to Joe Biden to administer, he's simply going to use it as leverage against Benjamin Netanyahu.
	And lo and behold, that's what he did.
	Now, that's not because I had some prophetic vision.
	It's because, like realizing how gravity works, like that's what's going to happen.
	And unfortunately, in that Israel bill, you also funded both sides of the war.
	So, whichever kind of war you're involved in, it's usually good to pick one side, not both sides, unless you're trying to wage just an ongoing state of war instead of a resolution to the conflict.
	So, we tried to offer amendments that would have made that a more focused effort, and unfortunately we weren't allowed to do that.
	So, for those reasons, I voted no.
	Your colleague, Thomas Massey, whose wife unfortunately passed away.
	Is he here?
	Do you know that?
	He's not here at the convention.
	He was originally planning to be, but given the circumstances, both his wife, Rhonda, and his mamaw passed away within days of each other.
	So, pretty rough stretch for Thomas.
	Well, we send our condolences to Congressman Massey.
	But he has talked about what he regards as the, I don't know if maybe malign is too strong a word, but the extremely intense influence that the pro-Israel lobby exerts on Congress.
	And we saw just a couple of weeks ago on the Democratic side, Congressman Bowman was primaried By a candidate, George Latimer, who criticized Bowman for not being sufficiently supportive of Israel and it ended up being the most expensive congressional primary in U.S.
	history with millions and millions of dollars poured into that race in New York by the pro-Israel donors or lobbyists.
	Do you blanch at all at that kind of influence being exerted?
	Obviously people have a right to free speech and they have a right to impact the electoral political system however they see fit.
	I guess just on an ethical level or a substantive level, is there anything that raises concern for you about that level of influence or intervention in electoral politics that these groups like AIPAC are now choosing to undertake?
	No, I mean look, Jewish Americans weigh in and they're largely united behind Israel, not uniformly.
	You see like Bernie Sanders is not really pro-Israel, though his ancestry is Jewish.
	Some of the evangelical Christians are much more strong on Israel than even some more secular Jews.
	Correct.
	So, you know, ethnically Jewish probably doesn't align you necessarily as much with Israel as maybe an evangelical American in the South, for example.
	So, if you look at the demographics, you know, I think one of the things that Thomas has tried to do is saying, hey, having a difference of opinion with Israel is not the same as being anti-Semitic.
	And Apex kind of tried to blur the lines there.
	I think that's the part that's dishonest.
	The idea that they would weigh in in the politics and try to influence an election isn't everyone trying to do that.
	And frankly, they're very transparent about their involvement.
	Final question, what do you anticipate for a prospective second Trump term with regard to foreign policy?
	So you have a fairly broad tent in terms of different foreign policy tendencies within the Republican coalition.
	We've had Marco Rubio giving a keynote speech, Tom Cotton, Mike Pompeo is speaking.
	I understand who kind of represent maybe one poll in terms of more interventionism or hawkishness to use a colloquialism.
	And then you have people like yourself or others who are Trump supporters, maybe less inclined toward interventionism.
	How do you see that shaking out under a second Trump term in terms of personnel?
	Because, you know, who he appoints Secretary of State, who he appoints Defense Secretary, National Security Advisor, etc.
	That's significant.
	How would it differ in your mind or how would you hope it would differ from the Trump first term, if at all?
	Look, Trump's messaging on Make America Great Again, America First has been phenomenal.
	When you talk about drain the swamp, you can't necessarily drain the swamp if you hire the swamp.
	And unfortunately, in Trump's first administration in a number of key positions, he effectively hired the swamp and lo and behold, it was.
	What's an example?
	Hard to drain.
	Well, within foreign policy, how are you going to have an America First foreign policy and have John Bolton as your national security advisor?
	That was one of those.
	How about Pompeo?
	You know, Pompeo kind of bridged that gap.
	He fully supported President Trump.
	And I think he was an effective foil because Donald Trump was able to go into negotiation and say, look, you've already met with Mike.
	You know where a lot of our country wants to go on this.
	And he was able to use that very effectively.
	I thought Mike Pompeo was an incredibly effective Secretary of State as the diplomat, you know, in terms of overhauling the State Department writ large and kind of the swamp level of that.
	I hope we have somebody who's much more assertive on that, even if it's Mike Pompeo again.
	But when you look at what we should be doing on foreign policy, Donald Trump set a great example.
	He didn't get us into more wars.
	He resolved them.
	He created a bold, strong... He did escalate a few wars.
	He escalated in Afghanistan.
	The U.S.
	dropped the largest number of bombs over the course of the entire Afghanistan war in 2018 under Donald Trump.
	So he did escalate existing conflicts.
	He got no Americans killed.
	He sent no extra troops.
	He scaled things down.
	He positioned it for our exit.
	You don't have to have served in the military to know that the way Joe Biden executed the plan to leave Afghanistan was completely backwards.
	First, you get the civilians out, and then you get the military out.
	Joe Biden did it the other way.
	Well, Trump now says he's never going to withdraw from Afghanistan.
	To begin with, he said in an interview a few weeks ago that he was going to always leave a permanent U.S.
	military force at Bagram Air Base.
	Which leads me to believe there was never going to be a withdrawal at all.
	Well, maybe not 100%.
	That's hard to say.
	That's a permanent occupation then, isn't it?
	They're at the invitation of the sovereign governor of Afghanistan.
	Is there a sovereign governor of Afghanistan?
	Well, perhaps not.
	I think that's the problem.
	There's not really.
	I mean, you essentially have tribal factions competing against each other for some made-up boundaries that the Western world decided that they were going to impose on that part of the world.
	When they had tribal boundaries, they kind of always had tribal boundaries.
	When they created these artificial, Western-imposed physical boundaries to define some set of geography and called it Afghanistan, well since then there's been control issues over who controls that piece of terrain recognized by the United Nations.
	The reality is the tribal factions within those physical boundaries have always had conflict, and they probably always will.
	So how to resolve that?
	Look, you know, I think Donald Trump was an incredibly effective foreign policy person.
	And if you want to look at the tell on where I think he will go and should go, I think his VP pick with J.D.
	Vance says we want a much more realpolitik focused America first foreign policy.
	And if we want to restore our government small enough to fit back in our Constitution, That's exactly what we need.
	These endless wars with no definition of success have bankrupted our country and expanded the surveillance state.
	So if you want to really get our government back and truly make America great again, you have to have scarcity and you have to recognize that our influence should be narrowly focused to America's priorities first and foremost.
	Okay.
	Congressman Warren Davidson of Ohio.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you.
	All right.
	Appreciate it.
	All right, so we're with Congressman Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey.
	How you doing, sir?
	I am doing well.
	It's great to be here.
	So you famously switched your party affiliation from Democrat to Republican.
	What was that, 2019?
	Is that right?
	Around the time of Trump's first impeachment.
	Not common for a member of Congress to switch their party affiliation.
	I guess as you reflect on that, what insights Has going down that road shown you in terms of how politics works?
	It's a broad question, but you're sort of in an unusual situation, so I'm just curious for your reflections on that.
	Well, for me, it was a good thing, and I don't regret it at all, and I'm happy I did.
	Even when we have our worst days as a Republican, it's still good.
	You know, I wouldn't vote for the impeachment of Donald Trump, and there was a huge amount of pressure on me, and I just realized throughout time that this party, this Democratic Party, had changed so much.
	and had just gone, in my opinion, awry.
	It really has just strayed away from the basic American principles of faith, family, freedom, and friendship.
	They're real.
	They're not just corny words.
	They really matter.
	And because of that, and because of a lot of other things, the impeachment, because of the focus of this party, I'm not a globalist.
	I believe in America first.
	I believe in America always.
	I believe the United States of America is the best nation ever on the face of the earth.
	Even with our problems, we self-correct.
	The Democratic Party has become a party of globalism, a party that says we're the same as everybody else, maybe not even as good.
	I don't accept that.
	And that's the big picture.
	And I won't go through the small picture of the open borders and the crime in the cities and a terrible foreign policy and terrible domestic policy with our prices going up, up and up.
	I could talk about all that.
	We don't need to.
	People know it and they feel it.
	The bottom line is, I believe the future of America is with the Republican Party and we've got to work hard to keep our country. - Speaking of globalism, the concept of America first, I would say that's one of the main slogans or mantras at the convention and really has been since the advent of the Trump era.
	You voted for the $24 billion in supplemental Israel funding in April, is that right?
	Correct.
	Now, is there any tension between being a proponent of America First and also voting in favor of sending many billions of dollars to the Middle East, where many Americans are disillusioned with our entanglements there, and subsidizing a war effort that is also regarded by many Americans as having been very much excessive?
	I mean, Gaza's been pretty well pulverized at this point.
	So is there any conceptual incongruity, I guess, between espousing America First and also voting to send many billions to the Middle East?
	There is not.
	I believe in Israel, and Israel needs our support, one of our strongest and oldest allies, and they are putting skin in the game, and by that I mean they're putting a lot of money in the game themselves.
	Understand something, that at this point, we have given over just the last couple of years, As much money to Ukraine, just about, as we've given to Israel since the 1940s.
	Israel's done a lot on their own.
	They fight hard, and they need to.
	What's happened to Israel is awful.
	Their women were brutalized.
	Babies were put in microwave ovens.
	Their women were raped.
	Was that confirmed that a baby was put... I mean, obviously, the Hamas attack was brutal.
	But there have been some questionable exaggerations of certain particulars of what occurred there that I think are worth just clarifying for the record.
	I have seen the videos, and it's all true.
	And everything that happened there was really awful.
	And women's pelvises were really broken because they were raped so many times.
	Hamas is evil.
	It needs to be routed out.
	And the only way to do that right now, unfortunately, is through force.
	You know, when you are in a war, and when you are attacked, You have to win.
	And Israel needs to win.
	And then we need to move on.
	So would you prefer for a second Trump administration to remove some of the limitations that many Republicans have complained the Biden administration has imposed on Israel?
	Whether sending certain weapon shipments.
	Biden, you know, we're told temporarily paused 500 pound bombs.
	That we're being provisioned to Israel.
	That's probably been lifted recently, but it's always a little unclear what the policy is.
	Would your hope be, and your expectation be, that Trump would give Israel greater free reign to do as it sees fit in conducting its war efforts?
	President Trump's going to tell them to win this thing and to do what's necessary to win.
	Peace through strength, war through weakness.
	Those words are true.
	Ronald Reagan uttered them.
	They are still true.
	They need to win this now.
	President Trump's going to help them to do that, to get in, win, and then get out.
	Remember, On many of our involvements around the world, we're giving money to all these different countries.
	I don't agree with a lot of that.
	I also don't agree with total isolationism.
	And I do believe that you have to be committed to your friends that have been with you and remain with you.
	Israel is one of them.
	Hamas is bad.
	I don't know.
	It's nothing else to say.
	It is evil.
	It is awful.
	It does have to be eradicated or else we're going to continue to have this problem.
	You know, during the days of World War II, we didn't say, it was, we said that we had to have a victory, a complete and total victory.
	If we were fighting World War II now, we would be afraid to drop the atomic bomb.
	If we were fighting World War II now, we'd say, well, we'll allow others to do the bad things they're doing, we'll just stop at a certain line.
	If you're gonna fight, if you're gonna put American men, women, munitions and money on the line, you win.
	And that's what we need to do.
	You honestly think that Hamas can be fully eradicated?
	I mean, in order to eradicate Nazi Germany, the country was just totally destroyed.
	Now, I'm not questioning that as a historical matter.
	But that requires an enormous amount of firepower, long-term commitment, total extirpation of every facet of Hamas.
	And who even qualifies as Hamas?
	Is it a 16-year-old who helps fire a rocket?
	Is that Hamas?
	Does he need to be totally eradicated?
	You see what I'm saying?
	Leadership has to be eliminated.
	You know what I mean.
	Leadership has to be eliminated and in order to go forward and they are doing that and I think we're close to it already and if we leave them alone in a relatively short period of time it will be done and there's been no country that has been more humane about helping those around them rebuild who's warned them when there's going to be impending attacks than Israel has been.
	Israel are good people and it's a good country and I believe this will end soon.
	You referenced the enormous amount of money that the U.S.
	has dispersed to Ukraine.
	I think it may be on the verge of exceeding, if it hasn't already, the total amount of foreign aid that's been given to Israel since 1948.
	Speaker Johnson, when the National Security Supplemental Bill was being deliberated, he was adamant.
	He went on conservative media, he made media rounds insisting that he and Donald Trump were on the same page.
	Correct.
	in wanting that supplemental funding bill to go through, which included the largest ever disbursement of money to Ukraine since the beginning of the war, 61 billion, which I believe you voted against, right? - Correct, I voted no on that. - So what are we to make of that in terms of the position of Trump, Johnson, I voted no on that. - So what are we What are we to make of that in terms of the position of Trump-Johnson?
	I mean, when Mike Johnson took over the role of Speaker, Trump proclaimed a MAGA Mike Johnson.
	So what does it tell us about the foreign policy thinking in that, in the upper echelons of the Republican Party?
	I believe they are on the same page and they have to speak for themselves, obviously, but I know the President well and I know the Speaker well.
	They are on the same page except for certain issues and that Ukraine issue at the end of the day was one of them and it was because our caucus didn't stick together.
	We couldn't get all the Republicans together which is a problem from time to time and that should be something that we need to work on.
	The bottom line is President Trump doesn't believe in what was said by Joe Biden.
	Joe Biden said no matter how much money it takes No matter how long it takes that he was going to do this with Ukraine.
	That's wrong.
	We need to make sure that we have a full and thorough audit of where the money is going.
	We need to make sure that other countries in Europe are putting in their fair share.
	Some are.
	Many are not.
	We have to make sure that none of it goes to government workers, government pensions, and government healthcare in Ukraine.
	And finally, we have to make sure that before we're worried about their borders and the integrity of their borders, we take care of and button up the borders in the United States of America. - So, one final question, if you don't mind.
	So you would have voted for a more narrowly tailored bill of Ukraine aid if it was maybe just more strictly armaments or military funding or were you against it on principle?
	We've given them a lot of armaments, a lot of funding.
	What I believe is I'd have to see anything that goes along further.
	But before I'm going to consider it, all of those issues that I just mentioned have to be taken care of.
	I have to ask, you're wearing a lapel pin of a tooth.
	You were a practicing dentist when you were in the New Jersey State Senate, right?
	Are you still a practicing dentist?
	I would never have the time to practice now.
	I spend 15 hours a day in Congress.
	However, one thing about being a dentist, the only comparison I'll make is, and only in one way, once you're a Marine, you're always a Marine.
	I'm not a Marine.
	I served in the VA as a dentist.
	But once you're a dentist, you're always a dentist.
	So I'm still a dentist, but I don't practice.
	I have a, my dentist in New Jersey is a strong, staunch Republican.
	What's the political orientation of New Jersey dentists?
	I mean, really, do you observe that there's a certain slant that they have, or is it hard to generalize?
	It's just like the general public.
	They're all over the place.
	But they're hardworking, they're small business people, and I believe more of them are Republican.
	Thank you, Congressman, appreciate it.
	Take care.
	So we're with Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
	Senator, in 2022 you won re-election here in Wisconsin.
	I think it was about by a point, right?
	The Republicans didn't do quite as well in the Senate races that cycle as many had anticipated.
	Wisconsin's obviously in the spotlight now politically.
	What did your relative success in 2022—obviously you were an incumbent, others who were seeking office weren't, so that's an advantage—what insight did that give you in terms of how Republicans ought to be running in Wisconsin this time around in the presidential and in the Senate race against Tammy Baldwin?
	Well, to say we didn't do as well as we hoped is an understatement.
	I think what happened in 2022 is the Dobbs decision turned the 2022 election into a referendum on abortion.
	And I would say that that never was accurately reported, honestly reported by the media.
	It was all about, oh, Republicans want to ban abortion.
	That's not what the Dobbs decision did.
	Dobbs' decision just corrected an incorrect Supreme Court decision where nine Supreme Court justices decided that profound moral issue for all of us.
	So Dobbs' decision just sent it back to we the people in the states to decide what I recommended as a one-time single-issue referendum in Wisconsin to decide that profound moral issue.
	At what point does society have the responsibility to protect life?
	Well, just asking it that way, you know, acknowledges the fact that society may decide that up to some point in life, in the womb, a mother can make that decision.
	But after some point, that child is viable enough or can feel pain or is, you know, enough of a human being that it needs protection or and or that abortion at certain levels Just become so abhorrent the society just can't tolerate it.
	So again that that's the kind of discussion kind of information education that we really didn't have for 50 years because everybody's went in the corner pro-life pro-life pro-life pro-choice that's it.
	We had to have that conversation now that conversation and we the people decide in 50 different states.
	Dr. Oz wasn't the greatest candidate, though, was he?
	I mean, Donald Trump endorsed him in the Republican primary in Pennsylvania.
	And, you know, I do think that it's reasonable to postulate that candidate quality factored into maybe some of the Republican underperformance in 22, no?
	By the way, I really am glad to see that John Fetterman is really healing.
	Truthfully, I'm very glad to see that.
	Actually, pretty surprised he's taking certain stances, but... On Israel?
	But, you know, candidate quality, Pennsylvania.
	So, each race is unique in itself.
	In terms of Wisconsin, I think what Wisconsin voters look for in a candidate is, first of all, somebody who's genuine.
	Whether they agree or disagree, Those individuals are telling you what they believe and hopefully genuinely believe.
	And I think JD Vance will, I think, appeal to Wisconsin voters as a result.
	Senator, what was your reaction a couple weeks ago when the Biden-DOJ agreed to a plea arrangement with Julian Assange?
	He was released from prison.
	He transited to the Northern Mariana Islands, was it?
	And then back to Australia.
	He was accompanied by Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister, Australian ambassador to the US, who was actually here at the convention.
	I don't know if you encountered him.
	I saw him yesterday.
	What was your response to that development?
	You know, the truth of the matter is, I do not know all the detail of exactly the kind of information, the kind of compromise, you know, to the extent that people lose their life over the release of that information.
	You know, there are people who say, well, that's what journalists do.
	He didn't steal the information.
	He just released it.
	I don't really know the details of, you know, the plot to obtain that information.
	So again, I literally am not qualified to judge that.
	He's obviously paid a pretty heavy price for his involvement.
	He's an Australian citizen.
	I can't say as I am overly upset that this is the result.
	So you don't lament the fact that he's no longer incarcerated as he had been for five something years?
	No, I mean, for whatever wrong he did, and I really don't know, he was never charged with anything.
	There was never any review of this information in court, so again, I don't know what all the evidence is.
	He obviously paid a pretty heavy price.
	Now it's over.
	Well, he was indicted under the Trump administration, actually, in 2019 and 2020.
	But he was never held, there was never any trial, and so I don't know all the information.
	What do you expect from a Trump second term in terms of foreign policy?
	Obviously, they're competing factions within the Republican coalition to some extent.
	J.D.
	Vance is at least perceived to represent maybe a slightly more interventionism-skeptical wing.
	How correct that is, it's hard to say.
	But you also have people like Mike Pompeo is here, Marco Rubio keynoted last night, Tom Cotton, who are probably more muscular in their foreign policy approach.
	How will those competing strains of foreign policy thinking, and I don't know where exactly you land on that, I guess it's a complicated question.
	How will those competing factions sort of resolve themselves under a second Trump administration in terms of personnel and also in terms of philosophy?
	Well, I can tell you I'm very anti-war.
	And the way you avoid war is you achieve peace, you have strength.
	But I come from a position that really primarily talks about economic strength, national strength, terms like national unity.
	Lincoln said, a house divided against itself cannot stand.
	That weakens America.
	So it would be nice With the enormous challenges facing this nation, we can, you know, come together as a people and try and fix these problems.
	And I think we need to have a very honest reassessment, retrospectively take a look at, okay, this is one foreign entanglement we're involved in.
	What were we trying to accomplish?
	Did we?
	What was the cost in human lives?
	What was the cost in treasure?
	And just go back in history and do an honest assessment.
	I don't think we do that.
	America's a great country because Americans are good people.
	We want the best for our fellow citizens and for people all around the world.
	There's a broad spectrum of opinion within the Republican Party as well as nationally in terms of how do you achieve those goals.
	I just don't think we have intelligent enough conversation about these things.
	Does peace through strength, you know, that's just such a slogan, right?
	Reagan said the same thing.
	Does that include ramping up military spending?
	Is it a way to achieve strength, to give more and more payouts and giveaways to what's sometimes derisively called the military-industrial complex, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc.?
	Is that a component of what you envision as peace through strength?
	What does that mean in more specificity?
	Well, I just described it to you.
	To me, peace and strength starts with economic strength and national unity.
	And right now, we're not scoring very high on those two measures of strength.
	That comes before the type of military strength.
	My fear is people misinterpret that as military strength and just, you know, throw more hundreds of billions of dollars into the military-industrial complex, which I have a great deal of suspicion of.
	Quite honestly.
	I don't think we've heeded Eisenhower's warning.
	Eisenhower was a very smart man, a very sober man.
	He ordered, you know, the invasion.
	He ordered people knowing that they were going to be dying in that war.
	So that's a serious human being that's warning us about the military-industrial complex, the public funding of scientific research, not plundering our children's future, and even more importantly, the fourth warning in his farewell address was we cannot allow society globally To descend into a state of dreadful fear and hate.
	Fear and hate.
	Well, climate change, pandemic, I mean, you know, all the boogeymen are around the world.
	They're pushing fear to control us.
	And certainly the hate that's being spread, the division being spread, further weakens us.
	So, again, I think we need to rethink an awful lot that, you know, that political demagogues and political rhetoric paper over.
	So I've spoken to Senator Kramer about the national security supplemental that passed in April.
	I believe you voted against that, correct?
	And Senator Kramer says that actually Donald Trump was fairly instrumental in getting that passed.
	Kramer liaised with Trump to include some of his policy recommendations in terms of how to structure The Ukraine component, as a loan, we're told.
	Do you think that's a loan that's going to be ever repaid?
	Apparently it doesn't accrue interest.
	And what was Trump's role, as far as you were able to tell?
	You know, massaging that bill such that it was palatable to enough Republicans to pass through the Congress.
	The only role I can imagine he played was talking about maybe make it a loan rather than just an outright grant.
	I can't imagine that loan's ever going to be repaid.
	I oppose the bill because I've thought before we spend $60 billion helping another country secure its border, we ought to do our own.
	And again, that was completely botched by Leader McConnell, but I see I've got to go.
	Thanks, Senator Johnson.
	We're with Congressman Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin.
	How are you, sir?
	Great.
	Final day of the convention, but we're sitting here waiting for President Trump's speech.
	And Hulk Hogan, we're told.
	And Hulk Hogan, though.
	I'm waiting for President Trump.
	Are you a wrestling fan?
	Not that much.
	The Crusher passed away years ago, and he's who we rooted for in Milwaukee.
	Alright, well, I'm sure we can all enjoy Hulk Hogan regardless.
	So one of the running themes of this convention, and really of the entire Trump era, since he's been a prominent political figure, has been this concept of America First.
	Do you see any conflict or conceptual Incongruity between supporting Ukraine, Israel and spending lots of billions on armaments and so forth for those conflicts and also espousing this idea of America first.
	Are they reconcilable?
	Well, we've had largely a safe world since the end of World War II and one of the reasons we have largely a safe world It's because America's been number one and countries like, say, Iran are not able to disrupt the world order.
	I do believe we should be looking to get out of Ukraine.
	I do believe we should be negotiating a peace, but I think the United States is better off if that peace is one negotiated with Russia rather than one determined by a complete Russian victory in Europe.
	So you voted in favor of the National Security Supplemental in April?
	I voted against the National Security Supplemental, but it's the vote you're talking about.
	Against the Ukraine funding portion?
	Right, I voted against that.
	But you voted for the Israel funding portion?
	I voted for the Israel funding portion.
	I had voted in the past, kind of reluctantly, to fund Ukraine, but I want to send the message that they should be negotiating an end.
	And I think if you talk to the Biden people, the big problem you have there is they keep throwing money into it without any plans to end that fight, which is ridiculous because there was a time when Ukraine had the upper hand there and they couldn't negotiate a peace.
	They didn't negotiate a peace.
	It's a war of attrition.
	And we do not want to have a war of attrition in which, first of all, humanitarian-wise, so many more Ukrainian and Russian troops are dying, but also a war that Russia will probably win because they've got a bigger population.
	So you did vote for the Israel portion, which was about $26 billion, correct?
	$24 billion, something like that.
	Now, do you look at that conflict in any kind of similar way?
	Is there any end state that you would want to lead that toward?
	Because it seems like it's another perpetual war that the U.S.
	obviously has a heavy role in.
	There could be another front opening potentially in the north with Hezbollah.
	Should any diplomatic leverage be exerted there?
	Or is that just another open-ended conflict in the Middle East that the U.S.
	is party to?
	I don't think it's open-ended.
	I think Israel is winning that war.
	I think their military is much stronger.
	And I think, I agree with Mr. Netanyahu, when he says when things wrap up in that war, we don't want to have a repeat of this thing for another 40 or 50 years.
	And I think to have that, you need complete victory.
	I think what disappoints me is the international community, including President Biden, is not putting more pressure on Hamas.
	They should be getting nothing, right?
	Our goal is to defeat Hamas.
	I don't think they're trying to do that.
	But, I mean, the United States has provided an enormous amount of armaments to Israel for use in that war, so it's not as though the U.S.
	has gone particularly easy on Hamas, right?
	I mean, Gaza's been pretty well pulverized into oblivion, hasn't it?
	Well, I'm apparently not pulverized enough because the war keeps on going.
	How about Taiwan?
	Would you prefer for the whole strategic ambiguity concept to be revised where the U.S.
	doesn't outright say, at least in terms of official policy, that it would come to Taiwan's defense in the event of an incursion by China?
	Would you want or would you expect a second Trump administration to be more explicit on that issue that the U.S.
	has this commitment militarily to Taiwan?
	How do you think about that issue?
	I think we've gotten along with the current situation since China became communist, China took over, and I don't see any reason to dramatically change the current statements or policy now.
	Okay, so obviously everyone is still a bit shook by the attempted assassination on President Trump last weekend.
	I've spoken to a lot of your colleagues who believe that there was some sort of divine intervention at play that spared Trump from the worst of the assassins, with the assassin's bullet.
	Did that thought ever cross your mind?
	Did you think there might be some heavenly explanation for what happened?
	Well, you're not going to see something like this happen again, right?
	I mean, if that guy took that shot 100,000 times, I bet he couldn't any other time hit President Trump's ear, but just miss his skull.
	So obviously, God has hands on all events.
	You can take it for what you will.
	So, how does this bolster the mythology around Trump?
	It seems like now he's almost entered into the annals of American folklore.
	Maybe he had been already to some extent, but this really intensifies it.
	What do you make of that?
	Absolutely, absolutely.
	I mean, for him to survive this, and then particularly not to cower behind his podium, but to get right up and tell everybody to keep fighting.
	That's why he's liked.
	And I think President Trump is, even among this Republican crowd, a lot more revered today than he was two weeks ago.
	All right.
	Thanks, Congressman.
	Appreciate it.
	So we're with Randy Fine, who's a state representative from Florida.
	Yes.
	And what is your relationship to the Trump campaign?
	I see you're wearing a kippah that has a Trump-Jewish coalition or council or something.
	Just describe.
	Well, this morning we had the kickoff of the Trump-Jewish leadership at 9 o'clock this morning.
	I was honored to be there and be a part of it.
	Because look, Jews in America have no choice.
	If we want to stay in America, we have to vote for Donald Trump.
	So if Joe Biden gets reelected, what happens?
	Is there a mass exodus from the United States?
	I don't know that it'll be safe.
	I don't think it'll be safe for my children.
	Look, the Democratic Party has embraced rank anti-Semitism.
	What you see going on on our college campuses make kids feel unsafe.
	I get calls every day from parents and students who no longer feel safe going to college in the United States.
	We don't want to end up like France, where the chief rabbi said, it's time to go.
	France is the third largest Jewish population in the world.
	You want to know who's number two?
	It's us.
	And so Donald Trump has to win because he will keep Jews safe.
	Now when you say that kids feel unsafe, obviously that's been a very popular narrative, common narrative since October 7th.
	Do you think there's any irony there in just the claim or the assertion that students don't feel safe often because they hear speech that makes them feel unsafe?
	Ought not students to be taught to be resilient and be able to withstand even very objectionable speech that they might find disconcerting or troubling?
	Are they really unsafe?
	That's what we more associate with, you know, being threatened with violence.
	Maybe that happens in certain instances, but in terms of where it's just pure speech.
	So maybe somebody's chanting for the river to the sea, you can object to that substantively, but does that really make them unsafe?
	Well, I'll give you an example.
	Look, I went to Harvard 30 years ago, and it was not an easy place to be a conservative.
	I often said they put you on an anvil and they beat Now, they beat you with words, and one thing happened.
	They either beat it out of you, or they beat it into you.
	In my case, I came out pretty sharp.
	But it's different now.
	Speech is not when you block the dining hall.
	Speech is not when you're screaming in the library when students are studying for exams.
	Speech is not when you're surrounding someone and scaring them.
	We are well past speech.
	In college, when I was there, we heard the Free Free Palestine nonsense.
	They still said it, but they have gone from speech to violence.
	And they can call it mostly peaceful protests.
	That's the Democrats' favorite phrase, but that's not what it is.
	And these kids aren't safe on campus.
	So, in a hypothetical scenario where a group of left-wing activists or whomever really did just engage in speech that was pro-Palestine, anti-Israel, you can object to it on the merits, that's what everybody can do in a free society, is there a way for them to do that that you wouldn't call for any measures to counteract them?
	Or, like, is it intrinsically unsafe for people to be chanting certain slogans about, like, river to the sea or what have you?
	Well, you shouldn't be able to call for the death of people, but it's not just what other people are calling.
	In Florida, we just had an issue where students were asked what country Israel got its land from.
	And the correct answer to the question on a test in school was Palestine.
	That's a factually inaccurate statement.
	Britain, right?
	That's the correct answer.
	Well, yeah, but it was not, it was not Palestine.
	And they were asked, what does Israel use to justify its terrorism?
	And the third question they were asked is, did you know that Israel invented terrorism?
	This was in a textbook being used in 150 universities in the United States.
	We discovered it in Florida.
	So it's not just about dangerous speech.
	It's about accurate speech.
	And kids deserve to be told the truth.
	And we're going to make sure that happens.
	I totally agree with you on accurate speech.
	I mean, obviously, there was the British mandate of Palestine that was then created, led to the creation of Israel because there was a declaration of independence.
	So people should get their facts straight.
	Now, I mean, you brought up Israel creating terrorism.
	I don't agree with that comment at all.
	But I mean, there were some You might call them terroristic incidents that led to the formation of Israel.
	King David Hotel.
	I was just in Jerusalem last year, so that was a terroristic incident, correct?
	But it was done by these Syrian militia groups that were very staunchly Zionist.
	So I mean, is there any...
	Just wondering, how do you react to that?
	Is that a credible historical claim to make?
	I stopped listening to the textbook when they asked me what country Israel came from, and the answer was Palestine.
	When you say something like that, everything that comes out of your mouth afterwards doesn't really matter.
	So again, it's not just about unsafe speech, it's about accurate speech.
	And universities need to be teaching kids the truth.
	And so much of the problem is they are being lied to.
	They're being fed nonsense.
	And we're going to learn, this shooter that tried to kill President Trump, It's not a coincidence that in the TikTok generation, where all of this nonsense gets spouted in front of kids, that they start to go crazy.
	We need to make sure people are not only hearing Not dangerous speech, but accurate speech, and there's too much nonsense being put out there.
	Wait, sorry, just to make sure I'm clarifying or I'm understanding what you're saying, are you hypothesizing that this shooter could be anti-Semitic or could have some views on Israel?
	No, no, no, I don't know that it has anything to do with Israel.
	I'm just saying when you look at the fact that anti-Semitism has spiked so much among the youth and you look where they get their information from, we have a problem in this country with Factually inaccurate information getting out there and that's why it's important like people like my friend Gabe Grossman who's over there and he's out there putting information out that we put out accurate information that people can use to understand what's really going on.
	What about younger Jews?
	Maybe more activist-inclined Jews?
	Is there any tension between, you know, declaring their political activity anti-Semitism or furthering anti-Semitism?
	And there's always been robust debate, dissension within Jewish communities since, you know, the dawn of time.
	Jews, we like to argue with each other.
	I consider myself a social and cultural Jew, even though I wasn't born a Jew.
	So, I mean, have you ever...
	Well, just because you like to eat bagels and lox doesn't make you Jewish.
	being inherited like pro-Palestine activism, when so many of the organizers are themselves, you know, college age Jewish people much of the time.
	- Well, just because you like to eat bagels and lox doesn't make you Jewish.
	I mean, look, there's a reason we have the IRA definition.
	- If you're bar mitzvahed.
	- Well, I mean that too, but there's a reason why we have the IRA definition.
	And the IRA definition lays out very clearly what is and is not anti-Semitism.
	And what's important, and people try to blur the lines, when you criticize Israel the same way you criticize other countries, that's not anti-Semitism.
	But when you treat Israel differently than other countries, when the same activity doesn't bother you in any other country in the world, but it bothers you when Israel does it, that's anti-Semitic.
	And so that's how they try to get away with it, but it doesn't change the fact of what it is.
	Yeah, that is in the IHRA definition, applying double standards to Israel.
	But let's say somebody does apply double standards to Israel.
	Does that mean that they are inherently anti-Semitic?
	Maybe they just have a disproportionate focus on Israel because it's a huge recipient of U.S.
	largesse, armaments, money, other kinds of operational coordination.
	I mean, does that automatically prove that they have an animus toward Jews?
	Sometimes I feel like issues get conflated around that.
	Is that not reasonable?
	Well, I think what's going on is there's gradations.
	You know, there are some people, I don't think you're either an anti-Semite or you're not.
	There's levels of anti-Semites.
	There are people who don't like me as a Jew.
	That doesn't mean they want to put me in the oven.
	And there are others who feel that way.
	So it's not yes or no.
	But the fact is, is that many of these double standards that you see, they are anti-Semitic.
	When you hear people blame Jews for killing Jesus, for example, but you don't see them mad at the Italians.
	You know, that's that's a double standard.
	So you see these issues that are out there where Jews get held out for special treatment that other groups in other countries that other peoples don't get.
	That's anti-Semitic.
	So what happened last fall when you you had initially endorsed Ron DeSantis in the presidential race?
	Obviously, you know, you work with him in Florida and then you you announced that you were switching your endorsement to Trump.
	If memory serves, I think I saw your tweet when you announced that and you said something to the effect that Trump was better for Jewish interests or that he would be a better protector of Jews.
	And I think, didn't you say that DeSantis had not denounced neo-Nazi rallyers that were, you know, making a commotion in Florida?
	Am I on target there?
	Was that your rationale?
	So I didn't do it in a tweet.
	I actually did it in an op-ed that ran all over the country.
	And look, the biggest issue, the biggest premise of my view was we know what we were getting with Donald Trump.
	And I don't believe October 7th would have happened if he were president.
	And in a world that's gone crazy, we could either go with what we know works or we could try someone new.
	My father does not like Donald Trump.
	My dad said he'd never vote for Donald Trump.
	He's a Republican.
	He just didn't like how he behaved on Twitter.
	He said, I'll never vote for the guy.
	And then on October 8th, my dad comes to me and he says, it has to be Trump.
	And I go, why dad?
	He goes, Excuse my language.
	I go, why dad, why Trump?
	He goes, sometimes you need an asshole.
	Your dad's OK with truth social, I guess.
	Well, no, my father believes that we need someone who's strong and forceful.
	And what you can say about what happened last Saturday is it takes a lot to get shot and then get up, say, wear my shoes and start saying, fight, fight, fight.
	He's tough.
	He's strong.
	And the world will be afraid of him.
	And that's what we need right now.
	Did you get any consternation or blowback in Florida among your colleagues for having switched your endorsement from the governor of your state to somebody else?
	What was that like?
	I did, but I always do what I think is right.
	I don't worry about the consequences.
	In this job, I get paid $29,000 a year to be a state representative.
	I'm away from my family and I get a lot of crap.
	If I'm not going to say and do what I believe is right, why do it?
	Because if there's all these perks to the job, no one's shown them to me yet.
	So I don't worry about those kinds of things.
	Last question.
	Is there a tension between adhering to this concept of America first and also Being an unswerving supporter of Israel.
	I don't know if you identify with America First, but sometimes there are some debates about that potential conflict within the Republican or conservative coalition.
	How do you reconcile those competing incentives or considerations?
	Well, it's very easy.
	Look, the values of Israel are the values of the United States.
	And the same people who want to kill Israel and blow up Israel, there's not that many Jews in the world.
	There's fewer Jews than there are people who live in Beijing, China.
	When they're done with the Jews, they're coming for us.
	So we can help them fight the bad guys over there or we can deal with them like we did on 9-11 over here.
	Standing with Israel means standing with America.
	So if you're America first, you should be Israel first as well.
	And what is your plan as far as campaigning for Trump looking toward November?
	Are you going to be active in organizing Jewish groups or what's your agenda going to be?
	I'm going to be as active as they ask me to be.
	I'm happy to travel to synagogues and go everywhere else because It is important for the safety of my two sons that he win.
	I believe the future of this country, the future of Israel, and the future of Jews in the United States depends on him winning.
	So I will do whatever they ask.
	If they want me to go knock on doors, if they want me to speak in synagogues, Nevada, Arizona, I've got plenty of frequent flyer miles they can put me to work.
	All right, Representative Randy Fine of Florida, thanks for joining us.
	Thank you.
	So we're with Congressman Ken Calvert of California.
	How are you, sir?
	Great, great, fantastic.
	What are your impressions of the convention so far?
	It's great.
	The party's unified.
	We're ready to move to November and get a good president in the White House.
	Can't be soon enough.
	So one of the running themes of this convention, and really of the entire Trump era, you might say, is the concept of America First.
	Do you see there being any tension between supporting expenditures to support war efforts in Ukraine and Israel, Indo-Pacific, and also espousing this notion of America First?
	If memory serves, you were a strong proponent of the National Security Supplemental back in April, which was A huge bill.
	Almost $100 billion for foreign conflicts.
	Yes, much of it spent on domestic production, but nevertheless.
	Do you see there being any tension there?
	Can you reconcile it?
	Look, we're going to have differences.
	That's any healthy party is going to have differences.
	We're going to talk it out.
	We work it out and try to put together legislation that, for the most part, people support in this country.
	So, in terms of the Ukraine piece of that, the Biden administration is unclear as to what are the parameters governing how Ukraine can use U.S.
	weaponry to strike inside territorial Russia.
	We were told that Biden issued an authorization that allowed Ukraine to make those cross-border strikes in May, but the geographic scope of that is ambiguous.
	What is your best sense of that?
	One of the criticisms I've had of the Biden administration, among many criticisms, is that there's not a strategy to success.
	That they need to allow the Ukrainians to have the systems and munitions that are necessary to actually win.
	Not to just have a stagnation on the Donbass at the present moment.
	And so that needs to happen.
	It needs to happen soon.
	Because obviously Ukraine can't have a war of attrition.
	They would lose because there's not enough of them.
	Russians would outlast them, so they need to move and move as quickly as possible.
	And would you hope and expect that a second Trump administration would remove some of those constraints that the Biden administration has imposed on Ukraine vis-a-vis the weapons, use of the weapons systems?
	Well first, let me say that I don't think there would have been a war in Ukraine if President Biden would have been president.
	President Trump.
	I mean President Trump would have been president.
	Excuse me.
	Because Biden was weak and Putin thought he could get away with it.
	And so he attacked.
	And obviously the Ukrainians have fought valiantly and the Europeans have been supporting him, obviously the United States.
	But to get this to end, we're going to need someone who's a strong president that can come in and And show strength and bring these parties together and end it.
	Right now there's 700,000 casualties in Ukraine and Russia combined.
	If this continues to go on by the end of the year, there'll be over a million casualties.
	Those are staggering numbers.
	Staggering numbers.
	These are young people.
	There's a large percentage of their populations are within those age brackets.
	I hate war.
	I deal with it every day, but I hate it.
	And the best way to avoid it is through strength.
	But we are where we are.
	I mean, you could posit a counterfactual where it never would have broken out if Trump had been in power, but you know.
	The timeline went the way it did, so therefore on a specific policy level, do you anticipate that Trump would loosen some of those restrictions on Ukraine in their offensive against Russia?
	I haven't talked specifically to him about that.
	I'm certain though that he would show strength and resolve and to try to bring this to an honorable end as quickly as possible.
	Yeah, so obviously we're all still a bit shaken from the events of last weekend with Donald Trump narrowly avoiding an assassin's bullet.
	Obviously he was struck, but it wasn't the worst that it could have been.
	I've spoken to a lot of your colleagues who are convinced that divine intervention of some sort was at play.
	Has that thought crossed your mind, or what is your theory of what occurred there?
	Well, it was a miracle.
	If he hadn't turned his head, we'd be attending a funeral today, not a nomination for the next President of the United States.
	So, God was with him that day.
	I believe that.
	Now, what about California?
	You represent Palm Springs area, is that right?
	Republicans actually overperformed in California in 2022, as best I could tell.
	Congressman Duarte and a couple of others were elected in competitive districts.
	Sometimes Republicans from elsewhere in the country will write off California as a lost cause, but there does seem to have been some momentum around, at least on certain levels, In California.
	What's your best political synopsis of the current status of California?
	I think we're in good shape.
	Obviously losing Kevin McCarthy wasn't helpful.
	But Jorte is a great candidate.
	Mike Garcia is a great candidate.
	Michelle Steele.
	Young Kim.
	Young Kim, obviously.
	David Valadao.
	All of those candidates.
	Scott Baugh running in the open seat in Orange County.
	Tom McClintock still plugging away?
	No Tom, he's always going to win that district and do well in it.
	So I feel good about California.
	As a matter of fact, I think we can have a net pickup.
	Maybe with Scott Baugh and maybe in Stockton we have a great candidate, Lincoln, who's doing a great job.
	And Gunderson running against Levin down in San Diego.
	So we have some great candidates out there.
	I think we're going to pick up seats.
	I think I'm, you know, I'm gonna do fine and we'll win and I think all of our incumbents will win and we'll add to the majority.
	Yeah, I think sometimes there's this sense that, you know, politics are static or, you know, red states and blue states have this intractable divide, but the Republicans would not have won a majority in 2022 without New York, New Jersey, California, Oregon, etc.
	We wouldn't have a majority in Congress without New York and California.
	And so the Democrats believe they can carry back the majority through New York and California.
	So they're going to spend a lot of money.
	They'll probably spend up to $20 million against me and against some of my colleagues.
	But they can't buy this seat.
	And I don't think they can buy any of the seats in California, nor in New York.
	How about the Senate race?
	Adam Schiff somewhat surprisingly, maybe to some, came out yesterday and called on Biden to withdraw.
	There's rumors that that was done as like a proxy for Nancy Pelosi, but who's to say for sure?
	Steve Garvey, you know, should be a fairly A fairly good-looking candidate for many, for a baseball star, obviously, but is there any chance for a statewide victory in California?
	I hope so.
	Steve's a great guy.
	Obviously, Adam Schiff is not the kind of senator I would like to see in the state of California.
	Censured recently.
	Yeah, and Steve Garvey is a great guy.
	By the way, the best fielding first baseman ever to play baseball, I think.
	And he's very popular in Los Angeles, very popular in the Hispanic community, who are huge Dodger fans, as I am.
	So I'm worshiping him well, and I'm gonna do everything I can to help him.
	I gotta, I gotta zip.
	Alright, thanks Congressman, appreciate it.
	Take care.
	Remind me of your name again, sir.
	4G Auto Blue.
	And what does that derive from?
	Blow means been living off wealth.
	Forgiato was a rim company that I got on my car, you know what I'm saying?
	At one time in the rap industry, I was signed under Blow.
	I had to change my name up to get out of my deal.
	So it was Forgiato Blow on top.
	And you just produced a music video with Amber Rose, who also spoke at the convention.
	We're obviously at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
	What was that like?
	At the end of the day, I think it was amazing to show her get up there, the courage to get up there.
	You know, she's been fighting a culture war for a long time, but on the wrong side.
	now she's on the right side.
	We voting Trump, Trump, baby.
	Trump, Trump, baby.
	November 5th, we going crazy.
	November 5th, we going crazy.
	Um, you know, a lot of people are coming out, and I tell a lot of supporters who are paying attention are everyday patriots, you got to let these new people come over.
	Our job is to red pill them.
	We're changing the culture.
	We need new voters.
	So one thing she can bring is new voters.
	She has more Instagram followers than Donald Trump does, you know what I'm saying, on social media.
	That's a fun fact.
	She has a big, big following.
	I think it's amazing.
	What does she do?
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not familiar with her, really.
	Well, I mean, she's been a model, you know what I'm saying?
	There's all types of models in the world.
	She's been in music videos like Kanye West, Wiz Khalifa, different type people.
	At the end of the day, you know, she has her own brand and she's been able to do great things with it.
	Do you consider yourself a conservative?
	Yes, I would.
	What does your ideology consist of in terms of conservatism?
	Well, to me, you know what I'm saying, obviously God, but it's just like, you know, caring about your neighbor, uh, also caring about your country, uh, putting other people first, but not being like judgmental, you know what I'm saying?
	And like giving people opportunity to really show you who they really are.
	And, um, you know, obviously I don't, I myself, I don't drink, I don't smoke.
	You know what I'm saying?
	I went to a military boarding school.
	From fifth to my senior year in high school.
	Where'd you grow up?
	Florida.
	So, you know, I was a black sheep in my family, you know what I'm saying, for a long time.
	But, you know, it's like Donald Trump went to boarding school, same thing happened to me.
	That's my connection with him.
	But I've always been like a businessman, a hustler, trying to find ways to make money.
	And I always supported Trump.
	That was his thing.
	Once you really got involved in this stuff, you really start to realize politics is kind of shady, the stuff they do.
	You know, when I rapped about guns, like I told you, and drugs and murder, I didn't get taken down.
	But when I'm rapping about, you know, No mandate on vaccines and close the border.
	You know, one day voting.
	Same day, tell me who's the winner.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Simple little things.
	They take you down on social media.
	So I already could tell it was a crapshoot from there.
	What are your thoughts on Israel and the war that's been going on there?
	And the U.S.
	has obviously supplied a lot of weapons to facilitate Israel's war in the Palestinian territories.
	What are your thoughts on that, if any?
	I mean, really?
	I stand with America.
	You know what I'm saying?
	Like, we need to stay in America.
	You know, it's cool that we're helping a lot of countries out.
	And I think, you know, that just goes back and forth.
	There's been a war brewing between them for a long time, you know?
	Obviously, I don't want to see no kids get killed.
	You know, I think that Israel is protecting themselves, you know what I'm saying?
	And then they, Palestinians, you know, stand on their ground too.
	So at the end of the day, I'm focused on this election.
	I'm focused on Donald Trump.
	I'm focusing on Joe Biden stepping down and see who's going to come in next.
	He doesn't have COVID, you know what I'm saying?
	There's a reason why there's any COVID.
	He's about to step down.
	I think Michelle Obama's going to come in.
	But my main thing is like America first.
	Like, look, we didn't have $7 million to build a wall, but we got $70 billion to give Ukraine, right?
	There's homeless veterans out here sleeping on the streets.
	You know what I mean?
	Well, Trump is the one who started arming Ukraine in the first place.
	we're cool But I'm saying, we didn't give him $70 billion.
	It's the same thing now.
	If you believe in Black Lives Matter, I believe that black lives do matter.
	But an organization, they're out here doing this stuff all day.
	How many homeless black people did they walk by out here sleeping to come bitch about Donald Trump?
	That's what I want to know.
	Well, Trump backed the $61 billion for Ukraine that was passed in the April National Security Supplemental Bill.
	So, you know, it's a mixed bag.
	At the end of the day, I'm standing with America first.
	Do you know Trump personally?
	Have you spoken to him recently?
	I've met Trump numerous times, yes.
	When's the last time you spoke to him?
	Maybe 10 months ago.
	And what did you talk about?
	Pretty much let him know that I got his back.
	You know, I do a lot of stuff outside of the politics in here.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, that's why when we're talking to you, there's a line of people trying to take pictures with me.
	I talk to the average everyday American that doesn't get to meet Donald Trump, that doesn't get to go to Mar-a-Lago.
	You know what I'm saying?
	That's sitting out here camping out at his rallies.
	They got the hope.
	They see my truck.
	They see my jewelry.
	They see what I'm doing.
	They see the hope of what I'm doing.
	And, you know, it is what it is.
	My boy right there is a legend.
	At the end of the day, it's like me, as being a rapper, I know all the news anchors.
	I know all the politicians.
	I built a lane.
	So if they say this party is racist, has a problem with somebody, I don't look like them 100%.
	I have a whole different style.
	So that's my biggest thing.
	I try to break down the narratives of what it is.
	What's your ethnic background?
	I'm white.
	I'm saying but you know Donald Trump at one time like he might have not been perfect.
	Nobody's perfect.
	You did something in your life that wasn't perfect.
	I did something in my life that isn't perfect.
	I like Joe Biden all day before I'm gonna take a freaking Joe.
	I mean uh Donald Trump before I'm gonna take a Joe Biden.
	You know what I'm saying?
	They only give us two choices.
	Not like we get a whole list of people in the world to pick from.
	You know what I mean?
	And at the end.
	You can vote third party if you want.
	No, no, give us two.
	I'm not voting for a third party.
	But at the end of the day, Donald Trump has did more for America than any president, I feel.
	You know what I mean?
	He's did more for the black community than Obama's ever done.
	So, but yeah, I got to go take these pictures, my brother.
	All right.
	Thanks, sir.
	So we're with Congressman Jack Bergman of Bergman, sorry, of Michigan.
	Congressman Bergman, there's sometimes debate within the Republican Party coalition or the conservative coalition on foreign policy in particular, the concept of America first.
	What does that entail, exactly?
	You did vote for the $26 billion in Israel funding in the Supplemental Appropriations Bill in April.
	Are you an adherent to America First?
	Is it something you support?
	And if so, how do you reconcile it with spending many billions of dollars on a foreign country's war effort?
	Well, you know, you have to understand the definition of what America First really means.
	America, historically, was created by people escaping from persecution or just wanting, you know, the freedom to do what they wanted to do.
	That's what created our country.
	We are now that country who provides a visual, an example of what can be done by faithful people who have a vision.
	So with that comes the responsibility to be the example for the world and sometimes that means helping those who without our help would not survive.
	Even if it requires getting fairly Robustly entangled in the Middle East.
	You know, a lot of Americans have become disillusioned with long-term military interventions, particularly in the Middle East, with the example of Iraq and whatnot.
	Again, is there any legitimacy to that apprehension in terms of how it relates to America First?
	Well, I think, to your point there about Americans being disillusioned, we have failed So many now three generations of Americans by not teaching history, geography, and the understanding that there was a time when our country was protected so easily by the Atlantic Ocean and by the Pacific Ocean.
	If we go to war, you want to play a home game or an away game?
	of everything from weapons system to intent, whether it's China, Iran, Russia, North Korea.
	I use the example to a group of high school students last week.
	If we go to war, you wanna play a home game or an away game? - Home game. - No, 'cause the last home game we played See, we don't teach history.
	Home field advantage, I guess is what I was thinking of for sports.
	No, we want to take it to the away team.
	In fact, we want to go to that other town and we want to help one school beat the other school who's being bad actors in the town.
	I've got grandpa analogies to build on because we've got 10 grandkids.
	And I'm always explaining to them or talking and dialoguing with them about what it means to have been blessed to where we live and what we do and the responsibility.
	Now, NATO, we just had the NATO Summit in Washington, D.C.
	I had a chance to chair part of that NATO parliamentarian expression, if you will, of each country's commitment to NATO and what they're going to do on their defense spending, what they're going to do on their commitment.
	But in the end, The United States is going to have to be the lead.
	That doesn't mean we pay for everything.
	It means we are the lead example and encourage, nourish, and in some cases push our NATO partners into, if you will, compliance with what we've agreed to in this NATO partnership.
	What was your impression at that NATO summit in Washington last week in terms of the attitudes of the European member states who had representatives there?
	Because the common media depiction of Trump and even to some extent J.D.
	Vance is that they're anti-NATO or they want to go easy on Russia.
	I mean, even though Trump brags about how antagonistic his administration's policy was toward Russia in certain ways, is there still that paranoia?
	Among the European officials who are just absorbing some of this erroneous press coverage, or are they a little bit more attuned to reality in terms of the Trump administration policy record, which is the best window into what his policy approach would be in a second administration, correct?
	Well, there's the yes but, because President Trump's first administration, he was new into this world of, if you will, commander-in-chief leadership.
	Sure, he's a business leader, but it's a whole lot different being a commander-in-chief than it is running a business, and he grasped that.
	He is going to be so spectacular with what he learned in his first term.
	We all make mistakes.
	But we don't make the same mistake twice.
	And what I'm proud of, so proud of him, is he has adjusted how he views his role, how he views getting things done.
	But he's no less demanding when it comes to results.
	I'm a Marine.
	J.D.
	Vance is a Marine.
	We're used to getting a mission and delivering the results.
	What was a key mistake from Trump's first term that you look forward optimistically to him correcting in his second term?
	I think he believed the bureaucracies in D.C.
	would jump right in to help.
	The bureaucracies in D.C.
	don't help anybody other than the bureaucracies.
	Now, the liberals are having a hysterical freakout over this Project 2025 document, which was authored by the Heritage Foundation.
	I've read portions of it.
	It really seems like it's just fundamentally some rather marginal bureaucratic reorganization Maybe to root out some of the more, I guess, democratic or liberal-leaning, longer-term, bureaucratic members of the bureaucracy who, in the previous administration, were not so hospitable to Trump.
	Is it really as drastic a plan as the liberals are depicting, as far as you understand?
	I don't know if it's as drastic a plan, but it sets the stage for the tone we need to have to reduce the size and the influence, the unnecessary influence, of the federal bureaucracies in our daily lives.
	We're a country of states' rights.
	The federal government needs to get out at certain things.
	One example, shut down the Department of Education.
	I said that eight years ago when I was running as a new guy.
	Ronald Reagan said that in 1980!
	And that it never happened.
	It never happened because we didn't have elected officials at the time who were willing to take on that task.
	Ronald Reagan got focused on Star Wars, as we called it back then, taking down the Soviet Union.
	And you can't focus on everything.
	But we've got such an opportunity in the, if you will, administration of 47, as it will be, to really finally take that cut out of the bureaucracy That will enable us as a federal government to deliver better results out of the way of the states and the American citizens.
	Finally, I spoke to your colleague Mike Collins from Georgia and he's of the belief that there was divine intervention at play that spared Trump the worst of the bullet that was fired at him on Saturday.
	And there does seem to be a kind of like a religious fervor sort of building in relation to that incident, which was obviously shocking and Extremely alarming.
	So you can understand why people might, you know, be looking above for answers.
	What do you make of that?
	Are you religiously inclined in terms of the explanation for why Trump was spared the worst?

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