Michael Knowles is joined by Rep. Jim jordan to discuss his new book, the future of the conservative party, and how optimistic we should be for the future of our country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| I'm very pleased to be joined now by the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee. | |
| Now, very shortly, I'm expecting him to be the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. | |
| The Republicans are looking pretty good for 2022, but there's a long way to go. | |
| I am joined by none other than Congressman Jim Jordan, author of the new book, Do What You Said You Would Do. | |
| One of the things that Jim Jordan said he would do is come here to Nashville to be on the show. | |
| Congressman, thank you for being here. | |
| Thank you for having me, Michael, and thank you for all you do for the cause of freedom. | |
| We appreciate it. | |
| Well, that's very kind. | |
| I'm so glad that you could be here because freedom is under threat. | |
| I'm not just talking about pie-in-the-sky freedom. | |
| I'm not even talking about economic freedom. | |
| We hear a lot about that. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I'm talking about the freedom to raise your own kids. | |
| And you have been calling out the Attorney General Merrick Garland on this. | |
| Merrick Garland said, I have not labeled parents, white supremacists, domestic terrorists, for wanting to stop crazy gender and race theories in their schools. | |
| But a whistleblower seems to have thrown that story upside down. | |
| Right. | |
| Did the Attorney General lie? | |
| Yeah, he said that on October 21st and just so happened when he said that the day before, the head of the counterterrorism division at the FBI, so not just anybody at the FBI, The head of the counterterrorism division had sent out an email to FBI agents around the country saying do what Merrick Garland said that he wasn't doing just 24 hours later to actually put a threat tag on parents, on people, moms and dads showing up at school board meetings. | |
| I mean, they were showing up to protest this crazy, racist, hate America curriculum. | |
| So yeah, I think he misled the committee. | |
| We've asked for him to come back. | |
| And he should, because he's got to answer some, I think, pretty... | |
| Here's one question I think. | |
| The first question you ask him is, how many? | |
| What's the number? | |
| How many parents have the tag or the label? | |
| When I first saw our staff at the district committee showed me the correspondence from the whistleblower and the email that went out, When I first saw it, the first thing that came to mind is this is what the IRS did 10 years ago, 10, 12 years ago when they had the BOLO list. | |
| Be on the lookout for these people, these types of groups using terms like freedom and patriot. | |
| Imagine that. | |
| All those terrible terms. | |
| This is just another example of weaponizing the government to go after people with a different political belief than what the left has in the government. | |
| The creepiest part of this to me—well, there are many creepy parts. | |
| I don't want to make that claim. | |
| But one of the creepiest parts is that these parents who show up and say, we don't want critical race theory in schools, we don't want radical gender theory in schools, they are labeled by the federal government, domestic terrorists or whatever, It's not as though they're being charged with a crime. | |
| It's not as though they're going to get to have their day in court. | |
| They're just having that label put on them, and in many cases, they won't even know it. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No, that's... | |
| And it's the federal government. | |
| It shouldn't be anybody in government doing it, but the idea that the big federal government's coming in, and if there is some kind of violence or something happening in court, well, then the local government, local sheriffs, local police, they should handle it. | |
| That's how it's supposed to work in our federal constitutional system. | |
| But when you have the FBI doing this... | |
| Here's the other thing I think, as I look at the timeline on this, remember the letter comes from the School Board Association on September 29th. | |
| Four days later, the letter asks for, it talks about parents, talks about the Patriot Act, and asks the Biden administration to go after these moms and dads. | |
| Five days later, Merrick Garland, the Attorney General of the United States issues a memorandum, which does just that. | |
| Puts in place task force in all 94 U.S. judicial districts, the U.S. attorney districts around the country. | |
| And then we go through this and Mayor Garland comes testify. | |
| But we now have learned that through, it's been reported, that the White House was working with the School Board Association before the letter was ever sent. | |
| So I don't think this was actually the School Board Association Initiating this, I think it came from the government. | |
| I think they just used the letter as the pretext to do this. | |
| They didn't like that parents were showing up protesting. | |
| They said we're going to stop it. | |
| We're going to stop it by this chilling impact of the Attorney General of the United States issuing a memo that says we're going to treat parents, give them this label of a terrorist tag, a threat tag. | |
| The one thing they didn't bargain for, though, moms and dads said, like heck you are. | |
| These are my kids. | |
| I mean, I always say, no lobbyist, no bureaucrat, no government official will ever beat a mom on a mission. | |
| And these moms said, we're not going to tolerate this. | |
| And moms and dads stood up, and that's what they didn't expect. | |
| And it was so much so that the day, less than 24 hours after Merrick Garland testifies, The agency, this left-wing political group, they issue an apology for the initial letter. | |
| You follow politics. | |
| I've been in politics a long time. | |
| I have never seen that happen. | |
| 24 hours later, oh, and here's the language. | |
| We regret and apologize for the letter. | |
| Wow. | |
| So they didn't bargain for that. | |
| And the Biden administration, I think, though... | |
| So it didn't go from the school board association to the government. | |
| I think it went the other way. | |
| That's the scary part. | |
| Now, do you think that this... | |
| I think you're totally right. | |
| I think that the government and the Democrats and the liberal establishment broadly saw this education issue as a big threat. | |
| It just cost them a governorship in Virginia. | |
| They saw parents of all stripes, of all shapes, of all colors showing up and saying, we're going to protect our kids. | |
| We have the right to raise our kids, not you, Terry McAuliffe, not you, Joe Biden. | |
| It seems to me this is the first issue-driven grassroots movement on the right since the Tea Party. | |
| You have the Tea Party, now you have the CR Tea Party, if you'll pardon a lame pun. | |
| Do you think that this just wins us Virginia, maybe it helps a little in Jersey and it fizzles? | |
| Or does this movement about education from the right No, it has legs. | |
| And you asked the question because you know it has legs or you believe the same thing I do. | |
| It's funny you say that because the October 21st, a few weeks ago, when Merrick Garland testified, I gave my opening statement. | |
| You know how these committee things work. | |
| Jerry Nadler, the chairman, gives the opening statement. | |
| Then the top Republican gives the opening statement. | |
| And at the end of my opening statement, I said, Mr. | |
| Attorney General, I think this memo... | |
| I think this is the last straw. | |
| I think this is a catalyst for a great reawakening, kind of revival-type mindset in this country for freedom, for Judeo-Christian principles and values. | |
| And I think that's catching on. | |
| I really do. | |
| And then, of course, it was a few weeks later, as you point out, where the voters in Virginia said, time out. | |
| We're going to make Glenn Youngkin the next governor of our state because we don't like where this is going. | |
| And it happened on top of what we've been through over the last year, where frankly every single right we enjoy as Americans under the First Amendment has been assaulted by the left. | |
| And so in that framework, they now find out, and now they're going to label us terrorists, and they're coming after, they think they're smarter than we are as moms and dads about our kids. | |
| Time out to that. | |
| So I think it is going to grow. | |
| I think it really is. | |
| Even this word education, we think of it as just reading, writing, and arithmetic. | |
| Education means, Raising a kid, that's the root of the word, and so it's about a lot more than that. | |
| To your observation here that a lot of this is about losing Christianity, our Christian morality, losing the regular old patriotism that we used to have. | |
| Now we're being taught all the opposite of that in schools. | |
| But there's obviously a moral component. | |
| There's obviously a religious component. | |
| If you teach a kid, we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, And endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. | |
| That's a religious statement. | |
| It's something that we are teaching. | |
| For a long time, Republicans said, we don't want to touch it. | |
| We don't want to touch the culture issues. | |
| We don't want to touch anything about religion or morality. | |
| We're going to cut taxes and that's that. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Obviously, it hasn't served us very well. | |
| Do you see the Republican Party getting behind this kind of... | |
| I do. | |
| I do. | |
| I really do, because... | |
| I mean, think about this. | |
| You go to any major urban public school district in the country, and the graduation rate is some ridiculously low percentage. | |
| Kids reading at grade level. | |
| Third graders in Detroit reading at grade level is 30... | |
| I'm just making up a number, but we know it's bad. | |
| 30%, 40%. | |
| And so this is happening in all kinds of urban public schools and now some other schools around the country. | |
| And what do Democrats say? | |
| Here's our answer. | |
| We're going to make your kid wear a mask all day at school. | |
| We're going to teach them critical race theory. | |
| We're going to tell them that their country stinks. | |
| And meanwhile, parents are saying, well, I don't like all that. | |
| And I'd also like you to teach them to read and write and learn the basics. | |
| Right. | |
| I think what we should be saying is, voters out there, do not vote for anyone who's not for school choice. | |
| Don't vote for anyone who doesn't say, moms and dads should determine what's best for their kids' education. | |
| And if you've got a candidate running for office and they're not for that, don't help them. | |
| Work against them or find a candidate to run against them. | |
| That's how we have to do it, and I think that will catch on. | |
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| You know, I saw the day after Youngkin's victory in Virginia. | |
| I saw some, I won't name names, but some members of Republican leadership. | |
| They said, this was a victory against socialism. | |
| That was the message. | |
| And I thought, look, I hate socialism. | |
| Socialism's evil. | |
| This had nothing to do with socialism. | |
| Terry McAuliffe is a regular, crooked, corporate Democrat. | |
| He's not Che Guevara. | |
| He's a Clinton Democrat. | |
| He's a Clinton Democrat. | |
| And I just think, if we just run against socialism, We're going to have the same old coalition we always have. | |
| But if we can somehow convince whole swaths of people that the Democrats are indoctrinating your kids with a bunch of nonsense that's going to screw them up for life, which has obviously happened. | |
| We got the receipts for that. | |
| Maybe we have a chance into 2022. | |
| Maybe 2024. | |
| The American people are smart people. | |
| The American people have common sense. | |
| And I think they have now seen the big picture. | |
| Remember, the guy who's in the White House, he campaigned on, I'm not Bernie Sanders. | |
| He campaigned on, I'm Scranton Joe, I'm Moderate Joe, I'm Middle Class Joe. | |
| It wasn't true, but that's what he sold to the American people. | |
| And he got in office and what did he do the very first day? | |
| Signed all those executive orders. | |
| One of those was getting rid of the 1776 Commission. | |
| That's right. | |
| This commission that says, let's focus on American history and what a great country we have. | |
| Not perfect, but the greatest nation ever. | |
| Built on a principle, as you said in the Declaration of Independence, endowed by our creator with these inalienable rights. | |
| He changed that on day one and has been Bernie Sanders plus... | |
| Since day one. | |
| And that's not how he marketed himself to the country. | |
| And in that context, and then we see what every policy area they've touched has been a disaster. | |
| The border, inflation, tax policy, you name it. | |
| Energy policy. | |
| And now, oh, and now you're going to come after moms and dads? | |
| In that context, the voters are saying, no way are we going to tolerate that. | |
| So I do think it's growing. | |
| And this education issue is kind of the issue that I think kind of brought it all together in that larger framework. | |
| So polls are looking good. | |
| Right now, Joe Biden is, what, 37%, 38%. | |
| Kamala Harris is 28%. | |
| Dick Cheney, after the Iraq war and after shooting a guy in the face, was 30. | |
| He was doing better than Kamala Harris is today. | |
| I've shot Harry. | |
| Remember when you said that? | |
| I've shot Harry. | |
| And he was still polling higher. | |
| So they're really not looking good. | |
| Let's say the Republicans take back the majority in the House in 2022. | |
| What's the first thing you do? | |
| The first thing we do is—now, we won't be able to make law because Joe Biden's still going to be able to veto everything. | |
| The first thing we do in the Judiciary Committee, which, Lord willing, I'll have the chance to chair, is we pass this Section 230. | |
| We get rid of the Liability Protection for Big Tech, who is censoring folks like you and I. So that's the first piece of legislation. | |
| It won't become law, but it's important to let the country know we're doing everything we can in that area. | |
| This is what AOC did with the Green New Deal. | |
| They put it out there, and everyone laughed about it, and she was persistent, persistent, persistent. | |
| Now it's a mainstream idea. | |
| It might become law. | |
| Right. | |
| That's how politics works in America. | |
| You frame it up, and then you have a big presidential election, and if one party gets control of government, they get to push the stuff that they campaign on. | |
| They get to do what they said they were going to do. | |
| And I do think it's going to happen, by the way. | |
| I do think, you hate to, you don't want to be overconfident, we've got to work hard, but I do think Republicans are going to take it back. | |
| I mean, the polling two weeks ago showed they asked the right track, wrong track question. | |
| 71% of our fellow citizens think the country's on the wrong track. | |
| I mean, when I first heard that, I actually said, I want to meet the 29%. | |
| I want to meet the 29% who think we're on the right track. | |
| There hasn't been anything go well in the last 10 months. | |
| So I do think it's shaping up as a win for us. | |
| If we win, what we have to do is undo as much as we can of the Biden administration. | |
| It'll be tough because he's still going to be in the White House, but we have to frame it up. | |
| And yesterday I had a debate on the House floor with Jim McGovern, Democrat chair of the Rules Committee, and he says, Republicans blame Joe Biden for everything. | |
| Never tell us what they're for. | |
| And it made me mad. | |
| So I spoke once, I got back up and spoke again, and I said, I'll tell you what we're for. | |
| We're actually for a secure border. | |
| Which we had under President Trump. | |
| I'll tell you what we're for. | |
| We're actually for stable prices, which we had under President Trump. | |
| I'll tell you, we're for wages going up, real wages going up, like we had just 10 months ago. | |
| I'm for energy independence, like we had 10 months ago. | |
| I'm for a DOJ. That doesn't go after its citizens, doesn't use the awesome power of the FBI to go after its citizens. | |
| I'm for a DOJ that doesn't pay illegal immigrants $450,000 for breaking the law and coming into our country. | |
| So that's what we have to demonstrate to the American people. | |
| I'm glad you brought up all of those specific policies because we think, oh, nothing really changes. | |
| It's not a big deal. | |
| Both sides always get hyperbolic about how the other side is the cause of all evil. | |
| Under Trump, real wages increased for the first time in a very long time. | |
| Under Trump, at least the first part of his presidency, The problems at the border really did diminish considerably. | |
| Sure did. | |
| Under Trump, you actually did have manufacturing confidence at record highs. | |
| Under Trump, you had unemployment at all-time lows, or very nearly all-time lows. | |
| And then it all changed. | |
| And things can change very quickly, and people are seeing that at the gas pump, and they're seeing that to go out Thanksgiving shopping. | |
| So one of the zanier ideas that has been floated is that if the Republicans retake the House, The Speaker of the House does not need to be a member of Congress. | |
| The Speaker could be, for instance, a brash billionaire from New York who now resides in Florida. | |
| What do you think the likelihood of that? | |
| I think he's going to run for President. | |
| I want him to. | |
| I've said it. | |
| I'm for him. | |
| I'm for him 110%. | |
| percent. | |
| No president in my lifetime has done more of what he said he would do than President Trump. | |
| And he did it with everyone against him. | |
| That whole town, every single Democrat, I mean adamantly crazy against him, as we all know. | |
| Everyone in the mainstream press was against him. | |
| Everyone in the bureaucracy, which is the real problem, was against him. | |
| And a bunch of Republicans. | |
| And yet, in spite of that, he said he would cut taxes He did. | |
| He said he'd reduce regulations. | |
| He did. | |
| He said he'd stand up to China. | |
| He did. | |
| He said he'd build the wall. | |
| He said he'd build the wall. | |
| He said he would get out of that crazy Iran deal. | |
| He said he'd put the embassy in Jerusalem. | |
| He did. | |
| And a bunch of other things. | |
| And I'm like, I'll take a guy like that. | |
| When he first got to the White House, I was in the West Wing with Mark Meadows and I. We were there several times. | |
| But early on, they had a big whiteboard. | |
| And they had written out every campaign promise. | |
| Every single one. | |
| And they were literally checking it off. | |
| That's leadership. | |
| That's what you want in our country. | |
| And frankly, I think there's a yearning for it now. | |
| I had a lady in a... | |
| She was an older lady. | |
| It was kind of like a quasi-town hall in a little town in the 4th District of Ohio. | |
| And she's probably mid-70s. | |
| And she started talking about what you're just saying. | |
| How... | |
| How crazy it's gotten in 10 months. | |
| And her eyes started, I mean, they started to glass up as she was thinking, because she loves the country, like we all do, like President Trump does. | |
| And she sees what's happening. | |
| And so that's what's so encouraging about what we're seeing, what we saw happen in Virginia. | |
| Courage is contagious. | |
| It's a mom at a school board meeting. | |
| And then the next meeting, it's five moms and a few dads. | |
| And then pretty soon, it's the Chicago Police Union saying, you know what? | |
| The vaccine should be a choice. | |
| This virus is serious. | |
| You want to get a vaccine? | |
| Great. | |
| But it's freedom. | |
| It's contagious. | |
| And you're going to see that spread, I think. | |
| And it's going to mean, I think, potentially a wave election in 2022. | |
| There is a whole lot more that we have with Congressman Jordan coming up. | |
| But before we get to that... | |
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| I feel uncomfortable by how optimistic you are right now. | |
| As a conservative, I feel odd when people are optimistic. | |
| But it does seem like there are signs of hope. | |
| However, just a few months ago, now I guess more like a year ago, a lot of Americans didn't have faith in the presidential election. | |
| Four years before that, a lot of other Americans didn't have faith in the presidential election. | |
| At least 16 years before that, a lot of Americans didn't have faith in the presidential election. | |
| in the presidential election. | |
| Terry McAuliffe actually still doesn't accept the results of the 2000 presidential election or the Georgia gubernatorial election. | |
| So there was the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict A lot of Americans don't have faith in the justice system. | |
| I think that gives us a little glimmer of hope for the justice system. | |
| But people's faith in these institutions and in the rule of law has really broken down recently. | |
| Do you think that there is a glimmer of hope to restore, not just to win an election, but to restore confidence in the institutions? | |
| Or are things always darkest before they go pitch? | |
| No. | |
| Well, I mean, a lot of times it looks pretty bad until it gets better. | |
| I would say a couple things. | |
| One, Americans are optimistic by nature. | |
| We're Americans. | |
| I think it's in our DNA. You know, it's like, you know, some people even, you know, kind of push that whole idea that maybe there's some truth to it. | |
| Because you think about the folks who came here. | |
| They told them in Europe, you've got to practice your faith a certain way. | |
| And they said, no, we don't. | |
| And we're willing to get on a ship, risk it all, and come to this place called America where we can do it the way we think the good Lord wants us to. | |
| Americans hate being told what to do. | |
| That's just who we are. | |
| So I do feel optimistic because it's, first of all, America. | |
| Someone once said that in this country, every third generation has had to do something big. | |
| The founders did something amazing when they started this experiment in freedom we call America. | |
| Three generations later, Lincoln held the country together, got rid of the evil of slavery. | |
| Three generations later, the greatest generation defeated the evil of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and here we are three generations later, and it's the left, and it's the people who want to destroy the Constitution and are on this accelerated march to I feel optimistic. | |
| I really do. | |
| I think Americans get it. | |
| I'm encouraged. | |
| I've said it now a couple times and you referenced it as what happened in Virginia. | |
| I think it's going to build. | |
| I really do. | |
| And the Rittenhouse decision In my mind, it's a victory for due process, for our system of justice, for the Second Amendment. | |
| If that wasn't self-defense, I don't know what was. | |
| And the jury, with all the The intimidation factors that were swirling around that courthouse in Kenosha made the right decision. | |
| That's great. | |
| And I think Americans are inspired by that and proud of how the system worked, how our due process and everything worked for this situation. | |
| So yeah, I'm encouraged. | |
| What Mike Pence, Vice President, used to tell us in the House, he said, I'm a conservative and I'm not mad about it, right? | |
| We should be the happy warriors because, for goodness sake, we live in America. | |
| I'm just going to say my background is wrestling. | |
| I've traveled to the Soviet Union and wrestled back in the 80s. | |
| Go to places like that, you thank the good Lord you live here. | |
| I think in the long run we're going to get through this. | |
| Forget about Soviet Union. | |
| I go to Italy for a week and say, get me out of here. | |
| These people don't even know how to conduct business here. | |
| I think there's a lot to that. | |
| And obviously a conservative, almost in his very nature, is going to be a little happier with the way things are. | |
| We're a little maybe better adjusted to things. | |
| We're not out screaming with crazy colored hair and throwing Molotov cocktails. | |
| So that's all great. | |
| And it gets to something you mentioned right at the top, and I guess it's really what we're all talking about here. | |
| Freedom. | |
| From what I'm seeing, and you're seeing it much more closely in Washington, it seems like the right is coming to terms a little bit with freedom in a way that we haven't in recent decades. | |
| For the left, freedom is do whatever you want whenever you want to do it. | |
| If it feels good, do it. | |
| For the right, that was never really what freedom was. | |
| The Founding Fathers said liberty cannot be abused to licentiousness. | |
| John Adams, Constitution's Bill for Moral and Religious People. | |
| And all of a sudden, you're starting to see the right kind of crack out of that libertine language. | |
| And they're saying, actually, no. | |
| We're going to say no to critical race theory in schools. | |
| It's going to limit your freedom and some kind of freedom, but not really. | |
| It's actually going to expand your freedom. | |
| We're going to say no to this desiccated, degraded culture. | |
| And we're going to say yes to the higher constraints of liberty. | |
| Do you see that message resonating, or do people just want to do whatever they want? | |
| Well, human nature is such that you want to do whatever you want. | |
| But you're right, real freedom flows from discipline. | |
| And we all fall short. | |
| This is why we need a savior. | |
| So we all fall short, and certainly I do. | |
| But true freedom is built on discipline and self-discipline because if you're disciplined to do things right, it gives you more opportunity, greater ability to chase your goals and dreams. | |
| And so that's the understanding that we need to... | |
| We need to have. | |
| So, yeah, I do think that's the case. | |
| I also think, though, I would add one thing to your description of the left. | |
| They're not only for doing anything, they're for doing anything as long as you don't criticize Me Too. | |
| So, it used to be you could have a debate. | |
| To me, this is the scariest thing happening. | |
| Is the attack on the First Amendment. | |
| Because it used to be. | |
| I talk about this in the book. | |
| Dennis Kucinich is a friend of mine. | |
| Dennis Kucinich is an old school liberal. | |
| He believes in the First Amendment. | |
| And Dennis showed up at our oldest daughter's wedding. | |
| I mean, he's a friend. | |
| I don't agree with him. | |
| He's a crazy lefty. | |
| He doesn't agree with me. | |
| But he believes in the First Amendment. | |
| Have a debate. | |
| Make your best argument. | |
| Let's see who wins. | |
| Then we'll move on to the next issue and have that debate and see how it plays out. | |
| Today's left is different. | |
| Today's left is if you don't agree with me, you're not allowed to talk. | |
| And if you try, I'm going to call you a racist and we're going to try to cancel you. | |
| And America said, no, you're not. | |
| We've had it. | |
| We're sick of the terms, call us deplorable, call us racist, call us those hillbillies and flyover country. | |
| That doesn't work anymore. | |
| Forget it. | |
| You can call them. | |
| I've been called every name you can imagine. | |
| I know you have too. | |
| You go to college campuses, which is really brave. | |
| So We're tired of that. | |
| We're going to stand up and speak the truth and we're going to defend the First Amendment because over the last year, every single right we enjoy as Americans under the First Amendment has been assaulted. | |
| And I think Americans have had it. | |
| You're right to... | |
| Practice your faith, your right to assemble, your right to petition your government, freedom of the press, freedom of speech. | |
| There are places in America today, a full congregation still can't meet on a Sunday morning. | |
| In America? | |
| So I think that's one of the unifying themes for conservatives and for making our conservative movement even bigger. | |
| But Congressman, what the left will tell you, And frankly, what I think some of the squishes even on the right will tell you is a lot of the incursions into free speech are not being pushed by the government exactly. | |
| When Facebook and Twitter and YouTube kick you off, even if they kick off the duly elected sitting president of the United States... | |
| Well, they're private businesses. | |
| Freedom demands that we let Mark Zuckerberg and hipster Rasputin, Jack Dorsey, and all the rest of them control the speech in our republic. | |
| Go build your own Google, they say. | |
| Why doesn't that argument hold up? | |
| First of all, this is why you've got to take away their liability protection. | |
| Second, one of the pieces of legislation we're looking at Now, again, we'd have to have a Republican majority and a Republican president, but it's an expedited way to get these antitrust issues to the Supreme Court. | |
| Justice Thomas, as indicated, seems to me, he's pretty clearly indicated he wants to deal with this issue. | |
| So we need to get that to the court in a much quicker fashion than traditionally happens with antitrust issues. | |
| So I think those are on the legislative side. | |
| But you're right. | |
| When you've got someone this big having this much influence, I mean, it was... | |
| I think I write about this too, but it was like three years ago in the summer. | |
| I'm literally walking in the Rayburn office building and I get a call from Matt Gates. | |
| And he doesn't even say hello. | |
| He's typical Matt. | |
| He's got ADD like you and I got. | |
| But he goes, Jim, Twitter is shadow banning us. | |
| And you know, Matt's young like you guys, and I was like, Matt, that sounds terrible, but what's shadowban? | |
| Go on. | |
| So he explained it to me, and it turned out they were. | |
| Think about it. | |
| They were shadowbanning four members of Congress. | |
| Gates, Meadows, Nunes, Jordan. | |
| I'm like, oh, interesting, four. | |
| And, you know, 435 members in the House, 100 senators, 535, only four. | |
| And Jack Dorsey said, well, it was just a glitch in their algorithm. | |
| And I'm like, yeah, I was being interviewed and I said... | |
| What did you put in the algorithm? | |
| The names Gates, Meadows, Newton's Jordan? | |
| It's like a monkey on a typewriter writing Shakespeare. | |
| I guess it could happen. | |
| Maybe it was just chance. | |
| The example you point out, the Ayatollah can tweet, but President Trump can't? | |
| Give me a break. | |
| Americans see it, and we're looking at different alternative platforms. | |
| All that's good. | |
| But in the end, Congress is going to have to act. | |
| And I think those two avenues certainly are where we should start, and it may have to be more. | |
| It's in a way ironic, though maybe not, that conservatives used to be on the side of... | |
| The big tech. | |
| Before they were really, really big tech. | |
| Because the new media gave conservatives an opportunity to break through the gatekeepers of the old media. | |
| But they didn't like that very much. | |
| Especially after 2016, they hated it. | |
| So they clamped down on us. | |
| Exactly right. | |
| It just seems like a matter of priorities. | |
| Of course we want flourishing free enterprise. | |
| We want entrepreneurship. | |
| We want all these things. | |
| Not at the expense of our most basic political rights to speak. | |
| If Sundar Pichai at Google is shutting me up, it doesn't make me feel better that he doesn't technically work for the government. | |
| I need my right to be able to speak and control my own government. | |
| Because that's the most fundamental liberty we have. | |
| I tell people, it's even more important than your right to practice your faith. | |
| Because if you can't talk, How can you practice your faith? | |
| How can you share your faith? | |
| You have to be able to speak. | |
| It is fundamental. | |
| And again, I go through, because I'm just shocked by this. | |
| Your right to assemble? | |
| This was six, seven months ago. | |
| I spoke to the New Mexico Republican Party In Amarillo, Texas. | |
| Because they had to go to Texas to get freedom to assemble because their Democrat governor wouldn't let them get together. | |
| I mean, in America, this kind of stuff is... | |
| Until a couple weeks ago, you couldn't even come to your Capitol to petition your member of Congress to redress your grievances because Nancy Pelosi wouldn't let you in. | |
| But all that's terrible. | |
| But the biggest one is when you can't talk, when you can't communicate. | |
| And when last election, 2020 presidential election, when big tech and big media colluded to keep the American people in just the weeks right before the election, to keep the American people from hearing the number one story that they should have had access to at that time, the Hunter Biden story, they said, "Oh no, it's misinformation." We had an eyewitness, we had documents, we had a laptop, we had the photos. - Yeah, it's like, But no, no, it was misinformation. | |
| That's frightening, and that's why this is so important, and we have to get a remedy. | |
| Yes, and so much of what you're saying has this kind of religious aspect to it. | |
| I mean, even down to the word revival, or down to our rights, or literally the freedom to practice our faith when they shut down the churches. | |
| Just to sound a little pessimistic again, and I hope you shut down my pessimism, America seems to be getting more secular. | |
| America seems to be getting more liberal. | |
| That's what the polls say. | |
| I agree with you. | |
| I feel that there is some deeper pulse in the American people, and maybe it's about to jump out. | |
| But looking at those numbers, one, do you think that we can recover the American tradition if we lose our faith, if we become more and more secular? | |
| And two, what does the revival look like? | |
| Well, no, good questions. | |
| I think part of the reason that we sort of summon the blame if we're not as Christian-focused as we should be, which I think is accurate, some of the blame comes to us. | |
| You know, I look at, like, standards that we all have in our personal life where maybe, well, okay, we need to improve and set that better example. | |
| So I think part of it is we've got to look at ourselves as well. | |
| Yeah, I mean, exactly. | |
| But I don't know. | |
| I just... | |
| I mean, you live in America, you've got to be optimistic. | |
| I think it happens. | |
| I think it is electing conservatives who actually go fight for the things they told you they were going to fight for. | |
| I think it's a focus on the Constitution. | |
| I think it's a real focus on people in office and the country understanding better the rights that we've enjoyed, that were given to us, passed down to us, that we have under the First Amendment. | |
| I always say my favorite scripture verse, I guess one of the reasons I got an optimistic attitude about it, my favorite scripture verse is 2 Timothy 4.7. | |
| And Paul's the old guy giving advice to the young guy, Timothy. | |
| And he tells them to fight the good fight, finish the course, keep the faith. | |
| And I always say I like that verse because it's not a wimpy verse. | |
| It's a verse of action. | |
| And Americans aren't wimpy people. | |
| We're not timid people. | |
| We're Americans. | |
| Like, what's the goal? | |
| Let's go make it happen. | |
| It's fight, finish, keep. | |
| So I think that's in us. | |
| And I just feel like we'll do it. | |
| And it manifests itself in putting people in office Who understand that, understand the Constitution. | |
| And then probably also just in communities where Get involved. | |
| I think we're going to see more people get involved. | |
| I mean, whoever thought we'd have the number of people showing up at school board meetings? | |
| And people actually running for school board. | |
| That's got to be the worst job in history, right? | |
| Being on the school board, who would want that job, you know? | |
| And who would have thought they'd be talking about critical race theory? | |
| This bizarro leftist academic lens from Harvard Law School. | |
| But the American people see it. | |
| They see the effects of it. | |
| They show up for this terrible job. | |
| You know who else loved that verse that you quoted? | |
| Ronald Reagan. | |
| I didn't even know that. | |
| This is, I guess, the point of the book, do what you said you would do, is that we need to do it. | |
| All too often, I feel, that these older conservatives They just want to dig up the corpse of Ronald Reagan. | |
| They want to reanimate him somehow and have him fight all of our battles for us. | |
| And just say the same old things that we said in the 80s and try to go back to the glory days. | |
| But no, we've got to fight. | |
| He fought his battles. | |
| We have to fight our battles too. | |
| Politicians need to do what they said that they will do and not pass the buck. | |
| And I say it truly without any flattery. | |
| You are one of the guys doing it. | |
| And it's a great inspiration. | |
| You're doing the hard work, man. | |
| You go to college campuses and... | |
| God bless you, man. | |
| Our security is not as good. | |
| That's true. | |
| The rotten tomatoes go further. | |
| But, Congressman, thank you very much for coming on. | |
| I hope that everyone goes and buys the book. | |
| Do what you said you would do. | |
| And then, Congressman, I hope that you are the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. | |
| And I hope you will do what you said you will do. | |
| And I'm certain and confident that you will. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Thanks for having me on. | |
| Well, thanks for coming on. |