Congresswoman Lauren Boebert recounts rising from Colorado poverty and McDonald's work to founding Shooter's Grill, which became "the safest restaurant in America" after staff began open carrying following a violent incident. Her political entry was sparked by Beto O'Rourke's comments on gun rights, leading her to challenge a five-term incumbent despite a 10-to-1 funding gap. Boebert condemns Nancy Pelosi's labeling of conservatives as the "enemy within," opposes vaccine mandates as authoritarian overreach, and advocates for energy independence and shrinking the federal government, arguing that states like Colorado must diverge from restrictive policies to attract businesses and preserve liberty. [Automatically generated summary]
We had to turn to the federal government for help, to state government for help.
I've stood in line for government cheese.
I've stood in line for bread.
And I knew at 11 years old that that was not America's best, that there was more for us.
We didn't live that way in Florida.
We didn't have to pay with Monopoly money for groceries in the grocery store.
And that's what we were doing in Colorado.
My stepdad, he ended up getting work in Aspen when I was about 12 and we moved to the western slope of Colorado and that really was the best thing that could have ever happened to us.
We moved into a community that wasn't just telling us where to get a hand out, but they were offering a hand up.
One's really-- - Sort of hanging on in free states? - Yes, we are hanging on.
I do believe that there are more conservatives in Colorado than the average person would know.
We are slowly turning into California.
And really, it's been quicker than any of us would have liked to have seen,
but we have a governor from California who wants to mimic everything that's happened here.
There's been documentaries that have gone out, The Rocky Mountain Heist, there's a book, The Colorado Blueprint, and they were kind of sounding the alarms of what was happening and that Colorado was really a petri dish for all of these liberal policies that Democrats want to take Nationwide.
And if they can do it in Colorado, they can do it anywhere successfully.
And so that's what we're seeing.
And we didn't have any voices in Colorado, so I'm really happy to be that loud voice in Colorado right now to let everyone know what's happening to us there.
Yes, and they're bringing their bad policies with them.
And so we, there really is an urban and rural divide and we want to keep rural Colorado rural.
But unfortunately in these high mountain ski resort towns that I represent, a lot of Californians can afford to move there and they're bringing the same policies that they're fleeing from.
So I ask this to every conservative or Republican official that I talk to, like, when the people come, do you think they have no idea that they voted for those policies, that they're now fleeing and realize that maybe they should think about things a little bit differently now?
Yeah, the idea that they're leaving the people who can't afford to move is sort of interesting,
You know, I realized this morning when I was thinking about how I wanted to do this interview that, you know, if you take sort of a new crop of Congress people and you think about mostly the Democrats, we all know everything about AOC.
We know everything about Ilhan Omar, probably too much, more than we want to know.
We know everything about Ayanna Pressley and the rest of the crew, but we don't actually know that much from a national perspective about you.
And it seems like people should be talking about you just as much, but that's not really how the media operates, because you're a scary conservative.
My grandparents, I attribute a solid foundation to them and the few years that they had me in their home.
But my mom just up and moved us to Colorado when I was four years old.
She met a guy and moved to an apartment in Aurora and I think her pride was too big to go back home to her parents.
Things kind of got a little rough.
He wasn't The prince charming that she thought he was going to be.
But then eventually she had my first younger brother with him and she didn't want to have another child, not have a father.
And so we were stuck.
We were here through the good, the bad, and the very ugly.
And that led us to times where he wasn't working and we had to turn to the federal government for help, to state government for help.
I've stood in line for government cheese.
I've stood in line for bread.
And I knew at 11 years old that that was not America's best, that there was more for us.
We didn't live that way in Florida.
We didn't have to pay with Monopoly money for groceries in the grocery store.
And that's what we were doing in Colorado.
My stepdad, he ended up getting work in Aspen when I was about 12, and we moved to the western slope of Colorado, and that really was the best thing that could have ever happened to us.
We moved into a community that wasn't just telling us where to get a hand out, but they were offering a hand up.
And they started sharing with my mom conservative values.
So she listened and even changed her voter registration to Republican.
But she didn't vote Republican.
She got to the ballot box and said, no, I'm scared.
I'll lose everything if Republicans are in charge.
We didn't have enough stability for her to let go of that mindset.
I started working at 15 years old at the Rifle McDonald's and I can still remember bringing mom home that first paycheck.
I remember the dignity that had come with earning a paycheck, putting my hand to something and creating wealth.
And that's something that never left me.
I learned at a very young age that I could do a better job taking care of myself than the government ever had.
So I began to develop these conservative principles, not even knowing what was happening.
And my husband and I, we met when he moved to Colorado to work in the oil and gas industry.
And you know, we knew that we could build a great life together, a successful life together.
I had only ever wanted to be a mom.
I didn't have dreams to be a business owner, to be a doctor or a lawyer, certainly not a politician.
I just wanted to be a mom.
My mom was my hero and someone that I looked up to.
And so whenever we, when we started our life together, we wanted to start our family right away.
And that left me with a very difficult decision to make my senior year of high school because now I have a child and a family and I didn't want to go back to the bread lines.
I didn't want government cheese for my boy.
And so I quit high school and I took a management position with McDonald's that was very good for my age and that was more valuable.
Well, it was really, it was the hours that I needed to work for that shift manager position of why I needed to quit high school.
I was working nights with them and they said, to be a shift manager, we need you in this day shift.
And so I had to leave high school to, to take on that role.
And for me, there was, um, there was more value in earning that paycheck for my family than sitting in geography class for another two months until I graduate high school.
Sometimes I see it as my greatest downfall, but sometimes it works out pretty well.
And I ended up leaving McDonald's and I went into the oil and gas industry for a while.
I was filing some papers at a local company and then decided to go out in the field and do work and I was a pipeline technician.
So, locating pipeline, doing cathodic protection without an engineering degree.
It's possible to do work without a four-year college degree.
And so, I was locating pipelines, I was GPSing the pipelines, making maps of them, doing cathodic protection.
is we install anodes to protect the pipe from corroding.
And so it was just this fascinating part of my job that I loved and got to drive all around the valley
and hike up and down mountains, locating these pipes and making sure they were protected.
And then the oil and gas industry started to be heavily regulated.
Colorado saw the industry pulling out.
So a lot of us, our days were numbered.
I ended up leaving and decided to be a stay-at-home mom.
I had three boys then and said, you know, I'm going to just be with my boys for a while.
And unfortunately, a little bit later, it got worse.
And so my husband ended up running out of contracts and he wasn't working in the industry anymore.
And we said we needed a plan B. There was a local restaurant that shut down.
And it was one of our favorites.
It was called the Cowboy Cafe.
C-A-L-F dash A. Got it, got it.
And they closed down and they had a for rent sign in the window and we drove by one day and said, maybe.
Maybe we could do this.
And so we went in.
It was a great deal to lease the place.
The equipment was there.
And we decided whenever he went back to work to start investing his paycheck into the restaurant and opening it up.
Very spontaneous.
Never owned a restaurant before.
But I wanted a way to give back to my community.
A lot of our friends were unemployed.
And they needed opportunity again, and that opportunity wasn't there in the oil and gas industry like it had been.
And so we opened up, we hired our waitresses, our kitchen staff, and we were just a Western-themed restaurant wanting to give excellent service to our community.
And it was a pretty great place.
When we first opened, I didn't have a lot of money.
I didn't have any money for advertising.
So we went door to door on the first day to each business and said, hey, come in and have a free meal on us.
And that was cheaper than any advertising I could have done.
And it worked.
People liked it and they were coming back.
So what you may have heard about the restaurant, A few weeks after we opened our Western-themed restaurant, there was an altercation where a man was brutally beaten outside of the restaurant.
Show up in the morning.
There's crime scene tape everywhere.
There's police officers.
I was talking with some of the officers that I knew, asking what had happened.
And there was a man who was beaten pretty badly, and he ended up losing his life.
And so that immediately prompted the question in me, how am I going to take care of everyone?
So when did you decide, okay, I've got these ideas, my life's in order now, restaurant's working, got the family, let me get into politics of all things.
Well, you know, being in the restaurant, I mean, a lot of people come in there complaining about the issues of the day.
I think you and I could probably relate with being involved in Republican politics because we're both kind of new to that.
I voted Republican, but I wasn't paying attention to who I was voting for, why I was voting for them, and what happened in between those elections.
And so I'm actually fairly new to that process.
I just know as a business owner, They were affecting my business.
They were affecting my family.
They were affecting the paychecks that we were able to bring home.
I was electing people who I thought had my same views, but then they would get to Washington, D.C.
or to the state capitol, over-regulate, over-tax, over-spend, and destroy everything that we're trying to build at home.
And so we talk about that kind of stuff in the restaurant, and I really believe that a lot of our problems in America is because we had An entire generation, at least, say you're not allowed to talk about religion or politics.
And now we have an entire generation that is ignorant about the things of God and government.
And that's why they believe that government can come in and rule you and you need to submit and they can take rights away from you because they are the grantor of those rights.
And so in my restaurant, you're free to talk about those things, even if you disagree with
me.
Freedom of speech is so under attack right now, and if we lose that, we lose everything.
Hate speech is free speech.
Speech that you disagree with is free speech.
And this is something that we have to protect.
So this isn't just a Second Amendment issue or a Tenth Amendment issue.
This is everything.
Our livelihoods and everything moving forward.
We know what big tech is doing to censor.
It's the first time in history that big tech, an entity this big, is more of a threat than big government.
Because this is someone playing the role of government in your life and taking things from you.
It's bizarre.
I didn't want to just sit and complain about what was going on.
I wanted to be a part of the solution.
And I didn't know what that meant, but suddenly there was this suave pretty boy from Texas who got up on a presidential debate stage and he slipped up.
Beto O'Rourke told the whole world what Democrats planned to do with your second amendment.
He said, hell yes, we're gonna take your AR-15s and your AK-47s.
So I got pretty upset and I drove to his presidential rally.
We don't have the fuel, the extra gas money to do that.
And I said, no, I'm going to talk to this guy.
He said, you just think they're going to let you talk to him?
I was like, I don't know.
But I'm going.
Very spontaneous.
So I drove three hours to his presidential rally with my Glock on my hip.
And I looked him in the eye and told him, hell no, you're not.
And I was just so frustrated.
Millions of Americans were just as frustrated as me.
And they were reaching out to me saying, thank you.
This is exactly what we felt.
And I said, who is speaking up for them?
And if me, just a mom of four boys from Rifle, Colorado, a restaurant owner, can say something so impactful that the nation listens, what else could I do to help bring awareness to what's happening and hold these people accountable and try to try to make a bad situation right.
So a couple of months later, I decided to run for this position.
Took on a five-term incumbent, and everyone told me, you can't do this.
You will lose.
And we were outspent 10 to 1, I won by 10 points.
It's because I had the people's support.
I have a very large district in Colorado, nearly half the state, and I have driven every bit of it and connected with thousands and thousands of people.
And I love them.
I love seeing them over and over and over again and connecting with them and hearing from them.
And, you know, you're part of this new crop of people and there's all these young progressives and they're on the cover of every magazine and everyone's telling, you know, they're all so wonderful, they're so perfect and everything, but they don't include you in that.
They don't include Dan Crenshaw in that.
Somehow you guys actually are basically framed as the bad guys.
Yes, well I was a little prepared for it coming into Congress because during the general election the media spent over five million dollars trying to make me look like a monster, an absolute criminal.
I have a mug shot because I didn't pay a hundred dollar traffic ticket, it's paid now.
But you know, you go in, you get your pretty little picture taken and you pay the hundred bucks and you leave.
Billboards everywhere, plastered with my mugshot, and this lawbreaker wants to be your lawmaker.
You know, and all of this.
Oh, that's clever, that's clever.
Yes, pretty clever.
I would take selfies with the billboards when I'd see them, you know.
Like, hey, it's better than my driver's license picture.
But then you get there, and then you see the reaction that they're getting.
Because basically, the leadership of the Democrats seem like they handed them the keys to the castle, and the inmates are running the asylum, but you guys Nobody's really talking about you guys.
Sort of a metaphor for America, I suppose, as the states kind of go their different ways.
So the media doesn't treat you guys that great, but what about, you know, I've been talking a lot on the show lately about motives, and it's like, do these people really know the damage they are doing?
And I think a lot of people think that their constituents don't.
Their constituents kind of think, oh, no, they're trying to do good.
I'm kind of past the point where I think that their motives are good because they're doing so much damage.
And it's interesting because there was a couple of dozen protesting my speech
and Christopher Columbus.
But he said, if you want to protest immigration, go to the southern border.
This is an invasion that's taking place.
You're calling Christopher Columbus a rapist.
I've seen the rape trees at the southern border.
I've been there three times.
Women's undergarments hung from them as trophies.
I've seen the young unaccompanied minors, the young teenage girls that have empty Plan B packaging in their backpacks because their mothers sent them on that journey with the Plan B pill expecting them to be sexually assaulted.
This is a crisis and unfortunately this regime won't do anything about it.
I think they're sitting back and saying mission accomplished.
So do you think it's that bad that, you know, I think 10 years ago there were a lot of Republicans or conservatives that were like, you know, the socialists are kind of coming here.
That's really what we're fighting.
And I think most people are like, oh, you guys are kind of nuts.
You're all on Republican, you know, conservative talk radio or something.
And now it seems kind of obvious that that's what I mean about the motives.
Like I sort of don't blame the 18 year old kid who's confused.
But I do blame now, I would say, the squad and Pelosi and Biden.
Not that I think he's really in charge.
You're welcome to comment on that too.
But like, are they just accomplishing what they want to accomplish?
Like, we shouldn't be saying, oh, no, no, they're trying to do good.
I do believe that they're accomplishing exactly what they want to accomplish.
I was talking with Lee Zeldin, congressman from New York running for governor, and I think he explained it perfectly.
He said, you know, if you were able to actually look into some of these squad members' hearts, If you were to look into Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, it's probably going to be pretty black and evil.
And they are accomplishing everything that they want.
But if you were able to take a peek into AOC's heart, you're probably going to find rainbows and unicorns.
And she really just wants everything to be cheerful and, you know, if we just pay for everything and provide everything to everyone, the world will be wonderful.
And that's not the way it works.
So I do believe that there are different motives, but unfortunately they're all going the same direction.
And it's a direction that we are trying to stop.
We just want people to be free.
It is not the proper role of government to keep people to keep them safe in every aspect of their life.
If so, we wouldn't let people drive cars.
You know, we would have somebody assigned to them to make sure they're crossing the street correctly.
And I mean, there's so many things that we would do to make sure that everyone is safe all the time.
Our founding fathers, they had such an amazing Spirit of faith.
They declared the end from the beginning.
They wanted to be independent.
They wanted to be freed from an oppressive, tyrannical king.
And they declared that independence before they had it.
They celebrated that freedom before they were free.
And then they went and fought that battle for 11 more years until they obtained it.
And then they crafted the Constitution.
The most amazing document to ensure that we keep these freedoms, that government is instituted to secure the rights of the people, that we the governed give consent to be governed.
And there's a lot that we're not consenting to anymore.
I mean, you know I agree with everything you just said, obviously, but like, is any of it at any level working right now?
When Biden comes out every day and we're not going to respect states' rights, and Psaki says it's unquestionable that the federal government has more power, the power to override the states and everything else, like what?
What percentage of your constituents do you think care about this?
Because I can tell you after this California recall that obviously didn't go the way that I wanted to, before and after almost everybody that I spoke to, and I campaigned with Larry Elder, almost everyone that I spoke to It might literally be everyone I spoke to during the campaign said, Dave, do you trust what's going to happen with the results?
Which they're already, that's their way of saying, I don't trust what's going to happen with the results.
So now we've got like this, this almost parasite in the system now of belief or lack of belief.
And that is very concerning because it, I would say high nineties, a high 90% of the folks that follow me and are voting don't have trust.
In our elections and I think there's been a distrust for a long time but this is the most blatant in your face form of distrust and This is something that we have to keep communicating to people to show up and vote.
I don't think that it helps any of us to say, oh well, stay home.
That doesn't help our country.
But we have to have states securing their election laws and making it easy to vote and hard to cheat.
We have to keep that pressure on these states to do that.
I can't guarantee that Colorado will be changing their election laws anytime soon with our Democrat supermajority.
But in these other states where they have the opportunity to do something, like Georgia, Do it.
If there's anything that's racist, it's vaccine passports.
Because there's actually... But you have to show an ID to get a vaccine.
Right, exactly.
Yes, you have to show an ID to get a vaccine.
And then even in places like New York, it's more difficult to sit down in a restaurant and eat than it is to cross our southern border illegally.
I mean, this is absurd.
So if they wanna talk about identification being racist, well, let's flip it right back on them and talk about these vaccine mandates that are coming from the White House.
This is something that is affecting people's livelihoods.
I'm so proud of the nurses that have taken a stand, the Southwest pilots that have taken a stand.
Joe Rogan just confronted CNN about taking so-called horse medicine, horse dewormer.
He's like, no, you said this.
Your company, who you work for, said this.
CNN said it.
And you didn't stop them.
You didn't, oh yeah, maybe that was bad.
No, no, no.
But you didn't stop it.
And that's what we have to do.
We have to continue to call them out on what they're doing.
Look, they have lied about me from the beginning.
They said that I led a reconnaissance tour January 5th.
I don't even think I was in the Capitol January 5th.
And January 2nd, I brought my family into the Capitol as a member-elect with a Capitol Hill police officer.
I have my four boys, my son, my mom, my husband, and my mom.
Sorry, sometimes he's like my son.
We're looking at this Capitol that I'm about to be sworn in as a member of Congress.
Steve Cohen, chairman of the Bad Hair Caucus from Tennessee, he sees us in the hall, waves at us, and then goes on CNN and says I was leading a reconnaissance tour.
And they are able to lie and get away with this.
And this is something my family has been attacked for, received death threats over.
My mom has received death threats and even filed a lawsuit against a very notable Influencer?
He said that she was the Bullhorn Lady on January 6th.
And the Bullhorn Lady, there's this woman with a pink hat and she's got a bullhorn and she's yelling and she's like giving directions for people.
We can't even find the bathrooms in the Capitol.
Like, we can lead a reconnaissance tour and give people directions.
And so, you're right.
They're able to lie.
All the time.
And they absolutely get away with it.
And we have to be there to expose the truth.
I think everyone, we're created to recognize truth.
And so if we keep putting that out there, more people will gravitate to that truth.
But then the other piece of that, which you sort of referenced already, is the big tech piece, obviously, which is now it's not only that they can lie, but their lies get injected with steroids.
Yes, but there are antitrust laws for this reason.
So these big companies, these big bullies can't suppress the little guys like they did with Parler, you know, that was getting too big for them.
We have to be in the majority to be able to do something.
I know Jim Jordan is working on legislation and I think that's where it's going to take place.
I think judiciary is going to get to the bottom of this and we're going to have some effective legislation to make sure Section 230 is gone, or at least these companies are broke up, whatever that means.
I keep hearing they're going to break them up.
I don't know exactly what that looks like.
But to break them up, remove the liability protection and make them accountable.
Yeah, are you worried, obviously we've talked about this a lot, but are you worried that if you remove 230 that in essence they lose the protections and then they're just gonna crack down on speech more because they're gonna be liable and then they're gonna be like, all right, we gotta get rid of everything.
That is absolutely a worry and that's why you haven't seen just a blanket removal of Section 230.
I think that's why you didn't see President Trump do away with Section 230 because There are details like this that we need to look into, but I'm really grateful that we have the Jim Jordans of the world that are looking into this.
Judiciary, that entire committee, there are brilliant minds serving there, and they just need the numbers to be able to get their agenda passed.
They need to be able to get that out there, because right now everything is party lines.
I mean, even something as simple as removing a $200 million earmark for the Presidio in Nancy Pelosi's district, you know, that's straight down party lines.
And she should get a little extra ice cream in her Twinsie fridge and all that stuff.
Do you ever think when you're at some of these hearings, like at this point when I watch, especially the big tech hearings, I watch them and Jim Jordan does do a great job and I've talked to him about it.
But when I watch these hearings, it sort of feels like we're just watching a movie that we've all seen before.
Yes, Zuckerberg will say some nice things and some things we disagree with.
The whistler blower, this whistleblower who really is a lefty activist, will sort of say some nice things, but then also became like a policy advocate for government intervention.
But it's just like, there's a lot of talk.
It's a lot of talk.
It's sort of interesting at some level.
And then it's kind of like, ah, nothing ever really matters because the next day starts and there we go.
Because the Democrats won't allow any progress to be made.
And they are in the majority.
Congress is a majority rule body.
We are a self-governing majority rule body.
So Congress makes its own rules for what happens in those chambers, in those committee hearings.
And the majority has the final say.
You know, you have Leader McCarthy, who has offered privileged resolutions to remove someone who can't get a civilian security clearance from the Intel Committee, Eric Swalwell.
Yeah.
But he's allowed to have this security clearance in Congress, on the Intel Committee, and they won't even hear it.
As long as you have that D next to your name, then yes, it's amazing what you could get away with.
But that's why we do hear a lot of talk because in the minority, That's what we have right now.
We have our talk.
Our job is to get in the Democrats' way and then come home and tell our constituents how we're getting in their way.
We're exposing what they're doing so that when we have that majority, we are able to hold them accountable.
We are able to do something.
And, you know, everybody likes to go back to 2017, 2018 when Republicans had it all and did nothing.
But forget that.
That's why people like me are here.
That's why Kat Cammack from Florida is here, and Mary Miller from Illinois, and Madison Cawthorn from North Carolina, Beth Van Dyne from Texas, Ronnie Jackson from Texas.
And we are here because we looked at that majority and were frustrated and said, what are you guys doing?
So we need that back so we can actually accomplish something.
We were all pretty confident we were going to take the house back and we would be able to bring home victories to our districts, but we don't have those numbers.
We're five short right now.
So we need people to show up in the next election and make sure we are in a position to actually put action behind our words to do something about what we're saying.
How worried are you though that this movie has been played before and you're the young crop now and you come in and you're like, we're going to change the whole damn thing and we're going to do all the stuff that nobody else did.
But then, you know, five years go by, you get re-elected once, twice, now you're in it for a while, and then it's like the swamp seems to just envelope everybody.
Right, and I have seen that, but I have a secret weapon.
So I am a proud member of the Freedom Caucus.
And there's about 40 of us right now, and it's incredible.
These are the members of Congress who are there for the right reasons.
These are your Mark Meadows, your Jim Jordans, your Andy Biggs, and they are the movers and shakers and the ones who aren't going to bow down just because leadership says this is what we're doing.
These are the folks that will vote against leadership because it's unconstitutional, because it goes against their principles and the promises that they made to their people.
So if we have a 40 to 50 person voting bloc in the majority, we have an ability to have a voice in what's happening in the Republican Party.
And that voting bloc is very, very important.
I do believe leadership gets it more than they have in the past and I hope that they stay in that direction.
But we can't do things the way we always have.
So being a member of the Freedom Caucus is so valuable to me because we actually debate the constitutionality of anything that we're going to take a position on.
We debate the constitutionality of procedures that take place.
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We are the ones that are But is that the problem at some level?
And your viewers need to know it, and they need to be calling all of these moderate Republicans, the ones who voted for impeachment, the ones who voted with Democrats to remove a Republican from her committee assignments.
They need to be calling these people and saying, do not pass the infrastructure bill, the $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill, because that is the catalyst for the $5.5 trillion Budget reconciliation.
But wait, just to be clear, so as of us taping this at this moment, I don't think there's anyone publicly that is doing it, but you're saying that there are talks behind the scenes and that some Republicans likely will break.
What do they see as the win for that?
It's just that people, they like being pet Republicans, like they like being pet on MSNBC.
They're in really tough districts, so they have to bring home the bacon for their districts.
And that means voting with Democrats.
But we can put forward a really good, Alternative.
In fact, I have.
I'm all for infrastructure.
We all are.
President Trump, I think he had a $5 trillion infrastructure plan.
That was pretty extreme, but he wanted to work with Democrats on infrastructure.
I have an infrastructure bill, the American Infrastructure Modernization Act, the AIM Act, $650 billion, which is more than that's currently allocated for infrastructure in their bill.
It's the most important infrastructure they're focused on.
Human infrastructure.
And so $650 billion.
No new money spent.
No tax increases.
Because you're using the unspent COVID funds that's already approved by Congress and it's paid for.
There's more than a trillion dollars unspent sitting there.
Approved.
Let's use that for infrastructure.
It's done.
I introduced this piece of legislation the moment they started talking about infrastructure.
I said, there is a way to do this without spending new money and without raising taxes on the American people.
And it's there.
I'm not just rubber stamping a no, saying you don't get your bridges and your ports.
I have a good alternative solution.
But no, there's probably, I would say a good 10 Republicans, if we don't get enough pressure out there, that will help get this infrastructure bill passed.
He has his staff that's absolutely running the show.
It's really sad.
I was just talking the other day, I was looking at the White House schedule for the President of the United States, and it says 8.30, a virtual briefing.
10.45, another briefing.
And then that was it.
Called it a lid.
So where is Biden?
I don't know.
He's napping.
He's eating his applesauce.
It's sad.
Today I saw a a press conference and again no questions because only
scripted Joe can talk. Unscripted Joe is cancelled. He's not allowed to. Are any of the
I haven't talked to him about Biden, but we talk about the border often.
He has a brother that's border patrol and he serves a border district.
And I mean, he's just disgusted at what's happening at the Southern border.
And so I would think that there is some frustration in the Democrat party.
But then again, I mean, I was at the congressional baseball game and I may or may not have been starting some chat chants when I saw Joe Biden come out, you know, let's go Brandon.
But, I mean, the Democrats, I mean, they're just so excited.
Oh my gosh, he's here, he's awake.
And so, I don't know, it's really frustrating.
Even when he came to Congress to talk to the Democrats, we all thought he was coming to whip the vote.
Hey, get it together.
We're passing this infrastructure.
We're passing the budget reconciliation.
But he actually just came to say, we don't have the votes.
Nancy couldn't tell her own conference that.
She had to drag Joe out of the White House to tell the conference, yeah, we don't have the votes.
What do you think Republicans or conservatives can do to take the people, say, that were like me five years ago, that were Democrats their whole life, progressives.
I was a Bernie supporter in 2016, obviously not that way anymore.
Poor Bernie.
Poor Bernie.
They used him and now he's done.
And he just seems like a Muppet on Twitter.
He seems like a parody of Bernie Sanders on Twitter.
But what do you think you guys can do, messaging-wise, to make all of the disaffected liberals, Like the not crazy progressives, the anti-identity politics liberals, the Bill Maher types that get it about free speech, that are maybe more libertarian in certain ways, to say, hey, we're not as scary as they think.
Because that's still what I see as the big thing.
I meet so many people that are like, Dave, I'm with you on a lot of this, but now it seems like you're a conservative or something.
And we've already seen what happens when you weaponize the IRS.
They come after conservatives, after the c-word.
And it's like with Lois Lerner.
We've seen it already.
We saw even just this year the IRS releasing private information about people who donated to Republicans.
And so what about that?
Doesn't scream authoritarianism.
And of course, the vaccine mandates.
I heard Biden say that we have to get 44 million more Americans vaccinated because we have to bring unity.
Well, what about get this or you're fired says unity.
It's incredible.
I said from the very beginning, this is a personal decision between you and your doctor.
Talk to your doctor.
My doctor's never mandated anything, but he's always given me his best advice and made suggestions, made sure that I had all the information that I needed.
And now we have bureaucrats and politicians making health mandates.
I see Democrats who are envious of the Chinese Communist Party every day.
They want to outsource our energy to China.
I serve on the Natural Resource Committee, and I'm so happy to serve there because I told everyone I would be their voice.
I would fight for them.
I would secure their rights.
But I promise to work for them.
And being on the Natural Resource Committee gives me a seat at that table.
And I have these conversations on a regular basis about American energy independence, pursuing energy dominance right here in America.
And they want everything outsourced.
And it's just, it only empowers China and weakens us.
Everything about their policies makes us weaker.
There was a man who came into the committee room and he wasn't very happy with the industry.
And he said, you know, I started working at this oil and gas company, and we were drilling for natural gas in North Dakota.
And it was really hard work.
One week in seven days, I worked a record 95 hours.
I was sitting there, 95 hours?
What?
That's nothing.
So I got on there and talked to him and said, sir, I, too, remember my first part-time job.
But I'm not in this committee room bragging about it.
But he went on to say that he has seen artificial hyperinflation Take place when these companies come into communities.
I live in a community where we had a boom and that boom didn't have to go away.
I've seen the schools built, the roads, the fire departments, the hospitals, the colleges, and the small businesses that opened.
My small business that opened and we were able to flourish and having mud on your floor meant that things were really going good.
People were coming in and patronizing your business.
I saw moms not have to work because dad had a good paying job.
They could raise their babies.
I was that mom for a while.
And I've also seen politicians step in and regulate our communities into poverty.
That is artificial.
Nothing about the success was artificial.
But that regulation is.
It didn't have to happen.
And they want to outsource all of this to China and Africa.
In Africa, we have 40,000 children mining with their bare hands for cobalt in the Congo.
Selling it to China, and we are buying solar panels from them.
These not-in-my-backyard extremists don't understand what's happening with these policies and what condition they're creating for people in other countries.
And they think that they're doing something great, but they're not.
I actually met a very, very wealthy woman in New York and there was a, she wasn't my biggest fan, but there was a wind farm that was going to be put literally in her backyard, right across the road.
Furious.
Move it down the road.
Why don't you put it down here?
There's nothing over there.
Why don't you put it in this neighborhood?
Not in mine.
I said, well, ma'am, you voted for this.
This is what you wanted, but you don't want it in your backyard.
I think I only got one more for you, which is, so with all of this in mind, I think a lot of people are suddenly talking about this idea that the future of America is just going to be the states kind of going their separate way.
That just if you live in Florida or Texas, It's going to be very different than if you live in California, New York.
Maybe that's already the way it is.
You in Colorado are, you know, somewhere kind of in between on that.
But do you see that sort of as just an inevitability and maybe that's okay?
Maybe that's sort of how the Federalist system was supposed to work in the first place?
I don't want this authoritarian federal government.
I want to shrink the federal government as much as possible.
I don't think that there should be a federal department of education.
I want the federal government out of our lives, and we do need to get back to states having ultimate rule.
Unfortunately, you do get people in these positions where They seem to have unchecked powers.
They have emergency orders and they're able to shut down small businesses.
They're able to stifle innovation and tax their citizens to a point of poverty.
And so you've seen it in California.
We're starting to see it in Colorado.
And so, I mean, that's obviously the negative aspect of having states have their own rights is because it can be a really bad place if you have bad people making these decisions.
But then you do have the right to move to somewhere that is more free.
Like, I don't want to have to move to South Dakota, but I will move to America if I have to.
But I wish you the best of luck and I'm glad we finally did this.
We met once in 2019 at a turning point thing for a second and we agreed to do a show and then we basically waited two years because we wanted to do it in person.