Congressman Jim Jordan recounts a West Wing whiteboard tracking Trump's fulfilled promises, from exiting the Iran Deal to building a wall, arguing this checklist defines effective governance. He predicts a narrow Republican House victory despite Senate losses in California and Arizona due to mail-in voting dominance, urging tactical adaptation over legal challenges. Jordan critiques Democratic radicalism amid rising inflation and crime, citing a whistleblower report alleging FBI corruption and Big Tech collusion with the White House. Ultimately, he reaffirms his unwavering support for Trump as the party's premier leader, viewing any primary competition as a healthy contest for voters to decide. [Automatically generated summary]
Relatively early in President Trump's administration, Mark Meadows and I, this was before Mark was Chief of Staff, were in the White House, and we're visiting someone in the West Wing, and one of the offices, and it may have been Jared's office or somebody's office, but they had a big whiteboard on the wall, and they had listed every single promise President Trump made to the American people in the 2016 campaign.
And they were just, I mean, it was packed.
Get out of the Iran deal, embassy in Jerusalem, build the wall, get out of the Paris Climate Accords, conservatives on the court, cut taxes, reduce regulation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
It was packed, because he made a lot of important promises.
And they were checking him off.
Just literally checking him.
That's how you're supposed to govern.
What did you tell the people you're going to do if they give you the privilege of representing and serving them and leading them?
Sometimes, though, in a committee hearing, when that witness is from the government, and you know they have not been square with the people I get to represent, sometimes you've got to roll up your sleeves so you can really get after them.
Because they deserve it, a lot of times.
In my judgment, a lot of times.
Like a Fauci guy.
You know Fauci.
How many things did Fauci tell us that were not true?
You see the piece in, I think it was the Atlantic, like two weeks ago?
Oh, Amnesty.
Yeah, right.
Like, let's just all get along and not worry about the things that said that, you know, shut down the economy, cost people their jobs, let people not go see their mom or dad in a nursing home, and maybe they were on their deathbed or something.
Crazy stuff that this guy did to us.
Oh, let's just forget it.
And I'm not like, It's not about holding a grudge, it's about accountability, so it doesn't happen again.
And that guy... Anyway, I didn't even mean to get started on that, but for some reason I thought about it, like, what the heck?
Well, all right, we can get to some of that stuff, but I have to ask you, the first thing I have to ask you is when I booked this trip to DC, we knew we were doing it right after the election.
We thought the red wave was a coming.
It's a trickle at best.
We still are unclear exactly where the House is going to end up.
But you're right, we thought it was going to be more.
I do think, I was talking with a conservative reporter who I have a great deal of respect for, and she said that we're going to have to do the ballot harvesting, The mail-in voting routine, as good as they do.
He says, you know, West Central, North Central Ohio, the great district I get to represent, we make things, grow things, move things.
And I always tell people on the coast who can work remote and sit at home in northern Virginia, drinking their $15 cup of coffee, harassing the truck driver and the manufacturer and the small business owner in Lima, Ohio.
I get it, and it is frustrating.
And, of course, the mainstream press is all the people working remote.
You can't remote work the crops in.
You've got to go out and plant the crops.
So it is a frustrating thing.
I hope we can come together at some point, because it is so divisive.
It's like we had this huge election, millions and millions and millions of dollars, maybe billions of dollars spent.
Probably was a billion, because McCarthy, Kevin, was like, I think he raised like half a million himself.
So, billions spent, and it basically looks like we're going to almost be status quo.
We're going to get the House, but the Senate's going to maybe even go down.
I think Herschel's going to win in Georgia, so we're going to be the same result.
Are you okay with the splitting of the states in that, you know, I saw something just the other morning that it's something like in the last three years about 500,000 people have left New York.
Now a huge percentage of them end up in Florida.
They vote red, Florida becomes more red, and then unfortunately New York becomes more blue.
Kathy Hochul only won New York by about 330,000 votes.
There were four of us who were in almost every deposition.
We were actually down in the bunker in the basement of the Capitol, I think more than Adam Schiff was, because it was Scott Perry, Mark Meadows, Lee, and myself, and then our staff lawyers, Steve Kastner and our team.
Lee's a good man, smart guy.
And again, this is the other thing I think is important.
He was a good, disciplined candidate about talking about the things New Yorkers cared about.
And I would argue his intense and quality race that he ran is a big reason why we picked up so many seats in New York.
Americans, you know, because remember, it's in our DNA.
When we started this place over in Europe, they said, you got to practice your faith a certain way.
And they said, no, we don't.
By golly, we're going to get on a ship, risk it all, go to this place where we call America, and we're going to do it the way we think the good Lord wants us to, and we're going to have our goals and our dreams, and we're going to make them happen.
And people in New York, where they're being attacked on all kinds of things, and all the left-wing, they're like, well, forget this noise.
I'm going to go to Florida.
I'm going to go to Texas.
I'm going to go to Nashville.
I'm going to go to Tennessee.
So, yeah, you see that happening.
You can't blame Americans, because like I said, I think that's kind of in our DNA to some degree.
We naturally crave freedom, and they're going to places where you can experience freedom.
But it does make me concerned, because it's tough.
Are we ever going to get California back?
It's probably going to take a whole generation, and maybe it's going to get... It's sad to say, but maybe when it gets even worse in these places, Maybe then people see the light and say, OK, time out.
We just can't take it anymore.
And we sort of thought that was going to happen Tuesday, and it did to a smaller degree.
I think I've asked every Republican that I've had on the show this.
I've probably asked you this question at least once or twice before.
But when you talk to your Democrat counterparts, do they honestly believe that the policies they're implementing are working?
Or do they just believe, you know, the sort of cynical view would be that they just believe it's keeping them in power because they're giving people stuff and it's working.
I think the ones who are still sort of open-minded and not just totally left-wing radicals, I think they think like, yeah, this is...
Well, even Maloney said this week that, you know, after he lost his race in New York, I think I saw where he said something like, this whole defund the police movement is crazy.
You know, well, we haven't heard a Democrat say that for three years, but he finally did.
And he happened to be the guy running the Democrat campaign apparatus.
So I think deep down, some of them know it, but remember the left controls that party.
Part of our constitutional duty, we take the oath of office on January 3rd.
Part of our duty is to get the due oversight so the country knows the truth.
They deserve that.
So I'm committed to doing that in an aggressive way.
And I think when you do that, hopefully it begins to slow down some of these agencies and the things they're doing that I think are just flat out wrong.
And again, we've seen some unprecedented things happen.
14 whistleblowers come talk to us.
We issued a 1,000 page report a week and a half ago.
That 1,000 page report highlights how political the place has become, the Justice Department.
One FBI agent, and again, he's talking about not the rank and file, but the people at the Washington field office.
One FBI agent who came to us as a whistleblower said the FBI at its top, at the Washington field office,
at its leadership level, rotted to the core, direct quote.
I mean, you got an agent who's given his life to this agency saying it's rotted to the core
at its leadership level.
That should tell us something.
So, and then the negative reaction we got from the mainstream press on this report tells us
where, I mean, it's always a good sign when the Washington Post is attacking you,
And I mean, if it's frustrating for you and I who follow this stuff, imagine just American citizens who are busy running their business and volunteering at church and going to Little League and soccer games.
Imagine what it's like for them.
So that is frustrating to all of us.
I always point out to them, though, all we can do is get the facts out there.
At some point, you got to have a justice department that's willing to prosecute people.
If you got the government actively pressuring press Pressuring these social media platforms to restrict information, and they're doing it for purely partisan political advantage.
That is a total violation of the First Amendment.
Totally wrong.
And those people should be held accountable.
But I don't know that this Justice Department will do it.
You may remember, I had a tweet in July of 2021 saying that vaccine mandates were coming, the vaccines aren't working as promised, and in essence, we should pause and think about it.
The question is, was that pressure that someone in the administration... Did Fauci get on the phone and call... Which is then a direct violation of my First Amendment rights.
The White House is the center of freedom, considered like the beacon of freedom in the world.
And you're in the White House, in the press room, in the West Wing, and the press spokesperson for the President of the United States, Jen Psaki, standing at the podium in the press room, and she says, most Americans get their news from social media platforms.
We're working with those social media platforms to understand and limit what Americans see.
And I literally saw that live, and I'm like, What?
You're the press person talking about limiting the press from the press room in the White House.
But again, there's no price to pay and she just gets a six-figure deal at MSNBC.
All right, we only got about three minutes left, so I'm gonna ask you the big one, which I'm sure is the one that you don't want to talk about probably.
Absolutely, but last time I had you on, you said that you absolutely would support Donald Trump if he runs.
We're taping this on Monday.
It sounds like he might make some sort of announcement tomorrow, but you can already feel what's really going on here, which is that the entire machine wants to set this up as some sort of Trump-DeSantis battle royal and then just destroy everybody kind of thing.
What do you make of what the future of the party will be?
And is there a way to do a fight out in the open that leaves Republicans kind of okay at the end?
I think he's the best president we've had and certainly in my lifetime, maybe ever, just did more of what he said he was going to do than Than any president I've ever seen.
And he did it with everyone in this town against him.
Every Democrat, everyone in the mainstream press, half the Republicans, and all the bureaucracy.
And in spite of that, got more done than, you know, they used to just go down.
There's an amazing list of things.
So I'm for President Trump.
I think he's the leader of our party.
I want him to run again.
The speech he gave Monday night before the election in our state?
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
What a leader.
So I'm for him.
But Ron DeSantis, look, there were nine of us who formed the Freedom Caucus seven years ago.
Ron was one of the original nine, and he's done a great job as governor.
He's got plenty of time, but that'll be his decision.
But no matter what, I'm going to be for President Trump.
I think he was the kind of leader that we need.
And if there's a competition, then we're the party of competition.
Voters will decide.
God bless America.
Like I said, my background is wrestling.
You've got to win the semifinals before you get to wrestle in the finals.
That's just the way the tournament goes.
I still remember, this is early, relatively early in President Trump's administration, Mark Meadows and I, this is before Mark was Chief of Staff, we're in the White House and we're visiting someone in the West Wing and one of the offices, it may have been Jared's office or somebody's office, but they had a big whiteboard on the wall and they had listed every single promise President Trump made to the American people in the 2016 campaign.
And they were just, I mean it was packed.
get out of the Iran deal, embassy in Jerusalem, build a wall,
get out of the Paris Climate Accords, conservatives on the court, cut taxes,
reduce regulation, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Just, it was packed because he made a lot of important promises.
And they were checking him off.
Just literally checking him.
That's how you're supposed to govern.
What did you tell the people you're going to do?
If they give you the privilege of representing and serving them and leading them, go do what you said.
And no one's done it better.
And people say, well, yeah, but you know, some of the things, I think that toughness is the only attitude that can work in this town.
When you look at how bad the mainstream press is, how mean the left is, how vicious the cancel culture is, you've got to have someone as tough as Trump to deal with all that.
I used to always, people would always say, you know, well, I like him, but you know, the tweets, the tweets, and I would always say, well, you can't tell the guy who did the thing that no one said could be done, that he has to act a little more like you would act because most likely you didn't accomplish that.
Look, the simple truth is, no matter whether he runs or not, or becomes president again or not, or whatever, like, we owe the guy a massive debt of gratitude.
All of the truth that we're now seeing, whether we can do anything with it or not, it is in large part because of him.