Representatives Jim Jordan and Byron Donalds argue that federal agencies like the FTC and IRS have been weaponized against Americans within a 48-hour window, alleging Democratic narrative tactics violate First Amendment rights. They condemn bureaucratic interference in Florida's parental education bill and warn that TikTok ban legislation risks excessive surveillance akin to the Patriot Act. Addressing inflation driven by record spending, they advocate for balanced budget amendments while Jordan supports Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, framing their potential conflict as a necessary conservative strategy to clean house in Washington. [Automatically generated summary]
We released a report that shows the FTC is doing what they're doing, naming journalists by name, asking what interaction the company's having with them.
The next day, two of them testify.
Democrats ask them who their sources are.
And while they're testifying, one of those journalists, the IRS is showing up at their door.
That happened literally, again, in a 48-hour time frame, and yet the Democrats say, oh, there's no weaponization in government.
Yeah, we didn't have it in our committee, but it was probably in the oversight committee.
Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of government overreach.
We actually function from the basic premise, Dave, that we think so many of these agencies have been turned on the very people, the American people that they're supposed to serve.
And you can see it time and time again.
And just remember what happened three weeks ago.
Three weeks ago, Chuck Schumer goes to the floor of the United States Senate and tells Rupert Murdoch, don't let Fox, tell the major network, don't let Fox play the January 6th tapes.
The very next day, we released a report which shows the FTC is targeting a private company, asking that private company, who are the journalists you're talking to?
Twitter, who are the journalists you're talking to?
Names four journalists personally.
The following day, two of those four journalists testify in front of our committee.
And while they're testifying, the Democrats ask them, who are your sources?
I mean, when you watch some of this stuff, and you're somewhat new here, when you watch some of this stuff and you have Democrats literally trying to get sources out of journalists, not knowing the basics about technology and phones and how these tech companies operate, is it mind-blowing to you that these people are even asking some of the questions?
And what you start to realize is the Democrats are always looking to fill their narrative.
The facts don't matter.
The issue does not matter.
It's what's going to fill the narrative.
These are the same people who were basically trying to be the defenders of the media, but now when a story doesn't come out in their favor, they want sources.
They want the press to get rid of their own journalistic integrity.
None of that matters.
Only thing that matters is either perpetuating the narrative or protecting their narrative.
And that's one of the saddest things that we see up here on Capitol Hill.
We see that time and time again when big government was pressuring big tech.
They were threatening the 230 issue and other things.
Either do what we want, take down these tweets.
We think these tweets violate your terms.
I mean, think about that.
The government's telling Twitter, we think these tweets, we think these violate your terms of service.
When did the government get that busy?
And to finish that, Nehru, think about it.
So, Schumer says it, we released a report that shows the FTC is doing what they're doing, name and journalists by name, asking what interaction the company's having with them.
The next day, two of them testify.
Democrats ask them who their sources are.
And while they're testifying, One of those journalists, the IRS is showing up at their door.
That happened literally, again, in a 48-hour timeframe, and yet the Democrats say, oh, there's no weaponization in government.
These guys have far more experience and technical knowledge than some of the folks at the CDC, and they were suppressed.
We have the documentation.
It's all on record, and it was coming from elements of our government.
Here's what I would say to the Democrats now.
If you truly believe in protecting the soul of America, if you truly believe in saving democracy, you can't allow elements of our government to suppress speech of the American people.
So speaking of speech, you've had a couple of nice moments in mainstream media lately.
You had a blowout, or whatever, you could describe it in your own words, with Joy Reid.
And it was pretty indicative of, I think, everything going on here with mainstream media, where they're acting as, you know, I think she considers herself a journalist, right?
I mean, if you asked her, she'd probably say she's a journalist.
But she clearly is an activist.
Do you think she was not prepared for that moment?
I thought she did come in.
She wanted to come in hot.
and showed it on the show, and you just calmly, clearly debunked her
She wanted to come in rapid fire, try to have me stumble or sidestep
or have to restate something.
And then that's that's the clip.
So kind of going in, that was my mindset.
It's like, OK, they're going to try to do something.
Just be prepared, be calm and then just take it step by step.
I think going on her show or some of these other shows, what I think it helps my colleagues understand
is you can go into the lines then and do ideological warfare,
or maybe warfare might be too much for them.
But you can have that dialogue, you can have that back and forth
and actually come out the other side.
I've had a lot of people come to me afterwards, they were like,
man, Joy didn't look good in that interview.
And I don't even say, I don't even put it out there, like, look how I owned her.
People say it and I just watch it.
But at the core of it is that you have to be factual.
And so a lot of my guys on our side of the aisle, I tell my guys, just be solutions focused.
Just be focused on the solutions.
They're going to bring the energy and the fire to it.
And you can go back at it with some.
But if you always have in mind the end goals, the solutions, the Constitution, like Jim was talking, the basic freedoms, freedom of speech, First Amendment rights, if you do that, you can win that argument.
Because the biggest thing we're having to deal with right now is that you have conservatives, we are the ones, trying to frankly save the soul of America.
We're the ones trying to save everybody's constitutional rights and liberties.
It's not the left.
And when you go into their shows, into their wheelhouse, and you talk about that stuff, it shows.
You had more people in the middle of the road in politics who basically like, why is Joy Reid lying?
But it's like, you step back and you just think about it for a second, like, okay, so some bureaucrat in Richmond who doesn't even know the kid's name?
Cares more about that child than a mom or dad.
Like, it's just so stupid.
It's so ridiculous.
And the good people of Virginia saw it for what it was.
And that's sort of the basic here is like, we actually believe that moms and dads know what's best.
After all, they know their kid's name, for goodness sake.
And that's the only way in the end we ultimately solve it.
I wish we could have got more of that in the bill, but it's a good bill that embraces this fundamental idea that moms and dads care more, know more, about what's best for their son or daughter.
I mean, look, I'm happy for the people of Florida.
something that's been up a long time coming.
Um, my former speaker, Richard Corcoran, back in the Florida legislature actually stopped me from
filing that bill. Not in a bad way. Richard understood because the Supreme Court at the time before Ron
dissenters became governor was a liberal Supreme Court. He was like, Byron, if you file that bill,
we're going to pass it. And if you pass it, the Supreme Court is going to strike it down because
they're waiting for us to strike it down. So I want to make sure I set the record straight for
Richard and his conservative bona fides. But But this has been a process, a journey for Florida for
quite some time.
And I'm just glad that my colleagues back in Florida and the governor, they just said, we're doing it.
And let's go.
Because at the end of the day, you want to have a system of education where, like Jim said, the parents are first in line.
If I get to choose where my kids play basketball, where my kids go to after school, who's the actual doctor for my child, what clothes do you wear, what shows do you watch, although today it's much harder for parents to do that.
If I get to choose all those things, I don't get to choose the school.
That's disrespectful of the position a parent has in their child's life.
Florida recognizes that.
I know Arizona recognizes that now.
I think the other state is Utah.
And there's gonna be more states- Arkansas is doing it right now.
Do you think fundamentally the issue for the Democrats on this is they realize now if they lose the schools, I mean, that's how they won this thing for the last 40 years.
So they sort of feel like, oh, if we can't start these kids on that path when they're literally five years old, We'll be in trouble.
Yeah, it's that coupled with just public employee unions.
It's been the power base in the Democrat Party for a long time.
So I think it's those two things meshed together is why you see them so against school choice, so against empowering moms and dads to make decisions for their kids.
And this crazy line about, you know, we had a hearing last week that I thought went well, where we're talking about the parents issue and what the DOJ and things have done, but the Democrats were talking about Republicans want to ban books.
There's a big difference between book banning and age-appropriate literature.
And that is the fundamental issue.
For them to argue, it's just so stupid.
We're not for banning.
You're the ones who want to restrict speech.
But there's a difference between what a second grader should be able to see and what a twelfth grader and what someone in college should be able to see.
I was on ground zero when we pushed that bill through the legislature when Rick Scott was governor
And we pushed that through.
And at the time, the Democrats in the state legislature were losing their minds.
You can't do this.
You can't have taxpayers and parents look at material.
They don't have the expertise to do this.
And our entire statement was, if taxpayers are paying for it, And the children of these parents have to look at it.
Shouldn't they be able to just comment?
View it and comment?
Do that with your local school board.
Engage in civil discourse and an actual democratic process with your local school board.
That's a good thing.
And it's really good to see this now has taken fire throughout the country.
Unfortunately, a lot of kids had to be subjected to material that they should not have been subjected to.
But look, if there was one silver lining of COVID, it's that parents got a chance to see what was actually going on in these classrooms and in these schools, and that's actually to the betterment of our country.
unidentified
Are you guys doing any version of this in Ohio now?
We've had good school choice in Ohio for a long time, and our Senate president Great guy, good friend of mine, is the most pro-school choice guy you can have.
So they're expanding the school choice there.
But I think there's a broader thing that also came through with COVID and with this debate is, I am so sick, and this is the left's position now, the experts make the decisions.
That's not how it works in our constitutional system.
It's the people who put their name on a ballot get elected.
They make the decisions because then if you don't like it, you can throw them out in two years.
And that is a darn good thing.
Instead, it's the Fauci's and the Collins of the world who make all the decisions.
And Dr. Fauci never once put his name on a ballot, went out and shook hands, talked to the people and got elected to anything.
But frankly, he ran the country, ran our lives for three stinking years.
unidentified
And everything he told us, by the way, yes, everything he told us turned out to be a lie.
Look, honestly, Florida, the Florida story, and I say it a lot in a lot of different rooms, We're like obviously the hot thing going today for obvious reasons, great leadership, great governor, all that stuff.
This has been a trajectory.
This has been a pathway for 30 years in our state.
I think probably the last time we talked, I talked about it.
What you're seeing now is what happens when you have consistent conservative governance in an area.
You see the opposite in California.
People are leaving in droves.
Crime is rampant.
Drugs are rampant.
It's crazy.
Their legislature has gone off the rails.
And so what happens?
Businesses flee.
Capital flees.
Families are fleeing.
Kids aren't learning.
They're being stuck between a rock and a hard place because the teacher's union is striking
We're still going through this stuff, but I got concerns initially.
When you talk about TikTok specifically, let's be very clear, the Chinese government is taking a digital picture of the decision-making process of young people in America.
And people who use that app in America, that is exactly what they're doing.
It's the same model that all social media is largely built off of, that depending on what you look at, you kind of see what's good and what's not, and you can filter and do all that kind of stuff.
I don't trust the Chinese government at all.
So that's my issues with TikTok.
What we shouldn't do is essentially redo the Patriot Act on a larger scale.
The Patriot Act, by the way, I get the premise, obviously, 9-11,
but what we've done as a result has not been good for the country.
Yeah, I mean, it basically led to all of this, and now they're trying to do it on our phones.
Let's talk about the financial stuff for just a moment, the bank bailouts and everything else.
Do you put all the blame on this, on just that Biden has, in essence, caused crazy inflation, and these banks ended up doing a bunch of risky things, and this was the obvious outcome?
Well, I think that was sort of the, The main thing is the inflation, the record inflation, which impacted the treasuries and what they had in these banks, and they weren't liquid enough to meet the demand from certain depositors.
I think that's obvious.
But it's all the spending that drove the inflation.
I mean, it's like literally record spending.
And of course, his budget, the president's budget, we were at record levels of spending, and he increased it even more with his proposed budget.
So we've got to get a handle on that.
And frankly, I think we've got to get in place, and I've pushed for this, The idea that when we get to the end of the fiscal year, we can't have this shutdown scenario.
So what I want is a no shutdown act so that, okay, we want to spend less, they want to spend more.
The Democrats always, when they have the White House, oh, Republicans want to shut down the government.
I'm going to say, no, no, we won't shut down the government, but we'll spend at some current level minus something.
And then you can have a real debate, because if we don't, we'll get into the crazy stuff.
So that's what I want on the debt ceiling, that structural change.
We have to get out of this, to Jim's point, this brinksmanship, shut down mentality, where as a new guy on the Hill, it is mind boggling to me why we don't have guys sitting in conference rooms all over the Hill going through spreadsheets right now saying, okay, what about that?
Well, this is that thing.
We can't really spend like that.
We got to cut this here.
You got, we have all the time in the world to do this.
Except one thing, there is no political will to do it.
Because if you have to sit down at a table and go through budgets, across from your political opponents, that's all well and good, you can actually get to a deal pretty quickly.
Is that particularly weird for you, because we're in a state, Florida, where we have a surplus, we don't have a state income tax, but everything's working, infrastructure projects, 20-year projects, the governor told me are now seven years, because we have to build faster, because so many people are coming.
Like, it's working there, then you come here and you're like, guys, Can we do math?
Let me ask you guys one more, which obviously there's some momentum with the Republicans right now.
Clearly, this Trump-DeSantis thing seems like it's heating up.
You knew I was going to have to ask one way or another.
You had a great answer for me last time on it.
You know, I keep telling people, I feel like I'm going to win either way because Either DeSantis remains my governor, which will be just fine, or potentially he's president, which would be great.
Or if Trump's president, that's great, and I still got DeSantis.
Short of Biden being president again, there's a win in it, I think, for Floridians.
But you guys might end up on slightly opposite sides of that thing, because you're obviously a Trump guy in that regard, and I know you like President Trump, of course, but you're a Floridian also.
How do you deal with that internally when it gets hot?
I don't think we've ever had a president who did more what he said he would do.
I may have shared this story with you before, David, but Mark Meadows and I are in the White House probably, I don't know, 2017, 2018, and we're in the West Wing there.
We're in one of the rooms.
I think it might have been Jared or someone's room.
Big whiteboard.
Literally, they had every promise written that President Trump made to the American people in 2016.
Every one.
You know, cut taxes, reduce regulations, the embassy in Jerusalem, build the wall, all of them.
And they were just checking them off.
And that is, I think that's how you're supposed to govern.
So I'm 100% for President Trump.
And I want him to win because I think he's got the toughness to do it.
I like Governor DeSantis.
When we formed the Freedom Caucus, there were nine of us.
He was one of the original nine.
So he's a good man, done a good job in Florida, but I'm for Trump.