We are filling in for Sean on the Sean Hannity Radio Show.
He's getting some well-deserved rest.
And we are tracking events on Capitol Hill where it is Christmas chaos in the Capitol.
They are apparently right now getting ready to vote.
They may already have started to vote on the third version of this bill.
The first two, of course, were shot down.
This is plan C. And Eric, this third version apparently is going to provide government funding through March.
It's going to provide disaster relief and farm assistance.
It is not going to get rid of the debt ceiling issue, which was the problem with the previous bill.
So we're going to track that.
And in a couple of minutes, we're going to have on Senator Rand Paul, who is in the middle of all of that chaos and craziness.
You talked about Christmas chaos in the Capitol, which I just want to point out, you know, you're a best-selling author, and you and I host a podcast together called The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer.
So you do have some broadcast experience.
But to drop the triple alliterative on national radio.
For an author, uh, it's impressive.
And I just want to acknowledge that in front of everybody.
But it is actually quite chaotic.
You know, you're the one that pointed out, we're actually in a weird spot where last night with the vote, you had Elizabeth Warren agreeing with Donald Trump.
Yeah.
You had 38 members of the House disagree, and that's one of the reasons why we're having a new vote.
One of the members of Congress that disagreed, Nancy Mace, we spoke to last hour, and she said that one of the problems that they have is that they are actively lied to you.
Those are her words about what the U.S. Senate can and cannot do in terms of the House, can they take up these single subject bills?
Yeah.
She says that we are told that they cannot do that.
So one thing we will ask Rand Paul about is hey, are you prepared to take more than one vote to keep the government open if it means that you know we we don't have to pass a bill that increases spending, no matter how many pages, whether it's a 1,547 or 116, Nancy Mace's point was the pages went down, the spending stayed the same.
That seems to be the sticking point.
What I what I want to know from you, Peter Schweitzer, you spent a career documenting the ways in which members of Congress use positions of public power for personal financial gain of all the things that were in that 1,500 page bill.
The thing that jumped out to both of us was the idea that Congress was trying to vote itself a pay raise.
What was your reaction to that?
Yeah, I mean, it's not surprising.
I mean, and this is the problem.
There are no incentives, really no incentives for a member of Congress to limit the federal budget, limit federal spending, and there's very few incentives to avoid trying to figure out creative ways to self-enrich.
Now, they don't want to do it in public.
They want to try to hide it.
They embed it.
Um, and they do it in a way that is hard to um track.
So it's not going to necessarily say a 40% pay raise.
What it's going to say is this law is this legislation is going to amend a previous uh issue when it comes to how much members of Congress are paid, and that's how they get the pay raise.
And that is the inherent problem.
So I applaud Nancy Mace.
I applaud Chip Roy and some of the other people who said on principle, you know what?
No, we have to stop spending money.
And this is going to be the challenge, I think, for Donald Trump, because every American president, even Ronald Reagan, who is the president I grew up on, the president that I love.
Very hard to get presidents to stop spending money because it helps you look good.
You're helping your constituency, you're helping the country.
It it sort of helps the economy boom.
The problem is you are passing down debt for the next generation.
So this is going to be an early indication of how much progress, if any, we're going to make on that topic.
So it's interesting that you use that metaphor, because yeah, you've made the point and we've made the point on our podcast and elsewhere that spending largely government spending, our money, tax dollar spending, is on autopilot.
Right.
And part of the problem with that is there are very few incentives to uh keep you from doing it.
Like who's who's in favor of you not spending money?
It's kind of the example I like to use is if you decide to pay off your house, yeah.
What you know, no one makes more money if you decide to pay off your house, pay off your mortgage.
You know, the bank wants you to have the loan, the your financial advisor wants you to keep the money in the market.
So no one's making money if you do that.
And what's interesting now about this moment is the reaction on social media to what they try to do actually suggests that there might be an incentive to rain down spending because for the first time the American people via social media channels because of Elon Musk and because of the mandate that we now have with him and Vivek Ramswamy, there is a political incentive to do it because that seems to be what the American people are supporting.
There is, there is.
And look, I think Doge is great.
I think having two outsider smart businessmen uh who are running this is a great way to do it.
Here's the fundamental problem, though, Eric.
If you look at the numbers of our federal budget, if you were to cut the workforce of the federal government in half, which is probably not going to happen, it's going to be more like 10 to 20%.
Even if you cut the federal workforce in half, it's going to put a minor dent in the deficit.
The the vast majority of spending by our federal government is on entitlement programs.
It's fixed.
And while a lot of people, Donald Trump has come out in favor of it, uh Elizabeth Warren has come out in favor of getting rid of the debt ceiling, and it seems this ridiculous, archaic thing that every once in a while you have to vote to raise the debt ceiling.
It's literally the only time members of Congress actually have to talk about federal spending.
The rest of the time they don't.
So I'm not in favor of getting rid of it.
It seems ridiculous.
It's this kind of is the government going to shut down?
Is it not going to shut down?
It's ridiculous, it seems, but it's the only time they actually have to address the fact that they are spending us into oblivion.
Are you concerned that Donald Trump seemed to support something that would have suspended that discussion, that one kind of crux where you actually have to have a hard conversation for the next two years?
And given his track record previously, look, Donald Trump did a lot of things really well.
You and I were both very supportive of the idea of his re-election.
But the reality is that there's one thing that maybe wasn't great under Donald Trump to your and it's consistent with every president.
Spending did not go down.
I mean, that the deficit did not go down, the debt did not go down.
Yeah.
This is a moment to have a hard conversation with the American people.
But what is positive is we seem to be having it together.
And you know, you use the word chaos.
We made the point in uh the first hour.
Chaos is a good thing.
This is a healthy thing.
This is actually what democracy is supposed to look like.
We were told that democracy was on the ballot.
And if we vote for Joe, if we vote for Donald Trump, then you know that's the actual threat.
Joe Biden is the one that was going to save democracy.
And then unfortunately, he like had to take a nap.
And so he went away, and then here comes Kamala Harris.
And then somehow the person who received no primary votes was the one that was going to defend democracy.
Uh and so unfortunately, right, or actually fortunately, Donald Trump did win.
And as a result, we actually, this is what democracy in action really looks like.
Yeah.
No, you're you're exactly right.
And look, I mean, I think Donald Trump wants to get rid of the debt ceiling because he's a businessman, and he says this is inefficient.
Why do we need to do this?
This is kind of a rote uh thing for us to be doing.
Uh, but I think that rote thing is absolutely necessary.
I hope that he's gonna reverse course because when he announced his support for that, yeah, those on the left, Elizabeth Warren, uh the American Prospect, which is a very um uh uh left-wing publication, they said Trump is offering us the deal of a lifetime.
Yeah, they have wanted to get out from under the debt ceiling forever because they don't believe that debts and deficits matter, and and of course it does.
All you have to do is look at our federal budget.
We are now going to be get set next year to be spending more money as a federal government on paying interest on our debt than we're paying on national defense.
Which is not a thing you hear.
And that's another thing that unfortunately the American people are lied to, and that's another thing that we have spent time talking about uh in this program.
There's reporting in the Wall Street Journal that showed how extensively the Biden administration efforted to lie to us about how weak Joe Biden was.
You and I, our last podcast episode, which you can find at the drilldown.com, was about Bill Clinton and Bill Clinton's new memoir and the lies he's telling in his book about kind of actually you because some of your great reporting was in this book,
Clinton Cash, and it was about how much money Bill Clinton made and how much uh you know there how much money the don the foundation raked in when Hillary was Secretary of State, and like there's a Washington Post review that says, Oh no, there's all been debunked, and even though donations to the Clinton Foundation dropped 93% after she stopped becoming the presidential candidate and was no longer Secretary of State.
So, you know, we've been lied to on a regular basis, and unfortunately, you know, that that's actually the fight that needs to happen.
It's not about the debt ceiling.
It's not about spending.
It's about can you continue to lie to the American people?
And that's where we have a brand new tool at our disposal.
And I do think it is the new Trump administration with Elon Musk's support, because to quote him, the media is no longer the gatekeepers like everyone else in the media, and each lie gets called out for the falsehood that it is.
Yeah, I mean, what do all these stories have in common?
Um, you know, the Clinton and the Clinton scandals, what happened with the Bidens, um, uh, the issue of Joe Biden's cognitive ability or lack thereof.
In every single case, you had mainstream media acting as gatekeepers, trying to prevent people from having actual real information that they have a right to know about, that they deserve to know about, and that news organizations are supposed to report on.
Those days I think are gone.
You now have with Twitter X, the debate over this budget is the one that is absolutely um at the center point um of the conversation.
That's at Twitter X. So, Rand Paul, we thought we were gonna have at 5'10.
It turns out uh there's another debate happening, not just on this program, um, but there's a debate happening on the Senate floor, and Rand Paul's actually in the middle of it right now.
So he You mean he's picking sitting on the Senate floor to talking to me.
I'm shocked.
I I also am shocked, and ironically, we talked about Clinton Cash.
I want to give Rand Paul a hard time for getting us in trouble by by leaking some of those revelations.
Uh in the meantime, we are talking about the federal spending and the efforts of Doge, and we have a caller, uh, John, who wants to talk about what exactly that could look like.
John from Pittsburgh, are you there?
Hey, fellas, I I really hope when they're tankering with the budget that they're not going to take away those critical tax deductions for our sex club fees.
Okay, yeah.
Well, everybody's got their pet project, right?
Um, it's the holiday season, John, you know, and uh everybody's got unwind a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I mean, but but here's the thing when it comes to all these debates, and this is the problem why cutting money is so difficult.
Um, it's cutting money because everybody has a constituency, right?
And so when you say we're gonna cut this program and it's gonna be 2.5 billion dollars, whether it's what John wanted or something else, um, you are now gonna have uh that industry rising up, and all they have to do is pick up a few powerful members of Congress um to make that sort of go away.
So the exciting thing about the conversation with Doge with Vivek and and uh with Elon Musk uh is that we are having this conversation that can come up with really smart ideas and smart solutions.
The reality is there are very easy, there are very few easy solutions that can just take effect without Congress having to vote for it.
So you're gonna have to get this through Congress.
There's a razor thing Republican majority, and we've already seen there's some Republicans that are willing to, you know, let's say go off the reservation.
Um so it's not going to be as easy as it sounds, but you've got to keep fighting the fight because it's worth fighting for.
Was that another Elizabeth Warren reference?
I'm just just checking.
Uh anyway, we're going to continue to have the difficult conversations, you know, sometimes about topics like John Ray, sometimes about other people, you know, that and other compromising positions, let's just say.
Uh, but that's a conversation we continue to like to have with you.
Thank you for joining us on your Friday, the last Friday before the Christmas holiday, and we appreciate Sean giving us a chance to talk about the work we've done on our drill down podcast.
We'll be right back after this.
He's Peter Schweitzer.
I'm Eric Eggers.
You can find our work at the drilldown.com, and we'll be back on the Sean Handy show after this break.
This is Peter Schweitzer.
I'm here with Eric Eggers.
We are filling in for Sean Hannity.
We do the drill down podcast.
We would love for you to check it out.
We are tracking a number of stories, including the vote on Capitol Hill.
We're going to be joined by Senator Rand Paul, we hope at the bottom of the hour.
He's actually on the Senate floor right now.
Also tracking the story in Germany, this horrific story in um Maud Deberg, where apparently a car was driven through a Christmas market.
Um there are numerous fatalities, 80 people injured.
It was an attack, and they have now apparently arrested a Saudi uh man who is 50 years old.
He's apparently a doctor who is there on a permanent residence permit.
Um, and they believe that he is the individual that's behind this attack, they are saying it is a loan attack.
That's what they believe at this point.
And to me, one Of the startling things about this story is apparently there was some disturbance yesterday.
There was tension between people in the German market and a group of migrants, and there was you know some a public uh affray, if you like, and the point that people are making who are commenting on this tragedy because you've got anywhere from two to eleven people being reported dead, eighty people injured, as you noted.
But we while we in America can see videos of the car, which is grotesque and horrific, just careening through this crowd of people.
People in Germany and in Europe could not share this same video because of censorship laws in case it was presented or portrayed as something as being uh anti-migrant.
And we've seen other reports of censorship law keeping people from commenting, and people are are being held accountable for social media posts in Europe.
It's a very different experience there than it is for us in the United States, where you and I can sit here and host a program and criticize the president of the United States and talk about how many migrants might be deported moving forward under Trump administration.
Those are freedoms we enjoy still in this country that others in the world do not.
Yeah, here's the other thing that strikes me in this, and of course, this is one individual, it's not indicative of everybody, but you know, apparently there was this issue that happened yesterday, and we don't know who started it and what happened, and it's terrible.
But one individual decides that he's gonna take it out on a bunch of other innocent people that were probably not even involved uh in that um uh you know confrontation.
Um, and it just speaks to what is evil.
Um and you know, there's there are terrible things going on in the Middle East right now, uh innocent people that are dying.
But you look at what the Israelis do to they they target the perpetrators, the individuals that are the terrorists, the people that are actually victimizing and killing people, they go to great lengths to avoid tangential casualties.
They do unfortunately happen when these perpetrators hide behind innocent people.
But in this case, the guy is looking to take out as many innocent people as possible.
It's terrible.
Well, that's an excellent point.
Uh it's an excellent point about horrific tragedy when the loss of human life.
Uh, but unfortunately, that is a profound distinction that is oftentimes not made in the way those issues are covered by the media.
We're going to continue to try to make more excellent points in the last 30 minutes of this show.
He's Peter Schweitzer on America Eggers.
This is Sean Handy Radio Show.
We'll be right back.
Welcome back to the Sean Hannity Radio Show.
My name is Eric Eggers.
I'm joined by author Peter Schweitzer.
We co-host a podcast called The Drill Down with Peter Schweitzer.
We're talking about lots of different stories, the things that are happening right now, and we're very excited right now to be joined by U.S. Senator Rand Paul, who just came from, I think giving a speech on the Senate floor.
Senator Paul, can you give us the latest in this ongoing discussion over whether or not and how we should continue to fund the United States government?
Well, you know, I was proud, you know, I was proud of conservatives yesterday who stood up in the House and said that an unlimited debt ceiling where you can spend as much as you want with no dollar limit for two years, but that's just not fiscally conservative.
So most of these guys and men and women were in the freedom caucus, but they stood up, they were fiscally conservative, and said, we won't vote for that.
So they voted down the unlimited debt ceiling idea.
But today there's still another vote going on, and it'll be coming over to the Senate soon, and it'll be a continuing resolution.
That means we will continue to spend money at the same rate as we have been all year.
But that same rate has led to a two trillion dollar deficit this last year.
So I think continuing spending at the same rate without reducing spending is a terrible idea, but it's it's worse than that.
They added a hundred billion dollars that they will borrow for disaster.
Added another thirty billion, they're gonna borrow for farmer subsidies, and then they also this week in the Senate voted for an expansion of Social Security by 200 billion dollars.
Even though Social Security is on its way to bankruptcy and actually currently spends more than it takes in.
So it isn't a good week to be for fiscal conservatism.
Yes, conservatives are standing up and fighting, but we're losing.
The swamp is winning, the big government Republicans are spending and borrow more money, and the Democrats are happily going along with all of it.
Well, that's the thing, Senator Paul, that I've always appreciated about you, uh, which is what you say is what you vote.
And the problem is there are a lot of people in the Republican Party who talk like they are fiscal conservatives, but they don't actually end up doing that.
Is this going to get easier when we have a a Republican House and a Republican Senate and Donald Trump is the presidency, or are we going to have this continued problem with Republicans failing to actually live up to what they promised the American people they would do?
You know, in many ways we've met the enemy and and it's us.
I mean, it's within the Republican Party.
The Democrats are of no value.
They don't they will not lie to you, though.
They don't care about the debt.
They believe in this modern monetary theory that you can just print money at the Fed forever and buy whatever you want.
Republicans go home to the Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce and Lions Club, and they tell you how they hate big government and they want to balance the budget, and they vote for all the spendings.
So it's about split.
This week we had a vote on expanding Social Security.
But Social Security this year lost 40 billion.
So you know, all the payroll taxes we pay, and we pay a ton of payroll taxes.
We spent 40 billion more giving Social Security benefits than we brought in in taxes.
So what we did is this bill, not me, I voted against it, but about half of the Republicans, I think 20 uh four of us voted against, no, twenty-five of us actually voted against this, and twenty-four voted for it.
But by expanding social security by two hundred billion, that means the deficit this year, instead of being 40 billion, will be 60.
So they've increased the Social Security deficit by 50 percent, and it's running out of money and will be out of money by 2033.
So it it's a perpetual fight, and it really is.
People need to identify and in Republican states, they need to say, you know, is my senator, is my congressman conservative, or is he really part of the swamp?
You mentioned that it's not been a good week to be a fiscal conservative, and I say this sort of tongue-in-cheek, but sort of seriously.
Is it ever a good week to be a fiscal conservative?
I mean, Mitt Romney ran on this platform to it, you know, to bring back fiscal restraint in 2012, and he lost soundly, and it doesn't seem like we've kind of taken that issue seriously since then.
Um it is this is something that you think we have given up on as a country, or actually, do you feel like the fact that yes in the last week people started to point out some of the ridiculous spending measures that were in that original bill, that 1547-page bill, and they highlighted how bad that was.
Did that give you any hope at all?
Well, you know, Vivek and Elon have brought a lot of attention to government waste.
I've been talking about it for a decade, and it's it's easy to find the waste, but they're drawing good attention to it.
But the the battle's just getting started, so we have to get rid of it.
And I'll give you another example.
So a lot of the science waste, so-called science, uh, let's say a million dollars spent studying Japanese quail to see if you give them cocaine, are they more sexually promiscuous on cocaine?
Uh, that usually draws laughter because people say that's ridiculous.
You had to make that up.
Now it was a million dollars.
It came from the National Science Foundation.
Well, about a year ago, big government Republicans passed a bill called the CHIPS Act, which subsidizes big chip manufacturers like Intel.
So Intel's a probably nearly a trillion dollar company, and it's getting government subsidies, but it also doubled the size of the National Science Foundation that has studies on the Panamanian frog to see if the country frogs have a mating call than the c you know the city frogs.
I mean, it goes on and on.
I mean, it's it's just insane.
That a million point five spent on if you take a selfie of yourself while smiling, and then look at it later in the day, will that make you happy?
My favorite one is from a while back where they wanted to find out what makes you more aggressive, tequila or gin.
And we all know the answer.
Come on, we but they they had an experiment and they fed codfish gin, and they fed the other half of the codfish uh tequila.
Now, I don't even know how you get a codfish to drink to very carefully.
And you are right, uh tequila.
Tequila makes it more aggressive and people too.
But you know, it's just that insanity, but then Republicans go along with doubling the size of that.
That's the downside.
You want to hear the plus side?
We do agree on lower taxes, we agree on less regulation.
We most of us appreciate uh the power of capitalism and appreciate uh the wealth and prosperity that is dragging everybody up.
I mean, the statistics are amazing how even despite the inflation of the last three or four years, the overall historical trend is that the middle class is moving up and moving up even into the upper class.
So there is good news about capitalism That we need to talk about, but there's some, you know, we have to keep our eyes open and and not take our eye off the ball as far as the spending goes.
Yeah, I know I agree with you on that.
Uh, we want to play a clip for you.
We had Nancy Mace on earlier, and this is what she was told by the leadership in the House as far as what the Senate could or couldn't do involving the uh uh spending legislation that's coming forward.
Just listen to Nancy Mace and give us your thoughts whether this is true or not true.
I sat in two meetings today with groups of Republicans where the lie was stated that if we do single subject bills tonight, do a clean TR, do a d separate uh disaster relief bill and a separate farm extension or farm type bill, that the Senate could only take up one bill.
That is a lie.
There is nothing limiting the Senate from taking up three bills.
We also, as a House, could do three separate single subject bills, and they then do what's called a MERS, MERV.
And that what the MERV would do is we would do this three separate votes and then combine the bills together as they were sent over to the Senate, so they only have one vote.
So, like there are many options and vehicles that and ways that we can go about this.
But again, Republicans are lied to because they were lied to, they got scared, and so it sounds like we're gonna do the CR again, the uh the the CR that we did last night, but no debt ceiling.
So it's just the same thing, a different year.
So, Senator Paul, is that true?
The Senate can only handle one bill at a time?
The rules in the Senate are arcane, Byzantine, and uh hard to understand.
But without consent, and I'm one of the ones who is uh flying the oilmen off often, if I don't consent to let them bring up three bills tonight, they can't.
Because it takes a while, you gotta go through several votes, procedural votes.
It slows things down.
And that can be good if you're preventing bad stuff, and most of the stuff they're passing is bad.
But there's a chance I will give them consent tonight.
And the leverage I have of blocking these bills is that I have two amendments that they'll defeat me on, but I will bring forward the American people know that we care, some of us.
I will put forward something called the Government Shutdown Prevention Act, and if I get a vote on that and may let them bring all the bills up tonight, even though I will vote against the bills.
The government shutdown prevention act says when there's not an agreement, when there's an impasse and government's gonna shut down, it doesn't shut down, it just continues funding, but with six percent less funding.
And that's a pretty significant cut and uh would probably draw people back to the negotiating table because they don't like the idea of cutting.
For me, it would be great because we're at impasse all the time, and I think cutting six percent would be a good idea, which is consistent with my penny plan, which would balance the budget in five years.
I have another bill that says for this 200 billion dollar expansion of Social Security that you can pay for it by gradually raising the age of eligibility three months per year for twelve years.
So by the time you get to 2036, it would be uh it would go from 67 to 70, and people are like, oh, you don't like old people, do you?
It's like no, I aspire to be an old person.
I want to save it for what I am there.
I want to save it for all the the rest of the next generation, and you can't save it if you don't fix it.
And you can't just keep adding expenses.
So this will be the first time if we get this vote tonight on raising the age that this will have been offered maybe ever on the Senate floor, uh, maybe since 1983.
In 83, I think they did it uh through legislation, so it must have come up in eighty three.
This may be the first time we voted on it since eighty-three, and I will lose, but it'll be it'll pre-sage or give uh four notice to the to the people what's coming and that this vote will have to happen again eventually will have to be done.
Well, this is one of the things I appreciate about you, Senator uh Paul.
Uh you really come up with some amazing policy ideas.
So instead of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, you come up with some amazing reform ideas.
I know you're uh a supporter of the idea of single subject bills, so you don't get these monstrous trains that kind of go through the legislative process where they add a lot of pork.
Another great idea that I I I don't know if you actually introduced legislation, but you talked about the fact of having transparency if an amendment is offered to a bill actually have some explanation of who actually wrote the bill.
Was that a lobbyist?
Who was it that Actually wrote that legislation.
And that to me seems to be the path we have to go forward to in a Trump term where you have the House and Senate.
Actual structural reform.
Because if we keep doing the same thing, uh the Democrats at some point are probably going to come to power again, and we're going to keep having these same problems over and over again.
How optimistic are you with the new administration, with the new House and Senate, that we're actually going to get changes to the manner in which we do things, uh, not just the cuts, which of course are important as well.
Well, I think you bring out a good point as far as that the process makes a difference in what ultimately the result is.
For example, our founders intended that they're in history suggests that there would be individual appropriation bills.
There's 12 different departments of government, there's 12 different spending bills.
If you pass 11 of them, and then the 12th one is the treasury, and you say I don't want 80,000 new IRS agents.
We control the House of Representatives.
Why wouldn't they pass 10 or 11 of these?
That way 10 twelfths of government is still open and say to the Department of Treasury, uh you can rot in hell if you don't get rid of these IRS agents.
More people for this, and we're going to fund you at 80% of the level.
We're going to retrench all that money for IRS agents, and we're not going to do it.
Pick some one item you're going to win on.
Instead, that never happens.
We never win.
We never exert the power of the purse.
Because what happens is the Democrats Republicans will put something forward and the Democrats will say, we don't like that.
And then the Democrats say, You shut down the government.
And the Republicans say, Oh, we're afraid to do that.
But the thing is, you don't have this big sort of cataclysmic shutdown of government if you can pass some of the spending bills, get them off the table.
So what you're discussing is one twelfth of the government coming to a halt for a while while we force a compromise.
But the way I perceive what happened is even when we take over the house, like right now we have the House.
How much, what percentage of the power of the person we're using?
Zero.
Not 10%.
We're not getting 50% of what we want.
So the bill they put forward this continuing resolution, $100 billion for disasters, $30 billion for farmers, another $200 billion for Social Security.
That's not a compromise.
They've already sold themselves out before we even get to the Senate.
So it's not like they're waiting, and the Senate wants something worse.
They've already produced something so bad, so big in spending and so much debt that the Senate's going to pick it up and overpass it tonight, also.
Not me.
The Democrats and the big government Republicans will.
It's really fun to hear you, Senator Paul, because you know you're just coming off the Senate floor, you're talking to the American people, you're telling them what votes are going to happen, you're saying we're going to lose, but here's why we're doing it.
I think to be honest, this is exactly the kind of transparency and invitation to the American public into the process that I do think our founding fathers wanted in our country is better because of it.
So thank you for taking the time to join us and giving people some insight into the process, not just today, but moving forward.
Uh, thank you very much for the time today, sir.
Thanks, guys.
That's Senator Rand Paul.
He is author Peter Schweitzer.
I am Eric Eggers.
Together we host a podcast called The Drill Down, which you can find at the drill down.com, and we'll be right back on the Sean Hannity Radio Show right after this.
And Eric Eggers, we've been covering for Sean Hannity on the Sean Hannity Radio Show.
Uh we thank you, Sean, for giving us the opportunity to sit in front of this microphone and talk to your audience.
We hope you're having a restful time over the holidays.
And thank you, Linda, producer Linda, uh, for guiding us every step of the way.
We have done this, I think now five times, and we appreciate it every single time we have a chance to do it.
Yeah, far be it for me to correct you, my boss here at the Government Accountability Institute, but it's actually our sixth time doing it.
Uh, and each and every time we we really cherish the opportunity to speak directly to the American people about like really important issues.
And today we talked about this pending um, you know, fight over how to fund the government.
We also talked about the way that the government's gotten used to being able to lie to us, the American people.
One point to make in all the discussion about a hey, what's the house doing, what's the Senate doing, and we know what Donald Trump supports.
You know who we haven't heard from?
Who?
Joe Biden.
No, and that's just a real thing.
And that's because we don't know what he's doing, where he is, and that continues to be a massive scandal in American history, one that we were happy to be able to experience with you, with the American people today.
That's right.
Well, Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, everybody.
We appreciate you taking the time to listen to us.