Sept. 21, 2023 - The Tucker Carlson Show
46:36
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. | |
| Ken Paxton. | ||
| Ken Paxton. | ||
| Impeachment. | ||
| Impeachment. | ||
| You went to the FBI on September 30th without any evidence. | ||
| That's right. | ||
| We took no evidence. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Allegations of bribery, unfitness for office, and abuse of public trust. | |
| He's being attacked by his own employees. | ||
| Did you gain any after that? | ||
| I don't recall. | ||
| It's about Ken Paxton and how bad Ken Paxton is. | ||
| The Board of Managers presented overwhelming evidence. | ||
| Is entered as to Article 1. Well, this is a resounding victory. | ||
| Ken Paxton has survived 16 votes on articles of impeachment. | ||
| The most aggressive legal opponent of the Biden administration in the United States. | ||
| You're a Republican elected with a big margin in a Republican state, but it was Republicans who tried to take you out. | ||
| How can you be removed from your job without being convicted of something? | ||
| We are a huge problem for the Biden administration. | ||
| Take away your job, they take away your money. | ||
| And they took away my ability, ultimately, to even speak. | ||
| Well, that doesn't really sound like the way democracy is supposed to work. | ||
| If you can do impeachments like this and you can have mail-in ballots, we don't have democracy. | ||
| Feels like Texas is going to be a democratic state pretty soon. | ||
| That's the goal. | ||
| We lose Texas, we lose everything. | ||
| Ken Paxton is the attorney general of the state of Texas and one of the primary checks against federal power. | ||
| So far in the Biden administration, Paxton's offices filed 48 lawsuits against the administration. | ||
| This past November, he was elected overwhelmingly to his third term, but then within months, he was impeached. | ||
| In the state of Texas, on a bunch of different counts, a pretty complicated case against him, alleging that he gave special favors to a donor. | ||
| He was just acquitted in that trial in the Texas State Senate. | ||
| Kind of an amazing spectacle, but it raises a bigger question, which is how did this happen? | ||
| Why did it happen? | ||
| And maybe most interestingly, who actually runs the state of Texas? | ||
| In his first interview since his acquittal, Attorney General Ken Paxton joins us on the set. | ||
| Mr. Attorney General, thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| Glad to be here. | ||
| What a great place. | ||
| So congratulations on your acquittal. | ||
| But I'm fascinated by the fact that you were impeached in the first place. | ||
| How did this happen? | ||
| First of all, let me just say, it was, as you've read through this, very complicated. | ||
| It is complicated, yes. | ||
| It was crazy, but I truly believe it became very political. | ||
| And I am sitting here because of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. | ||
| And I was delivered because it wasn't just about the law. | ||
| It became... | ||
| Political completely. | ||
| And I didn't know how it was going to turn out on the political side. | ||
| But it's just interesting because your fans and your detractors, I think, would both acknowledge that you're the most aggressive legal opponent of the Biden administration in the United States. | ||
| You're a Republican elected with a big margin in a Republican state, but it was Republicans who tried to take you out. | ||
| Yeah, that's what it looks like. | ||
| But in reality, I believe the Texas House, a lot of people don't understand this. | ||
| I spent 10 years in the Texas House. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And we have 150 members of the Texas House, and 65 of them are Democrats. | ||
| And those 65 Democrats always vote in the block. | ||
| And they pick the Republican they want, and they deliver those 65 votes. | ||
| And that Republican then has to come up with 10 votes because their own vote is going to count. | ||
| For the Speaker. | ||
| So whoever gives those Democrats the most, whatever Republican agrees to the most, gets elected. | ||
| In this case, I believe, and I think that the- Wait, so you're saying that the Republican Speaker of Texas is chosen by the Democrats? | ||
| Pretty much, yeah. | ||
| Because that 65 is hard to overcome. | ||
| All he has to do then is find 10 Republicans because he's got his own vote. | ||
| And usually you can find 10 Republicans who are either his friends or who he gives big- Committee summits to, like appropriations or state affairs or something big. | ||
| It's pretty easy to put together. | ||
| Wait, so you can have a big majority in the Texas House, but still not control the Texas House? | ||
| That's exactly what has been happening over the last, say, 14 years, 16 years. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It is crazy. | ||
| And people don't, and of course, the media doesn't tell people about that. | ||
| That's literally what happens in the Texas House. | ||
| So we have a really hard time. | ||
| The Senate is great. | ||
| They're very conservative. | ||
| They've done great things for Texas, but they get blocked a lot of times. | ||
| And a lot of my stuff gets blocked in the Texas House because Dave Phelan, the Speaker, is controlled by the Democrats. | ||
| You really believe that? | ||
| Yeah, so I was in the House. | ||
| I saw it at work. | ||
| I was pushed towards that. | ||
| I actually ran against the speaker, a Republican speaker, for that reason, because I could not vote for a speaker controlled by the Democrats. | ||
| Now, I couldn't win because I didn't have the Democrats. | ||
| Well, that doesn't really sound like the way democracy is supposed to work. | ||
| It's how it's working in Texas right now, and that's why this is an opportunity. | ||
| My impeachment actually becomes the opportunity, I think, to speak to this issue. | ||
| I'm going to be out talking about it. | ||
| I have a pretty concrete example of why this doesn't work. | ||
| And here's my argument. | ||
| There were two of the four House investigating lawyers that worked at the Department of Justice in Washington. | ||
| And that's no random. | ||
| It's not random. | ||
| Explain that a little bit for those who haven't followed. | ||
| So House investigating committees, there's five members. | ||
| There's three Republicans, two Democrats. | ||
| It's Texas House. | ||
| Texas House. | ||
| They are responsible for it. | ||
| They were the ones that investigated me. | ||
| And they hired, I think it was four lawyers, two of them. | ||
| Came from the Biden DOJ. That's not an accident. | ||
| They were sent there. | ||
| But you had filed 48 suits against the Biden administration. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I think that was the motivation. | ||
| We were causing a lot of trouble for the Biden administration. | ||
| Even if we didn't win, we slowed them down. | ||
| And we were winning, I think our number is 77% of our cases. | ||
| So we are a huge problem for the Biden administration. | ||
| And that was the way to get me out of the way. | ||
| And obviously that had an impact on the lawsuits being filed by Texas and other states. | ||
| So you think that the effort to remove you from office really came from the Biden administration? | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I think that's where it was instigated, and then there were other groups in Texas that we can talk about that I think were largely participating. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And some of those were Republicans. | ||
| Some of them were Republicans, yes. | ||
| So just to your case really quick, how did you find out you were being impeached, and what happened? | ||
| I literally had no idea. | ||
| It was a committee meeting. | ||
| The House Investigating Committee, I think it was three or four days before Memorial Weekend, the end of session. | ||
| So they're busy trying to pass all these big bills, and they decide they're going to spend one day investigating me. | ||
| Of course, they'd done secret investigation for three months that we didn't know about, behind closed doors with no transparency, no due process. | ||
| Which almost immediately after you're re-elected to a third term, they begin investigating you. | ||
| Yes, but I don't know that. | ||
| They started in March, is what they said, like March 1st. | ||
| And they investigated secretly, behind closed doors, with no one knowing. | ||
| Even the House Investigating Committee, not all of them knew. | ||
| I know for sure that one of the Republicans had no idea until they got to that day that it was me. | ||
| And he was told to vote for impeachment without knowing anything about the case and actually disagreeing with doing it. | ||
| But he was told his career would be affected if he didn't vote for impeachment. | ||
| So those five members had an investigation for one day. | ||
| They did a four-hour hearing. | ||
| Less than 48 hours from that, I was impeached on Saturday, Memorial weekend, without an opportunity to present my side, without an opportunity to have any sworn testimony, which is required by law. | ||
| They are required to have witnesses sworn in under oath. | ||
| No one was sworn in under oath. | ||
| They didn't even have witnesses. | ||
| They brought in investigators who had talked to witnesses, which is obviously hearsay and wrong. | ||
| So that's how it all got done. | ||
| And this was a total shock to you? | ||
| I had no idea. | ||
| They didn't come talk to me. | ||
| They told me nothing about it. | ||
| They didn't tell anybody. | ||
| So what happens once it was announced you're being impeached? | ||
| What happens to you? | ||
| It was horrible. | ||
| I was immediately suspended, so I lost my office. | ||
| I couldn't do any more lawsuits against Biden or anything else. | ||
| What do you mean you were suspended? | ||
| Suspended means I can't be in the office anymore. | ||
| I can't direct what's going on in the office, even though I'm elected, even though they proved nothing, even though they had no testimony. | ||
| You hadn't been convicted. | ||
| Hadn't been convicted. | ||
| They had presented no evidence. | ||
| They had presented no witnesses, and I'm out. | ||
| How? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's a very weird process. | ||
| So you don't even know you're being investigated the moment you find out you're being investigated and impeached or suspended from your job? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| It's the way that I think it's constitutional. | ||
| And I think it needs to be changed because they should have to prove something before the will of the voters is overridden. | ||
| And that's what happened. | ||
| The will of the voters. | ||
| I've been... | ||
| I was in four and a half months. | ||
| Now I've been out of office, suspended for almost four months. | ||
| So half my time of my term now, I've spent not being able to do what the people of Texas elected me to do. | ||
| How can you be removed from your job without being convicted of something? | ||
| It seems pretty crazy, but that's the way the law is. | ||
| And I know that Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor, has suggested now that that be changed. | ||
| They should have to prove that you did something wrong before they remove you from operating as someone who was a lawyer. | ||
| So you just wake up in the morning and they're like, you think you're an elected official? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And now you're not. | ||
| You're just in limbo. | ||
| When they did it that day, that Saturday, I had to walk out of the office and I haven't been back a day since, not a minute since. | ||
| And I was unable to do anything. | ||
| I can't direct any of our legal operations. | ||
| So, you know, I have to go now figure out what's going on in my own office. | ||
| And a lot of people have left. | ||
| They created a lot of harm to the state of Texas by doing it this way. | ||
| Did you think the voters were in charge? | ||
| I used to. | ||
| I used to think like election. | ||
| I'm like very suspicious now. | ||
| If they can do this to me, I mean, they can do this to the lieutenant. | ||
| So they take you out of office. | ||
| Do they pay you? | ||
| Well, they're supposed to. | ||
| By law, I am the attorney general. | ||
| It's in statute that I'm getting paid. | ||
| The comptroller, Glenn Hager, for some reason decided, you know what? | ||
| I'm not going to pay you. | ||
| I'm taking it away. | ||
| Go sue me. | ||
| And he knows that if I sue him in Austin, I have a hard time winning any case in Austin. | ||
| So they take away your job. | ||
| They take away your money. | ||
| What do you do? | ||
| And they took away my ability ultimately to even speak. | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| We had a gag order put in place on both parties somewhere, I think, in June. | ||
| So I could no longer even defend what was being leaked by the House team to reporters. | ||
| A gag order? | ||
| A gag order. | ||
| So I could not respond to any... | ||
| So you've been convicted of nothing. | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| You've not been able to bring your side of the story to the investigators. | ||
| I guess. | ||
| They refused. | ||
| We tried to even send somebody their little sham hearing that lasted less than four hours. | ||
| And they said, no, we don't want to hear your side. | ||
| And then you can't speak in public about it? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| But don't you have a First Amendment right to say what you think? | ||
| That's my opinion. | ||
| But the problem is I can't really challenge it because the very people that put it on and it was done by the Senate. | ||
| Put it in place. | ||
| And so there's nothing I can do about it because they're my votes for acquittal. | ||
| So I can't go challenge the people that, you know, ultimately are responsible for whether I get acquitted. | ||
| I can't start, you know, attacking them on legal issues. | ||
| Well, if there was a gag order, then why was I reading about the details every day in the media? | ||
| Because the House didn't follow the gag order. | ||
| They leaked everything to the Austin American States Fund or the Houston Chronicle or Dallas Morning News. | ||
| I just had to take it. | ||
| I mean, there was nothing I could do. | ||
| But why wouldn't they impose a gag order on those media outlets, which, for the record, hate you. | ||
| I think it's fair to say for ideological reasons. | ||
| So they're allowed to talk about you, but you're not allowed to talk about your position on this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's correct. | |
| Specifically told. | ||
| They were specifically said, of course, this doesn't apply to the media. | ||
| So then the House knows. | ||
| We just have to get it to the right place. | ||
| The gag order is fine for us because we can leak it to a sympathetic press. | ||
| I have... | ||
| So why would the media be allowed to attack you, but you're not allowed to defend yourself? | ||
| That's insane. | ||
| That's the way the rules got set up. | ||
| It was very difficult to deal with. | ||
| Because it was every day a new story that I couldn't say anything about. | ||
| And then people assume you're... | ||
| It doesn't sound American at all. | ||
| It wasn't fair. | ||
| Well, is that... | ||
| I mean, you are an attorney general, chief law enforcement officer of the state. | ||
| Is this common? | ||
| Well, you know, we see gag orders in certain cases, but I'm in a political position, and this became extremely political. | ||
| And, you know, I felt like I was, you know, two hands behind my back, and I felt like I had a constitutional right to be able to speak. | ||
| Well, you do have a constitutional right to be able to speak, period. | ||
| That's what I thought, the Bill of Rights guaranteed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Me too. | |
| First Amendment. | ||
| Me too. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But doesn't... | |
| That should apply to everybody. | ||
| How can it only apply to their enemies? | ||
| Look, it's got to apply to everybody, including people I disagree with. | ||
| They should be free to speak. | ||
| They should be free to criticize me. | ||
| I should be free to respond. | ||
| So I do not fault them for having the ability to speak against me. | ||
| So if you're not getting paid and you're not allowed to talk and you're being... | ||
| Impeached. | ||
| How do you pay for your legal defense? | ||
| So that was the other thing. | ||
| So we have a moratorium on raising money during session. | ||
| It starts 30 days prior to session. | ||
| So it started December 10th, I think. | ||
| And then through the governor's veto period, which was like June 20th, I think, or 21st, I was able to raise money. | ||
| And I spent almost all my money on my campaign because I had a primary, a runoff, and a general. | ||
| I spent 16, 17. Who'd you run against in the primary? | ||
| George P. Bush and a few others. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So I spent all my money. | ||
| So they knew. | ||
| When they did the impeachment, I didn't have any money. | ||
| And so they kicked me out. | ||
| Then they have taxpayer dollars to pay for every lawyer they want. | ||
| I think they had 14 to 17 lawyers. | ||
| And I had to go hire my own team. | ||
| I had no help. | ||
| I had no money. | ||
| And I was starting from scratch. | ||
| They had already done investigations. | ||
| So they get to use taxpayer dollars to prosecute you, but you can't use taxpayer dollars to defend yourself. | ||
| I was not afforded legal representation by the state while I was out. | ||
| I mean, even rapists get... | ||
| Legal representation. | ||
| Think about how many people survive just that. | ||
| You have no money. | ||
| You have no lawyers. | ||
| You have no ability to speak. | ||
| And you're up against a force that's already done an investigation, already have information, and you don't have any of their information. | ||
| You don't even know really what the charges are because even the articles were very vague. | ||
| They didn't identify elements of a crime. | ||
| So then we have to, like, figure out, like, what is it? | ||
| Someone were so vague. | ||
| We didn't even know what they meant. | ||
| But if I go kill someone, which I don't plan to do, but if I did, and I'm indigent, I have no money, The state pays for my legal defense, correct? | ||
| If you can't afford it, yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I get to defend myself if I want. | ||
| I get to say I'm innocent of what I'm being charged with, right? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| And I'm accused of murder. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you were accused, I think, of getting a new countertop in your house from a developer or something. | ||
| Other things like that, yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Huh. | ||
| So how did this happen? | ||
| So, again, I want to get back to the central mystery here, which is how does a conservative state... | ||
| Conservative enough to re-elect you three times. | ||
| How does this happen in a state like that? | ||
| I told you about the Biden piece of this. | ||
| Then there's a group called Texans for Lawsuit Reform. | ||
| They spent a lot of money to bring in another candidate, Eva Guzman, who was on the Supreme Court, to be part of running against me. | ||
| And they thought that if they got enough people running against me, they could take me out of a primary or run me out of money by putting me into a runoff. | ||
| And this group has spent a lot of money, and they were certainly not only part of trying to get me defeated, but they were also very much a part of this effort. | ||
| We have emails where they've written articles, and they send them to Karl Rove, and then Karl Rove gets them published in the Wall Street Journal, whereas we couldn't get anything published in the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| Even before they got recorded, we were turned down for our editorial by the Wall Street Journal, because we had a guy that tried to submit one. | ||
| They said, we can't do yours, and then the next day they did Karl Rove. | ||
| So Karl Rove wrote a piece. | ||
| This summer, I believe in August, saying that you were going to be convicted. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And that was... | ||
| Gloating. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And calling you a bad person. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So Rove is obviously a huge liberal. | ||
| Why would Karl Rove have the sway that he does at the Wall Street Journal and in Texas? | ||
| It's confusing. | ||
| I don't know why he has sway at the Wall Street Journal. | ||
| And I don't think he has that much sway in Texas. | ||
| I mean, his candidates typically lose. | ||
| I mean, he's backed my opponents in every AG race that I've been in. | ||
| First one, and then the last one with the Bushes. | ||
| Very tied in with the Bushes. | ||
| But he's definitely also tied in with the Texans for Lawsuit Reform. | ||
| And they were communicating. | ||
| And he was also communicating with some of the employees, some of my staffers, that had made these charges. | ||
| We have text messages with him communicating with them as well. | ||
| So I knew this was going on. | ||
| I didn't have proof. | ||
| But during this process, we got some of the proof that I thought existed. | ||
| So Karl Rove gets to write a piece in the Wall Street Journal, which I think is the biggest circulation paper in the country, or close anyway. | ||
| Calling you immoral and saying that you're going to be convicted in this trial and that you deserve it. | ||
| You should be destroyed. | ||
| And you go to the Wall Street Journal and say, I'd like to kind of give my side of it. | ||
| And they say no. | ||
| One of my friends did. | ||
| And they said, no, we're not going to publish yours. | ||
| And they were very vague about why they couldn't do it. | ||
| But they were not letting my side of the story be published. | ||
| So just to Karl Rove, who, again, is an activist. | ||
| Liberal working effectively for the Biden administration, who shares their views and their ideology. | ||
| I mean, he's a liberal. | ||
| Big time. | ||
| Hangs out in Aspen. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| But how would Karl Rove still be a force in Texas politics? | ||
| Are most Texas voters kind of on board with the Rove program? | ||
| No, I think he tries to be a force. | ||
| The numbers, it's, you know, I think my numbers in the primary show. | ||
| I got 68 percent. | ||
| George P got 32. He has some influence with that 32%, but not so much with that 68%. | ||
| But they thought if they buried me in negativity, of course, you remember, I can't speak, and I'm trying to just raise enough money to have some type of legal offense. | ||
| They felt like they had all the advantages, so he just starts pounding me with bad stories. | ||
| It was a strategy. | ||
| So describe, Rove is famous not as an intellectual, hardly, but as a political strategist, as a tactician. | ||
| Describe his method of politics. | ||
| You know, there's nothing he won't do, I believe. | ||
| He doesn't mind destroying a person's life. | ||
| Because, I mean, what this effectively potentially could lead to, one, is not only in my office, but I can never run again. | ||
| It affects my reputation, potentially puts me in legal jeopardy. | ||
| Any strategies open to Karl Rove. | ||
| He is good with it as long as he gets his way. | ||
| So destroying the person, his family, his marriage. | ||
| No problem for Karl Rove. | ||
| What's interesting is that when George W. Bush was president, I mean, I was there, Rove was relentlessly attacked by the media as a vicious person. | ||
| Now Karl Rove is defended by the media. | ||
| How did that happen? | ||
| I think they realize he's not conservative. | ||
| He's more in line with Bill Clinton and President Obama than he is in line with our voters in Texas. | ||
| And so the media is very sympathetic in doing things like this. | ||
| Only encourages the media to support Karl Rove. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So to the House Speaker, Dave Phelan, who led the charge against you, it got personal. | ||
| And at one point, you suggested or your allies suggested that he had been drunk on the floor of the Texas House in your famous pink building. | ||
| We have the video. | ||
| He apparently was outraged that you said that he was drunk. | ||
| Here's the video and maybe our viewers can assess whether you were right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Campbell sent out an amendment. | |
| The amendment is acceptable to the author. | ||
| Is there objection to the opposite amendment? | ||
| The chair has done. | ||
| The amendment is adopted. | ||
| The chair recognizes Mr. Johnson of Harris. | ||
| Mr. Johnson of Harris is speaking opposition to the bill. | ||
| The chair recognizes Mr. Niabe Criado to speak in opposition to the bill. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So what language is that? | ||
| Is that Hungarian? | ||
| Esperanto? | ||
| I didn't understand. | ||
| What was that? | ||
| Your guess is as good as mine. | ||
| I mean, I don't think there's any doubt. | ||
| I mean, he was definitely drunk. | ||
| And they tried to say... | ||
| Oh, he was... | ||
| Or on something. | ||
| He was very tired or whatever. | ||
| He was tired! | ||
| So you said you served 10 years in the Texas. | ||
| Were you shocked by that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| I've seen lots of alcohol on the floor. | ||
| I've seen lots of people drunk. | ||
| But it's really unusual for the speaker to do that. | ||
| I think we have other clips of him where it looks like he's drunk. | ||
| That one was probably the most clear. | ||
| It was at the end of session. | ||
| And I just thought it was unbecoming of a speaker that he should not put himself out in public. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If he worked in a factory, he'd be fired. | |
| Absolutely. | ||
| You're not allowed to be drunk at work. | ||
| Are you? | ||
| No. | ||
| I was horrified that the House members didn't respond. | ||
| I asked them to look into him. | ||
| Why don't you see if he's drinking on the floor? | ||
| Because we shouldn't allow a speaker, especially our party, to present himself like that in public. | ||
| And they did nothing about it. | ||
| Instead, they came after me. | ||
| So he was annoyed when you pointed out he was drunk on the floor. | ||
| I'm sure he was. | ||
| I mean, I'm sure he was. | ||
| It seemed like bad things started happening right away. | ||
| I'm going to watch that again when we get off the air because I'm kind of sympathetic. | ||
| You're probably not that drunk at work unless you've got a problem. | ||
| I mean, normal people don't act like that. | ||
| So do you believe that the speaker, Dade Phelan's opposition to you is ideological as well? | ||
| Yeah, I think it's more about power for him. | ||
| I don't think he particularly has an ideology. | ||
| I think his is like, I want to stay in power. | ||
| I've cut this deal to be speaker with the Democrats. | ||
| I have to deliver. | ||
| The Biden administration goes to the Democrats. | ||
| I don't think the Biden administration went to feeling it. | ||
| I think they went to the Democrats. | ||
| And the Democrats said, this is what we want. | ||
| We want him out. | ||
| Because that was causing so much trouble for the Biden administration. | ||
| And then you had these other forces come in with the Rove and the TLR, Texans for Lawsuit Reform group. | ||
| And that was the power. | ||
| And by the way, Texans for Lawsuit Reform, Gave lots of money to House members and lots of members to Senators. | ||
| So they have a lot of influence. | ||
| They give more money to Republican members than any other group or any other single donor. | ||
| Almost every single one of those Republicans that voted against me got money from Texans for lawsuit reform a lot. | ||
| How much time approximately, what percentage of his time does Karl Rove spend trying to destroy Republicans? | ||
| I think a good part. | ||
| I mean, obviously he makes money on... | ||
| Fox and he has other things he does. | ||
| But my view is that his PACs have gone after conservatives for a long time under the guise of being a PAC that goes after Democrats. | ||
| But I don't view him as an ally of Republicans. | ||
| Well, no, that's for sure. | ||
| But why is it so threatening? | ||
| So if a Republican stands up and says, maybe we should have real borders, for example. | ||
| Why is that so threatening? | ||
| The only thing I can think of, you know, you look at guys like Dick Weakley, who's a home builder, and he's one of the leaders of TLR. I mean, I think they think illegal immigration is a good thing. | ||
| It helps their business. | ||
| And obviously, I don't agree with that. | ||
| I think it's devastating to my state. | ||
| And if we want to have a program where we're going to bring workers in from other countries, let's get some legislation to do it the right way instead of just opening our borders to who knows who. | ||
| Well, you've had millions of... | ||
| Illegal aliens cross your border into Texas. | ||
| Every year. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And a lot of them have gone to other parts of the country. | ||
| I mean, they're kind of destroying New York City right now. | ||
| But they're completely changing the country and its political balance, too. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Republicans in Texas, are they aware of that? | ||
| I think it's probably... | ||
| The number one issue, other than maybe voter fraud, I think that's probably right up there with that issue. | ||
| It's affecting, obviously, our border communities are devastated. | ||
| You have towns that have 36,000 people, and you've got more than that, more illegals coming through there than people that live there. | ||
| So it's definitely... | ||
| I don't understand if you're John Cornyn, who's your senator, and you live in Texas, or at least part-time live in Texas, how can you... | ||
| Why not be outraged and upset about that? | ||
| How can you allow this to happen? | ||
| Look, I have no idea why. | ||
| He doesn't seem to address this on a regular basis. | ||
| Thank God that Ted Cruz has. | ||
| But John Cornett has been basically vacant on this issue. | ||
| He's not taking care. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Look, to me, he's been in Washington too long. | ||
| He's been there, what, for 14 years or so? | ||
| And I can't think of a single thing he's accomplished for our state or even for the country, let alone the fact that we have a massive invasion into our state. | ||
| And he doesn't speak out against it. | ||
| I've never seen him propose legislation that significantly affects it or at least push hard for it. | ||
| I haven't seen him in that fight. | ||
| No. | ||
| And in fact, if you were to go through every public statement John Cornyn has made in the last two years, And compare the amount of time he spent talking about the invasion of his own state by the rest of the world with the time he spent talking about the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, he's far more concerned about what's happening in Ukraine. | ||
| So how can a guy like that be your senator? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I think he's never really had competition. | ||
| Why don't you run against him? | ||
| Hey, look, everything's on the table for me. | ||
| Now that I've been through this and I've seen how guys like John Cornyn have represented the state of Texas and not represented us. | ||
| I think it's time somebody needs to step up and run against this guy that will do the job and do it the right way and represent us and worry about what's going on at the border. | ||
| So sincere question, I don't think if you were to do public opinion polling in Texas, particularly of Republican voters, you would see that Cornyn has the same views that they have. | ||
| He doesn't at all. | ||
| I totally agree. | ||
| So who's his constituency? | ||
| You know, he's just been fortunate because... | ||
| He has never really had, because of the money from D.C., the support from guys like Mitch McConnell, I think he's been able to stay there. | ||
| I think those days are over. | ||
| He seems like a puppet of the Bush family. | ||
| That's just an outsider perspective. | ||
| He is absolutely. | ||
| If you go back and look at his history, he was on the Texas Supreme Court, appointed by Bush. | ||
| He's the guy that pushed through our Robin Hood plan. | ||
| He did it judicially by judicial activism for the Bushes instead of passing legislation because they didn't want to pass legislation because... | ||
| President Bush was running for president. | ||
| And that would have required a tax raise. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And so Cornyn did it judicially, I think completely illegally, and turned our schools into very mediocre prospects because it took the rich school district, took their money and put it with the state, and then the state was supposed to give that to the poor school district. | ||
| The problem is it made all of them mediocre instead of letting the good school districts be good. | ||
| And focusing on the ones that needed more help, John Cornyn created a socialistic network. | ||
| And really, I think he hurt our schools. | ||
| That empowered the educrats. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And hurt our ability to educate our kids. | ||
| And he got away with it. | ||
| No one ever talks about it. | ||
| But he did that for the Bushes and for that. | ||
| They made sure he was AG of Texas for one term and then a U.S. senator. | ||
| So he got paid off. | ||
| And now, whenever they ask him to speak, criticize me when I'm running against George P. Bush or criticize me when I had this happen, he does what they ask him to do. | ||
| He is a puppet of the Bush and Karl Rove team. | ||
| Do you think the majority of Texas Republican voters are on board with that? | ||
| I do not think so. | ||
| He's just never had real competition. | ||
| No one's ever gone out there and highlighted and exposed his lack of a record of supporting our state. | ||
| And I don't think he has a record. | ||
| I wonder myself, like, what would he point to that he's done for our state in the last 40 years? | ||
| Zelensky loves him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Of course he does. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So is there, if you're not living in Texas and you just look at Texas and see these trends going on, particularly the immigration trends, it feels like Texas is going to be a democratic state pretty soon. | ||
| I think that's the goal. | ||
| I think that's why it's so important that we fix things like the Texas House and we have a message that resonates with the voter, which we do have that message. | ||
| But when you have this civil war inside the party that Dade Phelan and Karl Rove have created because they don't control it, I think it leads us down a very bad path. | ||
| And we also have a voter fraud issue because we now can't prosecute voter fraud in Texas because the Court of Criminal Appeals in Texas struck down a statute from 1951 that directed the Attorney General—I wasn't there in 1951—but we would prosecute voter fraud because these local DAs who were controlled by Soros in the big counties like Travis, which is Austin, or Harris, which is Houston, or Bayer, which is San Antonio, they are not going to prosecute. | ||
| So we were doing it. | ||
| We had 900 cases, so this whole idea there's no voter fraud, complete fabrication, we were prosecuting. | ||
| One lawyer, when I started to prosecute this, I got the legislature to give me more. | ||
| We were fully busy prosecuting voter fraud. | ||
| And then suddenly the Court of Criminal Appeals, all Republicans, said, nope. | ||
| That's unconstitutional for the Attorney General to be in court because he's in the executive branch. | ||
| That was their reasoning. | ||
| To be in court, I thought... | ||
| Not a lot, because they said that was a judicial function, so I no longer could be in court. | ||
| Now, they're right. | ||
| The Court of Criminal Appeals, they're the final court in our state on criminal matters. | ||
| So they're like the Supreme Court in that. | ||
| The Supreme Court is the final say on civil matters. | ||
| So they were able to strike down one area of law for us. | ||
| If they're right, the Supreme Court should tell me that no, I shouldn't be allowed to be in court on civil cases either because I'm in the executive branch. | ||
| And if that was right, every attorney general in the country should no longer be allowed to go to court. | ||
| I'm confused. | ||
| So the attorney general in the state of Texas is not allowed to prosecute voter fraud? | ||
| That's correct. | ||
| Even though the legislature directed it. | ||
| It's one of the things that I'm told to do four things in the Texas Constitution. | ||
| And one of those things is such things as are required by law. | ||
| Who makes the laws? | ||
| The Texas legislature. | ||
| The legislature passed a law in 51 that directed the attorney general to prosecute voter fraud, largely because I think that they didn't trust the local DAs to get that done because it's very political. | ||
| And so that's what we did. | ||
| We prosecuted voter fraud. | ||
| And we had plenty of it. | ||
| And now, guess what? | ||
| There's no prosecution for voter fraud. | ||
| But that's the core defense of democracy is prosecuting voter fraud. | ||
| If we don't fix this, if the Court of Criminal Appeals, who I am... | ||
| Concern was put there by George Soros because no one knows who they are. | ||
| They're all Republicans, but even Republicans don't know who they are. | ||
| If I go to a room of Republicans, I say, can you name one person on the Court of Criminal Appeals? | ||
| I'm lucky if I can get one. | ||
| And so I think it was a genius move by getting the right people on there. | ||
| We now have no defense because the local DAs won't do it. | ||
| And now I'm supposedly not allowed to do it. | ||
| So I tried to get the legislature to pass a law to reauthorize it. | ||
| The Senate overwhelmingly passed it. | ||
| And guess what I was told in the Texas House by Dave Phelan's team? | ||
| We don't have time for that. | ||
| We're not going to do it. | ||
| We don't have time to prosecute voter fraud? | ||
| We don't have time to reauthorize that statute so that I can go back and start prosecuting voter fraud and go change the makeup of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. | ||
| I was told by the Speaker, we don't have time for that. | ||
| In my opinion, the most important issue we have, because every other issue falls on whether we can elect the right people. | ||
| Of course, and whether... | ||
| Do voters have the power to send their choice into office? | ||
| I mean, do voters have power is the real question. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| And if you think about it, if we lose the state, the laws are going to change. | ||
| All the voter laws are going to change. | ||
| You're going to go to California where you can just mail-in ballots. | ||
| And what I know from mail-in ballot, having fought this for the last election, winning 12 cases on mail-in ballots that unfortunately other states like Georgia did not fight. | ||
| I know that mail-in ballots are completely unreliable. | ||
| If you just mail them out to everybody, you have no idea who's sending them back. | ||
| There's no verification. | ||
| When they say you can't prove voter fraud, they are right. | ||
| Because normally what you have to do, if you're going to mail in ballot, you have to satisfy the laws under certain categories. | ||
| You're over 65, you're out of state, you're disabled. | ||
| You satisfy, you sign an affidavit, and you send it in with your application that this is my signature. | ||
| And then when you send your ballot back, they send you a ballot and an envelope, you sign that envelope. | ||
| With your signature, stick the ballot, and they verify the signatures. | ||
| Not the best, not as good as photo ID that we have for all other voting, but it still is something. | ||
| But when you change it to mailing it out to everybody, we have no idea. | ||
| We have no signature verification. | ||
| We have no idea who's voting. | ||
| So when they say, you can't prove voter fraud, that's the system that they like because we can't prove voter fraud if we set up a system that's completely open. | ||
| And that's what's happening in America. | ||
| So that's why Georgia, which... | ||
| Most of us thought it was a kind of conservative state became one of the most left-wing states in the country, you believe, because of mail-in ballots. | ||
| I sat there on election night. | ||
| I told the president in, I think it was May, I said, Mr. President, I have 12 lawsuits in the most liberal counties. | ||
| I'm losing in every county because they sued in liberal counties where all the judges are liberal. | ||
| Court of Appeals are liberal. | ||
| I'm going to have to find a way to get to the Supreme Court or the Fifth Circuit before it's too late, before they mail those ballots out, or you won't win Texas. | ||
| I guarantee you. | ||
| If Harris County can send out 2.7 million ballots. | ||
| You won Texas by 600,000. | ||
| You will not win. | ||
| And if we have multiple counties doing that, they'll just figure out how many votes they need. | ||
| We won every single lawsuit, all 12. And I told him, we lose one, you're done. | ||
| He didn't believe me. | ||
| And I said, you've got to watch this in other states because if this is happening in Texas, which it looks like it's a national program, I can only focus on Texas. | ||
| You better make sure this doesn't happen in other states. | ||
| And sure enough, Georgia, which had the same margin of victory for Trump. | ||
| Four years prior. | ||
| They don't stop it. | ||
| The governor, the AG, they just sign a consent decree and they have mail-in ballots with no signature verification. | ||
| They have drop-off boxes. | ||
| And they allow all these mail-in ballots. | ||
| And guess what? | ||
| Now Georgia, that had the same margin of victory for Trump, now suddenly we have an 8% or 9% win for Trump by protecting the ballot box. | ||
| In Georgia, he loses by what? | ||
| 14,000? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It was a small amount. | ||
| And I knew when they stopped counting votes on election night, I'm sitting there watching, I'm going, This is what they would have done in Texas. | ||
| What was that about? | ||
| What's that? | ||
| They stopped counting votes on election night? | ||
| Because what they needed to figure out was how many real votes there were so they could figure out how many mail-in ballots to apply to the election. | ||
| That's what they would have done in Texas, I'm convinced. | ||
| So you think that was fraud, right? | ||
| I have no doubt. | ||
| Having been through that whole process... | ||
| It wasn't just a water leak? | ||
| It was definitely planned. | ||
| I mean, it would have happened in Texas. | ||
| I promise you. | ||
| But can you just stop counting ballots on election night when everyone's watching TV? Oh, I know. | ||
| Have you ever seen that before? | ||
| Ever? | ||
| For three hours? | ||
| Well, you tell me. | ||
| You're the one who's in politics. | ||
| I've never seen it before in my life. | ||
| I was like, I knew it. | ||
| When they stopped, and Trump is leading in all these states, I knew exactly what they were doing. | ||
| Because there's no way to know where those mail-in ballots came. | ||
| Anybody could have filled them out. | ||
| Anybody. | ||
| There's no way to know where those ballots came from. | ||
| That's not a dangerous conspiracy theory? | ||
| It's... | ||
| I watched it happen. | ||
| I was a part of it. | ||
| So they tell me I'm crazy whenever I talk about it. | ||
| They tell me that I should shut up. | ||
| As a matter of fact, they're going after my state bar license right now for going after election fraud in the overall election. | ||
| So on top of all of this, you know, I've got to deal with the... | ||
| But why wouldn't Karl Rove be upset about that? | ||
| I mean, he's a defender of democracy, right? | ||
| Very good question. | ||
| Why is Karl not worried about that? | ||
| He doesn't seem to care. | ||
| Well, so if you're Carl and you're taking all this money from billionaires, some of whom I know who are nice people, and I think they think it's helping, or Carl's convinced them that he's helping somehow, why wouldn't preventing voter fraud, mail-in ballots, which you bet voter fraud, be your number one priority? | ||
| I think for any- Anybody that cares about democracy, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, that that should be the number one thing. | ||
| And for the media to constantly shut down the conversation about this, and for social media companies, technology companies to shut down the conversation tells me that there's a reason they don't want us talking about it. | ||
| It's insane how you get treated for even bringing it up, when in reality, I don't think there's a more important issue, even than immigration, anything, because all those other issues... | ||
| We'll be affected by whether we have real elections that we can trust. | ||
| And you think it comes down to, or the most important issue is mail-in ballots? | ||
| For what I know, like I don't know the machine stuff. | ||
| I've tried to get people to bring stuff to prove it, and I've never seen proof. | ||
| So I would... | ||
| I haven't either. | ||
| Open-minded, but I haven't seen it. | ||
| I'm open-minded, but I have never had anybody bring me proof. | ||
| But I do know 100% that they cheat with mail-in ballots. | ||
| I know that for a fact, and we have prosecuted people for that. | ||
| We had a lot of cases. | ||
| It wasn't just like, Oh, well, you know why they can tell the narrative that there's no voter fraud? | ||
| Because no one prosecutes voter fraud in the country, except us. | ||
| We used to. | ||
| Now there's no cases. | ||
| Who prosecutes? | ||
| Can you name cases? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| They don't prosecute it. | ||
| The prosecutors do not prosecute it, even though it's a violation of law and it affects the fundamental basis of our democracy. | ||
| Well, it ends democracy. | ||
| We don't have it. | ||
| If you can do impeachments like this and you can have mail-in ballots, we don't have democracy. | ||
| We have control by a few people. | ||
| Can you just walk us through, since you prosecuted... | ||
| Cases, voter fraud cases. | ||
| How exactly does the fraud work with mail-in ballots? | ||
| So what these registrars do, these people that control the election offices, election administrators in each of these counties, so they decided because of COVID. So they got around a lot. | ||
| In Texas, we have a lot that says you can only mail-in ballot if you're out of state at the time of the election, or you have a disability, or you're over 65, or you're in jail, but you're not a felon. | ||
| That's it. | ||
| That's fairly broad. | ||
| I don't even like that broad because it still opens up voter fraud. | ||
| But that's what the legislature said, so that's the rules. | ||
| Well, so what they said, these judges, these local administrators, were going to send out millions of ballots. | ||
| I would have guessed seven or eight million ballots going out in Texas to everyone, just everybody that's in the county. | ||
| Well, so if the election administrator is colluding and telling people where those ballots are, they just pick them up, fill them out, sign them, and then mail them back in, you would have no idea. | ||
| And if you have a program for that... | ||
| There's no way to know. | ||
| I can't ever prosecute this because I don't know who signed the ballot. | ||
| I can't prove it wasn't real. | ||
| It becomes nearly impossible. | ||
| And that's what I think they were trying to accomplish in Texas. | ||
| And then when I saw it happen in these other states, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. | ||
| It affected our elections because guess what? | ||
| We all vote for president. | ||
| We all have national elections that relate to the Senate and Congress. | ||
| And that's why I sued. | ||
| I sued because I said, wait a minute, these states are required by the Constitution to follow their own laws. | ||
| And they didn't follow their own laws. | ||
| I can't prove voter fraud. | ||
| Even they probably can't prove voter fraud because of the way it was done. | ||
| But I did argue that they didn't follow their own laws and they are required to. | ||
| In the Supreme Court, we lost 7-2. | ||
| I think they should have heard our case. | ||
| And that's what the state bar said. | ||
| That was a frivolous lawsuit. | ||
| And even though two Supreme Court justices agree with you, you should be punished for filing that case. | ||
| Of course, they're not elected. | ||
| I am. | ||
| So you think that was the third rail? | ||
| That's what you did that brought impeachment on your head? | ||
| There's no doubt about that. | ||
| Of course, we have lawsuits against Google, Facebook, tech companies. | ||
| We were starting to invest big pharma on the vaccine because, as you know, the vaccine manufacturers are not liable for any... | ||
| We were already finding out they hadn't tested these vaccines and they weren't disclosing some of the consequences. | ||
| So we were investigating them to see if we had causes of action under deceptive trade practices in Texas. | ||
| And as soon as I did that, man, that blew up my world. | ||
| And I became, I think, a target of some big pharma, big tech, and obviously the Biden administration. | ||
| Why would that be controversial? | ||
| Big Pharma gives a lot of money. | ||
| But if they make everyone take the vaccine, but they haven't fully tested it, which is true, and they have liability, doesn't somebody need to... | ||
| I was doing it because the federal government has this immunity for them. | ||
| And I'm like, this is wrong. | ||
| They didn't test this thing, and then they didn't tell us about those side effects. | ||
| They had an obligation to test it, even if they weren't liable. | ||
| And they had an obligation to tell my people. | ||
| Hey, there's some risk here. | ||
| You should decide whether you want the vaccine, but here are your risks. | ||
| Instead of saying, oh, everything's good. | ||
| It prevents it. | ||
| You won't spread it. | ||
| All that was untrue. | ||
| And that's a deceptive trade practice. | ||
| If they did that, and we were starting to get that information— It seems like they did that. | ||
| It seems like they did that. | ||
| I had to leave office, so I don't know what's going on with that investigation. | ||
| I will be finding out this week. | ||
| But we are going to be back on that case. | ||
| And I think that the people of Texas and the country have a right to know what happened. | ||
| Well, of course they do. | ||
| Is Rove not on that either? | ||
| I have never heard him speak against anything related to that. | ||
| Never. | ||
| So it's interesting. | ||
| I've interviewed a lot of people who go through traumatic experiences. | ||
| This has obviously been a traumatic experience for you and your family. | ||
| And they either are kind of broken by it and decide to obey, or... | ||
| They become more ferocious. | ||
| Where would you say you are? | ||
| Look, I am so excited about going back. | ||
| I've been thinking about what I want to do when I get back since the day I left. | ||
| And so I'm re-energized to do the things that I think the voters sent me to do. | ||
| I ran again because I was in the middle of so many big things. | ||
| I mean, our Google lawsuit, our antitrust lawsuit is the... | ||
| I think the largest the world's ever seen. | ||
| And it will have an impact on whether we have free speech on the Internet, whether they can control all advertising on the Internet by one company. | ||
| The things that I was working on, like this big pharma stuff, and the fact that we're trying to stop the Biden administration from ignoring the Constitution and just ramrodding things through outside of the legislative process, these are all things that fundamentally affect, and the voter fraud issue, fundamentally affect whether we are going to be a free country. | ||
| And so, I mean, that excites me to go fight for that. | ||
| Even if they keep taking shots at me, which I assume Karl Rove and that group, they'll continue to do it. | ||
| But to me, it's worth it. | ||
| Because if we don't fight now, we're going to lose our freedom. | ||
| If we lose Texas, we lose everything. | ||
| Well, yeah. | ||
| I mean, the country is a completely different country if Texas goes. | ||
| There's no balance at all. | ||
| We cannot depend on Maine to say this. | ||
| It's a one-party state at that point. | ||
| So what do you think, though? | ||
| I mean, presumably... | ||
| You've got, what, 800 lawyers in your office? | ||
| Somewhere around that. | ||
| I'll have to go back and check. | ||
| So it's a four. | ||
| I mean, you are a four. | ||
| Yes, we are the largest Republican attorney general's office in the country. | ||
| I know that. | ||
| We've got resources other states don't have. | ||
| So we can do things they can't do. | ||
| And a lot of times, you know, other states will work with us to increase our ability to have an impact. | ||
| But we are the most important Republican state just because of size and resources. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Massive scale. | ||
| So they're trying to put Trump in jail. | ||
| What do you think they're going to try to do? | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I think if they could, they'd put me in jail. | ||
| I don't think they're going to stop. | ||
| They've realized that this law issue works because there are lots of judges who are political more than they are following the law. | ||
| And so you're exposed. | ||
| I'm exposed. | ||
| He's exposed depending on what court you end up in. | ||
| And you know if you end up in certain courts, you've got almost no chance of winning. | ||
| So it's a scary prospect for people like us. | ||
| But if we don't keep going… We concede. | ||
| We lose. | ||
| I mean, we all lose. | ||
| My kids lose. | ||
| My grandkids lose. | ||
| I mean, I'm 60. I'm only going to be around for, what, 20, 30 years? | ||
| I don't want to walk away from this and leave my kids and my grandkids in a spot where I just gave up and said, fine, let them do this. | ||
| Even if they punish me for it, so be it. | ||
| You hear conservatives complain about George Soros' effect on our judicial system. | ||
| But, you know, you've been in Texas a long time. | ||
| You've seen it. | ||
| It is dramatic because he's so smart. | ||
| I mean, I think he's outsmarted us on this stuff. | ||
| I watched DAs who I worked with, Democratic DAs, who I worked with, didn't agree with on every issue, but they would prosecute cases. | ||
| Whether it was in Travis County, we worked with the DA there. | ||
| I even tried to help her get money to prosecute certain types of cases. | ||
| The Bexar County, which is San Antonio, I thought that guy was doing a great job. | ||
| George Soros. | ||
| Put up candidates to take those two out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why? | |
| Because he wanted people that wouldn't prosecute real crime and focus on political crimes. | ||
| Instead of going after shoplifters and drugs and all the things that you'd expect a prosecutor to go after, George Soros and voter fraud, they're not going to do it. | ||
| It was a great strategy, so that leaves only me. | ||
| But why would he want that? | ||
| I mean, why would anybody want to encourage violent crime? | ||
| It's a mystery to me. | ||
| I don't understand it unless you want to destabilize the country, which that does. | ||
| I think it creates lack of confidence. | ||
| People don't feel safe. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They don't trust their institutions. | ||
| And I think you can look at the big cities, whether it's Austin or go to Seattle, go to San Francisco. | ||
| I mean, you know San Francisco. | ||
| I think the results speak for themselves, right? | ||
| I mean, crime rates have gone up. | ||
| People will feel less safe. | ||
| And I think it's had its intended effect and continues to have its intended effect. | ||
| So that was a smart move by George Soros. | ||
| And it's really hard for us to do much about it because we can't elect—we don't control Democratic primaries. | ||
| So that means we have to be smart. | ||
| We have to make sure our Court of Criminal Appeals, which is all Republican, that we elect the right people there. | ||
| We have to be sure that the Attorney General is going to go fight for this stuff. | ||
| Because if we lose some of these other pillars, we have nothing left to fight with. | ||
| Are there—I mean, again, I hate to keep going back to Karl Rove, but— You know, he raises probably more money than anybody in the state for politics. | ||
| Is this a concern of his? | ||
| I mean, are Republican groups trying to get prosecutors who care about the law elected? | ||
| I've never seen it. | ||
| I've never seen it from Karl Rove. | ||
| I wish Karl Rove cared about some of these things, but I've never seen him concerned about the things that I'm talking about, things that dramatically affect the future of Texas and the future of our country, which I have said are linked. | ||
| I've never seen Karl Rove ever step forward to do that. | ||
| I've seen him attack Republicans, conservative Republicans, who are trying to do that, like me. | ||
| But I've never seen him help us. | ||
| I've seen him work with the other side, but I've never seen him help us. | ||
| But I mean, a lot of people get murdered as a result of these policies. | ||
| Like, people die. | ||
| A lot of people die. | ||
| There's no doubt that we have higher crime rates in all categories because of policies from DAs. | ||
| I mean, look at what Austin did. | ||
| They cut their police force, I think it was by 34%. | ||
| Now, I mean, with crime rates going up and you're cutting the police force, they did that in Austin. | ||
| I know they've done that in other cities. | ||
| How does that make any sense? | ||
| And by the way, they kept saying in my trial that I was against law enforcement. | ||
| That is not true. | ||
| I'm against corrupt law enforcement. | ||
| I'm not against law enforcement. | ||
| I believe in law enforcement and I think cutting the police force is a bad idea. | ||
| So this whole notion that they tried to present in the trial that I was against law enforcement is absolute false. | ||
| And I think more law enforcement is actually better as long as they're doing their job the right way. | ||
| In any profession, you have people that don't do the right thing. | ||
| I've noticed. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Wouldn't it be interesting, though, to try and figure out how many people have been murdered as a result of these policies? | ||
| I mean, Austin got a pretty famous serial killer once they started pulling back on law enforcement. | ||
| Obviously, as time is going on, we should be able to get more and more of those statistics. | ||
| We already have probably at least a year or two's worth to look at. | ||
| And that's something I'm going to be super interested in talking about as I go around the state because I'm going to be going around the state talking about all these issues over the next couple of years. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| Well, that's quite a story. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Hey, thank you. | ||
| Thank you for coming. | ||
| Well, thanks for having me. | ||
| I really appreciate it. | ||
| It's my first chance to at least tell some of the story. | ||
| And obviously, I'm going to keep doing that. | ||
| I really appreciate you having me here. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| Thank you, by the way. | ||
| Thank you. |
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