Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows joins host Tucker Carlson to discuss the latest in the ongoing saga of Rep. Matt Gaetz and the death threats he has received from the Deep State, and why they should be treated differently than those who have received similar threats.
00:01:12.000Part of the conversation for each and every episode.
00:01:15.000Today, we have an exclusive, explosive interview with President Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows,
00:01:23.000who also served in the United States Congress and has some very strong views about how Republicans need to address the fight we are currently in.
00:01:32.000Against the Democrats, against the Biden regime, the media, and even some of those folks over at the Department of Justice
00:01:38.000who have been weaponized against those they don't agree with politically.
00:01:43.000But first, it's always interesting to expose the double standards that exist, particularly when it comes to the safety of members of Congress.
00:01:53.000Steve Scalise, my fellow congressman, was shot at congressional baseball practice by a mentally ill CNN-obsessed Bernie Sanders supporter.
00:02:05.000His recovery has been miraculous and inspiring.
00:02:08.000A Democrat, Gabby Giffords, was nearly killed by a deranged lunatic before Steve.
00:02:13.000We oppose political violence in the United States, regardless of the politics of the target.
00:02:18.000It shouldn't happen to Scalise, AOC, Ted Cruz, or even Ilhan Omar.
00:02:24.000But when death threats happen to Republicans, when they happened to me, they are often treated differently by a politicized Department of Justice.
00:02:34.000To the DOJ, America first conservatives are second-class citizens, political dissidents, insurrectionists.
00:09:31.000We've told her the congressman who was shot in the hip has been identified as Steve Scalise.
00:09:36.000He is the Republican House majority whip.
00:09:40.000And as you can see there, it appears that they are medevacking him.
00:09:45.000The Alexandria fire department and first responders are medevacking him to get treatment.
00:09:51.000And the shooting happened in the dugout of the baseball field.
00:09:54.000And as of this time, we do not know the name of the shooter and his motive or intent.
00:09:59.000A 2010 publication of Time Magazine stated, quote,
00:10:04.000Some historians argue that the goal of the program was to create a mind control system by which the CIA could program people to conduct assassinations.
00:10:14.000Now, we don't endorse the idea that such a program existed.
00:10:20.000But it's worth noting that Time Magazine is hardly part of what Hillary Clinton called the vast right wing conspiracy.
00:10:26.000And if the CIA was using people to commit assassinations, they probably wouldn't exclude from recruitment those who were mentally ill or unstable.
00:10:37.000Andrew Culbreth then left D.C. after his arrest was blocked by Mr. Rosen at the Department of Justice.
00:10:45.000And he found himself in Langley, Virginia.
00:10:50.000I wonder what he was doing in Langley.
00:10:52.000Not a lot of people are just casually hanging out in Langley, Virginia.
00:12:29.000And now, please enjoy this interview with President Trump's former Chief of Staff and my good friend, Mark Meadows.
00:12:39.000I'm here with the Chief's Chief himself, my good friend Mark Meadows, reacting to all the exciting news about his upcoming book, The Chief's Chief.
00:12:49.000Start by just letting people know, is there a scene from your upcoming book that lays out the Trump leadership style?
00:12:55.000Well, there is. And I think for you and I, who got to see the President up close and personal, we got to see that side of him that, quite frankly, the cameras never pick.
00:13:07.000But when you look at it, I've got one scene in there where he's got a whole bunch of his advisors sitting in front of the Resolute desk.
00:13:16.000You know, he essentially takes one person and he says, what's your opinion on that?
00:13:21.000He lets them espouse it. And then he knows that this other person in the room, so Steven Mnuchin, Peter Navarro, having two different points of view on China.
00:13:33.000And so he says, well, Peter, what do you think?
00:13:35.000Well, then a fight breaks out. I mean, almost to the point where it makes me uncomfortable.
00:13:39.000Well, you've seen it before. You've been in those those Oval Office conversations where it actually, you know, the friction, you can feel it.
00:13:47.000You can you can not only feel it, but you can taste it. You can see it.
00:13:52.000And and yet here was this friction. He sits back and just watches the fight.
00:13:56.000And and and you've been one that has been a friction.
00:14:01.000You know, we talk about firebrand, but you've been the one who's created friction in the Oval to to many of the advisors.
00:14:09.000You know, when when I was serving as the chief, many times they didn't want to see Matt Gates there because Matt Gates would tell the president the truth.
00:14:17.000And and and so that conflict goes back and forth.
00:14:22.000We share how that works out. And then the president makes a decision.
00:14:25.000He says, based on this information, let's make this decision.
00:14:28.000Let's get it done and let's get it done today.
00:14:30.000And and so that Trump time kind of decision making and what I call creative chaos because he creates a chaos and then then makes order out of it is something that was a thing to behold.
00:14:45.000I think people will actually learn about management styles from your book, The Chief's Chief, because you really see in President Trump a leader who did not like sources of information to be constrained.
00:14:57.000And other people who served as chief of staff to the president thought that their job was to manage the inputs and ensure that he only got the interactions or exposures that they curated for him.
00:15:08.000And you had seemingly the exact opposite view.
00:15:11.000You wanted to open up the president to different thoughts, perspectives, interpretations because you knew he was really the central note of the government. Right.
00:15:19.000Well, he is. And he was the one that was elected the 45th president of the United States.
00:15:24.000And you and I were not. And so when you look at that, you know, I can remember one of those times where you called and you said, you know, listen, the president needs to weigh in on this particular issue.
00:15:35.000It was, you know, a legislative issue that was coming up. I said, well, why don't you come over and tell the president in and in the interesting thing is what people are not used to that, you know, where you have members of Congress, where you've got direct input.
00:15:48.000I was willing to give it. But he wanted to hear from you. You know, what what did Matt think? What does Jim think? What does Devin think? You know, so he actually wanted to hear that perspective directly.
00:15:59.000In fact, if he thought you were going around him to try to manage his expectations, he could smell that, you know, a mile away.
00:16:09.000Your relationship with President Trump wasn't all roses. I remember when I first got here, you actually were leading the opposition against a very bad health care bill.
00:16:21.000Jim Jordan called Paul Ryan strategy the dumbest legislative strategy in history.
00:16:26.000And you actually had to serve as a ballast against some of the special interest influences in that bill.
00:16:34.000How do you go from being somebody, you know, very opposed to the president on one particular matter to being quite literally his most trusted advisor?
00:16:43.000Well, it's interesting. You remember that time. I remember that time. Jim Jordan remembers that time.
00:16:49.000I can remember being tweeted at, you know, and and when you're tweeted at by the president of the United States, it makes you Twitter famous, but not necessarily in a good way.
00:17:00.000And so, yeah, it was a tough time. But here's I think that goes back to your first question, Matt, is is the way that President Trump gets information.
00:17:10.000He wants you to shoot straight with him. He doesn't want it sugarcoated.
00:17:14.000And what he respected is the fact that we had a particular position. We were willing to go against Paul Ryan.
00:17:20.000We were willing to go against the Speaker of the House. We were willing to say that Paul Ryan was leading him astray.
00:17:26.000I've got one scene there in the book because it talks about that relationship.
00:17:30.000Bucket one, bucket two and bucket three. You remember that because he says, well, in bucket one, we're going to pass these things at Paul Ryan.
00:17:37.000Bucket two was going to be the administrative fixes that the secretary of HHS and bucket three was going to be all those things.
00:17:45.000We were going to be able to negotiate with the Democrats and get done.
00:17:49.000But that's where the real savings came. And I remember telling me there's something in bucket three, but it isn't health care.
00:17:55.000And calling it like it is, he appreciates that. And when you disagree with him, to let him know that.
00:18:04.000But my disagreements with him oftentimes were in the privacy of a one on one conversation, not going out, leaking it to the Washington Post or whomever.
00:18:14.000Mark, it it really it was interesting to many people that this brash New York business person could get along with this like genteels, you know, Highlands, North Carolina cashers, North Carolina southern gentleman.
00:18:27.000But I think that the essence of your relationship is that you both understood real estate and development.
00:18:33.000And Donald Trump really viewed a lot of the problems in government like a real estate deal.
00:18:38.000You had to be willing to walk away. You know, a win on something was better than sunk costs.
00:18:44.000Seeing things for the opportunity that they presented rather than their status, you know, sort of moment in time existence.
00:18:51.000Do you think that the fact that you and Donald Trump have both been real estate developers created a foundation for your relationship?
00:18:57.000Well, it did. It's interesting you say that we we talk about we talked about real estate.
00:19:03.000We still talk about real estate today. He he quite frankly, some of the deals he talked about, I was impressed with.
00:19:10.000And I thought, you know, I I thought I had a pretty good foundation, but he talked about, you know, buying easements and things that he did.
00:19:18.000And it was really impressive. But it was not just real estate.
00:19:21.000We we could talk about Perry Mason because we both we watched Perry Mason.
00:19:28.000We could talk about Columbo. Some of those. In fact, both of those you're watching reruns.
00:19:32.000They were before your time. But the interesting thing is that we had some of the same dynamics.
00:19:37.000And when he brought so you boomer bonded, we boomer bonded.
00:19:41.000And you're the you're the one that always remember that you always remind me about my boomer back.
00:19:48.000And you do. And you and and I tell you, it's not something that I can change.
00:19:52.000So what you're going to do is just have to manage around that.
00:19:54.000I'm sure it's not your only immutable trait that you'll have to apologize for.
00:19:57.000You know, Mark, when you took this job as chief of staff, I think you were largely set up to come in and build on the great economic successes of this presidency in this legislation on taxes on deregulation that you helped craft in the Congress.
00:20:13.000And you found a job that was very different than that, which you likely expected, because you take over right as this pandemic is being birthed onto the world from China.
00:20:25.000How did the administration think of the pandemic in the early days?
00:20:28.000And perhaps are there some unsung heroes, some folks that really were clarion voices that we should look back to now and say, gosh, that was a really patriotic and valuable contribution to the country?
00:20:38.000You know, it's interesting because early on, I thought we were going to just cruise.
00:20:43.000We had. Listen, this China virus was a thing that, you know, it's going to be beaten in a couple of weeks.
00:20:49.000And and even though the president had made some critical decisions in January before I took the job, you know, it was it was one of those.
00:20:56.000Well, gosh, 15 days to slow the spread.
00:20:58.000I can remember when I said, listen, if we close it for 15 days, how do we ever get it back open?
00:21:03.000And here we are, you know, over a year later, still trying to figure out how we can open up parts of our economy.
00:21:11.000And yet there were some decisions that were made with Secretary Mnuchin and candidly, more importantly, the president of the United States that that people don't realize.
00:21:23.000There was about 21 days when the economy had been shut down, that key decisions that were made by the president and by the secretary of treasury stopped us from being in a depression that we would still be in today.
00:21:38.000Wait a second. Your unsung hero of the coronavirus is Steve Mnuchin.
00:21:42.000No, no, no, no. I'm it's Steve Mnuchin who, like, got all the flexibility to create all the Fed policy he wanted for big business with a lot of folks.
00:21:50.000With all of that, let me push back just a little bit.
00:21:53.000So but what I'm saying there is, is that for 21 days, he was able to allow for policy that allowed that V-shaped recovery that we're talking about.
00:22:04.000Now, in doing that, it couldn't be anything that was was permanent.
00:22:08.000It couldn't be anything that, quite frankly, we shouldn't be doing.
00:22:13.000But flexibility at that particular point was was the key aspect.
00:22:17.000But the the unsung hero, if you really want to look at it in real detail, you may have recalled early on, they were talking about little pigs being, you know, killed.
00:22:29.000And it was this there's it was a little footnote. If somebody Googles it today, they can find it.
00:22:35.000But we we have two different supply chains here in the country.
00:22:39.000We have a supply chain that actually supports restaurants and a supply chain that actually supports grocery stores.
00:22:46.000Those two don't intermesh. I didn't know that until we have this crisis where we're going to run out of chicken and pork and and all of the proteins where we're going to have this.
00:22:56.000So, you know what the president did, Mark, if that's going to be a problem, get them all on the phone, literally had the head of every single group on the phone negotiating in real time, saying, we'll give you protection here.
00:23:07.000We'll give you protection there. So the unsung hero throughout the entire process was was a president that continued to make decisions based on information from other people.
00:23:17.000The two unsung heroes, Donald Trump and Steve Mnuchin. What about what about folks in the administration that maybe had a different type of impact?
00:23:26.000As you as we have the benefit now of time and, you know, you were right there in the room as these decisions were being made.
00:23:32.000Are there people in the administration that polluted the thinking with bad advice or bad tactics?
00:23:38.000I think you you hit on this a little bit earlier. What happens is there was a lot of people that really had a West Wing address that didn't really have the president's best interest at heart.
00:23:51.000And and by that, that's what I was most surprised about. You know, if people ask me, what are you most surprised about?
00:23:57.000I was most surprised that people would run to the press to leak things that one were not accurate, but two, even if they were accurate, shouldn't be shared with the press, should have been shared with the president of the United States.
00:24:10.000But then the other part of that, Matt, that was was key. When you start looking at some of these individuals, it was all about their resume, not about the president's accomplishments, not about what we could get done.
00:24:22.000It was about their resume and what job they would get done or get next. And so so for me, you know, it would have been easier to just tell everybody in the Trump administration if you had any association with Trump that, you know, the woke big corporations wouldn't hire you anyway.
00:24:36.000So you might as well use the you might as well go ahead and use it to the benefit of the American people, because that was in in essence what was happening.
00:24:43.900You know, when I took the job as chief of staff. So was Dr. Fauci a positive or a negative impact? He was a negative impact. Was Dr. Burke Burke's a positive?
00:24:51.440So they were negative impacts when it came to actually accomplishing. I can remember getting a call from one governor that we happen to know.
00:24:59.020And that governor called me and said, listen, I don't want any more help from Washington, D.C. on handling the coronavirus, because the things that they're saying are not based in science and they're not based on what we're seeing in in real time on on the ground here in our state.
00:25:17.060And said, please keep your help in Washington, D.C.
00:25:21.220The book is The Chief's Chief. But I also hope that you reflect a little on your time in Congress.
00:25:27.280You know, in Congress, I always said you were the best strategist at understanding where the puck was going, how we could meet the needs of the country.
00:25:35.860What grade would you give Republican leadership in Congress now in combating the Biden administration?
00:25:41.660They're not skating to where the puck is. And so I would give them a grade of a D.
00:25:48.040No grade. And we might have Biden inflation, but there's no grade inflation from Mark Meadows.
00:25:53.200You know me. I believe that on this tactic and strategy.
00:25:57.400Listen, you need to make Democrats take tough votes.
00:25:59.900You need to make sure that when you've got them on the ropes, that you don't throw in the white towel of surrender.
00:26:08.080And that's what's happened. We saw it with the infrastructure vote.
00:26:10.880You know, a few weeks ago, it's interesting. 13 Republicans jump across, give Biden a win, give Nancy Pelosi a win,
00:26:19.440when she couldn't get to 18 on her own. And here's the issue. They think that they're going to get money.
00:26:25.640I've looked at their congressional districts. None of those people, none of them that voted for this bill will get the majority of this money
00:26:35.420Now, they can go home and say they got money for roads and bridges, but it didn't come into a theater near them.
00:26:41.920It's sad, even if it is, right? I mean, no one. I mean, it was really hard for me to vote against the NDAA.
00:26:49.600Of course it is. When you have a base there in your home district and you love the military and you defend them.
00:26:55.240You've defended them at times when I wouldn't even defend them. And you were willing to do that, Matt.
00:27:00.160But here's the thing is, when you're willing to put the interests of the American people first and you're willing to vote and take a tough vote.
00:27:08.400Listen, everybody can come up here and make easy votes. But when you take a tough vote, I mean, you need to take a tough vote for the right reason going forward.
00:27:17.420And honestly, those 13 Republicans didn't do that.
00:27:20.300And you have called for them to lose their positions of leadership.
00:27:24.280And what shocked me after you made that announcement, I heard from almost every member of the Republican conference folks, hair was on fire.
00:27:31.320But I was shocked at how many of the 13 hold positions of leadership on committees or subcommittees.
00:27:37.180They're the who's who of the establishment. I mean, you're exactly right. They actually have.
00:27:42.520So what does it mean if there is no punishment? Because you and I have seen the case where everybody bangs their chest about how frustrated they are.
00:27:49.160They go home, they go on a foreign trip, they come back to Washington, and it's on to the news of the day.
00:27:53.620What does it mean if there is no consequence, no punishment? Will we see it again?
00:27:57.720We will see it again. And it means that there's no difference between Republicans ruling and Democrats ruling.
00:28:02.600And that's a strong statement. But let me just say this. Obviously, we want to make sure Republicans have the gavel.
00:28:08.820We want to control a number of those things. But here's the other part of it.
00:28:12.460If you're always going to have, you know, the dirty dozen, or at this point, a baker's dozen, actually go and side with the other team,
00:28:23.420then what's America, I can tell you, I heard from all over the country, they said, what in the world is going on?
00:28:29.020We give them a win. But it also talks about leadership.
00:28:32.020If you're going to be the Speaker of the House, you've got to be able to control those members.
00:28:37.320And those members with particular positions of authority and big money that comes from the NRACC,
00:28:44.220and I know you can't talk about that because we're here in your official capacity, but I'll talk about it.
00:28:48.660When that money comes in, there shouldn't be a dime's worth of money going to those individuals if they're going to vote like Democrats.
00:28:57.520Strong leadership from the Chief's Chief. Final question. We see Biden's poll numbers collapsing.
00:29:05.440We see his presidency collapsing. We see a Democratic caucus that has no organizing principle because their only organizing principle before was that they hated Trump.
00:29:14.180And he's playing golf down in Mar-a-Lago.
00:29:19.180But now we're starting to see Democrats, I think, try to escape their legislative failures by weaponizing the Department of Justice.
00:29:30.920And one thing I noticed when you were Chief of Staff, there was a liaison from the White House to the Department of Justice that was thrown out of the building.
00:29:38.200And I continue to hear folks at the DOJ and their supporters say, well, the DOJ should be independent.
00:29:44.440And, you know, I remember in high school I learned the three branches of government,
00:29:47.700and I sort of thought the Department of Justice was a part of the executive branch of government, not its own fourth branch of government.
00:29:55.400And so in the broadest possible terms, how should Americans think about the Department of Justice?
00:30:00.720As an independent, runaway-trained entity or as part of the executive branch?
00:30:06.200Listen, it needs to be part of the executive branch.
00:30:10.580Civics 102, 103, all of them would say that.
00:30:14.520And yet we somehow have a different definition.
00:30:18.000Part of that was born out of what you and I worked on early on, this whole Russia hoax and what happened with the FBI and DOJ at that point.
00:30:28.900They didn't think they worked for anybody under the Trump administration.
00:30:32.280Everybody says, well, you know, now you've got Garland and it's a different thing.
00:30:36.080But it sort of seems like maybe a different person is the attorney general.
00:30:39.960But the operation of the Department of Justice in many ways has really never been part of the pull of gravity of the executive branch of government since Donald Trump won the nomination.
00:30:52.280I think the other thing is there's a lot of fine people that work at the FBI and DOJ, career people that have done an outstanding job.
00:31:01.660And what we've allowed is the media and a few people at the very top to pervert the way that we looked at look at DOJ and FBI, but also the way that it operates.
00:31:14.780And so we've got to make sure that the rule of law is exactly that, that Lady Justice has a blindfold on and that she's not peeking out from underneath that blindfold to figure out who's guilty or innocent.
00:31:26.720Yeah, the only people who are in the blindfold these days are counting the ballots.
00:31:29.940But look, the book is The Chief's Chief.
00:31:32.120It is going to give folks not only a view of the Trump presidency you haven't seen before, but a view of leadership.
00:31:38.160And I think that is precisely the type of leadership that we need to be able to access and mobilize for the benefit of our people.