Dan Crenshaw is a member of the House of Representatives from Ohio's 6th congressional district. He served in the U.S. Marine Corps, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines' elite SEAL Team Six. He was shot in the head and blinded in an IED blast in Afghanistan in 2011, but recovered. He then went on to become a Navy SEAL and serve in the Middle East and Korea. In 2016, he was elected to Congress and has been in office since 2017. In this special, Dan talks about how he got there, why he decided to run for Congress, and what it takes to be a good representative. He also discusses how he became a good friend of President John F. Kennedy and why he thinks he should run for re-election in 2020. He also talks about the importance of being mentally tough and being able to compete in a free market, and how he thinks we can all learn from the lessons he learned from his experience in Afghanistan and the people he met along the way. The Sunday Special is a special thanks to our sponsor, PolicyGenius. Go check them out! Go check out their products and services, and don t forget to rate them out on Apple Podcasts and become a supporter of their products! Subscribe to our new podcast, Rate/subscribe in iTunes and leave us a rating and review in your thoughts on the Sunday Special on your favorite streaming platform! Thanks for listening and review! If you like what you ve been listening to this Sunday Special, please consider rating, reviewing and reviewing it in iTunes, and share it with a friend! and leaving us a review on your fellow podcast listening and sharing it on your podcast buddies! if you re a fellow podcasting and/or you re listening to Sunday Special Thanks! Timestamps: 4:00 - Rate, review, rating, and subscribe to our podcast! 5:30 - What s your favorite Sunday Special? 6:15 - What do you think of it? 7:00 8:10 - What would you like to do next? 9: What s a Sunday Special - What is your favorite part of the show? 10:00 + 1/20 - How did you think it s better? 11:40 - How do you would like to hear more? 13:00 / 7/10 / 10/10/10 + 5/10
00:01:32.000I'm very excited to have you here, although less excited than I was before since we arm wrestled, which went very poorly for me before the show.
00:03:00.000First of all, Harvard makes everybody think they can be in politics and then be a president, especially at the Kennedy School.
00:03:07.000And so in the back of my mind, I knew if I wanted to really have an impact on all of the policy issues that I care about, not just maybe a singular policy focus, that you eventually have to get into politics.
00:03:20.000Okay, there's three things you really need.
00:03:22.000You either need to be independently wealthy, you need to have great political connections, or you just need to have a window of opportunity.
00:03:27.000And so our window of opportunity came when Ted Poe announced retirement.
00:03:30.000It was my home district, and we went for it.
00:03:33.000I came home one day, asked my wife, should we do this?
00:03:58.000So, and early voting starts two weeks before that, mail-in ballots a whole month before that, so you really gotta get ahead of the curve here.
00:04:05.000We got second place in that election by 155 votes.
00:04:09.000And then we were off into a runoff, and the rest is history.
00:04:12.000So, what actually prompted you to get in the military in the first place?
00:04:15.000We're of the same generation, we're nearly the same age, and very few people of our generation actually joined the military.
00:04:19.000I'm a good example of this, so you did something that I didn't do, so thank you for that, obviously.
00:04:23.000But what prompted you to get into the military?
00:04:25.000You said you wanted to be in the Navy, and you were a Navy SEAL, obviously.
00:04:30.000I read a book when I was maybe eight years old called Rogue Warrior.
00:04:34.000And if you talk to most SEALs, this is generally their story because the only way you really make it through something like BUDS is to have wanted it your entire life.
00:04:42.000There is no choice for you once you get there.
00:04:44.000It doesn't matter how long they keep you in the Pacific Ocean.
00:04:46.000It doesn't matter how long they make you run with a boat on your head or how many hours of log PT you do.
00:04:50.000It just doesn't matter to you because it's just something you have to get through.
00:04:53.000Now, You complain about it, you whine about it, but you just have to do it.
00:06:01.000You know, a lot of controlled, what I would call controlled drowning.
00:06:04.000You know, it's, those are some of my least favorite parts of BUDS because they're trying to make you comfortable underwater, trying to make you comfortable in the worst situations possible at the bottom of the pool.
00:06:14.000And you get through that, you go to third phase, it's land warfare phase.
00:06:18.000And they make that painful and difficult for all, a whole bunch of other sorts of reasons.
00:06:25.000And even after BUDZ is over, you're not a SEAL yet, you have to go through what's called SEAL qualification training.
00:06:29.000Now you're really learning, you're really honing some skills, then you get your trident, and then you go to a team, and then you go through an entire other year or so of training with your platoon so that you are just a really perfect warfighting machine when you actually deploy.
00:06:53.000A few months ago, I was supposed to speak on the Hill.
00:06:56.000I was supposed to speak actually at Georgetown, and they canceled my speech because there was a big snow day.
00:06:59.000And so instead, I ended up doing a kind of impromptu session with all the congressional staffers A couple hundred congressional staffers showed up and they were, you know, talking about how much they enjoyed the show.
00:07:08.000I said, well, you guys have the hard job.
00:07:13.000Being in Congress means you have to make deals.
00:07:14.000It means you have to compromise on principle.
00:07:17.000How is that shift between being the ideologue who wants to run for Congress and then actually sitting in Congress?
00:07:22.000There's two questions, which is what I ran on and then this broader question of how do we maintain that balance between ideological purism and practicality.
00:07:34.000So, I tried to run on things that I knew I could at least fight for in a very real way.
00:08:37.000And then trying to balance that into some kind of practical sense, and I think the solution For politicians is just be open about it, just be open about why you're voting a certain way, like what pressures you had to face and to get that.
00:08:50.000And I think voters are more willing to listen than a lot of politicians realize.
00:08:54.000And so, I mean, just honesty, knowing why you believe what you believe and knowing and knowing why you can't quite get there, being able to take that.
00:09:04.000You know, win a few yards, as opposed to a Hail Mary touchdown, I think is important for us to do, and simultaneously doesn't require us to let go of those fundamental principles that drive us there in the first place.
00:09:16.000So what do you think are the fundamental principles that drive you?
00:09:35.000And really, they're the greatest ideas we've ever had, and they were written down in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
00:09:40.000So these ideas of limited government and local control, right?
00:09:43.000Where we have a diverse set of opinions and preferences across this country, and the only way to maintain that without it boiling over is to give people local control.
00:09:51.000Okay, that's a very conservative answer to that, basically.
00:09:54.000What I'm talking about is federalism, right?
00:09:56.000But I like to talk about these things in ways that people understand, because if you just say federalism and limited government, A lot of liberals just turn off, right?
00:10:03.000That's just a conservative talking point.
00:10:12.000So these kind of cultural values that I think are important to keep a society Again, together.
00:10:18.000Because if people don't believe in personal responsibility, if you are more inclined to believe in victimhood as opposed to personal responsibility, well, think about if everybody did that.
00:10:28.000And this is what I try to explain to people.
00:10:33.000If no one takes responsibility, if at least your first choice isn't, you have to take care of this.
00:10:38.000And then maybe it's your family, and then it's your community and your church, and then it's your local government, and then it's your state, and then it's the federal government.
00:10:45.000Try to help people understand that sort of line of reasoning and why that's the best way to run a society.
00:10:52.000Other cultural values I would actually throw out there are mental toughness.
00:10:59.000So a sense of grit, a sense of ability to this kind of American pioneer spirit that I think we're losing.
00:11:05.000And this kind of speaks to my whole history and outrage culture, which I was a part of the SNL skit and how that all turned out.
00:11:15.000And what I was glad to be able to do was just rebuff outrage culture.
00:11:21.000This idea that you have to be offended, that a grieved victim status is the greatest thing you can accomplish.
00:11:26.000And pointing out that that's just not a healthy place for us to go.
00:11:52.000So, you know, to answer your question in a long-winded way, you've got to start with the cultural aspects.
00:11:59.000Because culture, you know, as you always say, politics is downstream of culture and the policy is downstream of politics.
00:12:05.000You've got to start with the culture, then you can get to the politics, then we can win, and then we can actually put in the policy that reflects those cultural values that give ourselves So let's talk about the culture for a second, because as I said at the very top, the way that most folks know you is because of the SNL situation.
00:12:24.000So for folks who may have missed that story, and for folks who may not have seen it unfold, maybe you can tell us what that was like from your perspective.
00:12:30.000Yeah, I mean, I woke up Sunday, and all my friends are texting me.
00:12:47.000For folks who missed it, Pete Davidson, who is one of the stars of SNL, made a joke about your eye patch and suggested that you were a pirate or that you were some sort of James Bond villain or something.
00:14:08.000I said online I thought it was maybe the most uplifting moment in American politics I'd seen in a decade because it was you sitting next to him and actually Empathizing with him and saying, listen, we can get beyond the outrage culture is something that I thought was pretty unique.
00:14:27.000You can just you can look in the news almost every single day and find an example of this, of where we're just we're so ready to to pounce.
00:15:17.000In a second, I'm going to ask you how you think conservatives can do better in the culture wars and how you actually define the culture wars as opposed to the political wars.
00:15:23.000But first, when the founders crafted the Constitution, the first thing they did was to make sacred the rights of the individual to share their ideas without limitation by their government.
00:15:30.000The second right they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech, and their own persons, with force.
00:15:35.000You know how strongly I believe in these principles?
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00:15:57.000They design, engineer, and manufacture life-saving equipment.
00:16:00.000And they assume every rifle leaving their shop will be used in a life-or-death situation by a responsible citizen, a law enforcement officer, or a soldier overseas.
00:16:07.000Every component of a BCM rifle is hand-assembled and tested by Americans to a life-saving standard.
00:16:12.000BCM feels moral responsibility as Americans to provide tools that will not fail the user when it's not just a paper target.
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00:16:42.000So we're talking about the culture wars, and again, I said at the time, I've told members of the press that I think one of the reasons that you've become such a new fresh face of the Republican Party, so fresh, so fresh, is that you've actually engaged positively and in an effective way in the culture wars.
00:16:59.000How do you define the culture wars, and why do you think so many conservatives, particularly in politics, seem to miss the importance of the culture wars generally?
00:18:04.000What I try to ask liberals is, I mean, you know, don't you think we're on your, conservatives, don't you think we conservatives are on your side on this?
00:18:12.000Don't we all love our country and don't you realize that you're being sucked in by the leftists here?
00:18:16.000I mean, as you always point out, there's quite a difference between leftism and liberalism.
00:18:21.000My worry is that liberalism opens the gates to leftism.
00:18:30.000It's not bad to care about equal rights and justice and all of these things.
00:18:34.000That's not a fundamentally bad thing to do.
00:18:37.000But what I want liberals to understand is that it does give way to these things.
00:18:43.000It does give way, eventually, If given free reign to leftism, the kind of things we see there in the culture war, I think other aspects of the culture war, I think you see it on campus all the time, whether free speech is a fundamental right or not.
00:18:59.000The social justice movement as a whole and those kind of battles, I think that is more of a culture war issue, sometimes less of a policy issue.
00:19:31.000You have to engage on whether it's right to appreciate the national anthem or not.
00:19:37.000Because that, again, this idea of whether we should have contempt for our country or not is an important It's an important part of our culture.
00:19:43.000It's the one thing that brings us together.
00:19:45.000We have ideals that bring us together.
00:20:16.000Let's share yourself with the people, connect with people, let them know you're human, let them know the things you like to talk about, maybe outside of politics.
00:20:25.000I think one of the reasons the SNL moment went so viral and I think it was hailed by people on all sides is that I think the left was shocked that a Republican was a human being.
00:20:34.000When you talk about liberalism sliding into leftism, all the things that liberals talk about, maybe with the exception of income inequality, because I think the conservatives are more concerned about the growth of poverty than they are about some people being rich and some people being poor.
00:20:48.000But all the other issues that you talk about, those are issues where conservatives are also deeply engaged.
00:20:52.000And the way that liberals slide from being a liberal into a leftist is by casting aspersions at people on the other side and suggesting we don't care about the same things.
00:21:01.000And so when you are on SNL and suddenly you are a nice guy, and not only that, you're being extraordinarily generous with somebody who had personally insulted you and then made an offhand nasty remark about military service.
00:21:13.000I think that's why so many people It was dragging leftists back from leftism and toward liberalism, the idea that we all still have some things in common.
00:21:22.000I saw this trending on Twitter the other day, this, I'm the radical left, you know, and then they'll have this explanation for what that means.
00:21:29.000And it's usually along the lines of, you know, because I care about the environment and I want everybody to have access to health care.
00:21:33.000I was like, do you think you're the only ones who want those things?
00:21:36.000You know, don't demonize us in this terrible way.
00:21:39.000Do you really think that the right doesn't believe that?
00:21:41.000I mean, and I don't know if it's intellectual dishonesty or if they've just really have never spoken to a conservative.
00:21:46.000Oftentimes, they've just never spoken to a conservative.
00:21:49.000And I saw that at Harvard quite a bit.
00:23:47.000The border debate is a big example of that, right?
00:23:49.000Like, you know, again, we don't have to rehash all the speeches made by Chuck Schumer and others, you know, being so strong on border security and then doing a 180 now.
00:23:58.000I think they've gone more radically left on abortion issues.
00:24:01.000They've gone way more radically left on economic issues.
00:24:39.000And what I've heard from members of Congress, members of the Senate, is a couple of different stories.
00:24:44.000One is that the Democrats are true believers in this wild progressive agenda, that they actually believe what it is that they're saying.
00:24:51.000And then I hear sometimes that no Democrats actually behind closed doors know that what they're saying is pretty wild and they're catering to a base.
00:24:58.000And if you actually get them off the record, then they're quite willing to be moderate.
00:25:01.000It's just that once they get a camera on them, all of a sudden they move to the radical left in order to please their base.
00:25:06.000Which have you found to be more true or does it sort of depend on the person?
00:25:33.000I'll continue to fight those battles on Homeland Security Committee.
00:25:36.000The border is a pretty important thing to me.
00:25:38.000On the bigger issues and sort of the more radical socialism, Green New Deal type issues, I have yet to talk about that kind of stuff with a lot of the more moderate Democrats.
00:25:48.000What I see from the more moderate ones, which is generally the ones I hang out with, what their tendency is is to cover for the socialists, right?
00:25:59.000They'll dismiss it as, yeah, yeah, we know about all that, but don't worry.
00:26:17.000Beto's talking about tearing down walls in El Paso, contrary to what his mayor and his residents think and say, and then he backtracked on that.
00:26:33.000And I would also say that I wish people understood people actually get along better behind closed doors than you would see in public.
00:26:38.000And, you know, the more we can showcase that as members of Congress, I think the better for the American people.
00:26:43.000So specifically on the border issue, since you mentioned it a couple of times, do you think that there really is a national emergency at the border or is it just a slow rolling problem at the border?
00:26:50.000How should Americans view it since you're obviously much more fluent with those issues?
00:26:54.000It's, you know, now we're defining emergency very narrowly.
00:26:57.000I would say it's been an emergency for a very long time.
00:27:00.000And when you have 400,000 people a year apprehended crossing the border illegally, that's a pretty enormous number.
00:27:06.000And Border Patrol indicates to me that they maybe catch one in three.
00:27:10.000And so, you know, you can triple that number.
00:27:13.000And that's the lowest in decades, because Democrats immediately come back at me and they'll say, well, would you agree that's the lowest in decades?
00:28:48.000And I'd rather continue to fight this in Congress because I think we eventually started winning the messaging battle.
00:28:53.000I think we were losing that for a long time.
00:28:54.000I think we're using the wrong arguments and letting Democrats use very dishonest arguments instead of using unassailable arguments.
00:29:03.000Again, like that 400,000 number, using unassailable arguments and then making them be more honest about what they believe and what they don't believe.
00:29:11.000And the biggest frustration with how all these negotiations went over the last few weeks was that I no longer believe the Democrats actually want border security or enforcement.
00:29:19.000And this is based on what they were asking for in those negotiations.
00:30:22.000Well, what this provision says is that if you're a sponsor of a child, or a potential sponsor, or a potential sponsor in the household, then you can't be deported by ICE.
00:30:33.000So for an unaccompanied minor who has crossed the border.
00:30:36.000Well, what does that mean in practice?
00:31:42.000And it's a rough job because, number one, you have to deal with people you disagree with all the time who are sometimes being honest, sometimes being dishonest.
00:31:48.000And the other fact is that you get a lot of flack from the outside.
00:31:51.000And I've found myself really thinking a lot more in recent years about, as influence has grown, about how to wield that influence when it comes to members of Congress.
00:31:59.000Because there is a tendency to call for people's heads if they don't do exactly what you want.
00:32:05.000I think unfair to a lot of politicians.
00:34:52.000And I tend to agree with the idea that it's not that Congress people are being randomly paid off by evil corporate paymasters who smoke cigars and look like me.
00:35:01.000But in any case, that seems to be a prevailing myth, that everybody in Congress just wants to go to cocktail parties.
00:35:07.000And I've never been to one of these cocktail parties.
00:35:24.000You're with other members of Congress, but...
00:35:27.000It's just not what people think it is.
00:35:28.000I mean, how does that speak to campaign finance?
00:35:30.000So AOC, I know, is getting a lot of attention because she did a questioning on campaign finance where she basically suggested that anyone who takes any sort of lobbyist money is in the pocket of the lobbyists.
00:35:41.000It's always seemed to me, having dealt with, at this point, probably almost 100 members of Congress, that what actually happens is lobbyists tend to find people who already support their agenda and then they contribute to their campaigns because they like to see those people in Congress.
00:35:53.000But where do you come down on campaign finance?
00:35:55.000Well, you know, first of all, it seems like they're fine with a very transparent corporate PAC money.
00:36:01.000Or they're sorry, they're not fine with that, which is very transparent, but they're totally fine with ActBlue, which is extremely hard to find the origin of.
00:36:10.000So I don't see how you can balance those two ideas, but they do.
00:37:09.000Do we—or do we—do you believe in socialism or do you believe in the free market?
00:37:13.000All of this stuff can always be traced back to the culture war.
00:37:16.000It has always puzzled me, the idea that money is in complete control of American politics, and that if the NRA signs a check it's because they bought somebody.
00:37:22.000If that were the case, don't you think the NRA would just go bribe every Democrat, and then we could get...
00:39:39.000How can we get to a point where we actually vote on these programs?
00:39:41.000Because the thing we fight about constantly, every year, and again going back to what we're held accountable for by conservative groups, is 30% of the budget.
00:39:52.000That's, you know, we're fighting, and it's worth fighting over, don't get me wrong, but that's not what's causing our future $33 trillion debt.
00:40:00.000It's mandatory spending, it's increasing healthcare costs, and it's a completely unsustainable social security system.
00:40:05.000And again, I think we can reach out to younger people our age and get them to vote Republican based on this issue.
00:40:11.000And I'll just be very honest with them when I talk about it, say, listen, we have to raise our retirement age.
00:40:29.000Are we willing to have the mental fortitude and personal responsibility to make the hard decisions so that we can live in a sustainable society?
00:40:38.000That's connecting the policy with the culture.
00:40:41.000But you've got to get the culture right first.
00:40:42.000One of the things that's been obviously disappointing to watch is the newfound embrace by the radical left and many young people of socialism full scale.
00:40:51.000They call it democratic socialism now, which is, I guess, a soft version of socialism where you use capitalist infrastructure and then build a bunch of socialist institutions on top of it.
00:40:58.000Why do you think the newfound warmth for socialism, in a time where capitalism has essentially cured extreme human poverty, where free markets have generated the capacity to literally buy anything and have it at your door in two days, thanks to Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
00:41:13.000So, why do you think so many young people are buying into the lies of socialism?
00:41:17.000Well, it's a lack of gratitude, you know, and I kind of steal this idea from Jonah Goldberg in his book.
00:41:24.000But I think it really opens up the truth here.
00:41:27.000So, there's a complete lack of gratitude for these principles that gave us all of these things.
00:41:32.000And again, those principles is kind of, I think those cultural narratives, and I always hit back on these, personal responsibility, this idea that liberty is good.
00:41:39.000Okay, this idea of fairness where you get what you deserve, not that everybody gets equal stuff.
00:41:58.000Every generation sort of wakes up and thinks it knows so much better than the last generation.
00:42:02.000And this one is unique because, I think, for two reasons.
00:42:07.000One, this generation was coddled a lot by the previous generation, like, you know, no longer allowed to play on playgrounds, told you that, you know, second place trophies, all that, right?
00:42:18.000And on top of that, On top of that, they have the Internet.
00:42:23.000So the Internet makes you more knowledgeable, but it doesn't necessarily make you smarter, and it doesn't teach you the framework in which to absorb those new ideas that you have at your fingertips.
00:42:33.000So that's an interesting combination because it means that they are very confident in their ability to say what they want and that their feelings matter most and that they can kind of pick what ideas they want to use there.
00:42:59.000The conservative might say, well, there might be a good reason that there's this fence here.
00:43:02.000Maybe there's landmines on the other side.
00:43:03.000And I don't like landmines, as you know.
00:43:07.000But I think this new generation, somebody on the left who thinks they're smarter than everybody else would say, obviously, there's no reason.
00:43:13.000They said, just obviously, there's no reason for this fence.
00:43:16.000I mean, we're not even going to question it.
00:43:21.000And maybe we should be a little bit more responsible in our policymaking as we move forward.
00:43:26.000Do you think that unity is possible in the country at this point?
00:43:29.000Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the country coming together again?
00:43:32.000Because in some ways it seems like there's sort of moments of optimism, your SNL appearance, and then there are vast swaths of desert where people are just clubbing each other like it's Mad Max.
00:43:41.000I mean, where do you stand on being positive or negative about the country, which feels at many points like it's coming apart?
00:44:19.000And I have to pull myself back from that sometimes.
00:44:22.000You know, and the standard I try to give myself is attack ideas, don't be afraid to attack ideas, even make fun of ideas, but try not to question the character of the others.
00:44:34.000That would be a good next move and something I hope we can aspire to.
00:44:37.000And as conservatives, I think the character, our character is questioned in immense ways.
00:44:43.000And I would like to see a stop to that.
00:44:45.000But at the same time, we shouldn't do it to the other side.
00:44:48.000And we've got to refrain at those moments.
00:44:50.000But I would say instead of being neutral, I'm more optimistic than I am pessimistic.
00:45:08.000So we were talking about the corporate PAC money side.
00:45:12.000But there's another aspect to that, which is, what should the limit be, and how arbitrary is that?
00:45:17.000And what I don't think a lot of people understand, and a lot of people who are railing against corporate PAC money, railing against money in politics, they don't really know what that means.
00:45:35.000Well, it doesn't happen very easily, because there's something called campaign contribution limits.
00:45:40.000You can only take a certain amount of money and it's not that big.
00:45:44.000You can go up against somebody who can self-fund their own campaign.
00:45:47.000So in my primary, there was one candidate, and this is just one out of nine, they all had a lot of money, but one had six and a half million dollars to spend on her campaign.
00:45:56.000So you've created a system by over-regulation and by limiting campaign contributions, you've created a system where only the rich and the well-connected can actually compete.
00:46:05.000And again, this philosophy carries on into broader government regulation on businesses and the economy at large.
00:46:12.000It also matters in campaign finance, and I don't think a lot of people understand that.
00:46:16.000Okay, so now I want to get to your foreign policy.
00:46:18.000So, obviously, your military experience is a defining characteristic for you, and you've been watching the Trump foreign policy.
00:46:24.000I've agreed with large swathes of Trump foreign policy.
00:46:26.000There are a couple areas where I have significant disagreements.
00:46:28.000I sense that you share some of those disagreements.
00:46:30.000One of them is pulling out American troops from Syria.
00:46:37.000At least don't do it in a quick manner.
00:46:41.000And I say very simply to people who question this, and both the right and the left questions this, and I say, listen, we go there so that they don't come here.
00:46:51.000You can hop on a 12-hour flight and you can be here, or you can get here even faster with the movement of the internet, and you can radicalize people remotely.
00:46:59.000Okay, we saw that in Orlando, we saw that in San Bernardino, we see it in Paris.
00:47:46.000What President Trump has is a small contingent.
00:47:50.000Relatively cheap in terms of costs, and it's the right move.
00:47:54.000It allows us to have eyes and ears on the ground so that we can predict future attacks.
00:47:57.000This is our intelligence collection side of it.
00:47:59.000Allows us to build capacity within our partner forces, whether that's the Kurds in Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces, or in Afghanistan, the Afghan government.
00:48:07.000They're not ready yet, and we risk those being toppled, and we risk a lot of sacrifices being made in vain, and I really don't want to see that.
00:48:15.000Not that I care about my eye, I'm still very, you know, That's fine, but there's a lot of friends who have made the ultimate sacrifice, and if they could be here right now, they'd go right back, just like I would.
00:48:26.000This is one of the issues that I have with how politicians generally talk about foreign policy in a way you're not talking, and that is that they just lie about the expectations of foreign policy.
00:48:34.000This idea that, well, there's going to be a ringing victory in Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria, and then we'll bring the troops home, there'll be a big ticker tape parade.
00:48:42.000That hasn't happened since World War II, and there we were fighting an actual government with uniformed soldiers.
00:48:48.000The fact is that low-level conflicts like Afghanistan or like Syria, and I mean by that it's not hundreds of thousands of troops in simultaneous combat, the reality is that a holding pattern may in fact be the best that we can do in many of these cases, and yet no politician actually wants to say that.
00:49:32.000Alright, and so I don't define missions... you can't define mission success in this case as beating a well-defined group in a territory, right?
00:49:43.000So just kind of your typical warfare where there's...
00:49:47.000You know, people wearing uniforms and such.
00:49:49.000You know, there's no head of state to negotiate with here.
00:50:06.000And I think that's what politicians need to be more honest about.
00:50:08.000So you've been dealing with President Trump, as everybody has.
00:50:10.000He's sort of become the star around which all politics apparently revolves.
00:50:15.000If you had to grade the president on his performance so far, how would you grade him?
00:50:20.000Well, I'd grade him pretty high, as far as policymaking goes.
00:50:27.000Again, there's only a couple things I really disagree with, and that's the pullout from Syria and Afghanistan and a lot of his trade policy.
00:50:34.000And not that I don't see and understand where he's trying to go with his trade policy.
00:51:07.000I think he's absolutely right on the border issue.
00:51:10.000And I think, but I do think we could have done a lot better job as a whole, a lot better job negotiating that and a lot better job messaging that.
00:51:19.000So we still have a chance to come back from that.
00:51:21.000So for people who are skeptical about Congress, particularly among Republicans, Republicans basically have a theme, which is when Democrats are in charge, we stop them.
00:51:27.000And then when we are in charge, then Republicans pass a tax cut.
00:51:32.000It's So what would you say to people who watch Republican Congress and they're constantly disappointed by, you know, all the promises to defund Planned Parenthood, to End Obamacare, to secure the border.
00:51:43.000People who look at President Border struggling with the border now and say, where were you in 2017?
00:51:49.000Like, why wasn't this the top issue in 2017?
00:51:51.000Why are we doing this now the Democrats have taken over Congress?
00:52:11.000I wasn't there, so, you know, not my fault.
00:52:16.000But it always goes back to this idea of are you trying to do a Hail Mary or are you trying to have a win?
00:52:23.000And boy, I think every Republican would go back to those deals being made right now and And absolutely make those deals that were that were going on back then.
00:52:30.000There's a lot of inside baseball there that even I don't really understand, just again, because I wasn't there.
00:52:35.000But it's but it's very frustrating to voters because.
00:52:38.000And I think here's why, because a lot of politicians that go into office and I think they overpromise.
00:52:46.000I think they forget to inform people that you need 60 votes in the Senate for a lot of things, right?
00:52:51.000And so a lot of people don't realize things like that.
00:52:54.000So they go in thinking, well, you have a majority, so what's the problem?
00:53:09.000But I have to be understanding of some of the Republicans who don't have those kind of districts.
00:53:14.000And in the end, they're not selling out to anybody except their own constituents, which is kind of the whole point of representative democracy.
00:53:22.000You know, I want voters to be able to understand that, understand that I will fight for the things I said I was going to fight for.
00:53:28.000I also try not to overpromise things that I just can't get done.
00:53:32.000And again, when you campaign, it's up to you as a good politician to just be more honest with your voters.
00:53:37.000So now I have to ask you a weird personal question.
00:53:39.000You brought your wife along here today.
00:53:40.000take some honesty and some authenticity.
00:54:44.000So you obviously have raised your profile more than any other member of Republican Congress since your election.
00:54:49.000I mean, you've only been in Congress for about five minutes here.
00:54:51.000What are your future aspirations on the Republican side?
00:54:55.000First, we've got to do right by our district.
00:54:57.000That's always the very first thing before you start thinking bigger than that.
00:55:02.000Politics is often about opportunities more so than a very well-defined pipeline upward.
00:55:09.000You know, as you can probably imagine, as you well know, I think the opportunities that come to you, maybe you run for Senate one day, maybe you run for Governor, maybe you stay in the House and try to go to a leadership position.
00:55:19.000Well, these days everybody runs for President, so who knows?
00:55:35.000And there's local issues that matter to them that I think we have to fight for before we start believing that we're worthy of something bigger.
00:55:43.000How have you been treated by the media after the SNL thing?
00:55:46.000Obviously there's a lot of warm media coverage.
00:55:47.000My experience with the media has been every time there's a bit of warm media coverage, it's immediately followed by a piano being dropped from a high story.
00:55:55.000What's been your experience with the media since the SNL stuff?
00:55:57.000Yeah, it's not terrible, but it's not great either.
00:56:02.000You know, it depends on which parts of the media, of course.
00:56:04.000Obviously, conservative media, I'm still, you know, we're still friends, and that's good.
00:56:36.000For people who missed it, AOC tweeted something out about, well, she'd been suggesting a 70% tax rate for people making above $10 million, and after New England won the Super Bowl, Dan tweeted out that New England should redistribute its points or its Super Bowls or something like that.
00:56:51.000Yeah, I was like, we should tax the Patriots a 70% to make the NFL more fair and equal.
00:56:54.000Right, and then she tried to explain marginal tax rates.
00:56:57.000The joke went completely over her head, which seems to happen a lot, which is amazing for a woman as brilliant and well-informed as AOC.
00:57:12.000Well, this is one of the things that I think has made you popular, and I think it's one of the things that the left can't handle, is that you do have a sense of humor, you are good-natured.
00:57:20.000What they actually want in Republicans is people who look mean, who look nasty, and who are going to get angry at every single problem here.
00:57:28.000Well, that's a good point to touch on, actually.
00:58:07.000Again, you know, we don't like identity politics and ideas matter much more than that.
00:58:12.000But we're foolish if we think that it's not beneficial to have more people on our side, more different types of people, male, female, you know, different races, all of it.
00:58:32.000And they'll hit you in very interesting ways, as I've noticed, and some of my local media has done similar ways.
00:58:42.000I don't call it fake news, but I do call it deliberately misleading news, where they're reporting facts, but it's facts that are very clearly meant to mislead the public in a certain direction.