The Ben Shapiro Show - Dan Crenshaw | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 40

00:00:00.000 You can't have liberty if you don't have a personally responsible individual.

00:00:03.000 And you can't have pure liberty if you don't have people who are mentally tough and able to compete in a free market.

00:00:07.000 All of these things are intertwined.

00:00:09.000 Here we are on the Sunday special, and I'm excited to welcome Congressman Dan Crenshaw.

00:00:20.000 We're going to be getting to all of our questions for Dan Crenshaw, his entire life story.

00:00:24.000 Everything you need to know about Dan Crenshaw, we'll get to in just one second. 0.72

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00:01:29.000 Well, Congressman Crenshaw, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:01:31.000 Thanks for having me.

00:01:31.000 It's really cool to be here.

00:01:32.000 I'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.

00:01:39.000 Yeah.

00:01:39.000 No, you were doing really well.

00:01:40.000 And then you weren't.

00:01:41.000 Thanks.

00:01:42.000 That's just how that happens.

00:01:44.000 Yeah, well, this is how I know you're a nice guy.

00:01:46.000 For a short half second, I felt a surge of hope in my heart.

00:01:50.000 Yeah, I wanted to give that to you.

00:01:51.000 That was nice of you.

00:01:52.000 Because you were just bragging about doing CrossFit earlier this week.

00:01:54.000 I have a hundred push-ups, no problem.

00:01:56.000 I mean, these are your words.

00:01:57.000 These are your words.

00:01:59.000 This hurts a little bit.

00:02:00.000 I mean, I say facts don't care about your feelings, but I didn't say they don't care about my feelings.

00:02:04.000 Yeah, the feelings matter sometimes.

00:02:07.000 Let's talk about how you got here.

00:02:09.000 So most people who know you nationwide know you from the appearance on SNL, but I want to start before that.

00:02:13.000 How did you get to Congress in the first place?

00:02:15.000 Because your story is really quite fascinating.

00:02:18.000 Truth is, I never wanted to leave the Navy.

00:02:19.000 So I was wounded back in 2012.

00:02:20.000 And I think people know this story pretty well by now.

00:02:23.000 I was blown up by an IED blast.

00:02:26.000 My interpreter was killed right in front of me.

00:02:28.000 And I was blinded and miraculously recovered through just absolute miracles in the operating room.

00:02:33.000 I did two more deployments after that.

00:02:35.000 Not combat related, but back to the Middle East and to Korea after that.

00:02:39.000 And eventually the Navy realized that I couldn't see very well and I had to go on to a medical retirement track.

00:02:45.000 So I left in late 2016, went to Harvard.

00:02:48.000 I think you spent some time there as well.

00:02:50.000 Wonderful place.

00:02:51.000 And I did my master's there.

00:02:54.000 My wife actually both went in the sense that she can take classes with me. 0.99

00:02:57.000 It was actually a pretty great year.

00:03:00.000 First of all, Harvard makes everybody think they can be in politics and then be a president, especially at the Kennedy School.

00:03:07.000 And 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.

00:03:19.000 But how do you do that?

00:03:20.000 Okay, there's three things you really need.

00:03:22.000 You either need to be independently wealthy, you need to have great political connections, or you just need to have a window of opportunity.

00:03:27.000 And so our window of opportunity came when Ted Poe announced retirement.

00:03:30.000 It was my home district, and we went for it.

00:03:33.000 I came home one day, asked my wife, should we do this?

00:03:36.000 She goes, yep. 0.99

00:03:37.000 It was without hesitation because it has to be a family.

00:03:40.000 It has to be a family decision.

00:03:41.000 And so we went for it.

00:03:43.000 We tried to connect with as many people as we could.

00:03:44.000 It was kind of this desperate sort of grassroots campaigning.

00:03:48.000 And it worked out.

00:03:50.000 We won the primary.

00:03:51.000 And we only had a couple months because we made this decision in November.

00:03:55.000 The primaries in Texas are March 6th.

00:03:58.000 So, 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.

00:04:05.000 We got second place in that election by 155 votes.

00:04:09.000 And then we were off into a runoff, and the rest is history.

00:04:12.000 So, what actually prompted you to get in the military in the first place?

00:04:15.000 We're of the same generation, we're nearly the same age, and very few people of our generation actually joined the military.

00:04:19.000 I'm a good example of this, so you did something that I didn't do, so thank you for that, obviously.

00:04:23.000 But what prompted you to get into the military?

00:04:25.000 You said you wanted to be in the Navy, and you were a Navy SEAL, obviously.

00:04:27.000 obviously.

00:04:28.000 So what made that happen?

00:04:30.000 I read a book when I was maybe eight years old called Rogue Warrior.

00:04:34.000 And 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.

00:04:42.000 There is no choice for you once you get there.

00:04:44.000 It doesn't matter how long they keep you in the Pacific Ocean.

00:04:46.000 It doesn't matter how long they make you run with a boat on your head or how many hours of log PT you do.

00:04:50.000 It just doesn't matter to you because it's just something you have to get through.

00:04:53.000 Now, You complain about it, you whine about it, but you just have to do it.

00:04:57.000 And that's just our mentality.

00:04:58.000 And if you didn't want that your whole life, it's really tough to have that mentality.

00:05:03.000 Most guys I know have the same story I did.

00:05:05.000 Yeah, it's just a childhood dream.

00:05:07.000 And we went for it.

00:05:08.000 And what is the BUDZ program like?

00:05:09.000 I mean, most of us haven't experienced it, obviously.

00:05:11.000 Well, it's just an online course.

00:05:13.000 It's like Harvard, yeah?

00:05:15.000 Yeah, it's just like Harvard.

00:05:18.000 Well, it's a lot of fun, but it's also quite terrible.

00:05:23.000 Looking back on it, we have a lot of fond memories.

00:05:25.000 So it's six months long.

00:05:26.000 The first two months are called first phase, and the second Second phase then third phase.

00:05:31.000 First phase is you're not really learning anything except how to harden yourself.

00:05:35.000 All right, how to push yourself way past the limits you thought possible.

00:05:39.000 The fourth week of first phase is hell week.

00:05:40.000 Okay, so you're up for about six days.

00:05:42.000 I broke my leg my first time through.

00:05:44.000 It would be recycled throughout the entire program.

00:05:45.000 You'd run about 200 miles with these, with calm IBS, inflatable boat systems, basically a river rafting boat.

00:05:52.000 A boat crew of six takes these everywhere with you.

00:05:55.000 You run about 200 miles throughout the course of just that week.

00:05:58.000 You've been doing it for about a month.

00:05:59.000 Second phase is dive phase.

00:06:01.000 You know, a lot of controlled, what I would call controlled drowning.

00:06:04.000 You 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.

00:06:14.000 And you get through that, you go to third phase, it's land warfare phase.

00:06:18.000 And they make that painful and difficult for all, a whole bunch of other sorts of reasons.

00:06:25.000 And even after BUDZ is over, you're not a SEAL yet, you have to go through what's called SEAL qualification training.

00:06:29.000 Now 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.

00:06:42.000 That's amazing.

00:06:42.000 So when you decided to join Congress, what were sort of the ideological goals that you had?

00:06:47.000 It's interesting because I have an easy job.

00:06:49.000 I get to talk about politics all day long.

00:06:50.000 I get to be as pure as I want to be.

00:06:53.000 A few months ago, I was supposed to speak on the Hill.

00:06:56.000 I was supposed to speak actually at Georgetown, and they canceled my speech because there was a big snow day.

00:06:59.000 And 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.

00:07:08.000 I said, well, you guys have the hard job.

00:07:10.000 I feel the same thing about you.

00:07:11.000 I mean, you have a rough job.

00:07:13.000 Being in Congress means you have to make deals.

00:07:14.000 It means you have to compromise on principle.

00:07:17.000 How is that shift between being the ideologue who wants to run for Congress and then actually sitting in Congress?

00:07:22.000 There'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.

00:07:34.000 So, I tried to run on things that I knew I could at least fight for in a very real way.

00:07:42.000 I ran on border security.

00:07:43.000 I ran on the debt, things I really care about, mostly because of how old we are, right?

00:07:47.000 And I believe this is, and also I think this is something that reaches across party lines when speaking to people our age.

00:07:52.000 I've noticed that.

00:07:54.000 I ran on the third rail of politics, you know, entitlement reforms, because it's going to crush our generation.

00:08:02.000 That actually speaks to a lot of young people.

00:08:04.000 So I talked about that a lot, a lot more than most politicians think they should.

00:08:08.000 And actually, I was rewarded for it, you know, for being honest about these things.

00:08:14.000 I ran on flooding issues.

00:08:15.000 That's a unique local issue to Houston.

00:08:17.000 It's not really partisan, so it doesn't really acquire any kind of purism there.

00:08:20.000 But this broader question, like you said, and I think what you're getting at is how do we deal with conservative media?

00:08:28.000 How do we deal with people who only want you to support the president no matter what, or support certain ideals no matter what?

00:08:35.000 Never vote for anything.

00:08:37.000 And 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.

00:08:50.000 And I think voters are more willing to listen than a lot of politicians realize.

00:08:54.000 And 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.

00:09:04.000 You 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.

00:09:16.000 So what do you think are the fundamental principles that drive you?

00:09:19.000 What's your political philosophy?

00:09:21.000 What's your brand of conservatism?

00:09:24.000 I would say the things that make our country sustainable.

00:09:27.000 And I like to put it in very simple terms like that.

00:09:30.000 So what are the things that make a country sustainable?

00:09:32.000 And give it longevity.

00:09:35.000 And really, they're the greatest ideas we've ever had, and they were written down in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

00:09:40.000 So these ideas of limited government and local control, right?

00:09:43.000 Where 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.

00:09:51.000 Okay, that's a very conservative answer to that, basically.

00:09:54.000 What I'm talking about is federalism, right?

00:09:56.000 But 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?

00:10:03.000 That's just a conservative talking point.

00:10:04.000 I don't want to hear it.

00:10:05.000 Okay, so we have to boil this stuff down a little bit better than I think we normally do.

00:10:09.000 Individual freedom and liberty.

00:10:10.000 Personal responsibility.

00:10:12.000 So these kind of cultural values that I think are important to keep a society Again, together.

00:10:18.000 Because 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.

00:10:28.000 And this is what I try to explain to people.

00:10:29.000 What if everyone thought that way?

00:10:32.000 How long would we really last?

00:10:33.000 If no one takes responsibility, if at least your first choice isn't, you have to take care of this.

00:10:38.000 And 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.

00:10:45.000 Try to help people understand that sort of line of reasoning and why that's the best way to run a society.

00:10:52.000 Other cultural values I would actually throw out there are mental toughness.

00:10:59.000 So a sense of grit, a sense of ability to this kind of American pioneer spirit that I think we're losing.

00:11:05.000 And 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.

00:11:15.000 And what I was glad to be able to do was just rebuff outrage culture.

00:11:21.000 This idea that you have to be offended, that a grieved victim status is the greatest thing you can accomplish.

00:11:26.000 And pointing out that that's just not a healthy place for us to go.

00:11:32.000 Other cultural values I think.

00:11:35.000 I think are important.

00:11:36.000 You know just basic notions of Liberty and also how these things are interconnected.

00:11:41.000 You can't have liberty if you don't have a personally responsible individual, right?

00:11:46.000 And you can't have pure liberty if you don't have people who are mentally tough and able to compete in a free market.

00:11:50.000 All of these things are intertwined.

00:11:52.000 So, you know, to answer your question in a long-winded way, you've got to start with the cultural aspects.

00:11:59.000 Because culture, you know, as you always say, politics is downstream of culture and the policy is downstream of politics.

00:12:05.000 You'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.

00:12:24.000 So 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.

00:12:30.000 Yeah, I mean, I woke up Sunday, and all my friends are texting me.

00:12:33.000 They're saying, hey, you made it.

00:12:35.000 You're on SNL.

00:12:36.000 It's a great job there.

00:12:37.000 And then we see it.

00:12:39.000 And it doesn't make me mad right away.

00:12:41.000 I'm from the SEAL teams.

00:12:43.000 We have a very different sense of humor.

00:12:45.000 We're pretty thick-skinned.

00:12:47.000 For 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.

00:12:55.000 Yeah, something like that.

00:12:56.000 And that was fine.

00:12:59.000 That wasn't even, you know, his comments weren't that bad.

00:13:02.000 It was the part that maybe was scripted, maybe not.

00:13:05.000 And he just said, oh, lost it in war or whatever.

00:13:08.000 You know, it was an extremely dismissive thing.

00:13:10.000 And that's what made America angry.

00:13:14.000 It kind of brought us together for a little bit.

00:13:16.000 And, you know, SNL was taking a lot of fire for that.

00:13:19.000 And they came around to emailing me an apology.

00:13:23.000 And then eventually the producers called me and said, why don't we have you on this weekend?

00:13:29.000 You can say whatever you want.

00:13:30.000 I said, well, this weekend's Veterans Day weekend.

00:13:32.000 I can't really go on.

00:13:33.000 I've got a lot of events already planned.

00:13:35.000 They said, no, it has to be Veterans Day weekend for exactly the reasons of, you know, because we insulted veterans.

00:13:41.000 I said, that's a good point.

00:13:42.000 So let's make it happen.

00:13:43.000 And let's make this a fun, cool thing to do.

00:13:46.000 And I think we did.

00:13:47.000 We had a lot of fun doing it.

00:13:48.000 Yeah, it really is pretty fantastic.

00:13:49.000 For folks who haven't seen the segment, you should go on YouTube and you should check it out.

00:13:52.000 Basically, you did something that was unique.

00:13:55.000 First of all, your comedy bit was hilarious.

00:13:57.000 Oh, I agree.

00:13:58.000 Thank you.

00:14:00.000 Dan goes after Pete Davidson and makes fun of his appearance.

00:14:03.000 And the whole point is obviously that we can make jokes.

00:14:06.000 And that was what was unique.

00:14:07.000 It was unique moments.

00:14:08.000 I 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.

00:14:21.000 Yeah.

00:14:21.000 And it's it's so important that we're able to joke with each other again.

00:14:25.000 I think we've really lost that.

00:14:27.000 You 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.

00:14:36.000 Right.

00:14:36.000 Republicans pounce.

00:14:37.000 Right.

00:14:39.000 But it's not you know, and we've got to be careful to not to be Not to be overly sensitive.

00:14:45.000 And for the most part, I think we're better about that.

00:14:48.000 But it doesn't mean we're perfect.

00:14:50.000 And we don't want to be hypocrites either on this particular issue.

00:14:53.000 But it's really a shame.

00:14:56.000 I'm not sure how to fix it except for to just not be part of the problem.

00:15:01.000 And to, you know, encourage a little lightheartedness every once in a while.

00:15:06.000 But, I mean, geez, you saw my joke about the Super Bowl.

00:15:09.000 I was like, really, this is what triggers people?

00:15:13.000 It's amazing.

00:15:14.000 It's amazing.

00:15:15.000 Anything will trigger anybody.

00:15:17.000 In 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.

00:15:23.000 But 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.

00:15:30.000 The second right they enumerated was the right of the population to protect that speech, and their own persons, with force.

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00:16:42.000 So 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.

00:16:59.000 How 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?

00:17:07.000 Two very important questions there.

00:17:08.000 So, how do we define the culture war?

00:17:11.000 There's different battle lines drawn on the culture wars, so I think examples are the best way to talk about the culture wars.

00:17:18.000 One example, I had a curator here in California recently.

00:17:21.000 There was a lady, I think she worked for Santa Barbara Community College. 1.00

00:17:24.000 She was upset that they no longer did the Pledge of Allegiance before board meetings, or something along those lines.

00:17:29.000 I think I'm getting the story right.

00:17:31.000 And as she was testifying her story, she got up and did the Pledge of Allegiance.

00:17:36.000 And she was met with the most ferocious, ferocious leftist attacks.

00:17:40.000 And they were there in the room just screaming at her, shouting her down.

00:17:43.000 And she's in tears as she's giving the Pledge of Allegiance.

00:17:47.000 That is a fundamental part of the culture war. 0.66

00:17:49.000 This idea that either you love your country and we all agree on that, or you truly despise your country.

00:17:55.000 You have contempt for it.

00:17:58.000 I think that's the most important part of the culture, this idea of whether we love our country or not.

00:18:02.000 That's what worries me.

00:18:04.000 What 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?

00:18:12.000 Don't we all love our country and don't you realize that you're being sucked in by the leftists here?

00:18:16.000 I mean, as you always point out, there's quite a difference between leftism and liberalism.

00:18:21.000 My worry is that liberalism opens the gates to leftism.

00:18:24.000 Right?

00:18:25.000 Because it's not bad to be concerned about income inequality.

00:18:28.000 It's not bad to care about the poor.

00:18:30.000 It's not bad to care about equal rights and justice and all of these things.

00:18:34.000 That's not a fundamentally bad thing to do.

00:18:37.000 But what I want liberals to understand is that it does give way to these things.

00:18:43.000 It 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.

00:18:59.000 The 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.

00:19:11.000 It does manifest in policy sometimes.

00:19:14.000 The other aspect of your question is how do politicians fight it?

00:19:19.000 And I do think it's important for us to do that because it's what people listen to.

00:19:23.000 And again, politics is downstream of culture.

00:19:25.000 You can't win in politics until you've won the culture war.

00:19:27.000 So you have to engage on that front.

00:19:31.000 You have to engage on whether it's right to appreciate the national anthem or not.

00:19:37.000 Because 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.

00:19:43.000 It's the one thing that brings us together.

00:19:45.000 We have ideals that bring us together.

00:19:46.000 We don't have skin color.

00:19:47.000 We don't have religion.

00:19:48.000 You know, even geography isn't a great thing to bring people together.

00:19:53.000 You need ideas.

00:19:54.000 You need fundamental values.

00:19:56.000 And I worry greatly that those are being undermined.

00:19:58.000 And I worry greatly that politicians aren't fighting on those fronts enough.

00:20:03.000 So that's the benefit of going on SNL.

00:20:04.000 That's the benefit of of doing the media that we do, sharing yourself a little bit more with people on social media.

00:20:11.000 I don't think politicians do enough of that. 0.79

00:20:12.000 I think they're a little too careful.

00:20:13.000 We don't need to be so careful.

00:20:15.000 All right.

00:20:16.000 Let'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.

00:20:24.000 That would go a long way.

00:20:25.000 I 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.

00:20:33.000 And this is sort of the problem.

00:20:34.000 When 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.

00:20:46.000 But all the...

00:20:47.000 Exactly.

00:20:48.000 But all the other issues that you talk about, those are issues where conservatives are also deeply engaged.

00:20:52.000 And 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. 0.99

00:20:59.000 You're bad, you're vile, you're terrible.

00:21:01.000 And 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. 0.98

00:21:13.000 I 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.

00:21:21.000 Yeah, I think that's a good point.

00:21:22.000 I 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.

00:21:29.000 And 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.

00:21:33.000 I was like, do you think you're the only ones who want those things?

00:21:36.000 You know, don't demonize us in this terrible way.

00:21:39.000 Do you really think that the right doesn't believe that?

00:21:41.000 I mean, and I don't know if it's intellectual dishonesty or if they've just really have never spoken to a conservative.

00:21:46.000 Oftentimes, they've just never spoken to a conservative.

00:21:49.000 And I saw that at Harvard quite a bit.

00:21:51.000 I mean, they've never seen one.

00:21:56.000 It's really funny.

00:21:57.000 And they truly don't know what we believe.

00:22:00.000 I've watched them try to make arguments that they think that we'll like.

00:22:03.000 You know, the carbon dividend is a great one, a great example.

00:22:07.000 So this idea that you can have a carbon tax, but you're going to distribute it.

00:22:13.000 So the government's not making money, therefore it's conservative.

00:22:17.000 I'm like, that's not what conservatism is.

00:22:19.000 You want to create a whole new bureaucracy to redistribute money?

00:22:22.000 How is that efficient?

00:22:23.000 That's not good limited government.

00:22:24.000 And I would tell these professors this.

00:22:26.000 I'm like, do you realize that you're not making the right arguments towards conservatives?

00:22:30.000 This is not the way to win our hearts.

00:22:31.000 I'm just letting you, they really don't know what we think.

00:22:34.000 They've never bothered to study it, which is strange because I think there's a lot of history and framework to conservatism.

00:22:40.000 What worries me about progressivism is It's progress at any cost.

00:22:45.000 So it can go anywhere.

00:22:46.000 There's no limits to this.

00:22:47.000 There's no way to box that in.

00:22:49.000 Again, that's why good-natured, well-intentioned liberalism eventually leads to what is more dangerous, which is progressivism.

00:22:55.000 You know, the Wilsonian progressivism where they openly have contempt for the Constitution. 0.76

00:23:00.000 That worries me.

00:23:01.000 There is no limit to that.

00:23:02.000 It is power at all costs to do good things.

00:23:04.000 Well, who decides good things?

00:23:05.000 Well, they do.

00:23:06.000 Whatever that might mean at the moment.

00:23:07.000 And that changes over time.

00:23:09.000 And we've seen... I think your average voter will say, hey, both sides have just moved to the extreme.

00:23:18.000 Maybe that's true.

00:23:19.000 And it is true as far as willingness to cooperate, willingness to vote with the other side.

00:23:24.000 And you can measure these things, okay?

00:23:26.000 So that is true.

00:23:27.000 Both sides have moved to extremes on that.

00:23:29.000 But then we have the question, okay, who has really moved to the extreme on policy?

00:23:33.000 Conservatives haven't really, okay?

00:23:34.000 Now, the Trump administration is a little different, of course, especially with trade policy.

00:23:39.000 But for the most part, conservatives still believe what we believed decades ago.

00:23:44.000 The left hasn't.

00:23:45.000 The left has changed quite a bit.

00:23:47.000 The border debate is a big example of that, right?

00:23:49.000 Like, 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.

00:23:58.000 I think they've gone more radically left on abortion issues.

00:24:01.000 They've gone way more radically left on economic issues.

00:24:04.000 Socialism is no longer a dirty word.

00:24:05.000 Why is that?

00:24:06.000 Because progressivism has no limits.

00:24:09.000 That's a scary thing.

00:24:10.000 That's what I want people to understand.

00:24:11.000 That when they're voting, they're voting based on a governing philosophy.

00:24:15.000 That's what you should be voting for.

00:24:16.000 You know, vote for issues if they're really important to you, but please vote on a governing philosophy.

00:24:21.000 And I think conservatism is the right governing philosophy.

00:24:23.000 It's what gave us everything we have.

00:24:25.000 We should have some gratitude for that.

00:24:26.000 So progressivism is something you don't know where it's going, and that should scare us.

00:24:31.000 So you have to deal with Democrats, I'm sure, much more now in Congress than you had to do in your home district.

00:24:36.000 So now you're in Congress.

00:24:38.000 You're having to deal with Democrats.

00:24:39.000 And what I've heard from members of Congress, members of the Senate, is a couple of different stories.

00:24:44.000 One is that the Democrats are true believers in this wild progressive agenda, that they actually believe what it is that they're saying.

00:24:51.000 And 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.

00:24:58.000 And if you actually get them off the record, then they're quite willing to be moderate.

00:25:01.000 It'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.

00:25:06.000 Which have you found to be more true or does it sort of depend on the person?

00:25:09.000 It depends on the person.

00:25:11.000 I think both are true.

00:25:14.000 It does depend on the person.

00:25:17.000 What I find, there's a couple things I find actually being behind the scenes.

00:25:22.000 On the border debate specifically, they agreed with us.

00:25:25.000 A lot of them agreed with us, but just would never vote for us.

00:25:27.000 That was extremely frustrating.

00:25:28.000 I found that to be a deeply dishonest way to govern.

00:25:31.000 And I'm still frustrated about it.

00:25:33.000 I'll continue to fight those battles on Homeland Security Committee.

00:25:36.000 The border is a pretty important thing to me.

00:25:38.000 On 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.

00:25:48.000 What 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?

00:25:59.000 They'll dismiss it as, yeah, yeah, we know about all that, but don't worry.

00:26:03.000 Well, what do you mean, don't worry?

00:26:06.000 This is really gaining traction.

00:26:07.000 At a certain point, you have to recognize that.

00:26:11.000 Green New Deal has quite a few co-sponsors.

00:26:13.000 Most presidential candidates want the Green New Deal.

00:26:15.000 They advocate for the Green New Deal.

00:26:17.000 Beto'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.

00:26:24.000 I was very proud of that, by the way.

00:26:25.000 I was able to, that was my doing.

00:26:28.000 Getting him to answer that question.

00:26:31.000 I guess both are true is the answer.

00:26:33.000 And I would also say that I wish people understood people actually get along better behind closed doors than you would see in public.

00:26:38.000 And, you know, the more we can showcase that as members of Congress, I think the better for the American people.

00:26:43.000 So 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?

00:26:50.000 How should Americans view it since you're obviously much more fluent with those issues?

00:26:54.000 It's, you know, now we're defining emergency very narrowly.

00:26:57.000 I would say it's been an emergency for a very long time.

00:27:00.000 And when you have 400,000 people a year apprehended crossing the border illegally, that's a pretty enormous number.

00:27:06.000 And Border Patrol indicates to me that they maybe catch one in three.

00:27:10.000 And so, you know, you can triple that number.

00:27:13.000 And 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?

00:27:19.000 Yes.

00:27:19.000 Is it low?

00:27:20.000 No.

00:27:20.000 Okay.

00:27:21.000 Next question.

00:27:24.000 It doesn't matter.

00:27:25.000 You know what helped lower that?

00:27:27.000 Enforcing the border.

00:27:28.000 Putting this bollard fencing where we need it.

00:27:32.000 And I think we should continue to do that.

00:27:35.000 So, is it an emergency?

00:27:37.000 Yes.

00:27:38.000 Is the policy right?

00:27:39.000 Yes.

00:27:39.000 Is the process the President is undertaking the best one?

00:27:42.000 It's not the best one.

00:27:43.000 It's not ideal.

00:27:45.000 I think you can argue both ways on that.

00:27:48.000 I am worried about the precedent, but maybe not as much as people Should be?

00:27:53.000 Okay, let me explain that a little bit.

00:27:55.000 So what the president is doing is he's appropriating money that wasn't given to him to enforce a law that exists, okay?

00:28:02.000 And the law is you can't cross the border, okay?

00:28:05.000 So that's very different from, say, declaring a national emergency on gun violence and then changing gun laws, right?

00:28:12.000 So the equivalent of a Democrat president doing that would essentially be appropriating more money to enforce the same laws.

00:28:17.000 That's not really that bad.

00:28:19.000 So I'm not so sure that we need to worry that much about the precedent.

00:28:23.000 You could also argue, constitutionally speaking, the precedent is there to faithfully execute the laws written by Congress.

00:28:28.000 That's literally what it says.

00:28:31.000 What do the laws say?

00:28:32.000 They say you're not allowed to cross the border.

00:28:34.000 Again, that's arguing both sides of it.

00:28:37.000 It's still not a great process, and I think it's going to get bogged down in courts.

00:28:41.000 And that's my biggest frustration with it.

00:28:43.000 It's creating a lot of political uncertainty.

00:28:45.000 Probably won't work.

00:28:48.000 And I'd rather continue to fight this in Congress because I think we eventually started winning the messaging battle.

00:28:53.000 I think we were losing that for a long time.

00:28:54.000 I think we're using the wrong arguments and letting Democrats use very dishonest arguments instead of using unassailable arguments.

00:29:03.000 Again, 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.

00:29:11.000 And 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.

00:29:19.000 And this is based on what they were asking for in those negotiations.

00:29:22.000 I'll give you some examples.

00:29:24.000 When Border Patrol is asking for $5.7 billion, what they're asking for is to fund their top eight priorities.

00:29:31.000 And those priorities are geographic in nature.

00:29:34.000 Democrats wanted to say, OK, fine, we'll fund three of them.

00:29:37.000 And we're like, oh, great, one through three.

00:29:39.000 No, no, no, six through eight.

00:29:41.000 Why on earth would you?

00:29:42.000 Why?

00:29:44.000 What could possibly be your reason except you want less enforcement?

00:29:48.000 The other thing they did was they were demanding that we decrease the number of detention beds.

00:29:53.000 So that's a decrease in our ability to enforce.

00:29:56.000 There is no other reason for that except you don't like enforcing this law.

00:30:00.000 You don't like enforcing illegal immigration.

00:30:02.000 You have reasons for that.

00:30:03.000 It's unclear what they are, but they're not good.

00:30:10.000 There was another provision snuck in there, which essentially makes it more likely that children will be trafficked.

00:30:16.000 I think you've covered this before, so I don't need to delve into it too much more.

00:30:20.000 No, I mean, it's fine.

00:30:20.000 Maybe folks have not heard.

00:30:22.000 Well, 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.

00:30:33.000 So for an unaccompanied minor who has crossed the border.

00:30:36.000 Well, what does that mean in practice?

00:30:37.000 What it means in practice is this.

00:30:40.000 When I was down at the border, we saw 16 kids.

00:30:42.000 This was just one day as I was with Border Patrol.

00:30:44.000 They had 16 kids who were identified who came with adults who were not their parents.

00:30:48.000 Further questioning, they found a stash house in Houston with about 54 illegal immigrants in it.

00:30:53.000 Why were there 54 people in a house?

00:30:54.000 Well, because the drug cartels would not let them leave.

00:30:57.000 Because they were being trafficked and because they hadn't paid their dues yet.

00:31:00.000 Drug cartels have complete operational control of the southern border on the Mexico side.

00:31:05.000 The Mexican government has no say in how that works.

00:31:08.000 Illegal immigrants do not come across by themselves.

00:31:10.000 That does not happen.

00:31:12.000 They have to pay somebody.

00:31:13.000 And this is enforced violently because it's a business for them.

00:31:17.000 They lose money if they don't allow this to be enforced.

00:31:20.000 That's what people need to understand about it.

00:31:22.000 Those are the right arguments and we can win those arguments if we say them enough and say it with honesty.

00:31:28.000 Don't overstate our point.

00:31:30.000 You always get slammed if you overstate your point, right?

00:31:32.000 So that's what I try to do on the Board of Debate.

00:31:35.000 So I want to ask you about the Budget Committee and your work there.

00:31:37.000 Before I get to that, I do want to ask you about, again, it must be tough to be in Congress.

00:31:41.000 It's a rough job.

00:31:42.000 And 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.

00:31:48.000 And the other fact is that you get a lot of flack from the outside.

00:31:51.000 And 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.

00:31:59.000 Because there is a tendency to call for people's heads if they don't do exactly what you want.

00:32:05.000 I think unfair to a lot of politicians.

00:32:08.000 Leave us alone, Ben.

00:32:10.000 It does happen.

00:32:11.000 So I haven't been in politics that long.

00:32:13.000 I haven't dealt with this very much, but I certainly see it.

00:32:15.000 I see how it can work.

00:32:17.000 And there's really two separate movements in the conservative movement that do this, right?

00:32:22.000 There's the more puritan.

00:32:26.000 Conservatives, again, people I pretty much agree with on just about everything, but they don't want you to vote any other way.

00:32:32.000 They don't want you to make any deals.

00:32:33.000 They want a touchdown.

00:32:35.000 They don't want you to move the ball forward a few yards.

00:32:36.000 That's not acceptable.

00:32:38.000 That's what hurt us, by the way, I think, in the last couple of years with health care and with the border issues.

00:32:43.000 So that's a problem.

00:32:45.000 You know, you've got to let us work.

00:32:46.000 And you've got to understand, too, that these politicians aren't selling out to the swamp, whatever that means.

00:32:51.000 I was asking, what does that mean?

00:32:53.000 And nobody can tell me.

00:32:54.000 Like, I don't know what it means to sell out, okay?

00:32:56.000 The reality is that most members of Congress are catering to somebody, yes, but it's their constituents.

00:33:02.000 Because that's the people who vote them in, you know?

00:33:04.000 So it's not as, it's this idea of this being this corrupt place, that's just not entirely true.

00:33:10.000 It's not what I've seen.

00:33:11.000 I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm just saying I haven't really seen it.

00:33:15.000 The other element of what we deal with is this need to support the president no matter what.

00:33:22.000 And again, I support the president on pretty much everything.

00:33:25.000 There's a couple things I disagree with, and I'm very open about that.

00:33:29.000 He said a piece in the Wall Street Journal about this, about how much I disagree with pulling out of Syria.

00:33:34.000 And I disagree with his trade policy because it's bad for my district.

00:33:38.000 So that's fine.

00:33:39.000 That's fine.

00:33:39.000 And frankly, he's fine with it.

00:33:41.000 He understands that.

00:33:42.000 You know, it's I think as time has gone on to he's going to get more comfortable in the executive position.

00:33:47.000 And I think we can openly disagree about these things.

00:33:50.000 But but there's certainly a sense even among my voters.

00:33:53.000 And they'll say, you know, we just get the sense that the Republicans just aren't supporting the president.

00:33:58.000 And I'm like, why?

00:33:59.000 Why do you think that?

00:34:00.000 You know, what did Mitch McConnell do to you?

00:34:04.000 He held up the process for the Supreme Court nominees.

00:34:08.000 He got you Neil Gorsuch.

00:34:09.000 He got you Brett Kavanaugh.

00:34:11.000 What did he do to you that you're so mad about?

00:34:14.000 He would not allow a spending bill on the floor until the president said he would sign it.

00:34:18.000 I mean, what did Mitch McConnell do that is so bad?

00:34:22.000 And I get that they don't do everything perfectly.

00:34:24.000 I'll tell you, I fully agree.

00:34:26.000 But we have to be a little more careful with eating our own.

00:34:30.000 It's not exactly what you think.

00:34:32.000 And this goes back to, remember, my cultural values of mental toughness and discipline.

00:34:37.000 I want to dig for a second on the issue of the swamp.

00:34:39.000 dropping counting to 10 and saying, is there more to this story?

00:34:42.000 Is there more to the story?

00:34:44.000 Can I breathe?

00:34:44.000 Can I breathe and have the mental fortitude to say there might be more to this than I think?

00:34:49.000 I want to dig for a second on the issue of the swamp.

00:34:51.000 So you mentioned the swamp.

00:34:52.000 And 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.

00:35:01.000 But in any case, that seems to be a prevailing myth, that everybody in Congress just wants to go to cocktail parties.

00:35:07.000 And I've never been to one of these cocktail parties.

00:35:09.000 They are supposed to be unbelievable.

00:35:10.000 I keep hearing about these amazing cocktail parties.

00:35:13.000 Frankly, sitting with a bunch of Congress people having cocktails sounds about like the worst evening I could ever possibly have.

00:35:17.000 There's no fun cocktail parties.

00:35:18.000 And if there are, I haven't been to any.

00:35:20.000 I mean, there's lobbyists.

00:35:22.000 You get to know them, sure.

00:35:24.000 You're with other members of Congress, but...

00:35:27.000 It's just not what people think it is.

00:35:28.000 I mean, how does that speak to campaign finance?

00:35:30.000 So 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.

00:35:41.000 It'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.

00:35:53.000 But where do you come down on campaign finance?

00:35:55.000 Yeah.

00:35:55.000 Well, you know, first of all, it seems like they're fine with a very transparent corporate PAC money.

00:36:01.000 Or 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.

00:36:10.000 So I don't see how you can balance those two ideas, but they do.

00:36:17.000 Here's what a corporate PAC is.

00:36:20.000 First of all, it's a bunch of people who work for a corporation who pool their money together and then donate.

00:36:25.000 Okay, and the max they can donate is $5,000.

00:36:27.000 All right, so can I be bought off with $5,000?

00:36:29.000 The answer is no.

00:36:32.000 It's very simple, no.

00:36:34.000 And you're absolutely right.

00:36:35.000 They only come to you if they already agree with you.

00:36:38.000 And we might have more detailed discussions on, OK, what issues do you guys care about?

00:36:43.000 Can I get behind that?

00:36:44.000 No, yes, maybe, probably not.

00:36:48.000 It's a very simple conversation.

00:36:50.000 But the reality is, is they just don't wield the power that people think they do.

00:36:53.000 They bring up issues that you never would have heard of otherwise.

00:36:57.000 And I don't fundamentally see a problem with that.

00:37:00.000 It's very—this is a very strange attack on corporations.

00:37:05.000 And again, this goes back to the culture wars, right?

00:37:07.000 Like, do we want to punish success?

00:37:09.000 Do we—or do we—do you believe in socialism or do you believe in the free market?

00:37:13.000 All of this stuff can always be traced back to the culture war.

00:37:16.000 It 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.

00:37:22.000 If that were the case, don't you think the NRA would just go bribe every Democrat, and then we could get...

00:37:25.000 Right, that's a good point.

00:37:26.000 Or that near all pro-choice America would come bribe every Republican.

00:37:30.000 I want to get to your work on the budget committee.

00:37:32.000 So you said you campaigned on entitlement reform.

00:37:34.000 That's an amazing thing.

00:37:36.000 I wonder, is that ever going to happen?

00:37:38.000 Because I look at the situation.

00:37:40.000 People love their entitlements.

00:37:42.000 Two-thirds of the American budget every year constitutes entitlement spending and it's mandatory.

00:37:47.000 It is not discretionary spending.

00:37:49.000 Do you ever see a future where there is a restructuring of entitlements?

00:37:51.000 Are we going to go the way of Europe and basically we'll have an economic meltdown and then we'll have to take austerity measures?

00:37:58.000 Well, Medicare goes insolvent in 2026, and Social Security goes insolvent in 2034.

00:38:04.000 I really hope we deal with it before then, because here's what that means.

00:38:09.000 When Social Security, for instance, goes insolvent, that means that benefits automatically get cut.

00:38:13.000 That's what happens according to current law.

00:38:15.000 Well, what's instead going to happen, because we're not actually going to cut benefits to seniors who are relying on those things?

00:38:20.000 Well, they're going to tax us.

00:38:21.000 They're going to tax my generation, your generation, and they're going to tax us pretty heavily.

00:38:27.000 And we're going to be told that it'll be fine for a little while, then they're going to have to tax us more.

00:38:31.000 OK, this is a completely unsustainable program now.

00:38:34.000 But the question is, are we going to fix it?

00:38:35.000 Well, I'd like to.

00:38:36.000 I'm going to keep fighting to fix it.

00:38:38.000 Democrats have no interest in fixing it.

00:38:40.000 That's that's a real problem.

00:38:41.000 They again, we fundamentally disagree on why there's a debt.

00:38:45.000 That's a real problem.

00:38:46.000 We fundamentally disagree on the facts.

00:38:48.000 And that's what I get out of these budget hearings.

00:38:50.000 Democrats honestly believe that history began two years ago with President Trump and history began with the tax cuts.

00:38:56.000 They will actually argue that the reason we have bad deficits is because of these tax cuts.

00:39:00.000 Okay, well, let's look at the numbers on this.

00:39:03.000 Without the tax cuts, in about 10 years, we'd have around $32 trillion in debt.

00:39:08.000 With the tax cuts, we have about $33 trillion in debt.

00:39:12.000 Those are not causing the debt.

00:39:14.000 I mean, this is real simple numerical, some numerical evidence that we can look at to prove that.

00:39:21.000 But they believe it.

00:39:21.000 And they'll hammer that, and they'll hammer that.

00:39:23.000 And we'll say, listen, 70% of spending is mandatory spending.

00:39:27.000 That's Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt.

00:39:30.000 Some other entitlement programs as well.

00:39:32.000 Things we can't control, things we refuse to vote on.

00:39:36.000 And that's a real problem.

00:39:38.000 That's the issue.

00:39:39.000 How can we get to a point where we actually vote on these programs?

00:39:41.000 Because 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.

00:39:52.000 That'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.

00:40:00.000 It's mandatory spending, it's increasing healthcare costs, and it's a completely unsustainable social security system.

00:40:05.000 And again, I think we can reach out to younger people our age and get them to vote Republican based on this issue.

00:40:11.000 And I'll just be very honest with them when I talk about it, say, listen, we have to raise our retirement age.

00:40:15.000 We're living longer.

00:40:16.000 We have to.

00:40:17.000 I shouldn't be retiring at 67.

00:40:18.000 I would like to.

00:40:19.000 I think that would be great.

00:40:20.000 I want to live in this utopia that Drew is talking about but it just can't happen.

00:40:24.000 So let's actually make the hard decisions.

00:40:26.000 Again, back to the culture.

00:40:29.000 Are we willing to have the mental fortitude and personal responsibility to make the hard decisions so that we can live in a sustainable society?

00:40:35.000 A society that has longevity.

00:40:37.000 That's what it always comes down to.

00:40:38.000 That's connecting the policy with the culture.

00:40:41.000 But you've got to get the culture right first.

00:40:42.000 One 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.

00:40:51.000 They 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.

00:40:58.000 Why 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.

00:41:13.000 So, why do you think so many young people are buying into the lies of socialism?

00:41:17.000 Well, it's a lack of gratitude, you know, and I kind of steal this idea from Jonah Goldberg in his book.

00:41:22.000 He really talks about this a lot.

00:41:24.000 But I think it really opens up the truth here.

00:41:27.000 So, there's a complete lack of gratitude for these principles that gave us all of these things.

00:41:32.000 And 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.

00:41:39.000 Okay, this idea of fairness where you get what you deserve, not that everybody gets equal stuff.

00:41:44.000 Okay.

00:41:46.000 That leads to the free market, that leads to the ability to thrive in a free market, and that leads to prosperity.

00:41:51.000 And we have all this proof that this prosperity exists based on these principles, and yet there's no gratitude for them.

00:41:57.000 Right?

00:41:58.000 Every generation sort of wakes up and thinks it knows so much better than the last generation.

00:42:02.000 And this one is unique because, I think, for two reasons.

00:42:07.000 One, 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?

00:42:16.000 This whole kind of change in culture.

00:42:18.000 And on top of that, On top of that, they have the Internet.

00:42:23.000 So 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.

00:42:33.000 So 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.

00:42:46.000 So I think that from the Internet.

00:42:48.000 And that results in this lack of gratitude.

00:42:51.000 It results in this situation where it's like the idea of you're walking through a forest and you see a fence.

00:42:57.000 Why is the fence there?

00:42:59.000 The conservative might say, well, there might be a good reason that there's this fence here.

00:43:02.000 Maybe there's landmines on the other side.

00:43:03.000 And I don't like landmines, as you know.

00:43:07.000 But I think this new generation, somebody on the left who thinks they're smarter than everybody else would say, obviously, there's no reason.

00:43:13.000 They said, just obviously, there's no reason for this fence.

00:43:16.000 I mean, we're not even going to question it.

00:43:17.000 It doesn't make any sense.

00:43:19.000 Well, maybe there is, all right?

00:43:20.000 And maybe we should find out.

00:43:21.000 And maybe we should be a little bit more responsible in our policymaking as we move forward.

00:43:26.000 Do you think that unity is possible in the country at this point?

00:43:29.000 Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the country coming together again?

00:43:32.000 Because 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.

00:43:41.000 I mean, where do you stand on being positive or negative about the country, which feels at many points like it's coming apart?

00:43:50.000 Oh, that's a good question.

00:43:53.000 And it's very difficult to answer.

00:43:55.000 I'm not overly optimistic.

00:43:57.000 I'm not overly pessimistic.

00:43:58.000 I think...

00:44:02.000 I think our country has seen worse before.

00:44:05.000 People don't realize that a lot, just looking at history.

00:44:08.000 That being said, it's hard to see a way out of it.

00:44:12.000 And I would just ask that more people stop being part of the problem.

00:44:16.000 Stop looking for reasons to club.

00:44:18.000 And that would be nice.

00:44:19.000 And I have to pull myself back from that sometimes.

00:44:22.000 You 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.

00:44:34.000 That would be a good next move and something I hope we can aspire to.

00:44:37.000 And as conservatives, I think the character, our character is questioned in immense ways.

00:44:43.000 And I would like to see a stop to that.

00:44:45.000 But at the same time, we shouldn't do it to the other side.

00:44:48.000 And we've got to refrain at those moments.

00:44:50.000 But I would say instead of being neutral, I'm more optimistic than I am pessimistic.

00:44:57.000 But we've got a lot of work to do.

00:44:58.000 All right.

00:44:58.000 So I want to ask you about your foreign policy, about Syria and all that.

00:45:01.000 First, I read a piece where you were talking about your thoughts on campaign finance reform and campaign finance limits.

00:45:06.000 And I was wondering if you might explicate that.

00:45:08.000 Sure, sure.

00:45:08.000 So we were talking about the corporate PAC money side.

00:45:12.000 But there's another aspect to that, which is, what should the limit be, and how arbitrary is that?

00:45:17.000 And 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.

00:45:24.000 Well, here's the actual reality.

00:45:27.000 Somebody like me, who's got no independent wealth, I've got no political connections, and I want to get into politics.

00:45:34.000 So how does that happen?

00:45:35.000 Well, it doesn't happen very easily, because there's something called campaign contribution limits.

00:45:40.000 You can only take a certain amount of money and it's not that big.

00:45:44.000 You can go up against somebody who can self-fund their own campaign.

00:45:47.000 So 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.

00:45:55.000 That's impossible to compete with.

00:45:56.000 So 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.

00:46:05.000 And again, this philosophy carries on into broader government regulation on businesses and the economy at large.

00:46:12.000 It also matters in campaign finance, and I don't think a lot of people understand that.

00:46:16.000 Okay, so now I want to get to your foreign policy.

00:46:18.000 So, obviously, your military experience is a defining characteristic for you, and you've been watching the Trump foreign policy.

00:46:24.000 I've agreed with large swathes of Trump foreign policy.

00:46:26.000 There are a couple areas where I have significant disagreements.

00:46:28.000 I sense that you share some of those disagreements.

00:46:30.000 One of them is pulling out American troops from Syria.

00:46:33.000 Where are you on that, and why?

00:46:36.000 Yeah, I say don't do it.

00:46:37.000 At least don't do it in a quick manner.

00:46:41.000 And 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.

00:46:49.000 It's really that simple.

00:46:49.000 The world is a very small place.

00:46:51.000 You 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.

00:46:59.000 Okay, we saw that in Orlando, we saw that in San Bernardino, we see it in Paris.

00:47:04.000 This happens.

00:47:05.000 When you give terrorists like ISIS the space to operate, They will act on that.

00:47:12.000 They're not satisfied with what they have there.

00:47:15.000 What they really want is to take down Western civilization.

00:47:17.000 And I know this because they talk about it all the time.

00:47:19.000 Like, we don't have to guess, you know?

00:47:20.000 We don't have to guess what their intentions are.

00:47:22.000 And the same with Afghanistan.

00:47:24.000 American leadership matters a lot more so than people realize.

00:47:28.000 And we've actually found the right balance.

00:47:30.000 And this is what I tell the president.

00:47:32.000 He has actually found the right balance here.

00:47:35.000 Between massive amounts of troops and really ill-advised pullouts like the one that happened in 2011 under Barack Obama in Iraq.

00:47:45.000 Neither of those are good.

00:47:46.000 What President Trump has is a small contingent.

00:47:50.000 Relatively cheap in terms of costs, and it's the right move.

00:47:54.000 It allows us to have eyes and ears on the ground so that we can predict future attacks.

00:47:57.000 This is our intelligence collection side of it.

00:47:59.000 Allows 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.

00:48:07.000 They'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.

00:48:15.000 Not 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.

00:48:26.000 This 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.

00:48:34.000 This 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.

00:48:42.000 That hasn't happened since World War II, and there we were fighting an actual government with uniformed soldiers.

00:48:46.000 It was not a war on terrorism.

00:48:48.000 The 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.

00:49:04.000 It's an insurance policy, right?

00:49:05.000 It's an insurance policy against future attacks, and what we hit on is the definition of mission success.

00:49:11.000 That's really the point you are making, I think.

00:49:14.000 Which is, how do we define mission success?

00:49:17.000 And politicians have not been honest about what mission success is.

00:49:20.000 Maybe they don't understand the problem well enough to define it for the American people.

00:49:24.000 The American people, you know, they're willing to listen if we have leaders who are willing to talk to them in honest ways.

00:49:31.000 And they can tell.

00:49:32.000 Alright, 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?

00:49:43.000 So just kind of your typical warfare where there's...

00:49:47.000 You know, people wearing uniforms and such.

00:49:49.000 You know, there's no head of state to negotiate with here.

00:49:52.000 This is different.

00:49:54.000 This is an ideology that you're battling, and it requires presence in order to battle it.

00:49:58.000 And it requires building capacity amongst your partners.

00:50:00.000 And mission success is actually every day that we don't have another 9-11.

00:50:04.000 That's mission success.

00:50:06.000 And I think that's what politicians need to be more honest about.

00:50:08.000 So you've been dealing with President Trump, as everybody has.

00:50:10.000 He's sort of become the star around which all politics apparently revolves.

00:50:15.000 If you had to grade the president on his performance so far, how would you grade him?

00:50:20.000 Well, I'd grade him pretty high, as far as policymaking goes.

00:50:27.000 Again, 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.

00:50:34.000 And not that I don't see and understand where he's trying to go with his trade policy.

00:50:39.000 It just hurts my district.

00:50:40.000 That's the reality.

00:50:42.000 It's not workable for my constituents.

00:50:45.000 But overall, pretty good, you know?

00:50:48.000 I don't know about a grade.

00:50:48.000 I don't like grading things.

00:50:50.000 But I would say overall pretty good.

00:50:52.000 I like how open he is to members of Congress.

00:50:55.000 You know, he does listen.

00:50:57.000 It's a very open White House.

00:50:58.000 I think he should get some accolades for that.

00:51:03.000 Unfortunately, I think, again, I'm still very passionate about the border.

00:51:06.000 issue.

00:51:07.000 I think he's absolutely right on the border issue.

00:51:10.000 And 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.

00:51:17.000 And the fight's not over though.

00:51:19.000 So we still have a chance to come back from that.

00:51:21.000 So 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.

00:51:27.000 And then when we are in charge, then Republicans pass a tax cut.

00:51:30.000 And that's pretty much what we do.

00:51:32.000 It'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.

00:51:43.000 People who look at President Border struggling with the border now and say, where were you in 2017?

00:51:49.000 Like, why wasn't this the top issue in 2017?

00:51:51.000 Why are we doing this now the Democrats have taken over Congress?

00:51:54.000 What would you say to folks?

00:51:56.000 Are we getting it right when we criticize Congress or are we getting it wrong?

00:52:00.000 A lot of those criticisms, I think, are correct.

00:52:03.000 Yes and no.

00:52:04.000 So, on the border deal specifically, yes.

00:52:09.000 We should have some self-critique there.

00:52:10.000 We could have done better.

00:52:11.000 I wasn't there, so, you know, not my fault.

00:52:16.000 But it always goes back to this idea of are you trying to do a Hail Mary or are you trying to have a win?

00:52:23.000 And 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.

00:52:30.000 There's a lot of inside baseball there that even I don't really understand, just again, because I wasn't there.

00:52:35.000 But it's but it's very frustrating to voters because.

00:52:38.000 And I think here's why, because a lot of politicians that go into office and I think they overpromise.

00:52:46.000 I think they forget to inform people that you need 60 votes in the Senate for a lot of things, right?

00:52:51.000 And so a lot of people don't realize things like that.

00:52:54.000 So they go in thinking, well, you have a majority, so what's the problem?

00:52:57.000 Get it done.

00:52:57.000 You have a majority, and you're all supposed to be exactly the same, too.

00:53:00.000 Well, first of all, not all Republicans are the same.

00:53:03.000 They cater to different bases, okay?

00:53:05.000 I can be pretty conservative.

00:53:06.000 I am pretty conservative.

00:53:07.000 That's just how I'll vote.

00:53:09.000 But I have to be understanding of some of the Republicans who don't have those kind of districts.

00:53:14.000 And in the end, they're not selling out to anybody except their own constituents, which is kind of the whole point of representative democracy.

00:53:22.000 You 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.

00:53:28.000 I also try not to overpromise things that I just can't get done.

00:53:32.000 And again, when you campaign, it's up to you as a good politician to just be more honest with your voters.

00:53:37.000 So now I have to ask you a weird personal question.

00:53:39.000 You brought your wife along here today.

00:53:40.000 take some honesty and some authenticity.

00:53:42.000 It's okay.

00:53:43.000 We don't have to be so cagey and programmed all the time.

00:53:46.000 And I think I was rewarded for it.

00:53:49.000 And so we'll keep doing that. - So now I have to ask you a weird personal question.

00:53:52.000 So you brought your wife along here today.

00:53:54.000 And how did you guys meet? - So we met through a friend in San Diego.

00:54:00.000 I had just come out there to start Buds.

00:54:04.000 Actually, I had just broken my leg my first time through Hell Week.

00:54:09.000 I was friends with another girl who was in the Navy.

00:54:14.000 They were both Navy brats and they went to middle school together.

00:54:17.000 And they introduced us, so here we are.

00:54:21.000 How long did you guys date before you got married?

00:54:24.000 Jeez, how long did we date?

00:54:25.000 Seven years.

00:54:25.000 Oh, wow.

00:54:26.000 Okay.

00:54:26.000 Yeah.

00:54:27.000 What took you so long, dude?

00:54:29.000 You know, I got blown up.

00:54:30.000 Let me just go back to that excuse.

00:54:34.000 That's about as good an excuse as I've ever heard, actually.

00:54:37.000 Yeah, right?

00:54:38.000 I was like, jeez, what am I saying?

00:54:40.000 So we got married in 2013.

00:54:42.000 So what are your future aspirations?

00:54:44.000 So you obviously have raised your profile more than any other member of Republican Congress since your election.

00:54:49.000 I mean, you've only been in Congress for about five minutes here.

00:54:51.000 What are your future aspirations on the Republican side?

00:54:55.000 First, we've got to do right by our district.

00:54:57.000 That's always the very first thing before you start thinking bigger than that.

00:55:02.000 Politics is often about opportunities more so than a very well-defined pipeline upward.

00:55:09.000 You 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.

00:55:19.000 Well, these days everybody runs for President, so who knows?

00:55:24.000 For right now, I'm young.

00:55:26.000 I can be patient.

00:55:27.000 I don't have to leave my constituents and try to move on to something bigger right now.

00:55:34.000 I want to do right by them.

00:55:35.000 And 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.

00:55:43.000 How have you been treated by the media after the SNL thing?

00:55:46.000 Obviously there's a lot of warm media coverage.

00:55:47.000 My 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.

00:55:55.000 What's been your experience with the media since the SNL stuff?

00:55:57.000 Yeah, it's not terrible, but it's not great either.

00:56:02.000 You know, it depends on which parts of the media, of course.

00:56:04.000 Obviously, conservative media, I'm still, you know, we're still friends, and that's good.

00:56:08.000 I like to keep it that way.

00:56:10.000 And I think your more mainstream media hasn't hit me hard in any way.

00:56:15.000 You know, your CNNs, even your MSNBC, every morning, Joe had me on.

00:56:20.000 They didn't try to give me a right hook or anything.

00:56:24.000 It was okay.

00:56:25.000 But then you do something like make a joke about the Super Bowl and you joke about the 70% tax rate.

00:56:31.000 Oh boy, they will come after you.

00:56:33.000 That was the funniest thing.

00:56:35.000 Yeah, that was an absurd thing.

00:56:36.000 For 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.

00:56:51.000 Yeah, I was like, we should tax the Patriots a 70% to make the NFL more fair and equal.

00:56:54.000 Right, and then she tried to explain marginal tax rates.

00:56:57.000 The 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.

00:57:05.000 It was such a strange thing.

00:57:07.000 Of all the things that I thought would trigger the left, I mean, that one, wow.

00:57:10.000 You can't joke!

00:57:11.000 Can't joke anymore.

00:57:12.000 Well, 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.

00:57:20.000 What 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.

00:57:28.000 Well, that's a good point to touch on, actually. 0.93

00:57:31.000 They do want us to be old white guys.

00:57:33.000 That's what they want.

00:57:34.000 They targeted our female candidates in this last election heavily. 1.00

00:57:40.000 Young Kim in California, Mia Love was targeted heavily.

00:57:46.000 Katie Arrington out in South Carolina.

00:57:49.000 So, you know, they don't want us to be anything else but old white guys. 0.56

00:57:56.000 And that's a problem.

00:57:57.000 It's a problem for us.

00:57:58.000 We need to identify that.

00:57:59.000 We should be more diverse because it's helpful to our message if we have different kinds of people messaging it.

00:58:06.000 And I think that's important.

00:58:07.000 Again, you know, we don't like identity politics and ideas matter much more than that.

00:58:12.000 But 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.

00:58:23.000 We have to.

00:58:24.000 And I think, you know, and I think that'd be to our benefit.

00:58:26.000 But Democrats certainly don't want that. 0.82

00:58:28.000 They don't want us to be funny.

00:58:29.000 They don't want us to be good people.

00:58:32.000 And they'll hit you in very interesting ways, as I've noticed, and some of my local media has done similar ways.

00:58:42.000 I 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.

00:58:54.000 And that's just unfortunate.

00:58:55.000 And you bring this up to a lot of journalists and they'll be so indignant about it.

00:58:59.000 Like, how could you possibly say that?

00:59:02.000 We are the press.

00:59:04.000 They put themselves on this pedestal that is really unbelievable and I don't quite understand.

00:59:09.000 I don't know.

00:59:09.000 I mean, you're part of the press, maybe.

00:59:11.000 It's my fault.

00:59:13.000 So in a second, I want to ask you one final question.

00:59:15.000 I want to ask you about what you think is the biggest problem facing America that's solvable.

00:59:20.000 Some of these things may be intractable.

00:59:21.000 What do you think is the biggest solvable problem facing the country?

00:59:23.000 I'm going to ask that question to Representative Dan Crenshaw, but to hear his answer, you actually have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.

00:59:28.000 So subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com, click subscribe, you can hear the end of our conversation over there.

00:59:33.000 Well, Congressman Crenshaw, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:59:35.000 I really appreciate your time, and thanks for all you're doing, and thanks for all you have done.

00:59:39.000 Really appreciate it.

00:59:39.000 It's awesome to be here, Ben.

00:59:41.000 I'm a big fan, so this was a pretty cool honor.

00:59:43.000 Thanks a lot.

00:59:44.000 Thanks.

00:59:44.000 Thanks a lot.

00:59:54.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:59:55.000 Associate producer Mathis Glover.

00:59:57.000 Edited by Donovan Fowler.

00:59:59.000 Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.

01:00:00.000 Hair and makeup is by Jeswa Olvera.

01:00:02.000 Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.

01:00:04.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - March 03, 2019

Dan Crenshaw | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 40

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