00:00:06.000I admit, I was skeptical, but they pulled it off.
00:00:09.000Email us freedom at charliekirk.com and support our program at charliekirk.com slash support and get involved with Turning Point USA today at tpusa.com.
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00:01:07.000I will admit, I was a skeptic, but I kept an open mind and definitely an open line.
00:01:13.000And one of the people that deserves a ton of credit, an overwhelming amount of credit, was one of the lead negotiators that helped bring the House rules, the, let's just say, demands is probably too strong a term, the requests to completion and to now passage.
00:01:34.000And that is Chip Roy, who joins us now.
00:02:34.000There were a few more than that, I would tell you, who basically said, well, we can't get behind Kevin.
00:02:40.000And so then we started having conversations about what he needed to do.
00:02:43.000And I'm not going to give the whole TikTok because we don't have enough time.
00:02:45.000But at the end of the day, we put forward on December 8th a list of requests, to use your words, what we believe were central to anyone who would be speaker.
00:02:56.000If you go back and look at that document from December 8th, it's public.
00:03:00.000Everybody talking about secret deals, you know, secret deals.
00:03:03.000We put all this out there for the public to see.
00:03:06.000And we made specific requests about restoring Jefferson's single person motion to vacate for accountability, about making sure that you could have 72 hours to read the bills, to have single subject bills, to have germaneness rules, to be able to have open debate and offer amendments on the floor on us, particularly appropriations bills.
00:03:23.000We had specific language in there about needing to have a plan for securing the border and policy choices.
00:03:30.000And then importantly, limits on spending.
00:03:33.000We talked about the need to have conservatives on important A committees, the Appropriations Committee, the Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, Financial Services, the powerful, you know, number one committees, if you will.
00:03:44.000And in particular, the Powerful Rules Committee, which is how stuff gets to the floor.
00:03:59.000We tried to give more ideological diversity among the committees so that Republicans never repeat the absolute debacle, the failure that was 2017 and 2018 when we had control of all three president, Senate, and White and House.
00:04:18.000We're trying to pump the brakes on that and make sure that we've got the structures in place now to avoid that cataclysmic failure.
00:04:26.000We need to stand up and limit spending.
00:04:28.000We need to stand up against the weaponization of government against the American people and stand up in defense of civil liberties.
00:04:34.000We need to stand up for a strong military, sparingly used, forcefully used, non-woke military, and make sure we stand up to secure the board of the United States.
00:04:44.000And importantly, we need to restore federalism so we can agree to disagree, stop trying to solve every problem in this godforsaken town.
00:04:54.000And now some of the specifics are, let's just take one that I was just chuckling at, which was a concession for 72 hours to read a bill.
00:05:02.000And one of my favorite kind of parts on C-SPAN or whatever I was watching at 2 a.m. on Saturday morning was they said, now I wonder if they're going to have a rules package passed tonight.
00:05:11.000And one of them said, well, they do have a provision in the rules package saying you need 72 hours to read it.
00:05:16.000And the person said, yeah, that would probably not make a lot of sense to have a rules package that says you need 72 hours to read a bill.
00:05:24.000And it turns out it looks like it was 72 hours before you guys voted on it.
00:05:36.000And we were trying to get through it and get it passed on Monday night, but certainly it was widely available then for basically the three days.
00:05:44.000It's not to say, look, in the wake of 9-11, in the wake of Pearl Harbor or whatever, should we act immediately if you need to without waiting 72 hours?
00:05:53.000Of course, the body can come and waive a rule like that.
00:05:55.000But on average, the way the swamp works is they purposely, just like that stupid $1.7 trillion monstrosity that those 18 Republicans adopted, they purposely use Christmas.
00:06:33.000And we think we've set us on a glide path to avoid those things.
00:06:36.000Now, here's something that's come out of this that I was just at a meeting with a conservative movement group, you know, the Conservative Action Project.
00:07:25.000And this morning in the Republican conference meeting, there was energy and enthusiasm and unity because what we did last week, not just the rules, everybody's focused on that.
00:07:37.000I want you to understand we did not have a commitment in the commitment to America to limit spending, cap it, cut it, and set us on a path to a 10-year balance budget.
00:07:48.000We got that in part of this discussion as a group.
00:07:52.000And the leader, the speaker, I should say, this morning laid that out to the entire Republican Conference.
00:08:08.000But we've set the tone to change the place, and it's really important.
00:08:12.000And it also, in some ways, kind of was a helpful exercise of which I was afraid it was going to go the other direction, where you guys kind of got any of the grievances out of your system.
00:08:24.000You guys figured out how to work with one another.
00:08:27.000In a strange way, it almost drew you guys closer to one another.
00:08:31.000And look, that's not something that should surprise anyone about how human beings interact.
00:08:37.000You know, we came together, we had to sit across the table, figure things out, and you force people to the table.
00:08:43.000It's one of the reasons why I've said that our biggest problem with deficit spending and just writing checks and then going to our corners and giving press conferences is you never have to do what a business does or a family does: sit around the table, roll up your sleeves, and make tough choices.
00:08:57.000If you're a family budget, you say, look, I'm capping my budget to the 2022 level that we spent.
00:09:03.000My wife and I can't not pay our mortgage, right?
00:09:07.000For the federal government, we can't not pay our interest and we can't not defend the country.
00:09:11.000But we better damn well then have a debate about all the other things.
00:09:14.000And just like my family, I'm not going to cut our mortgage.
00:09:18.000I'm not going to take food off the table.
00:09:20.000I'm not going to not pay for electricity, but I might cut my vacation.
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00:11:20.000Boy, I want to know exactly what was said between Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gates.
00:11:25.000And no better person to tell us than Matt Gates himself.
00:11:27.000Matt, I will say on air what I texted you, and I said this to Chip Roy.
00:12:55.000No, every Congress, they got to kind of redo the pamphlet, if you will, the standard operating procedure of how Congress operates.
00:13:03.000Well, the worst thing we've seen in our recent memory here in the Congress was the passage of the omnibus spending legislation.
00:13:09.000And so our goal was to ensure that something like that could never happen again.
00:13:15.000Some, you know, multi-thousand-page bill thrown on our desk at the last minute, dealing with every subject under the sun, every earmark, every pork barrel project.
00:13:24.000And you're either thumbs up on the whole thing or thumbs down on the whole thing.
00:13:28.000So to make that happen, there are really three legs at the stool.
00:13:31.000There's better policy, better procedure, and better personnel.
00:13:37.000As recently as Monday, we did not have concessions from Speaker McCarthy on some policy votes that we absolutely wanted to have this year.
00:15:12.000And then finally, to enforce it, Charlie, personnel.
00:15:15.000We are frustrated that too often conservatives get sidelined on committees where the action isn't really happening on the legislative front.
00:15:25.000Sure, we get an opportunity to make great points in the oversight committee and the judiciary committee, but often it's the appropriations committee stitching together these deals.
00:15:33.000Often it is the rules committee determining what amendments will be made in order.
00:15:37.000Now, you are not going to be able to get a bill to the Florida floor without having the members of the rules committee that are Freedom Caucus or Freedom Caucus aligned approving of that.
00:15:48.000And our one Freedom Caucus member who's on the Appropriations Committee now, Andy Harris, we're going to see him likely elevated to a major position within the appropriations process.
00:15:58.000So it's not any one of those three things.
00:16:01.000You got to have all three of them together.
00:16:03.000And it took us until pretty late on Friday to get all the assurances we needed.
00:16:07.000But we are as secure as we can be in our belief that Kevin McCarthy wants to keep these commitments for the good of the country, the good of the institution, and the good of his speakership.
00:16:16.000I have several questions, but the rules package that passed yesterday, was it a carbon copy of what was agreed to in the negotiations so far?
00:16:25.000So there are two major differences from where we were at the beginning of the week to where we also ended up on the rules package.
00:16:32.000First, the motion to vacate reduced from a five-member threshold to a one-member threshold, critical accountability tool.
00:16:39.000Second feature of that, the church commission, so that we can really focus on the rules.
00:17:51.000This is also going to prevent the Senate from doing this because then if the Senate sends you guys something, which is not typical, but sometimes certain bills can originate in the Senate and then go back to the House.
00:18:03.000If it doesn't apply to House rules, then it's dead on arrival.
00:18:08.000See, this is what the mainstream media is missing, Charlie, because they're like, oh, Gates and his band of rebels have weakened McCarthy.
00:18:14.000To the contrary, we've given Kevin McCarthy as our speaker far more tools in negotiating with the Senate to be able to out the bad policies and to be able to consider them individually.
00:18:25.000And then if we get into a situation where they're trying to force us into voting for bad stuff or enduring a shutdown, no, we can send them the appropriations bills for our military, for our veterans, for our national parks.
00:18:38.000But then maybe we don't want to fund the Department of Labor or a weaponized Department of Justice or CDC.
00:18:45.000And so I think that the ability to draw those distinctions allows Kevin McCarthy to go back to the senators and say, guys, there's no convincing here.
00:18:54.000The House rules do not allow us to do these things.
00:18:57.000And the other thing, Charlie, is that there were actually populist Democrats who agreed with me and who supported these changes in the rules.
00:19:04.000I saw AOC out on Alex Wagner's program saying, look, what these Freedom Caucus folks are fighting for is actually good for the institution.
00:19:18.000And one thing I'll give the squad credit on, they're at least willing to take those tough votes.
00:19:23.000Now, the counter to my argument is: well, you know, Gates, we've got some frontliners, some people who want in Biden districts, and maybe they don't want to have to take some of these tough votes.
00:19:33.000Maybe they need protections from the rules where individual members can't file amendments.
00:19:42.000If you don't want to take tough votes, you shouldn't have run for the job.
00:19:46.000And I'm glad that everyone realized, everyone except one of our Republican members voted for the rules, and that's a credit to our Congress.
00:19:53.000Yeah, so Tony Gonzalez voted against the rules because he's deeply worried that he might have to be put on the record about whether or not there should be a border wall.
00:20:02.000He's like really worried about that, even though he, if I'm not mistaken, represents a border district or a border adjacent district in Texas, if I'm not mistaken, at least in the kind of general vicinity or general region.
00:20:14.000And so, Matt, this is really important.
00:20:17.000So what ends up happening, for example, I was texting with senators that voted for the omnibus bill, and I was pretty aggressive, honestly, and I was really upset.
00:20:27.000And their response is always the same.
00:20:29.000I think they just copy-paste the same thing, which is, of course, there was a lot of garbage, but come on, we want to fund our military and we want to fund this.
00:20:36.000And they are able to hide behind widely popular measures in our government outside of the military being a woke college campus and saying, come on, Charlie, I don't want to have to defund the Marines.
00:20:50.000But yes, we are going to get the Michelle Obama jogging trail and we're going to get the gay museums in New York and we're going to get the BLM stuff and that border security for Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia.
00:21:09.000And I think we're going to get better policy as a result because people will be too embarrassed to actually have their terrible legislation and their terrible pork barrel projects when you're voting on the interior funding bill and the defense funding bill and the funding bill for health and human services and will actually be more engaged in the legislative process.
00:21:30.000And speaking of engaged, didn't you like the cameras on the floor?
00:21:54.000My theory is that you and Biggs and Crane had math that you thought was going to work on the 14th as far as like, I'm going to vote present.
00:22:04.000And Kevin thought that he was going to get it.
00:22:12.000Right before the 14th ballot, I started to get word that some of the moderates were intending to announce their opposition to the rules that McCarthy tool that we were excited about passing.
00:22:23.000And so when I saw Tony Gonzalez issue a tweet that he was a no on the rules, I wanted to ensure before we let the ink dry on Kevin McCarthy's speakership that I had his assurance, that I had assurance from key leaders of some of the moderate groups that Tony would be an outlier.
00:22:40.000Of course, he has every right to vote his conscience, but that he wasn't going to be bringing two, three, four, five, 10 other members with him in that endeavor.
00:22:47.000And so there were some final assurances I needed to make sure that we weren't going to fall for a pig and a poke.
00:22:52.000McCarthy delivered those assurances to his credit, and we got the deal done.
00:22:57.000If like everyone acts like it was this terrible, chaotic moment that it took us four days to select the person who's second in line to the presidency.
00:23:04.000I mean, there are entire days where all we vote on is the renaming of a post office.
00:23:09.000Every year, we take six weeks off and do absolutely nothing during the summer.
00:23:14.000So it didn't strike me as harmful to the institution to take four days to go through this, to utilize leverage, and ultimately to end up with a work product that everyone is proud of.
00:23:40.000Well, I agree with Mike Rogers that that was sort of a nothing burger.
00:23:43.000When you have late night tense moments, when we've been in very thorough negotiations for an extended period of time, of course, people can get a little bit animated.
00:23:53.000Of course, people can get their Irish up for lack of a better term.
00:23:58.000And if you had cameras on the floor, you would actually see more moments of disagreement.
00:24:03.000You would see more moments of agreement.
00:24:05.000I mean, Mike Rogers is a guy I have worked with for six years on the Armed Services Committee.
00:24:51.000Well, it is the traditional, I would say, kind of boomer rule of the Congress that C-SPAN is only able to take certain angles and point the camera right at the rostrum.
00:25:00.000And I think the reason is because members of Congress want you to think that when they're giving these boisterous speeches on the floor, that the chamber is full.
00:25:08.000And oftentimes, attendance is pretty low during debate, even on significant bills.
00:25:13.000But isn't the gig kind of up on that already?
00:25:15.000Do we have to continue to pretend about that?
00:25:17.000I think what's far more interesting is that you're able to see me have a conversation with Permilla Jiles.
00:25:23.000And ask, hey, was that about breaking up big tech?
00:25:26.000You're able to see me have a conversation with Ilhan O'Mar, and we were actually talking about war powers issues and whether or not we could work on changing the authorizations to use military force.
00:25:35.000And you always get to see like the tense moments of conflict when we have a big debate in committee or a big hearing.
00:25:42.000But sometimes the warmer moments, the kinder moments, the moments of coordination and cooperation get totally missed.
00:25:50.000And if we had the cameras there, like people could say, like, what were you and Jayapal talking about?
00:25:55.000What we were talking about was bringing up the bills to break up big tech.
00:25:58.000And, you know, with AOC, we were strategizing about how many people were going to be in attendance for every vote so that I could calculate how many votes I needed in order to get the most out of these negotiations.
00:26:12.000And I think that if we had more dynamic camera angles in the floor of the House, we would actually know a lot more about what's coming in the legislative process and how our leaders are dealing with each other.
00:26:23.000So another one of the agreements, so you did say in the rules package was the new church committee, which could be the Jordan committee, and it's going to be underjudiciary, I believe.
00:26:33.000Walk us through the significance of that.
00:26:36.000Well, someone like a Chip Roy with a tenacity and an intellect could lead a subcommittee within the Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by my friend and colleague Jim Jordan, to specifically focus on the weaponization of the government against the American people.
00:26:51.000And the news I can break to you is the specifics of that agreement demand that that select subcommittee be staffed and resourced no less than the January 6th committee.
00:27:06.000But look, it's not just the FBI and the DOJ.
00:27:08.000I mean, even at the post office, they have a covert internet surveillance program to monitor what people post about politics.
00:27:15.000So throughout the enterprise of the federal government, we've seen the bureaucrats really turn against the people.
00:27:22.000And I think we need that type of a wide scope.
00:27:25.000We need someone like a Chip Roy leading it.
00:27:28.000And it's my hope that within the Judiciary Committee, we will actually be able to receive recommendations on reforms that might not just be supported by Republicans.
00:27:37.000I would love to get Democrats on board with actual individual liberty and classic liberalism, right?
00:27:44.000The notion of your rights and your freedom not coming directly from some edict from government.
00:27:49.000And if we're able to do that, maybe we won't have these types of lockdowns.
00:27:53.000Maybe we won't have an FBI and a DOJ that are hyper-politicized.
00:27:56.000And maybe we won't have every agency trying to figure out how to cleave away a little bit more power from the body politic.
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00:29:25.000How significant, if at all, because there's mixed opinions on this, is getting the Congressional Leadership Fund to stay out of comfortable Republican primaries.
00:29:34.000Well, we've had a number of conservatives blocked in their path to Congress because lobbyists and special interests utilize the, well, we got a good one in Corey Mills, so I'm not going to be critical of him.
00:29:45.000But, you know, we had the Conservative Leadership Fund play in a lot of primaries.
00:29:50.000I would note the Caroline Levitt race as a principal example.
00:29:54.000And we don't want to see that anymore.
00:29:55.000And so now we're actually going to have more teamwork across the Republican enterprise.
00:30:00.000And there's going to be a war council that includes some of McCarthy's folks, some of our folks, and these decisions will be made in unison.
00:30:07.000So we're not blowing millions of dollars attacking each other and making our candidates less electable in the general election.
00:30:13.000I mean, Caroline Levitt should be in Congress.
00:30:16.000The only reason she's not is because she was opposed by our leadership.
00:30:19.000And she had such a late primary in September, there wasn't the opportunity for her to reconstitute the Republican base and get in a position to win.
00:30:27.000So we don't want to lose seats because of infighting.
00:30:30.000And I think setting up a war council to go through these things on the front end would actually be so productive to our politics and to our electoral success and the growth of our majority in future elections.
00:30:41.000Matt, how is the debt ceiling fight now going to unfold with these recent rule changes?
00:30:50.000Well, I mean, we're going to have that vote in a few months, but we're working on it right now within our conference.
00:30:55.000We actually had a very robust debate this morning about the types of spending reforms we should demand as a part of the debt ceiling negotiations.
00:31:03.000And what we have gotten as a commitment from leader or from Speaker McCarthy is that he's going to revert to 2022 spending levels.
00:31:12.000So think back to when we did cut, cap, and balance.
00:31:15.000We're going to use a similar paradigm.
00:31:16.000We're going to go back to the 2022 spending levels that's going to require across the board cuts.
00:31:21.000And I don't love defense cuts, but given all the money that we've sent to Ukraine and the NDAA, it seems like a pretty obvious place where we could reduce spending and meet some of those budget requirements.
00:31:33.000It's also going to mean reforms to our entitlement programs.
00:31:36.000And that means tough conversations about work requirements, about able-bodied people not being on some of these social safety net programs forever if they have the opportunity to make a more meaningful contribution through actual work.
00:31:49.000I think that's important, not just for our spending problems, but also for the workforce challenges that many of our employers face.
00:31:57.000So it's going to be policy, it's going to be entitlement reforms, and it's going to be cuts to funding the defense of other nations in faraway lands.
00:32:06.000One of our listeners says, Matt, first they say, Matt, you're a total patriot.
00:32:09.000God bless you for your fight and for your whimsy throughout the entire process.
00:32:14.000Anyone call you whimsical this last week, Matt?
00:32:27.000One of my favorite members of Congress is Thomas Massey, and the fact that he's going to be on this new committee really gives me hope.
00:32:35.000Matt, do you anticipate allowing the dogs to be released, if you will, against this fourth branch of government?
00:32:42.000Yeah, Kevin McCarthy told us he's going to get the evidence out in front of the American people, and that means releasing the 14,000 hours of tapes that have been hidden that I think would give more full context to that day rather than the cherry-picked moments that the January 6th committee tried to use to inflame and further divide our country.
00:33:02.000So, yes, I do believe that part of this deal is a concession that we are going to get the truth out in front of the American people.
00:33:09.000Kevin McCarthy could have in his victory speech just said, well, the government is weaponized, but he was very specific in his language.
00:33:16.000He talked about the weaponization of the FBI specifically.
00:33:20.000His willingness to do that with particularity, I think, shows that he's ready to lower his shoulder and to get into this fight that so many Americans expect us to be in on behalf of the civil rights that we hold dear.
00:33:32.000And contrast that to Paul Ryan or Boehner, who never would have done that.
00:33:36.000And you deserve a lot of credit, Matt, for steering that direction because Kevin wanted to be speaker really badly.
00:33:41.000He said, wow, I'm not going to be speaker if I don't listen to these members and cut a deal.
00:33:45.000Is that a fair way to depict it or summarize it?
00:33:49.000Well, I think it is fair to say that we would not be in the position today had we had a smooth Tuesday.
00:33:56.000But I would rather have a turbulent four days and then come up with a process that we all believe in and commitments that we can rely on than have a really smooth takeoff and then two years of turbulence and not really knowing what's coming next.
00:34:11.000So I think this is a far preferable system.
00:34:14.000I think we've got our cards on the table right now.
00:34:16.000The American people know what to expect from a fighting Republican majority.
00:34:20.000The Senate knows to what they can expect from us regarding how we are going to comport ourselves and handle the legislative process professionally like adults.
00:34:30.000And I thought it was interesting to hear people give speeches about the institution, about what drives decisions here in Washington, D.C.
00:34:38.000And we want to make this a better place.
00:34:40.000I mean, the last time we had all appropriations bills go through regular order, the youngest member of Congress wasn't even born yet.
00:34:49.000And so it's been broken for a long time.
00:34:52.000And I think we actually needed the shock to the system that the last week provided to try to get us back on track.
00:34:59.000And boy, in our Republican team meeting this morning, there was a sense of unity and purpose and forward-looking.
00:35:05.000And I'm so excited to be a part of it.
00:35:07.000Matt, congratulations and look forward to see results after result.