The Charlie Kirk Show - The Deal of the Century with Matt Gaetz and Chip Roy

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today in the Charlie Kirk show.

00:00:01.000 Matt Gates and Chip Roy walk us through the deal of a century.

00:00:05.000 They got it done.

00:00:06.000 I admit, I was skeptical, but they pulled it off.

00:00:09.000 Email 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.

00:00:20.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:21.000 Here we go.

00:00:22.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:24.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

00:00:26.000 I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.

00:00:29.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:33.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:34.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:35.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.

00:00:43.000 We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.

00:00:52.000 That's why we are here.

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00:01:07.000 I will admit, I was a skeptic, but I kept an open mind and definitely an open line.

00:01:13.000 And 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.

00:01:34.000 And that is Chip Roy, who joins us now.

00:01:37.000 Congressman Roy, thank you so much.

00:01:40.000 You and I were chatting late some of those nights, and I said, What is the plan?

00:01:44.000 What is the plan?

00:01:44.000 And you walked me through it and you said, Hey, we're not making this about Kevin.

00:01:48.000 We're making this about rules.

00:01:49.000 We're making this about concessions.

00:01:52.000 And it seems as if the rules package passed yesterday.

00:01:56.000 Just walk us through your take from last week and some of the victories that are now no longer abstract, but are now realities.

00:02:03.000 Well, Charlie, thanks and thanks for trying to walk through this.

00:02:06.000 I think objectively, you know, highlighting some of the concerns and like, hey, hey, how are you guys going to get this done? 0.98

00:02:11.000 But also not taking a two by four to us and saying that, you know, hey, you guys are clowns. 1.00

00:02:15.000 You're crazy. 1.00

00:02:16.000 Or terrorists, as some people called you, which is just. 0.99

00:02:19.000 Yeah, and some of the conservative movement, you know, use those kinds of terms.

00:02:23.000 And you were pretty objective about it.

00:02:24.000 I appreciate that.

00:02:25.000 Look, go back to the election.

00:02:28.000 It was a narrow margin, narrow victory.

00:02:30.000 There were a handful of members that are fairly public now.

00:02:33.000 There were at least five.

00:02:34.000 There were a few more than that, I would tell you, who basically said, well, we can't get behind Kevin.

00:02:40.000 And so then we started having conversations about what he needed to do.

00:02:43.000 And I'm not going to give the whole TikTok because we don't have enough time.

00:02:45.000 But 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.

00:02:56.000 If you go back and look at that document from December 8th, it's public.

00:02:59.000 It's widely out there.

00:03:00.000 Everybody talking about secret deals, you know, secret deals.

00:03:03.000 We put all this out there for the public to see.

00:03:06.000 And 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.

00:03:23.000 We had specific language in there about needing to have a plan for securing the border and policy choices.

00:03:30.000 And then importantly, limits on spending.

00:03:33.000 We 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.

00:03:44.000 And in particular, the Powerful Rules Committee, which is how stuff gets to the floor.

00:03:48.000 Now, that's all in the weed stock.

00:03:49.000 Yes.

00:03:50.000 For the average American, here's what we got.

00:03:52.000 We got the power for your representatives to be your voice.

00:03:57.000 We opened the house up.

00:03:59.000 We 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.

00:04:15.000 Correct.

00:04:15.000 And we failed.

00:04:17.000 We failed.

00:04:18.000 Yes, we did.

00:04:18.000 We'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.

00:04:26.000 We need to stand up and limit spending.

00:04:28.000 We need to stand up against the weaponization of government against the American people and stand up in defense of civil liberties.

00:04:34.000 We 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.

00:04:44.000 And importantly, we need to restore federalism so we can agree to disagree, stop trying to solve every problem in this godforsaken town.

00:04:51.000 We can do that with these tools.

00:04:53.000 I agree with all that.

00:04:54.000 And 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.

00:05:02.000 And 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.

00:05:11.000 And one of them said, well, they do have a provision in the rules package saying you need 72 hours to read it.

00:05:16.000 And 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.

00:05:24.000 And it turns out it looks like it was 72 hours before you guys voted on it.

00:05:28.000 Just about.

00:05:28.000 I mean, and I think.

00:05:30.000 Go ahead.

00:05:31.000 Yeah, I think certainly certainly within the spirit of it.

00:05:33.000 I didn't add up the hours.

00:05:36.000 And 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.

00:05:42.000 And that's important.

00:05:44.000 It'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?

00:05:53.000 Of course, the body can come and waive a rule like that. 0.99

00:05:55.000 But 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. 0.99

00:06:07.000 They drive up to the last minute. 0.99

00:06:09.000 They force the tension saying you're going to shut down government on Christmas Eve in order to pass a big spending bill.

00:06:16.000 That's what the appropriators do.

00:06:18.000 That's their playbook.

00:06:19.000 That's exactly right.

00:06:20.000 Everyone, the members want to go home.

00:06:22.000 They're exhausted.

00:06:22.000 Many are retiring.

00:06:24.000 They want special favors, special deals.

00:06:26.000 They put it all together and our country gets further into debt and our actual critical problems don't get addressed.

00:06:32.000 Correct.

00:06:33.000 And we think we've set us on a glide path to avoid those things.

00:06:36.000 Now, 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.

00:06:42.000 And we had a bunch of us meeting.

00:06:44.000 And my colleague Dan Bishop made the point that I would like to highlight.

00:06:47.000 We're sitting here right now.

00:06:48.000 It's 1.15.

00:06:49.000 So one week ago, right now, we were starting our vote in which 19 of us voted for someone other than Kevin.

00:06:56.000 Then we went through what we went through last week.

00:06:59.000 Remember what happened a week ago in the morning?

00:07:01.000 There was almost like a mob-like Republican conference meeting because people were so frustrated.

00:07:06.000 And it wasn't good.

00:07:08.000 And Mike Rogers threatened some people to lose committee chairs.

00:07:11.000 And look, and by the way, Matt Gates and Mike Rogers spoke this weekend.

00:07:14.000 They tweeted out, hey, we're all going to work together.

00:07:16.000 I pulled Mike aside today, shook his hand.

00:07:19.000 I'm talking to everybody and saying, look, let's move forward.

00:07:21.000 No retaliation.

00:07:22.000 Don't care any side of this whole fight.

00:07:24.000 Let's all unite.

00:07:25.000 And 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.

00:07:37.000 I 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.

00:07:48.000 We got that in part of this discussion as a group.

00:07:52.000 And the leader, the speaker, I should say, this morning laid that out to the entire Republican Conference.

00:07:58.000 And we've got broad unity on that.

00:08:00.000 Now, there are disagreements.

00:08:02.000 How do we handle the debt ceiling fight?

00:08:04.000 How do we handle military spending?

00:08:06.000 We're going to work through that.

00:08:08.000 But we've set the tone to change the place, and it's really important.

00:08:12.000 And 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.

00:08:24.000 You guys figured out how to work with one another.

00:08:27.000 In a strange way, it almost drew you guys closer to one another.

00:08:31.000 And look, that's not something that should surprise anyone about how human beings interact.

00:08:37.000 You know, we came together, we had to sit across the table, figure things out, and you force people to the table.

00:08:43.000 It'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.

00:08:57.000 If you're a family budget, you say, look, I'm capping my budget to the 2022 level that we spent.

00:09:03.000 My wife and I can't not pay our mortgage, right?

00:09:07.000 For the federal government, we can't not pay our interest and we can't not defend the country.

00:09:11.000 But we better damn well then have a debate about all the other things.

00:09:14.000 And just like my family, I'm not going to cut our mortgage.

00:09:18.000 I'm not going to take food off the table.

00:09:20.000 I'm not going to not pay for electricity, but I might cut my vacation.

00:09:24.000 I might change the car I have.

00:09:26.000 And that's what we have to do as a country.

00:09:28.000 We're not doing it.

00:09:29.000 We just sat down this week.

00:09:30.000 We rolled our sleeves up.

00:09:32.000 That's a model.

00:09:33.000 Let's do it.

00:09:34.000 Listen what I was saying right before Christmas when the Senate was like, oh, we got to blow out of town.

00:09:38.000 Why?

00:09:39.000 The boys at the Battle of the Bulge, you know, sitting in the trenches, they didn't walk away at Christmas.

00:09:46.000 Neither did the guys crossing the Delaware.

00:09:48.000 So our job is to get this done right for the American people, and we should do it.

00:09:51.000 Chip, congratulations.

00:09:52.000 You deserve a lot of credit.

00:09:54.000 And you brought it to, I think, the top moment of a crescendo.

00:09:57.000 And we now have the most conservative structure, an actual structure, a framework to get stuff done for the American people.

00:10:03.000 Congrats, Chip.

00:10:04.000 Talk to you soon.

00:10:04.000 I know you got to get to votes.

00:10:05.000 God bless, Charlie.

00:10:06.000 Take care.

00:10:07.000 Thank you.

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00:11:20.000 Boy, I want to know exactly what was said between Kevin McCarthy and Matt Gates.

00:11:25.000 And no better person to tell us than Matt Gates himself.

00:11:27.000 Matt, I will say on air what I texted you, and I said this to Chip Roy.

00:11:32.000 I was skeptical last week.

00:11:34.000 However, you guys were able to negotiate a fabulous deal.

00:11:38.000 Congratulations.

00:11:39.000 In fact, you said on air, I am running out of stuff to ask for.

00:11:44.000 Joining us now is Matt Gates.

00:11:46.000 Matt, welcome to the program.

00:11:48.000 Oh, thanks for having me, Charlie.

00:11:49.000 And sometimes you got to drive a hard bargain to change an institution as intractable as the House of Representatives.

00:11:55.000 But I think we're in a better place.

00:11:57.000 And we actually have more teamwork and unity forged by fire.

00:12:01.000 I've never been more optimistic about the ability of the House to work together.

00:12:05.000 We got our rules passed.

00:12:07.000 The moderates didn't jump out of the bucket.

00:12:10.000 And that's going to be a good thing, not just for this Congress, but beyond.

00:12:14.000 I mean, members of Congress, we stay here for a few terms, and speakers usually last an average of about five years.

00:12:21.000 But rules, once baked in, are frequently enduring.

00:12:26.000 And we hope that these are.

00:12:27.000 So tell us about what some of those kind of rule changes were.

00:12:31.000 So you voted president for Kevin McCarthy, but you enthusiastically voted for the rules, which I totally appreciate.

00:12:37.000 And because it really, the structure of Congress is so in need of change.

00:12:44.000 So walk us through it.

00:12:45.000 I mean, feel free to get as wonky as you're comfortable doing because our audience is kind of, some are convinced.

00:12:51.000 Some are saying, Charlie, I don't even know what congressional rules are.

00:12:53.000 What do you mean rules?

00:12:54.000 Is it in the Constitution?

00:12:55.000 No, every Congress, they got to kind of redo the pamphlet, if you will, the standard operating procedure of how Congress operates.

00:13:03.000 Well, the worst thing we've seen in our recent memory here in the Congress was the passage of the omnibus spending legislation.

00:13:09.000 And so our goal was to ensure that something like that could never happen again.

00:13:15.000 Some, 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.

00:13:24.000 And you're either thumbs up on the whole thing or thumbs down on the whole thing.

00:13:28.000 So to make that happen, there are really three legs at the stool.

00:13:31.000 There's better policy, better procedure, and better personnel.

00:13:37.000 As recently as Monday, we did not have concessions from Speaker McCarthy on some policy votes that we absolutely wanted to have this year.

00:13:47.000 We want to vote on the fare tax.

00:13:49.000 We want to vote on congressional term limits.

00:13:51.000 We want to vote on a balanced budget.

00:13:53.000 We want to vote on ending the COVID mandates.

00:13:56.000 And we want to vote on the border plan and the immigration enforcement plan that the Texas delegation stitched together.

00:14:03.000 And that's not just at the southern border.

00:14:05.000 That includes internal enforcement of our immigration laws.

00:14:08.000 Kevin McCarthy, to his great credit, agreed to all of those things.

00:14:12.000 And he agreed to different ones at different stages along the way and different vote sequences.

00:14:17.000 So that's the policy concession we got.

00:14:19.000 Then you go into the procedure.

00:14:21.000 It is maddening to not be able to offer amendments to cut spending.

00:14:26.000 Now, if there is any bill on the floor, if you offer an amendment to reduce the spending in that bill, it must be made in order.

00:14:34.000 That allows us to tweeze through some of the worst parts of pork barrel projects, of earmarks that get baked in in one form or another.

00:14:43.000 And it allows us to actually evaluate whether or not these programs are working.

00:14:48.000 We also are going to have individual appropriations bills.

00:14:51.000 This gives us leverage against the Senate.

00:14:53.000 See, the Senate loves to put everything together in one giant bucket, send that over to the House and say, take it or leave it.

00:15:01.000 Well, now our rules won't permit us to take up that legislation.

00:15:04.000 We have to have 12 individual votes on the 12 different jurisdictional areas for appropriations.

00:15:10.000 That is huge, huge.

00:15:12.000 And then finally, to enforce it, Charlie, personnel.

00:15:15.000 We are frustrated that too often conservatives get sidelined on committees where the action isn't really happening on the legislative front.

00:15:25.000 Sure, 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.

00:15:33.000 Often it is the rules committee determining what amendments will be made in order.

00:15:37.000 Now, 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.

00:15:48.000 And 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.

00:15:58.000 So it's not any one of those three things.

00:16:01.000 You got to have all three of them together.

00:16:03.000 And it took us until pretty late on Friday to get all the assurances we needed.

00:16:07.000 But 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.

00:16:16.000 I 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?

00:16:25.000 So 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.

00:16:32.000 First, the motion to vacate reduced from a five-member threshold to a one-member threshold, critical accountability tool.

00:16:39.000 Second feature of that, the church commission, so that we can really focus on the rules.

00:16:42.000 Is that in the rules?

00:16:44.000 Is that in the rules?

00:16:45.000 Wow.

00:16:46.000 Okay.

00:16:46.000 We had a guest yesterday that was not in the rules package.

00:16:48.000 Okay.

00:16:49.000 So, Matt, is it fair to say that if these rules were in place, the $1.7 trillion omnimus bill would not have passed as it was designed?

00:16:59.000 Absolutely.

00:17:00.000 It would have violated the single subject rule that exists in over 45 of our state legislatures, but not in the United States Congress.

00:17:08.000 And many of the amendments that pulled that terrible piece of legislation together would have failed on Germany grounds.

00:17:14.000 Now, your amendment actually has to be relevant to the underlying bill to be considered.

00:17:19.000 I know that sounds wonky, but just this last Congress, the National Defense Authorization Act wasn't even a standalone bill at the end.

00:17:26.000 It was an amendment to a water infrastructure bill.

00:17:30.000 Earlier in my career in Congress, we had to take one vote that was the farm bill and related to war powers in Yemen.

00:17:40.000 And these things ought to be considered separately.

00:17:42.000 A serious country would not pair things that are not germane together and would not consider this to a single subject.

00:17:50.000 This is huge.

00:17:51.000 This 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.

00:18:03.000 If it doesn't apply to House rules, then it's dead on arrival.

00:18:06.000 Is that correct?

00:18:07.000 Absolutely.

00:18:08.000 See, this is what the mainstream media is missing, Charlie, because they're like, oh, Gates and his band of rebels have weakened McCarthy.

00:18:14.000 To 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.

00:18:25.000 And 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.

00:18:38.000 But then maybe we don't want to fund the Department of Labor or a weaponized Department of Justice or CDC.

00:18:45.000 And 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.

00:18:53.000 There's no arms to twist.

00:18:54.000 The House rules do not allow us to do these things.

00:18:57.000 And the other thing, Charlie, is that there were actually populist Democrats who agreed with me and who supported these changes in the rules.

00:19:04.000 I saw AOC out on Alex Wagner's program saying, look, what these Freedom Caucus folks are fighting for is actually good for the institution.

00:19:10.000 Get that clip.

00:19:11.000 I haven't seen it.

00:19:11.000 It's not going to get rolled by the establishment.

00:19:13.000 You know, the establishment always wants to package everything together.

00:19:16.000 That's what the Uniparty wants.

00:19:18.000 And one thing I'll give the squad credit on, they're at least willing to take those tough votes.

00:19:23.000 Now, 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.

00:19:33.000 Maybe they need protections from the rules where individual members can't file amendments.

00:19:38.000 Well, I'm sorry.

00:19:38.000 You got to put on your big girl pants and your big boy pants.

00:19:41.000 This is the United States Congress.

00:19:42.000 If you don't want to take tough votes, you shouldn't have run for the job.

00:19:46.000 And 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.

00:19:53.000 Yeah, 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.

00:20:02.000 He'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.

00:20:14.000 And so, Matt, this is really important.

00:20:15.000 So now it's single subject.

00:20:17.000 So 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.

00:20:27.000 And their response is always the same.

00:20:29.000 I 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.

00:20:36.000 And 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.

00:20:50.000 But 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. 0.52

00:21:01.000 And so they wrap it all together.

00:21:02.000 What you've done is you say, no, no, no, no.

00:21:05.000 You're now going to have to have 15 separate bills.

00:21:07.000 Is that correct?

00:21:08.000 That's absolutely right.

00:21:09.000 And 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.

00:21:30.000 And speaking of engaged, didn't you like the cameras on the floor?

00:21:36.000 I got to interrupt you, Matt.

00:21:37.000 Have you seen, you've seen the lip reading video, I'm sure, right?

00:21:40.000 I have.

00:21:40.000 We played it in conference this morning.

00:21:42.000 It was actually a nice, lighthearted moment.

00:21:45.000 We could replay it.

00:21:45.000 We played it yesterday.

00:21:47.000 What did Kevin say to you?

00:21:48.000 My theory is this, Matt, and I haven't talked to a single member.

00:21:50.000 Actually, we talked to Marjorie Taylor Greene.

00:21:52.000 She said, I was over the target.

00:21:54.000 My 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.

00:22:04.000 And Kevin thought that he was going to get it.

00:22:06.000 Is that correct?

00:22:06.000 Was the 14th supposed to be it?

00:22:08.000 What kind of inside baseball can you give us?

00:22:11.000 That wasn't quite it.

00:22:12.000 Right 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.

00:22:23.000 And 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.

00:22:40.000 Of 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.

00:22:47.000 And so there were some final assurances I needed to make sure that we weren't going to fall for a pig and a poke.

00:22:52.000 McCarthy delivered those assurances to his credit, and we got the deal done.

00:22:56.000 And you know what?

00:22:57.000 If 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.

00:23:04.000 I mean, there are entire days where all we vote on is the renaming of a post office.

00:23:09.000 Every year, we take six weeks off and do absolutely nothing during the summer.

00:23:14.000 So 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.

00:23:26.000 Yeah, and it was fascinating.

00:23:29.000 And Mike Rogers took a lunge at you, which was something.

00:23:32.000 It just, it seemed to be a dramatic moment.

00:23:35.000 What can you fill us in there?

00:23:37.000 What was Rogers saying or doing?

00:23:40.000 Well, I agree with Mike Rogers that that was sort of a nothing burger.

00:23:43.000 When 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.

00:23:53.000 Of course, people can get their Irish up for lack of a better term.

00:23:58.000 And if you had cameras on the floor, you would actually see more moments of disagreement.

00:24:03.000 You would see more moments of agreement.

00:24:05.000 I mean, Mike Rogers is a guy I have worked with for six years on the Armed Services Committee.

00:24:09.000 I have tremendous respect for him.

00:24:11.000 I probably wouldn't even be on the Armed Services Committee if it wasn't for Mike Rogers.

00:24:15.000 And so you don't let one moment of expression of emotion get in the way of six years of a working relationship.

00:24:23.000 So that was actually a way bigger deal to the media and to other people in the country than it was to me or Mike.

00:24:28.000 We've been great partners in the past and we're going to work together very well going forward.

00:24:32.000 Yeah, so you want to bring so the cameras are going away, but you want to bring them back.

00:24:37.000 What's the latest on cameras?

00:24:38.000 I mean, come on, Matt, the meme content that we could have at TPUSA.

00:24:44.000 I mean, you would fill our content appetite immediately.

00:24:48.000 What's going on here with the cameras?

00:24:50.000 Who decided to get rid of them?

00:24:51.000 Well, 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.

00:25:00.000 And 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.

00:25:08.000 And oftentimes, attendance is pretty low during debate, even on significant bills.

00:25:13.000 But isn't the gig kind of up on that already?

00:25:15.000 Do we have to continue to pretend about that?

00:25:17.000 I think what's far more interesting is that you're able to see me have a conversation with Permilla Jiles.

00:25:23.000 And ask, hey, was that about breaking up big tech?

00:25:23.000 I agree.

00:25:23.000 I think that's a good idea.

00:25:26.000 You'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.

00:25:35.000 And you always get to see like the tense moments of conflict when we have a big debate in committee or a big hearing.

00:25:42.000 But sometimes the warmer moments, the kinder moments, the moments of coordination and cooperation get totally missed.

00:25:50.000 And if we had the cameras there, like people could say, like, what were you and Jayapal talking about?

00:25:55.000 What we were talking about was bringing up the bills to break up big tech.

00:25:58.000 And, 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.

00:26:09.000 So transparency is a good thing.

00:26:12.000 And 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.

00:26:23.000 So 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.

00:26:33.000 Walk us through the significance of that.

00:26:36.000 Well, 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.

00:26:51.000 And 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.

00:27:02.000 It was a big number then.

00:27:04.000 Big number, big project.

00:27:06.000 But look, it's not just the FBI and the DOJ.

00:27:08.000 I mean, even at the post office, they have a covert internet surveillance program to monitor what people post about politics.

00:27:15.000 So throughout the enterprise of the federal government, we've seen the bureaucrats really turn against the people.

00:27:22.000 And I think we need that type of a wide scope.

00:27:25.000 We need someone like a Chip Roy leading it.

00:27:28.000 And 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.

00:27:37.000 I would love to get Democrats on board with actual individual liberty and classic liberalism, right?

00:27:44.000 The notion of your rights and your freedom not coming directly from some edict from government.

00:27:49.000 And if we're able to do that, maybe we won't have these types of lockdowns.

00:27:53.000 Maybe we won't have an FBI and a DOJ that are hyper-politicized.

00:27:56.000 And maybe we won't have every agency trying to figure out how to cleave away a little bit more power from the body politic.

00:28:03.000 Yeah.

00:28:04.000 And the other thing is, Matt, you no longer can vote remotely.

00:28:08.000 That's another thing that would and I think that's good.

00:28:11.000 I really do.

00:28:12.000 I think it's good that we're going to force people to actually go to Washington, D.C. and do your job, not just vote remotely.

00:28:19.000 And so it's another big change.

00:28:23.000 Hey, everybody, Charlie Kirk here.

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00:29:25.000 How significant, if at all, because there's mixed opinions on this, is getting the Congressional Leadership Fund to stay out of comfortable Republican primaries.

00:29:33.000 Your thoughts, Matt?

00:29:34.000 Well, 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.

00:29:45.000 But, you know, we had the Conservative Leadership Fund play in a lot of primaries.

00:29:50.000 I would note the Caroline Levitt race as a principal example.

00:29:54.000 And we don't want to see that anymore.

00:29:55.000 And so now we're actually going to have more teamwork across the Republican enterprise.

00:30:00.000 And 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.

00:30:07.000 So we're not blowing millions of dollars attacking each other and making our candidates less electable in the general election. 0.98

00:30:13.000 I mean, Caroline Levitt should be in Congress. 0.94

00:30:16.000 The only reason she's not is because she was opposed by our leadership. 1.00

00:30:19.000 And 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.

00:30:27.000 So we don't want to lose seats because of infighting.

00:30:30.000 And 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.

00:30:41.000 Matt, how is the debt ceiling fight now going to unfold with these recent rule changes?

00:30:48.000 And when is that vote going to be up?

00:30:50.000 Well, I mean, we're going to have that vote in a few months, but we're working on it right now within our conference.

00:30:55.000 We 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.

00:31:03.000 And what we have gotten as a commitment from leader or from Speaker McCarthy is that he's going to revert to 2022 spending levels.

00:31:12.000 So think back to when we did cut, cap, and balance.

00:31:15.000 We're going to use a similar paradigm.

00:31:16.000 We're going to go back to the 2022 spending levels that's going to require across the board cuts.

00:31:21.000 And 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.

00:31:33.000 It's also going to mean reforms to our entitlement programs.

00:31:36.000 And 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.

00:31:49.000 I think that's important, not just for our spending problems, but also for the workforce challenges that many of our employers face.

00:31:57.000 So 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.

00:32:06.000 One of our listeners says, Matt, first they say, Matt, you're a total patriot.

00:32:09.000 God bless you for your fight and for your whimsy throughout the entire process.

00:32:14.000 Anyone call you whimsical this last week, Matt?

00:32:16.000 Well, attorney.

00:32:17.000 This is the first time, but it's heartwarming.

00:32:19.000 That's a good word.

00:32:20.000 I like that word.

00:32:21.000 They say, basically, it's a long email.

00:32:23.000 Can we get answers on J6?

00:32:25.000 Can we get answers on this?

00:32:26.000 Can we get answers on that?

00:32:27.000 One 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.

00:32:35.000 Matt, do you anticipate allowing the dogs to be released, if you will, against this fourth branch of government?

00:32:42.000 Yeah, 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.

00:33:02.000 So, 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.

00:33:08.000 And you know what?

00:33:09.000 Kevin McCarthy could have in his victory speech just said, well, the government is weaponized, but he was very specific in his language.

00:33:16.000 He talked about the weaponization of the FBI specifically.

00:33:20.000 His 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.

00:33:32.000 And contrast that to Paul Ryan or Boehner, who never would have done that.

00:33:36.000 And you deserve a lot of credit, Matt, for steering that direction because Kevin wanted to be speaker really badly.

00:33:41.000 He said, wow, I'm not going to be speaker if I don't listen to these members and cut a deal.

00:33:45.000 Is that a fair way to depict it or summarize it?

00:33:49.000 Well, I think it is fair to say that we would not be in the position today had we had a smooth Tuesday.

00:33:56.000 But 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.

00:34:11.000 So I think this is a far preferable system.

00:34:14.000 I think we've got our cards on the table right now.

00:34:16.000 The American people know what to expect from a fighting Republican majority.

00:34:20.000 The 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.

00:34:30.000 And I thought it was interesting to hear people give speeches about the institution, about what drives decisions here in Washington, D.C.

00:34:38.000 And we want to make this a better place.

00:34:40.000 I mean, the last time we had all appropriations bills go through regular order, the youngest member of Congress wasn't even born yet.

00:34:49.000 And so it's been broken for a long time.

00:34:52.000 And I think we actually needed the shock to the system that the last week provided to try to get us back on track.

00:34:59.000 And boy, in our Republican team meeting this morning, there was a sense of unity and purpose and forward-looking.

00:35:05.000 And I'm so excited to be a part of it.

00:35:07.000 Matt, congratulations and look forward to see results after result.

00:35:11.000 Appreciate it.

00:35:11.000 Thank you so much.

00:35:12.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:35:13.000 Email us freedom at charliekirk.com and subscribe to the Charlie Kirk Show podcast.

00:35:18.000 The emails we are responding are overwhelmingly positive for Matt Gates.

00:35:24.000 It really goes to show me that the base, if you will, really they wanted to see some structural changes.

00:35:32.000 And that's a big a week ago, the emails were split and torn and all over the place.

00:35:38.000 And it seems as if finally there is a win, not just winning an election, but actually getting substantively done.

00:35:43.000 And I just hope all of you take a moment today to say, wow, things are getting a little bit better.

00:35:49.000 I know it might not feel that way, but that is a real direct result of showing up, of canvassing, of giving money, of knocking on doors.

00:35:59.000 That's a big deal.

00:36:01.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:36:02.000 Email me your thoughts as always: freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:36:05.000 Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.

00:36:10.000 For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.

The Charlie Kirk Show - January 11, 2023

The Deal of the Century with Matt Gaetz and Chip Roy

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