00:00:44.000He's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created, Turning Point USA.
00:00:51.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:24.000You know, I understand some of the details here.
00:02:25.000Obviously, you know it much better than I do.
00:02:28.000Walk us through what some of his objections are and why you feel this is a solid deal.
00:02:33.000And there seems to be some disagreement over Jack Smith.
00:02:36.000Do you have a plan for handling his investigation and the funding of his investigation?
00:02:42.000Well, let me take Jack Smith first and I'll work backwards.
00:02:45.000I think people need to understand that if we're in a government shutdown, that does not stop Jack Smith's persecution, his political persecution of President Trump.
00:02:54.000The Department of Justice and Joe Biden will exempt Jack Smith from the shutdown.
00:03:39.000Because like so many Americans, they have been lied to by Republican leadership before.
00:03:43.000They have been lied to by this government.
00:03:45.000They have been told we're going to fight on the next thing and the fight never comes and the can gets kicked down the road.
00:03:51.000So I know why they're upset with the CR plan.
00:03:54.000I don't want to have to deal with the CR plan.
00:03:56.000But if you want to put Jack Smith in the box, if you want to cut the weaponized stuff out of this government, if you want to cut spending overall and get us on a fiscal track and preserve our border, we've got to shape that in a battle with the Senate over the border.
00:04:09.000Chuck Schumer does not want to talk about the border policy.
00:04:12.000He wants to talk about internal Republican fighting.
00:04:15.000So I'm going to read Matt Gates' tweet here.
00:04:17.000And Byron, I mean, you're hearing all the objections.
00:04:18.000I just want to give you a chance to walk through it.
00:04:21.000And this is a friendly territory for you to do it.
00:04:24.000Matt Gates says, quote, I want to send Jack Smith and every person who works at the DOJ a message.
00:04:29.000Byron, your legislation sends them a check.
00:04:32.000Here is my plan, single subject bills, programmatic reform at DOJ, and goes on from there.
00:04:40.000Do you think that maybe what Matt is proposing is unrealistic?
00:04:44.000No, what I'm saying to Matt, and probably to the members who might disagree, and frankly, for Americans who are disagreeing with me at this point, is that single-subject bills wanting to actually go after the Department of Justice, I want to do that too.
00:04:58.000But up here on Capitol Hill, there are members that you have to tactically get into that position.
00:05:03.000That's the only real difference between us.
00:05:05.000I know that doesn't seem like you're using every arrow in your quiver to get it done, but those are the realities on Capitol Hill.
00:05:12.000I've been involved in these spending negotiations now for four months.
00:05:16.000I've been imploring House leadership that you've got to cut spending bills down even further, or you're not going to have the votes amongst members from the Freedom Caucus to support it.
00:05:24.000There's been little movement from the leadership to this point.
00:05:27.000And so now we're in this battle right now.
00:05:29.000But I want to stress to you, Charlie, the only way you're going to deal with weaponization at the Department of Justice or the FBI or any other part of our agency, if you want to stop the spying on the American people with FISA and everything else, is that you've got to get to the appropriation bills.
00:05:45.000And if we have members of our conference who sign a discharge petition with the Democrats to essentially do a clean continuing resolution, we're not going to have any ability to do that.
00:05:57.000And so it's really a tactical difference between Matt and I.
00:06:00.000It is not an overall goal difference about wanting to make sure that we end the weaponization in our government.
00:06:16.000That just basically buys you time to continue to negotiate.
00:06:21.000So walk us through from what you can without revealing too much inside baseball, you know, the strategy and the tactical premise here.
00:06:29.000So right now, actually, what came out of this morning is, like I said, there are members who weren't supportive of a continuing resolution, and that's fine.
00:07:05.000They're in heavy blue districts, but the border is killing them just as well as it's killing the people on the southern border.
00:07:11.000And it gives them an ability to pit Eric Adams against Joe Biden, to pit Chuck Schumer, you know, against the squad members in the House who want this radical open border policy.
00:07:22.000Let them fight about their terrible policy.
00:07:25.000On our side of the aisle, let's get our members together, get through this appropriations process, have the ability to deal with weaponization in our government, secure the border and everything else that needs to occur.
00:07:37.000So then, how do we know that the Biden regime will actually then execute on the border?
00:07:45.000If you finance it, will they actually end up executing on it?
00:07:48.000And then is there any conversations negotiating ongoing with the United States Senate?
00:07:55.000So one thing is, I want to be clear on this one.
00:07:58.000What was in the continuum resolution was HR2, which is the most conservative border security package that's ever passed off the House floor in Congress.
00:08:22.000It's defunding the CPB1 app that has allowed Joe Biden to basically put our asylum process on DoorDash or Uber Eats where people can just get into their app and do it that way.
00:08:34.000It defunds Majorpis' letter that allows for the transmission of migrants.
00:08:39.000It defunds the ability of borough agents to no longer make determinations of credible fear.
00:08:45.000And this is very technical, but the way border security used to operate is that border agents made a determination of credible fear, and that would stop people from being allowed into the country.
00:08:56.000Joe Biden got rid of that, and they have no ability to make these determinations.
00:09:02.000At the end of the day, if Joe Biden's in violation of the law, in my view, those are clear articles of impeachment.
00:09:08.000And then those gives us an ability to fight that out with the courts about his ability to basically ignore the law.
00:09:14.000But I think those are issues that, look, in a political context, we have to bring that to the forefront.
00:09:21.000All the news channels are covering what's happening at the southern border now.
00:09:24.000Even ABC and CNN, they're talking about it now because you cannot hide from this reckless policy.
00:09:30.000So my view is let's actually put the Democrats in a pinch on that while we handle the other appropriation bills, deal with Jack Smith and the Department of Justice, the FBI and Chris Ray, and all these other areas of our government where the radical left has run them up through Nancy Pelosi's spending and policies.
00:09:52.000Balance of Nature, changing the world one life at a time.
00:12:10.000We've gone through government shutdowns before, and it's not nearly as dramatic as they think.
00:12:16.000And I would say if and only if they show that they're not negotiating in good faith, my fear, Byron, is that we're pandering a little bit too much to the moderates like Dusty Johnson.
00:12:33.000What I think a lot of people need to understand up here is that we do have members on the more moderate side of our conference.
00:12:41.000They've actually said it in two meetings I've been involved in over the last hour.
00:12:46.000They are going to sign off on a clean CR with the Democrats, and they'll do it because, in their view, in the districts that they represent, that it's better to keep the government open.
00:12:59.000So, my thought, my view of the entire landscape, knowing the members here, having talked with them, having engaged with them for many months, is I do think that's what they would do.
00:13:09.000And so, is it better for them to go vote for a clean CR and then there's no ability to negotiate the stuff that we need to do, like taking care of Jack Smith, the weaponization, et cetera?
00:13:20.000Or is it better to have a serious political and frankly budgetary fight over the border and some government spending while we continue the other work to get to Jack Smith and the weaponization?
00:13:32.000That's really the difference here, Charlie.
00:13:34.000It's not about, and look, I get the concerns.
00:13:36.000People are frustrated with our government.
00:13:42.000It's outside the confines of Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution.
00:13:46.000I agree with all of that, but I know there are members up here who don't want to go through a government shutdown fight.
00:13:52.000And so, looking at that landscape, all I'm saying is I'm looking at the tactics that are being used all around this town.
00:13:59.000And I want to make sure that the conservative movement, the America First movement, gets real wins, not tweets, not talking points, not cool speeches at rallies.
00:14:54.000I don't really think it should be viewed as getting my way.
00:14:57.000You know, I've put together an idea with Chip and Scott Perry and a couple of members on the moderate side of our conference.
00:15:04.000As it stands right now, I don't really think the votes are there.
00:15:08.000But I think the overall strategy is we have to find a way to pass the justice appropriations bill.
00:15:14.000And in that bill, then what you have to do is you have to defund political prosecutions.
00:15:20.000You have to fend, you have to get rid of the woke stuff that's at DOJ.
00:15:24.000You have to actually hold them accountable for a weaponization activity, spying on the American people activities, stuff like that.
00:15:31.000That's the stuff you bring into that argument.
00:15:33.000And then you have to find a way to conference that with the Senate.
00:15:37.000So this goes back to some of the political strategy.
00:15:40.000If Joe Biden, who frankly is taking naps three times a day, no disrespect to taking naps sometimes is great, but you're the commander in chief.
00:15:49.000If Joe Biden can't even defend his position on the southern border and Chuck Schumer doesn't want to talk about the southern border, my question is for everybody watching, does that give us more leverage to deal with the Department of Justice or less leverage?
00:16:03.000And at the end of the day, here in D.C., everything is a leverage play.
00:16:06.000I hate it, but that's the reality of what we're dealing with.
00:16:10.000And so, you know, I've always told my voters back in Southwest Florida and everywhere else, I'm going to tell you what it is and what it's not.
00:16:17.000That's where we are right now, in my view.
00:16:20.000Byron Donalds, thank you for the time.
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00:17:56.000I have to say, sometimes people email me stuff and I'll respond and then they say, thanks so much for the reply.
00:18:17.000But I would be a hypocrite if I did that whole hour about the threat of debt and I say, yeah, you know, we just need a short-term resolution.
00:19:39.000If we shut down the government, it's going to hurt moderates in their districts and we're going to lose the House of Representatives.
00:19:45.000Tyler Boyer from Turning Point Action has been warning us how we are probably going to lose the House next November because of bad redistricting.
00:19:54.000We are in a bad spot because Republicans did not do their job with redistricting.
00:20:11.000I have heard that argument for 11 years.
00:20:15.000I think we need to do the right thing and then defend the right thing to our voters, not constantly just kick it down and say another election, another election.
00:20:25.000And I fully acknowledge and admit there is a risk to this.
00:24:01.000We need to take a position and we need to say no more that what's happening on the border, whether it's the drugs coming across, the human trafficking, the sex trafficking, the cities along the border and within the United States that are now being overrun.
00:24:18.000You've got the New York City mayor, for Pete's sake, who's at his wit's end, and he's experienced 110,000 illegal aliens.
00:24:27.000Imagine if you're Yuma, Arizona, and you've seen, you know, every three months you're seeing about that many, or Del Rio, or Eagle Pass that had 2,200 people just the other night.
00:24:40.000I mean, I don't know exactly if you do something now, even now, if we can recover from the literally millions of people who've come here from all over the world, who don't have the American ethos, who don't have the same connection to the American government, who don't have the same affinity for the American culture.
00:25:05.000But part of what melting pot means is you come together and you have one idea of culture, one idea of freedom, one idea of your relationship to your government and the rights that are recognized, not given, but recognized and protected by the government.
00:25:30.000And we get political power, you get political power from the voters to fight, right?
00:25:36.000And we've been through these, and you come on our show a lot, Andy, and it's always the next deadline and the next deadline.
00:25:42.000So, address kind of the silent motive here, which is, and they're not saying this, but this is that the moderates are afraid of two, there's two fears.
00:25:53.000The moderates are afraid that if we shut down the government, they're all going to get clobbered next November, always about the next election, right?
00:26:01.000And then the second one is that the moderates are going to team with the Democrats.
00:26:06.000Well, okay, so there's no doubt because the moderates have indicated pretty clearly that if we don't do a CR, they are going to do a discharge petition, take a CR out of the drawer of the speaker, put it on the floor, vote with the Democrats, and send a clean CR.
00:26:24.000That means that no modifications whatsoever.
00:26:26.000You're keeping the Biden, Pelosi-Schumer policies, their spending levels, everything, and that's going to go over to the Senate.
00:26:32.000They've already said that that's the case.
00:26:36.000The other one, though, is, I think, a little bit more problematic, and that is if you are always saying, wait till the next time, the next election, the next leverage point before you take a stand.
00:27:48.000And you and I both know because we live in the Valley of the Sun, gas is up to $475 a gallon.
00:27:54.000And that means inflation is going to, that pressure is going to keep driving prices up, certainly in my home state, but around the country.
00:28:03.000All of those things that are happening, crime is rampant everywhere.
00:28:09.000When you begin to look at these series of problems, you can't keep saying we're going to fight it next time.
00:28:17.000Somebody actually told me the other day, they said, Andy, if we can't get all the stuff that you're looking for us to fight on, don't worry.
00:28:25.000We can fight for some of that stuff next time.
00:28:27.000And I'm like, at some point, you've got to say, today is the day we're going to fight.
00:28:33.000At some point, you actually have to listen to your voters and to draw a line in the sand.
00:28:38.000For 11 years now, Andy, I've heard, well, next cycle, next cycle, next cycle, next cycle.
00:30:54.000We've got someone who's been injured and can't be here on the Republican side.
00:30:58.000So you move down two or three people, and it becomes two people can actually drive or prevent or block the agenda.
00:31:07.000So I understand where the moderate side of our conference is coming from.
00:31:15.000They tell me they're representing their constituency.
00:31:17.000And I say, I understand you're representing your constituency.
00:31:20.000But at some point, we are facing an existential crisis as a nation.
00:31:26.000And so the point I would make to my friends who say, well, let's at least get something is sticking in language into a bill, a spending bill, that you know that the Senate is going to, first of all, immediately take it out.
00:31:42.000That means that it's not going to happen, right?
00:31:48.000But moreover, even with that language in there, if let's pretend that he got through and Joe Biden signed it, because we can only do what we can do, right?
00:31:59.000Charlie, is there anybody who is watching things and is sentient at all that believes that the Biden administration would all of a sudden have an epiphany and start enforcing the border laws of HR2 plus those that are on the books?
00:32:13.000And the answer is no, because this is a lawless administration.
00:33:34.000And so some of our guys said, well, we'd like to find something.
00:33:37.000But I had no idea what was going on, what was being said.
00:33:43.000And then I learned, seriously, I was flying back to DC Sunday and I got a text message on the flight or a message on the flight saying, hey, there's going to be a conference meeting in a few minutes where they announce some kind of proposal between Dusty Johnson and several of the Freedom Caucus guys.
00:34:08.000And I mean, media is asking me about it.