00:00:13.000It's about how we finance our elections in our country.
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00:03:12.000I want to start today with a story about the Republican meeting late last night.
00:03:21.000Republicans in the House of Representatives are trying to figure out what direction they're going to go.
00:03:29.000Understandably, after the Capitol Hill riot tragedy, which is more and more looking like a premeditated infiltration than just a spontaneous act of randomness, I think that we have outlined that in great detail about how there were different groups of people.
00:06:48.000There's one part of this story, though, that everyone is missing.
00:06:53.000There's a critically important part of the story that is not being covered, which is this was a private ballot.
00:07:01.000How many people, if they would have had to go back to their constituents and justify that they would have someone who voted for the impeachment of President Trump to still stay in third command, they wouldn't be able to justify that.
00:07:15.000The meeting was five hours long, five hours long.
00:07:21.000And one of the reasons this is continually being a story is because Liz Cheney is now digging in.
00:07:30.000Liz Cheney is almost saying, you think I'm so unpopular?
00:07:35.000Now, the media is now running cover fire for Liz Cheney.
00:07:42.000In a bizarre turn of events, the Cheneys are now media darlings.
00:07:47.000If you remember anything about Bush-era politics, George W. Bush was hated.
00:07:52.000Dick Cheney was the most hated Republican for a decade.
00:08:00.000He was an apologist for gitmo tactics.
00:08:03.000He was the chief sponsor behind the Iraq war, and many biographers say that he was the one that originally floated the idea, pushed the idea, theorized what it would look like, convinced the people within the Bush administration to go forward with the invasion of Iraq.
00:08:23.000And so Liz Cheney is getting headlines saying she survives what a defeat for Trump Republicans.
00:08:34.000First of all, just forcing a vote is a win.
00:08:52.000Liz Cheney went and peached Donald Trump thinking that there would be this grassroots groundswell of people that would follow her, and it was like 11 people at most.
00:09:04.000This was a five-hour meeting last evening.
00:09:13.000And it really kind of showed where the private interests of Republican congressmen are.
00:09:23.000It showed that in private, 61 Republicans do want to move on from the Bush-Cheney forever war agenda.
00:09:33.000But in private, the vast majority of Republicans, let's get a final number of what that was.
00:11:02.000Number one, grassroots conservatives, we need to get better at organizing.
00:11:07.000We need to get better at vote tallying and counting.
00:11:09.000We need to get better at tactics and strategy because there were a lot of promises made that we have the votes, we're going to do it.
00:11:19.000And my friend Matt Gates, credit to him for even being able to get the forces together to do this.
00:11:27.000But the deeper issue here is if you remove Liz Cheney, okay, well, who's going to replace her?
00:11:36.000Just another spokesperson for corporate America.
00:11:41.000Another megaphone for the Chamber of Commerce.
00:11:45.000Another person that is going to be walking the halls of Congress with a big binder that says dreams about Myanmar, about how they want to bring an aircraft carrier into the Bay of Bengal with a big show of force for a country of 54 million people and a GDP of 66 billion.
00:12:03.000I'm half being sarcastic, but I wouldn't be surprised if Lindsey Graham is trolling the halls of the Senate today trying to get support for a ground invasion in Myanmar.
00:12:18.000And so I want to explore this with you of how do we actually fix this problem?
00:12:22.000Because it's actually not about Liz Cheney.
00:12:25.000It's about the people behind her that have been doing so much damage to our country.
00:12:29.000So Congresswoman Cheney is the third in command of the Republican Party of the House of Representatives, the House GOP Leadership Conference, I guess someone, that's one way to put it.
00:12:43.000And she is definitely a spokesperson for corporate America.
00:12:47.000She's a spokesperson for open borders.
00:12:50.000She is a spokesperson for a different type of worldview than what is represented in grassroots conservatism.
00:12:58.000It's definitely not consistent with traditional Wyoming values.
00:13:02.000It's definitely not consistent with the values of the most conservative state in the entire country.
00:13:09.000And that is exactly why her approval rating has plummeted.
00:13:12.000And that is why the rally that Congressman Gates in Wyoming did so well.
00:13:18.000But if you remove Liz Cheney, what's going to take her place?
00:13:23.000The answer is just another ambitious person who is willing to take money from the top corporate interests in our country.
00:13:31.000And so you can go to openseecrets.org and see her contributors.
00:13:35.000You can see where she gets a vast majority of her contributions from.
00:13:39.000You want to know why Liz Cheney is not speaking out against the GameStop saga?
00:14:53.000And this is something that Cortez, Alexandria Casio-Cortez, when she isn't making broad fictional narratives, which we will get into, she's actually right on.
00:15:05.000This is something that Matt Gates is right on.
00:15:07.000The way we finance our elections is broken.
00:15:12.000There was an old meme about a decade ago that is just as it's actually more applicable today than it was 10 years ago, which it says, why don't we have all the members of Congress walk around with their corporate sponsors like NASCAR drivers do?
00:15:30.000Why doesn't Liz Cheney just leave the Republican conference meeting with a Lockheed Martin jacket or a Northrop Grumman jacket?
00:15:41.000And by the way, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman do amazing work in regards to military technology.
00:16:06.000And so if we're serious about actually reforming our country back to constitutional governance, if we're serious about giving a voice to those 61 people that rejected Liz Cheney, what they were really rejecting, and the reason why the other 146, is that right, 146 didn't go alongside with the rejection is because they were afraid of this corporate stream of money being put in jeopardy.
00:16:37.000Verizon Communications, Charter Communications, Abbott Laboratories, Comcast Corp.
00:16:45.000That's right, Comcast, who owns NBC Universal, donates to Liz Cheney.
00:16:58.000You'd be stunned to find that a lot of Republicans take money from Comcast.
00:17:03.000A lot of Republicans take money from the top law firms.
00:17:07.000Berkshire Hathaway, owned by Warren Buffett, who owns Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, Burlington, Northern Santa Fe Railroad, which benefited tremendously from the abolition of the Keystone XL pipeline.
00:17:26.000Campaign finance is something that only Democrats have talked about with the exclusion of Matt Gates.
00:17:32.000That's the real story here that everyone's missing.
00:18:38.000You see, grassroots conservatives care more about improving the country than ruling the country.
00:18:49.000And so you have some power-hungry, sometimes sociopathic Sociopathic people that want to be in politics.
00:18:58.000They just want to be there for a couple decades and they want to rule.
00:19:05.000Since they want to rule, they're willing to broker deals to make them in charge for a long period of time.
00:19:16.000Now, bribery is illegal in our country.
00:19:19.000You cannot bribe a politician, but you can contribute a lot of money to their campaign account.
00:19:29.000Now, if you're a retired business guy and you want to see the country move in a certain direction and you feel that Andy Biggs or you feel that Matt Gates or Madison Cawthorne is going to be the best way to save the country and you don't have any sort of immediate financial government contracting regulatory interest, I don't find that to be the main problem of campaign finance in our country.
00:20:00.000But the real issue is when you have people that are on quarterly estimates that have to hit corporate projections, that have to report to a board of directors who have to go to corporate America.
00:20:15.000I'm sorry, the corporate America then goes to the congressperson and says, hey, we are Raytheon.
00:20:27.000And they do phenomenal work in regards to innovation and being able to have our military be the premier military in the country, on the planet, I mean.
00:20:42.000However, the incentive structure at Raytheon or Northrop Grumman or Lockheed Martin, and yes, they do employ tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, but their incentive structure is to make sure that there are congress people in positions of leadership that are going to purchase their products using taxpayer dollars.
00:21:00.000And so when you go through the list at opensecrets.org and you see who actually finances your leaders, our rulers, it all kind of starts to make sense.
00:21:15.000And yes, there are campaign contribution limits, but boy, do they max out those limits every single time.
00:21:24.000So you have someone like Adam Kinzinger, Adam Kinzinger, who voted to impeach President Trump, Adam Kinzinger, who never misses an opportunity to defend the corporate agenda, not the small business agenda, not the muscular class agenda, but instead the Zoom and Skype class agenda, what protects the Chamber of Commerce.
00:22:15.000Raytheon gave him a significant contribution.
00:22:21.000Pfizer gave him a significant contribution.
00:22:28.000So here's a guy who's supposed to represent rural Illinois, an area I know very well, who probably is more likely to answer and to represent the people that fill his campaign account than the constituents of Illinois' 16th congressional district.
00:22:49.000The founding fathers never wanted a system where private business interests would be able to influence the creation of laws disproportionately.
00:23:03.000Now, there's a fine counter argument to this, which is, well, Charlie, if you get rid of this, then how are these companies that employ a lot of people going to have their voices heard?
00:23:16.000However, I think a reasonable society, if we were interested in governing and fixing our systemic problems, could address that very quickly and reasonably.
00:23:28.000Have a capacity where these companies are allowed to, through a lobbyist representative where it is disclosed, contact lawmakers and make it public exactly what was discussed.
00:23:39.000For example, Comcast, which owns NBC Universal, Comcast, which owns Saturday Night Live, Comcast, which owns the most left-wing Democrat propaganda machine donated to Adam Kinzinger's campaign.
00:24:01.000Because we as conservatives and grassroots activists have not made a bigger issue of the financing of elections, Adam Kinzinger takes the money from Comcast.
00:24:12.000He's like, oh, they employ people in my district.
00:24:22.000You see, we have, as conservatives, created some rules of engagement with campaign finance.
00:24:30.000For example, if Adam Kinzinger were to take money from Planned Parenthood, he would get primarily and lose.
00:24:37.000He might get primarily and lose anyway.
00:24:39.000If you're listening to this on AM560, the answer, my friends in Chicago, go help with that.
00:24:47.000If Adam Kinzinger took money from the teacher unions, he would come under backlash in his district.
00:24:52.000If Adam Kinzinger took money from Mike Bloomberg, he'd come under fire in his district.
00:24:58.000However, when he takes money from Comcast, he gets reelected.
00:25:04.000The point is that we as conservatives have to realize that the flow of capital from these companies from the woke industrial complex, which is what they are, no different than Dwight D. Eisenhower warning us against the military industrial complex.
00:25:33.000But I would say we have to put limits on how much these companies can give, way more limits than they already have.
00:25:40.000And I also think that you should not be able to, if you're a corporation that is actively seeking government contracts or dealing with federal regulation, I do not think you legally should be able to contribute to a member of Congress or a person running for Congress.
00:25:54.000It is the clearest conflict of interest I could possibly imagine.
00:26:00.000So it is illegal to bribe an elected official.
00:26:04.000It's illegal if Comcast came to Adam Kinzinger's office with a briefcase of $10,000.
00:26:11.000But it's legal if Comcast comes into Adam Kinzinger's office with a check for $10,000 to his campaign account.
00:29:20.000Yet Liz Cheney is taking money from corporations that are lobbying for the continued woke industrial complex, lobbying for lockdowns indefinitely.
00:29:32.000That's who represents the people of Wyoming.
00:29:35.000Not Liz Cheney, but the corporations that fund her campaign.
00:29:40.000That's the issue that we must focus on through robust campaign finance reform, small dollar donation support, and lifting up and congratulating Republicans that reject the easy money just to get reelected.
00:29:55.000I think that a lot of this discussion around the direction of the Republican Party needs to be who's going to be financing the Republican Party.
00:30:41.000And this is what made Donald Trump so different.
00:30:44.000It made Donald Trump different because he took the small, he was able to build a small dollar donation army, something Republicans had never done before.
00:30:52.000And instead, Liz Cheney doesn't think about, well, maybe Donald Trump was onto something to actually represent the muscular class in this country, the entrepreneurs, the people that start something from nothing, the people that are trying to create new,
00:31:08.000not just the people that are trying to get favors from the government, not just people like Liz Cheney, something that her father perfected, which is how do I maximize the U.S. taxpayer for my own benefit.
00:31:23.000There's nothing conservative about that.
00:31:58.000Liz Cheney doesn't just raise the money for herself, but she's the gatekeeper for a lot of these corporate interests for the other members of Congress.
00:32:09.000For members of Congress like Adam Kinzinger, like Peter Meyer from Michigan, who decided to run as a grassroots conservative and then all of a sudden became a corporate type.
00:32:20.000We won't forget that, Congressman Meyer, come the next elections.
00:32:23.000I know people in Western Michigan are very, very fired up to primary you and to hold you accountable.
00:32:29.000Congressman Meyer, we did a Super Saturday for you at Turning Point Action, and we wanted to see you win.
00:32:35.000One of your first acts of Congress is indulge yourself in an unconstitutional circus.
00:32:43.000You could have gave a House floor speech condemning Trump to the sky, but then as soon as you did the impeachment exercise, you went back on your promise to the voters of Western Michigan.
00:32:56.000So that the 146 people that supported Liz Cheney, what they're really saying is, keep the easy money coming.
00:33:03.000I don't want to have to pick the tough fights.
00:33:05.000I don't have to go raise money for anyone that's outside of corporations, outside of Comcast, Raytheon.
00:33:11.000And I hope you all understand that's easy money for these guys.
00:33:18.000You just promise that you won't challenge them on committees.
00:33:23.000You give a wink and a nod that you won't have to make any alterations to the multi-trillion dollar stimulus, to the multi-trillion dollar bills.
00:33:31.000And Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Comcast, and all those cast of characters will continue to contribute to your campaign account.
00:33:43.000What's amazing is when you look at Liz Cheney's contributions, very little of her money is raised from Wyoming.
00:34:02.000If Liz Cheney was representing the people of Wyoming, not the investment bankers on Goldman Sachs or the war planners at Raytheon, then she would have a ton of money from Wyoming.
00:34:13.000Trust me, there's plenty of money to be raised in Wyoming.
00:34:16.000And she's got some people here and there.
00:34:19.000So that's the real issue that we must zero in on.
00:34:22.000Nothing will change till we get to the fundamentals and we find solutions to this.
00:34:27.000And a temporary solution outside we get of the legislative is that just Republicans that are watching this, you must demand from your elected officials that they will find ways to finance their campaigns through a people-focused agenda, not through a corporate-financed agenda.
00:34:45.000You want to know why we're in this circus in D.C. where we talk about things that don't matter?
00:34:49.000It's because if you actually got into the nuts and bolts of what actually is hurting the American people, maybe a couple of their corporate financiers might get a little bit upset.
00:35:01.000And so for any Republican out there that doesn't take the free flow of money from corporate America, we will lift you up and applaud you.
00:35:08.000Those that do, we'll continue to challenge you on this program.
00:35:15.000Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
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