The Great America Show - December 26, 2022


SENATOR BLACKBURN SAYS OUR CHILDREN & GRANDCHILDREN WILL PAY FOR THE CRIPPLING DEBT CREATED BY $1.7 TRILLION OMNIBUS SPENDING BILL


Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

138.86606

Word count

2,028

Sentence count

164

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joins Lou Dobbs on the Great America Show to talk about her efforts to force the Defense Department to drop a ban on the use of a controversial anti-vaccine drug called Ciprofloxacin.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, everybody. I'm Lou Dobbs, and welcome to The Great America Show.
00:00:04.260 Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah.
00:00:07.420 Thanks for being with us here today.
00:00:09.300 As we wrap up this eventful year, the Senate Republicans have made it a memorable one for the Biden White House.
00:00:17.120 Mitch McConnell gave the Marxist Dems everything they wanted in a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill.
00:00:25.600 And in so doing, McConnell gave Biden and Schumer a bonus.
00:00:30.520 Funding everything out till the end of September.
00:00:34.240 Meaning the House Republicans, their majority just doesn't mean as much as it once did.
00:00:40.580 They won't have any budgetary leverage at all until the next fiscal year.
00:00:46.840 And that's the way the Trump-hating America last McConnell wanted it.
00:00:51.100 As Senator Mike Lee said after the Senate passed that bill,
00:00:54.500 the Republican Party will self-destruct if they ever pass such a bill again.
00:01:01.360 Well, personally, folks, I believe the Senate Republicans are well on their way to self-destructing,
00:01:07.100 and they have a lot to answer for.
00:01:09.100 In particular, Mitch McConnell.
00:01:11.220 The Senate RINO Republicans act as though they're in a third political party already.
00:01:16.540 But fortunately, there are exceptions, and our guest today is among those few.
00:01:22.040 She's making a real difference for the nation.
00:01:24.760 Senator Marsha Blackburn joins us today.
00:01:27.740 Thanks for being with us, Senator, and Merry Christmas.
00:01:29.860 And thanks for your hard work over the past year in demanding that the military end their COVID vaccine mandates.
00:01:37.380 And with your leadership, the GOP did manage to achieve the rollbacks of those mandates,
00:01:43.540 just as you told the Pentagon they should from the very beginning.
00:01:47.740 I am so pleased that after six months of work and pushing to end this COVID vaccine mandate on our military,
00:01:56.660 that we have won this fight.
00:01:59.180 And yes, indeed, I offered this when we were working on the Defense Authorization Act back during June.
00:02:08.940 And I'm a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
00:02:12.320 I offered the amendment there.
00:02:13.940 Every Democrat voted against it.
00:02:16.000 And I told them at that point I was going to ask for a vote on the floor on this amendment
00:02:22.600 because the president had said the pandemic was over.
00:02:27.080 So if the pandemic is over, we do not need to have a COVID shot mandate on our men and women in uniform.
00:02:36.940 And they ought not to have to choose between continuing their chosen profession,
00:02:43.320 which is serving in the U.S. military and taking a shot that at this point is still experimental.
00:02:53.060 It was an emergency use authorization.
00:02:56.660 The Department of Defense has many vaccines that are required of men and women in uniform.
00:03:03.540 And that is with good reason because of the areas that they travel to, the proximity within which they are with others,
00:03:13.640 the proven nature of the effectiveness of these vaccines.
00:03:18.940 But the COVID vaccine does not fit into that category.
00:03:24.640 And we started looking at the acceptance rate of request for medical exemption and found out that that was at 0.0044.
00:03:37.280 And religious exemption requests were granted at a rate of 0.0047.
00:03:45.100 We were looking at the fact that...
00:03:46.640 Unbelievable.
00:03:47.540 Unbelievable.
00:03:48.260 Our recruiting numbers, the Army itself, just the Army by itself.
00:03:53.340 They're 15,000 troops short this year on their recruitment and retention.
00:03:58.540 Next year, they're going to be 21,000 short.
00:04:02.640 So this shows you that something needed to be done.
00:04:06.940 So my language is very simple.
00:04:08.960 It just says the DOD, until you meet your recruiting numbers, you cannot implement this vaccine.
00:04:16.240 Well, again, good for you.
00:04:19.640 And the White House, obviously, very resistant to this, still insisting that there should be a mandate,
00:04:28.720 irrespective of whether the president signs or does not sign the NDAA.
00:04:35.460 How do you think that's going to ultimately play out with the White House?
00:04:38.480 I think the president is going to end up signing it because it's not telling DOD that they cannot exercise vaccine mandates.
00:04:47.840 This is very, very specific to that one shot.
00:04:52.980 And it protects our men and women in uniform.
00:04:55.380 And hopefully will get us back on the path to closing the gap that exists between the goals and the required numbers for military and strength and where we are right now.
00:05:07.980 Speaking of military strength, the numbers vary.
00:05:13.340 I have seen it seems to me you would know, obviously, far better than me.
00:05:18.180 But it seems to me the Pentagon is playing with numbers here because we've looked at their recruiting goals that look at various points to be as much as 40 percent off.
00:05:28.060 We know further that they are losing senior, talented, experienced soldiers, as well as airmen and sailors and so forth.
00:05:41.180 So we're seeing sort of a double whammy here.
00:05:44.640 Add to that the 60,000 people who would have left the service over the vaccine mandate.
00:05:52.220 It's it's really it's troubling to think of the command, the general staff in that Pentagon is so stupid that you had to sort of hold their nose to the reality of the recruiting numbers and the size of the of the of the force.
00:06:11.120 Yeah. And, you know, Lou, I think that is what helped me to get bipartisan support in the House and the Senate is I said, look at this.
00:06:20.880 I'm not saying you can't do this. I'm just saying don't do it until you get your house in order and get your recruiting and retention back on pace.
00:06:32.360 Right now, it is severely off pace and they know that.
00:06:38.600 So this is a way of saying, OK, let's shape this up.
00:06:43.220 Then once you have shaped it up, then you can go back to visiting whether or not you want to have this mandate on this particular shot and it brings some common sense to bear.
00:06:58.920 But so far, the Department of Defense has removed 3,300 Marines, 1,800 soldiers, 1,800 sailors and 900 airmen from active duty service because they did not get the shot.
00:07:16.020 We also see this happening with the National Guard.
00:07:18.920 And what we are doing is getting this mandate off the books.
00:07:24.360 Then a step two will be how we go about opening the door for these individuals to return to service.
00:07:33.240 But first things first.
00:07:35.080 And the first thing is get the mandate off the books.
00:07:38.220 Well, and again, good on you for for taking care of it, because you took the leadership role.
00:07:45.100 I've got to ask you to General Petraeus interviewed saying that the two big issues for him are the military readiness priorities for NDAA and giving more money to Ukraine.
00:08:01.320 And by the way, pointing out to everyone that the outrage over the mandates, vaccine mandates for the military were manufactured.
00:08:15.420 I have to believe you aren't too thrilled with General Petraeus and his remarks there.
00:08:20.880 I have a difference of opinion.
00:08:22.420 And I first first started hearing about the mandate and the impact of this from our National Guardsmen and women in Tennessee.
00:08:32.240 Some of them had had COVID.
00:08:34.120 They didn't want to take the COVID shot.
00:08:36.160 They had already had COVID.
00:08:37.440 They had antibodies.
00:08:39.040 Others had family members who had had an adverse reaction after having taken the shot.
00:08:45.600 And the doctor had said, well, maybe the kids don't want to get this thing or someone would have a brother or a sibling that had myocarditis following getting the shot.
00:08:57.360 And they didn't want to take the shot.
00:09:00.780 These are things that would fall under the category of medical exemptions.
00:09:05.740 And as I said, they were at 0.0044 in approvals of those requests for medical exemption.
00:09:17.800 So, of course, you know, there are times when people will say, I can't take a flu shot or I have a reaction to certain types of vaccines.
00:09:29.620 I can't take this or I can't take that.
00:09:31.700 And generally, the military finds a workaround on those issues.
00:09:40.060 But when you're not even hitting a half percent on these, you're not hitting 1%, you're not hitting 5%, then that's where your problem comes in.
00:09:53.260 People were not being heard.
00:09:55.620 Their requests were not being heard.
00:09:58.080 And bear in mind, these are people that have volunteered.
00:10:02.520 They are people, individuals that have raised their hand.
00:10:05.540 They've taken an oath to protect and defend every one of us.
00:10:11.020 They are willing to sacrifice their life for the freedoms that we enjoy every single day.
00:10:20.240 And it's a good thing that somebody got that message through to the to the Pentagon.
00:10:25.120 Now, maybe the White House will also respond.
00:10:27.720 I want to ask you very quickly.
00:10:29.240 I know we're short on time here.
00:10:31.040 I want to ask you about a couple of things.
00:10:33.320 One, the omnibus bill.
00:10:35.320 We understand that that's just ready to go.
00:10:38.160 It's going to be a just a hammer on a on the budget.
00:10:44.600 It is outrageous that we will see this happen.
00:10:48.100 But apparently it's moving ahead.
00:10:50.540 Your thoughts and what is going to happen?
00:10:53.560 Well, I think it is outrageous.
00:10:55.660 The fact that our children and grandchildren are going to have to pay for this thing.
00:11:00.160 We're at $31 trillion in debt.
00:11:02.880 When you look at our federal spending, just let's look at.
00:11:07.240 In 2019, we had total outlays of $4.4 trillion.
00:11:16.540 Now, in 2020, that number went up.
00:11:20.760 Today, we are at $6.3 trillion in outlays.
00:11:27.060 $1.7 trillion is mandatory.
00:11:31.380 I mean, it's discretionary.
00:11:33.220 And the balance is mandatory.
00:11:35.000 Lou, this is outrageous.
00:11:36.020 Let me ask you this, Senator, because this audience is not going to be, you know, is not interested in having to go through and do the math because they know they've got Mitch McConnell as the minority leader in the Senate to protect them, to be fiscally responsible.
00:11:53.380 Where in the heck has he been and why is he going along and permitting this?
00:11:58.760 We would hope that we are going to see the Republican conference come together and vote against this.
00:12:04.980 I've talked to some of my House colleagues this morning, and of course, they are fighting it.
00:12:12.560 We have never, never, never, never had the House flip or a chamber flip and then come along and do this kind of behemoth of a spending bill.
00:12:24.180 This is not the way we should work.
00:12:26.720 Kevin McCarthy, as Speaker of the House, should have the ability to come back in January with Republican appropriators and build out this budget.
00:12:38.300 Senator, agreed, agreed.
00:12:40.320 But the question I ask is, where in the hell is Mitch McConnell and why is he making it possible for the Marxist Dems to win on this and eliminate?
00:12:51.020 You know, Lou, what I'm hearing is that he is working with Kevin McCarthy.
00:12:57.660 And I think that a lot of people are supporting McCarthy in this.
00:13:03.140 I think what's happening is they're pushing against some of the appropriators that are Republican and Democrat.
00:13:11.900 And, of course, Leahy is getting ready to retire.
00:13:15.600 He wants to have his name on the final budget.
00:13:18.540 But that is coming at the expense of the future of our children and grandchildren.
00:13:23.720 We have to remember running up this kind of debt is a danger to us because you've got China. 1.00
00:13:31.680 You have OPEC, the cartel.
00:13:33.820 Well, these are entities that are some of the largest holders of our debt.
00:13:38.740 Absolutely.
00:13:40.500 Senator, we appreciate you taking the time to be with us here today.
00:13:44.100 We thank you, as always.
00:13:45.900 And, again, congratulations on all that you are getting done there in the nation's capital in the U.S. Senate.
00:13:54.040 Senator Marsha Blackburn, thanks so much and Merry Christmas.
00:13:57.200 And a Merry Christmas to you.
00:13:59.120 Take care now.
00:13:59.880 Bye-bye.
00:14:00.760 Thank you.
00:14:01.760 Senator Marsha Blackburn.
00:14:03.820 And she and the Republicans deserve great credit for rolling back those vaccine mandates that should never have been ordered in the first place.
00:14:12.340 Please follow us on Twitter and Truth Social.
00:14:15.140 Go to at Lou Dobbs.
00:14:16.820 That's at Lou Dobbs on Twitter and Truth Social.
00:14:20.680 Thank you, everybody, for being with us.
00:14:22.460 Tomorrow, our guest is John Solomon, founder and executive editor of JustTheNews.com.
00:14:29.000 Please be with us.
00:14:30.320 Please join us here tomorrow.
00:14:32.100 Till then, God bless you.
00:14:33.820 And may God bless America.