EXCLUSIVE： Speaker Johnson on Iran War, Midterms, SAVE AMERICA Act with Michael Knowles
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Summary
Learn English with Donald Trump. President Trump delivers a speech to the Conservative Study Group at the Conservative Action Project, a conservative think tank, in Washington, D.C. on the eve of the mid-term elections, where he lays out his vision for the 2020 election and lays out the path to victory.
Transcript
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When you let aero truffle bubbles melt, everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow.
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Like that pile of laundry. You didn't forget to fold it.
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Feel the aero bubbles melt. It's mind bubbling.
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So there are 237 days till the midterms, but who's counting?
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Typically, in an off year after a presidential election,
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especially if you win really big like we did last time, you face daunting odds.
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There seems to be a chasm between political reality on the economy,
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on foreign policy, and everything in between, and perception.
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With a big dose of reality and with a clear message,
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The first ingredient is to have great candidates,
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and we recruited extraordinary people to go flip blue seats to red this cycle.
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and all those who've been part of the big successes of the last year and a half,
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are going to be out talking about their record of success.
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I've made the case that the first year of the Trump administration
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was arguably the most productive and successful in at least the modern era.
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I think one of the top five in the history of Congress,
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because of all the substance and the big things that we passed and got it signed into law.
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Now, there is an incredible media bias, as you know.
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And the mainstream media, the legacy media, every day,
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the talking points of Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, as crazy as they are.
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And they try to censor and silence our viewpoint in various ways, as you know.
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And so we've got to break through that and get the reality to the people.
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So it will be a lot of direct candidate-to-constituent discussion.
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They're going to be doing the candidate forums and the town halls and all that
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I'm absolutely convinced we are going to win the midterms and grow the majority.
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It's only twice in the last 90 years that a sitting president has picked up seats
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But I can give you a very boring 90-minute slideshow
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But it boils down to a record of success, great candidates.
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We have a fundraising advantage right now because the stakes are so high,
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Republicans over Democrats, first time in 10 years.
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Democrats are at historic lows in approval rating.
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They have no leadership, no message, no vision for where they're going.
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Their whole platform is they hate Donald Trump.
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That's not exactly something to sell to constituents.
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And then we're going into a cycle where the president of the United States,
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where a second-term president who can't be on the ballot again
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It's going to make a big difference, big turnout difference for us.
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I think in the end, as the economy continues to improve,
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I think people are going to feel better about that right about the time they go in to vote.
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Well, the good news I saw on the polls on the economy
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is that voters don't trust the Democrats on it.
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But the bad news I saw is they don't trust the Republicans either.
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And some of the numbers have moved in a negative direction from January to today.
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Now, I wonder how much of that has to do with the recent diversion into Iran,
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How significant will the Iran war be looking at the midterms?
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And, you know, I talk to the president multiple times a day,
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and he says the same thing privately that he's staying publicly.
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This is a very limited scope of mission and objective.
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We have virtually accomplished the mission entirely, incredibly quickly.
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That was by design, just as calibrated, as is the improvements in the economy.
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Scott Besson, Treasury Secretary, said a few weeks ago,
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he said 2025 was sort of like setting the table,
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and the feast and the banquet in the economy is going to be in 2026.
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The big, beautiful bill, the Working Families Tax Cut,
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of our legislation was done and signed into law by last summer.
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Remember, triumphantly, we did it on July 4th with B2s flying over the White House.
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That was by design because we knew that it had to all be implemented and take effect
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as we went into the midterm cycle to get relief to the people as soon as possible.
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Right now, people are getting bigger refunds for their taxes
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because we changed the tax code and the law in their favor.
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They're getting bigger paychecks, and that will continue.
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So the little blip on the screen right now with Iran and oil prices
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I mean, this morning, Doug Burgum, Interior Secretary, is out explaining
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And long-term, we're going to be much better off with some stability in Iran
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instead of an avowed enemy of the United States and Israel
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trying to develop nuclear weapons to wipe us off the face of the earth.
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And when their cost of living goes down, which is what we're fiercely devoted to,
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we have done and we'll continue to do that this year,
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they're going to be feeling much better about this,
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and it's going to be reflected in the outcome of the election.
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You don't need to persuade me that the potential upside in Iran is very serious.
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I mean, from the perspective of grand strategy, I totally get it,
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and I don't think any other podcasters are saying that because they're all opposed to it.
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And this is one of my fears looking ahead to the midterms, is the war is unpopular.
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It seems to be especially unpopular with the right-wing podcasters, with the influencers,
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And yet, one can see all of that potential upside.
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So then my question is, heading in, what does unity look like?
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There is complete division among the meta-political influencer new media set.
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There seems to be substantially more unity among the Republicans who are actually in elected office,
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with some exceptions, maybe your colleague Mr. Massey and others.
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We'll have to pull everybody together going into the election.
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I mean, we have the smallest margin in the U.S. history.
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I have a one-vote margin, which means I have to get unanimity
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because the aforementioned colleague of mine votes no almost every day.
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And, you know, we have a broad spectrum of opinion inside the House Republican Conference.
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There's seven different major caucuses just along that conservative spectrum in there,
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Well, the thing that binds us together is adherence to our core principles,
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and that's what we try to keep focus of all the time.
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I call them the seven core principles of American conservatism.
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I never ask a colleague to violate core principles.
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We have to give up on our preferences sometimes because it's a deliberative body with hundreds of members, right?
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You're never going to get 100% of what you want,
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but our objective every day is to move the product to the most conservative place that we can
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to gather the votes to pass it into law and get it to the president's desk.
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We've been wildly successful with that, over 500 pieces of legislation so far this Congress,
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100 of its executive orders codified, CRAs, the Congressional Review Acts.
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We clawed back a record number of crazy regulations from the previous administration under Biden.
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All that would not have been possible if we had not gotten everyone together around those core principles.
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Individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength,
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fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity.
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Every day we're trying to move the ball further towards those objectives,
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keep the party anchored to those things, and move the country forward.
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And the results of that is good policy that's good for the people,
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and I think it gets rewarded at the ballot box, and it will have a way, I think, of bringing everybody together.
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We are not out trying to be the world's policemen.
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Even the people that they call neocons are coming back to reality because of our financial situation.
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We don't have the ability to do those things even if someone wanted to.
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I got all the classified briefings from Marco and from John Ratcliffe, CIA director,
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The intel said that we were in imminent danger of an attack on our personnel,
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our service members, our civilians, our installations in that region,
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that Iran was going to have a barrage of missiles.
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This would be in response to the Israeli attack, which was going to happen whether we wanted it or not.
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Which was imminent because it was an existential threat for them,
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and they saw their avowed enemy who said they wanted to wipe Israel off the map at a moment of vulnerability,
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and they were producing new ballistic missiles in Iran at a rate of about 700 a month,
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which is far outpacing what our regional allies there could keep up with,
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and they were, of course, pursuing their nuclear ambitions again.
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It's their right as a nation to do it, and there would be an immediate cause and effect,
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and we had to act first to prevent mass casualties on our side.
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I think that mission is getting accomplished, and the world is going to be better off because of it.
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You know, some of the arguments that I've heard, including from Capitol Hill,
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that we need a formal declaration of war, obviously, are nonsense.
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Obama took, what, seven months on Libya or something like that?
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And not a single Democrat said a word about it.
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Biden was shooting the Houthis for a year without a declaration of war.
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Now, if President Trump's timeline is legit, as you seem to think it is, five weeks,
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then I could see that not really mattering into the midterms.
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Something that I could see mattering, perhaps even more, though, is you could say,
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look, we've done our part in the House, and we've backed up the President's agenda,
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But your colleague in the upper chamber seems to be really struggling even to bring a basic piece of legislation,
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Voter ID, widely popular, what, 80% popularity.
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So are you going to be punished for the Senate's inability to pass basic legislation?
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We passed the SAVE Act twice, previous Congress, this Congress.
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Now we pass the SAVE America Act, because now it's voter ID and proof of citizenship together.
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And then, as you might have noted, the President, the last few days, has added a few more bills and whistles.
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Leader Thune has a, John has a tough decision on his hands.
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They are concerned that if they open the talking filibuster, as obvious as that seems to you and me in the Senate,
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And they're concerned, their reading of the rules is, Democrats could flood the field with thousands of amendments.
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There's no germaneness limitation on the amendment.
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They're going to add any crazy Democrat policy they want.
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And if they're able to lure a couple of squishy Republicans over there, then we've got a live grenade.
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The other problem is, the clerk, under the rules, is made to read every amendment into the record live.
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Okay, so if they file 1,400-page amendments, they could tie the Senate floor up for months.
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Now, desperate times call for desperate measures.
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You know, I've talked to the president about this and the risks versus the benefits, and he says, let's risk it and go for it.
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Because you and I know, and we all know, and the reason we pass it so vigorously, the Save America Act is aptly named.
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It would save election integrity, which preserves our republic.
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You can't have a constitutional republic if people don't have faith in the election system.
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There's no reason that they shouldn't be able to get 60 votes under regular order over there.
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Because, as the president says, the only way and reason you could be against voter ID to vote and citizenship to vote is if you intend to cheat.
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And, you know, they're showing us by their actions.
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Two final questions, but they're basically the same question.
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The people from my class, the podcasters, love to tell Congress what to do, sometimes without much knowledge of how Congress actually works.
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So what would your message be to the conservative podcasters, influencers, pundits, and babbling types, one?
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And then two, 237 days left, you've got to herd cats.
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What do you say to all of your members is the unifying message, the coherent message that breaks through the noise,
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that brings that chasm between perception and reality back together?
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There's a widening chasm between the two parties.
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This is not our grandfather's Democratic Party.
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They're insurgent far-leftists, and they will destroy the country in quick order if they get in charge again.
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So we have to evaluate that, and then we've got to articulate that to the people, to the voters, to our constituents.
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I mean, the president was right in the State of the Union.
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What they would do to this country is frightening.
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So we've got to go out, articulate that clearly, consistently, with conviction and authenticity.
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And we have the people that can do that, the people that serve in the House, battered as we are by fake news, by the left,
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and misinformation sometimes on our side, well-intended folks, that there's always more nuance to it.
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And what I would say to our allies and friends in the conservative movement is, now is the time for us to stick together.
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And if you have questions or something seems awry or there's a big conspiracy theory brewing, there's usually some more facts behind that.
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And if you would just take the time, take a pause, contact us, let us know.
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And if we're off, I'm open to course correction every day.
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But it's been said and written, and I think it's true.
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I'm the most conservative person that has ever held a gavel.
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I was the attorney for most of the conservative groups that are, you know, leading in the policy arena and everything else.
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And my objective every day is to move the ship of state to the furthest point we can on the conservative spectrum and to get public policy right.
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We have a president who's fiercely devoted to fixing America and making America great again.
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But it will only stay on that trajectory if we all stick together.
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If you're going to fire, don't do it inside our tent.
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There's plenty of folks on the other side politically who can take that ammo.
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I agree with that message entirely, Mr. Speaker.
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I just wish that other members of the party and the movement would see things the same way.
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In any case, you have meant much more to do, speaking of all that hurting cat.