Interview with Senator Mike Lee
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Summary
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is running for re-election against Evan McMullin (D-VA) in a close race that could determine the outcome of the election. But how close is too close for a Republican to win a Senate election in Utah?
Transcript
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We are in the absolute final stretch of the 2022 midterm elections.
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Things are looking very, very good for Republicans right now.
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And one of the absolutely most interesting races in the country
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happens to concern one of my absolute favorite United States senators.
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And that would be Senator Mike Lee over in Utah.
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Good, strong conservative senator who's facing a little bit of a weird challenge
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because he's running against, well, I guess he is running against a Democrat,
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but he's running against a Democrat who says he's a Republican with the backing of the Democrats
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and the very liberal Republican other senator from Utah is staying kind of neutral.
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And anyway, it's very, very intricate and bizarre.
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So, Senator, all sorts of crazy races to watch this year.
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Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, all over the place.
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Yours might be the strangest one, actually, of all of them.
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Because I thought, look, this is a Republican year.
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Mike Lee has one of the best conservative records in the United States Senate,
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in the United States, frankly, as far as I'm concerned.
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Utah is a very good conservative state, and yet there's this weird fact you're running against
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this guy, Evan McMullin, who was the kind of never-Trump candidate from 2016,
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who some Democrats gave a bunch of money to fruitlessly.
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And now he's running for Senate in Utah, but the Democrats are backing him.
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And I don't pretend to know all of the intricacies.
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Look, this race is much closer than it should be, for the simple reason that we've got an
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independent who's telling Republicans he still thinks like a Republican.
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He's telling Democrats he'll vote like a Democrat.
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And the local media is overwhelmingly liberal, entirely liberal, in fact.
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They don't actually make him talk about issues and where he would stand on things.
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In fact, the most substance he's provided on how he would vote was provided to the Utah
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Democratic Party while he was actively courting their endorsement.
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You see, he went to them and said, don't run a Democrat because they have a D after their
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I'll have an I after my name, but I'll vote more or less how you want me to vote.
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And I can get elected more easily than they can.
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And he rattled off a whole bunch of things where he stood with it, including the fact that
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he voted for Joe Biden, he campaigned for Joe Biden, he encouraged others to do the same.
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This bill that would take over the authority to run federal elections, strip the states
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of their authority to impose voter ID requirements and otherwise make it almost impossible for
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He also said that he would nuke the filibuster for purposes of passing H.R.1.
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But meanwhile, the mainstream news media in Utah, which is to say the entire media establishment
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in Utah, save one or two radio talk show hosts, is backing this guy, helping this guy.
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So, yeah, this race is closer than it should be.
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So, it's probably as close a general election as we've had in quite a while for a U.S.
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It's not surprising in a certain way because it seems to me the only way the Democrats have
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any hope of winning really anything this year is through chicanery.
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And this is a great example of that kind of chicanery.
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I actually didn't know that about McMullen's support for you in your very diplomatic, very
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A lot of people call it the Corrupt Politicians Act.
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This is just such an awful piece of legislation.
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Our mutual friend Ted Cruz coined that term, and I think it's a delightful and accurate way
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And so, to go in and basically cut a secret shady deal with the Democrats and say, look,
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I'll pretend to be a Republican or at least an independent to get the Republicans to vote
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I'm going to be a vote for you guys because I don't really, I don't really, I'm not running
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I'm just voting to give the Democrats political power, just like I was campaigning to elect Joe
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Biden, just like I was running to be a spoiler against Donald Trump, just like this guy who
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kind of came out of nowhere, seems to continue to do.
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You know, he's the Republican who just does whatever the Democrats want.
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And I have to say, I mean, it seems to me, basically every single Senate Republican supports
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Every conservative that I know, that I've spoken about it with, supports you.
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There is one senator who's been kind of quiet on the race, I can't help but notice.
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Look, I'm very grateful to have the support of 48 of my Senate Republican colleagues.
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It's implicit that I support my own candidacy, which would be weird if I didn't.
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There's one outlier, my fellow senator from Utah hasn't.
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But look, I'm just grateful that I've got the support of all the others.
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I mean, look, Susan Collins and I don't agree on everything.
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Doors always open to the remaining senator, my colleague from Utah, if he decides he wants
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In the meantime, he said he's got two friends in this race and wants to stay out.
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I guess that's his prerogative, his decision to make.
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It speaks volumes as far as I'm concerned and I think really bolsters your conservative
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So, Senator Lee, I know it's a close race and there are all sorts of crazy things that
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I'm not surprised that the Democrats are doing everything they can to get rid of you.
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You have been a big thorn in their side for many years now.
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So what happens once the Republicans retake the Senate, you go back to Washington, D.C.?
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Well, look, I hope and expect that we will retake the majorities in both houses of Congress.
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The Senate is looking better every day, you know, with some exceptions, including my race
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But when we get back, I really do think we'll be on a short leash from the American people
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We'll be on a short leash in the sense that they will expect us to put an end to all of
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the nonsense that Joe Biden is perpetrating on the American people.
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We won't be able to do everything that we would like to do because we still don't occupy
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But we can put an end to the worst of the worst of what he's doing.
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We can put an end to, you know, bringing in four trillion dollars last year and spending
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That's not going to happen under Republican watch.
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I would hope that we would also conduct real meaningful oversight and get answers to all
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sorts of questions about things that have happened that shouldn't have happened to the government
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from the humanitarian crisis on the border to the fentanyl problem to Tony Fauci and what
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appeared to be blatant lies that he told under oath.
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I look forward to figuring out what happened in Afghanistan, why we botched that so badly.
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But again, this is another reason why this race matters.
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My opponent has claimed that he won't caucus with either party, which means that he really
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would be strengthening the hand of the Democrats and weakening the hand of Republicans if he
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People are saying maybe the Republicans, they can win up to 54 seats, you know, on election
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But not so long ago, it was very unclear that the Republicans would retake the Senate.
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And there's a very good chance Republicans don't retake the Senate.
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And so a guy coming out there in a very conservative state and saying, I will not caucus with the
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Republicans could be the difference between Joe Biden gets to do whatever he wants and Joe
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Biden is stopped from instituting his legislative agenda.
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And in fact, I recently discovered a tweet that my opponent sent out on January 3rd, 2021,
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on the eve, literally, of the Georgia U.S. Senate race, the dual U.S. Senate race rung off.
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And he encouraged people to defeat the two Republicans, to defeat them.
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Because as he put it, the Republican Party is, I don't remember what exactly he said, it was
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something like irredeemably lost and corrupt or something like that.
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So he did his best to disempower a Republican majority then.
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And by the way, that cost us at least $4 trillion in reckless inflationary spending.
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But look, he's making it close because the media is giving him millions of dollars in free
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He's raising millions of dollars off of ActBlue, the Democratic donor network.
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And he's got a super PAC that has spent $3 or $4 million on attack ads on me.
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So if any of your listeners and viewers who want to support my campaign, they can do so
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And unlike Evan McMullin, which is not through ActBlue, I'm on wind radio.
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Yeah, I always think, you know, Senator, I always think that you can judge a man by his enemies,
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you know, and you can judge a man by his friends.
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And I think you've got absolutely all the right enemies.
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And I think that Evan McMullin has all of the wrong friends.
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And I, you know, I just, the libs drive me crazy because the libs have a terrible agenda
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and they cause all sorts of destruction in the country.
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But there's one group that I have even less respect for than the libs who are destroying
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And that, that would be the, the deceitful people who pretend to be conservative or Republican.
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And then all they ever do is the bidding of that corrosive liberal establishment that is
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destroying our, our fiscal situation, opening up our borders, you know, tearing the country apart.
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And as far as I can tell, the only thing that your opponent has done in political life
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is that, I can't, I, he's, he came onto the scene in 2016.
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I mean, I'm sure he had, he had a career before that, but he came onto the political scene in 2016.
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And I think we've really, really got to be aware of these deceitful people in politics.
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I say it because it's an important race and, and because I mean it, you have been a real straight
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I know you personally, uh, the seat is very important concern.
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It would be insane for Utah to have a, a Senator doing only the bidding of the Democratic
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And so Senator, I really wish you the best of luck in the race.
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Look, in addition to going to lead for Senate.com, uh, people who are online, um, communicating
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on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, on any social media platform, uh, can interact when
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they see comments being made that don't make sense, uh, back them up with conservative
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arguments, call out people, call about people who were, uh, praising my opponent is supposedly
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Um, my opponent is rebranding himself still as a conservative.
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After getting the democratic nomination and convincing them not to run a candidate, he's
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Uh, only he redefines conservative to mean he likes to go on hikes and he believes in America
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He, uh, he, he actually ran sort of to the right of Donald Trump in 2016 because Donald
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Trump was insufficiently committed to seeing Roe versus Wade overturned and standing up
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And, uh, then a few months ago he went on MSNBC and said that he's opposed to overturning
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Roe versus Wade, but he still markets himself as pro-life only he's redefined the term pro-life
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to mean that he believes we should have more social programs.
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So, uh, he's really good at redefining things and I, uh, frequently want to tell him, I don't
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think that word means what you think it means, sir.
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Uh, anyway, uh, I can use all the help I can get in messaging and, uh, uh, really appreciate
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I would strongly encourage our Utah listeners to go vote for the conservative in the race,
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