The Michael Knowles Show - New Republican Leadership & New Vision ｜ Rep. Brandon Gill & Michael Knowles

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00:00:37.760 New year, new president, new Congress, new conservatism, new direction for the country.

00:00:45.140 I sit down with my friend, U.S. Congressman Brandon Gill.

00:00:49.480 Brandon, thank you for being here.

00:00:50.680 Thanks for having me.

00:00:51.460 You are not only the representative from Texas' 26th congressional district,

00:00:56.960 you are the president of the freshman class.

00:01:00.160 I have not been the president of a freshman class since 2004, and that was just in my high school.

00:01:05.740 You are the president of the whole freshman class of Congress.

00:01:08.720 The freshman Republicans.

00:01:10.100 I say we're pretty bifurcated here.

00:01:12.360 We're not quite to the bipartisanship yet.

00:01:14.220 You didn't get a lot of Democrat votes.

00:01:16.440 I'm not terribly surprised about that.

00:01:17.980 But you actually have been elected, even within the Congress, to a kind of a leadership role for your new class.

00:01:25.900 This was a bizarre election where you saw a major demographic shift.

00:01:29.900 Lots of people who used to vote for Democrats or who didn't vote at all now voting Republican.

00:01:34.380 So you're entering not just as a spokesman for a regular old congressional class.

00:01:41.340 This is a rather distinct congressional class.

00:01:43.540 What makes it different?

00:01:45.180 Well, that's exactly right.

00:01:46.520 And what makes it different is we're coming in with a very distinct mandate.

00:01:50.900 You know, if I look across my class, there's 31 Republicans in my class.

00:01:55.040 Every single one of us ran to varying degrees on the Trump agenda.

00:01:59.340 You know, some people focused on energy, some people focused on the border, some people focused on tax policy, some on social issues.

00:02:06.020 But all of us were different component parts of that Trump agenda.

00:02:10.080 So whenever we're coming in, we're 100 percent aligned with the president, I think, as a class.

00:02:15.820 And I think that's a very different situation than we had in 2016, for instance.

00:02:20.780 So I think the unique thing is that the class and the conference as a whole, I think, is aligned with the president.

00:02:27.520 We're ready to execute on this agenda.

00:02:29.800 And I think we're going to get started here very, very, very quickly.

00:02:33.020 Okay.

00:02:33.640 The first part of that seems obvious to me.

00:02:35.760 The class is fully on board with Trump in a way that you did not see in 2016, 2017.

00:02:41.300 Is the rest of the GOP conference, some of the older members, some of the perhaps more establishment members, for any Republican Speaker of the House, I have such pity for Mike Johnson.

00:02:52.620 It's the hardest job in Washington.

00:02:54.100 It's always like herding cats.

00:02:55.920 Do you really think that there will be reasonable unity behind Trump's agenda in the Congress?

00:03:02.360 Well, I think there's going to have to be reasonable unity.

00:03:05.280 You know, and you're right.

00:03:06.060 The difference between Democrats and Republicans is Democrats are all pointing in the same ideological direction.

00:03:11.840 It's just a difference of degree.

00:03:14.160 It's kind of the Bolsheviks versus the Mensheviks. 0.81

00:03:15.920 Whereas the Republicans, we're principled.

00:03:20.860 We've all got our own ideas.

00:03:22.720 We think independently.

00:03:24.280 And there are very distinct ideological strains within the Republican Party, as we've talked about before.

00:03:29.540 There's the paleoconservatives and the neoconservatives and the Reaganite fusionists.

00:03:35.160 And then there's everything – the libertarians.

00:03:37.760 And then there's everything in between.

00:03:39.960 So coalescing all of these disparate ideological groups into a single political body to get an agenda passed is extraordinarily difficult.

00:03:50.300 So, you know, I do not envy Speaker Johnson at all.

00:03:55.100 But I think that everybody realizes that, too.

00:03:57.800 I think that there's a broad recognition that we were elected with a mandate from the president, but that we've got one shot to execute here.

00:04:06.360 That if in two years we go back to our districts and we say, I ran on securing the border, I ran on extending the Trump tax cuts, I ran on fighting against this weird, woke trans agenda, and we didn't do any of it, we're not going to keep the majority. 0.88

00:04:21.060 And that's what all of us want to do.

00:04:22.860 So I think that we realize that we have to come together.

00:04:26.780 It's more an issue of necessity than anything else.

00:04:29.840 Well, tell me a little bit about that, what you're seeing down the line in two years, because it seems to me that this mandate, this new coalition that you've got, brings with it new kinds of policies, new ways of looking at politics.

00:04:44.340 I wonder, if you go back to your district in two years and you say, hey, I did exactly what every other Republican congressman has ever done.

00:04:52.280 I gave you some tax cuts.

00:04:55.000 I don't know, maybe I deregulated a little bit.

00:04:57.960 I had some good sound bites on the border, but probably didn't do that much about it.

00:05:01.900 But anyway, I cut your taxes.

00:05:04.220 Do you think that you will be reelected?

00:05:06.300 Or do you think that the new class of Congress brought in by this new coalition is demanding something different than you saw during the Bush era or during the other Bush era or even during the Reagan era?

00:05:17.680 Is this, what does it mean to be a new kind of Republican?

00:05:20.780 Right.

00:05:21.120 Well, I can answer that this way.

00:05:23.200 So I'm the youngest Republican in the class right now, 30 years old.

00:05:26.660 And I think about the America that I grew up in versus the America that Republicans 20 or 30 years ago grew up in.

00:05:33.800 And these are entirely different worlds.

00:05:36.400 The America I grew up in was after Ronald Reagan.

00:05:38.920 I was born in 1994.

00:05:40.500 So didn't experience the Reagan revolution.

00:05:42.980 For my entire life, we've had a border crisis.

00:05:46.160 Even under Republican administrations, we like to think that this is a Biden problem.

00:05:50.700 It was exacerbated by Joe Biden.

00:05:52.300 But we've had a border crisis for 30 years now.

00:05:55.500 For my entire life, we've had an economy addicted to deficit spending and interest rate manipulation.

00:06:01.560 For my entire life, we've watched as the woke left has progressively taken over every single facet of civil society.

00:06:09.520 You know, we've watched as our foreign policy goes off the rails, loses all sense of realism and restraint, in my opinion.

00:06:16.880 Yeah.

00:06:17.460 And I think whenever that's the America that you experience, and I think that other people in my class see this too,

00:06:23.780 you don't have any illusions about how hard we're going to have to fight to get our country back.

00:06:29.120 And I think that that's the direction the party's going because everybody recognizes that.

00:06:35.500 They see where we're at.

00:06:37.100 They see that it's going to require a more muscular conservatism, more fight on our side to actually get us back to the country that we know and love and want to live in.

00:06:48.280 So I think everybody recognizes that.

00:06:50.540 I think the party as a whole recognizes it.

00:06:52.780 Again, it's just time to execute now.

00:06:54.520 Now, do you think there is a divide in not just the electeds, but in the people around the electeds?

00:07:02.260 Meaning, I'm seeing demands from GOP voters that are maybe at odds with demands from GOP donors or GOP institutions or GOP nonprofit organizations or whatever.

00:07:16.920 How are you going to work that conflict?

00:07:21.060 Yeah, and I think a really good example of that, right, is immigration.

00:07:26.940 And that's been one of the driving factors.

00:07:29.440 You know, for a very long time, there's been this sort of Faustian bargain between Republicans and Democrats.

00:07:36.940 And Democrats wanted to open the borders because they wanted to flood the country with illegals who they believed would be voting for them in the future.

00:07:43.860 And historically, that's been a pretty good bet, actually.

00:07:48.740 And Republicans knew what was going on, I think, whether they wanted to say it or not.

00:07:53.040 But they went along with it because there was a massive cheap labor lobby.

00:07:57.140 And there was this libertarian notion that we need to embrace not only the free flow of capital across international boundaries, but the free flow of labor as well.

00:08:08.120 And that that would create – that would be pro-growth economic policy that would – and that was sort of the only end that we were looking towards.

00:08:16.120 Yeah, yeah.

00:08:46.120 We're looking towards the same route to the same destination.

00:08:47.660 And that is, let's undermine our culture, our society, all of the things that are bedrock American principles that our economy sits on top of.

00:09:00.760 So we enjoy this amazing free enterprise system that's created an enormous amount of prosperity for our country.

00:09:08.520 And it's been great for wealthy Americans, for working class Americans, for everybody in between.

00:09:14.960 But that sits upon a certain amount of cultural principles, you know, a certain degree of cultural homogeneity.

00:09:23.340 You know, we all worship the same God.

00:09:25.520 We all have the same, generally speaking, moral principles.

00:09:29.060 And obviously there's some diversity, but I mean –

00:09:31.260 The Founding Fathers wrote about this.

00:09:32.440 The Framers of the Constitution wrote about this.

00:09:34.120 Of course, but by and large we all have the same cultural principles and that creates social trust.

00:09:40.980 That creates an environment that's much more conducive to the type of robust American capitalism that we've gotten to enjoy.

00:09:49.080 Mass migration, I think more than anything, undermines that. 0.75

00:09:52.760 You see a federal government that seems explicitly almost to pursue the interests of foreigners over American citizens, you know, at our expense in so many different ways.

00:10:05.560 So I think, long story short, I think that we're recognizing that we've got to move in that direction.

00:10:11.120 We've got to realize that we have to represent our voters.

00:10:14.500 And I think that, you know, the donors and everybody else will realize that long term.

00:10:19.400 I agree.

00:10:20.000 I think it doesn't need to be a terrible, all-out, bloody conflict between the voters and the donors because, you know, without the donors, the voters are going to have a hard time getting their messages out in campaigns.

00:10:32.460 But without the voters, the donors are just setting their money on fire, you know.

00:10:35.940 I mean, I don't think that donors who are maybe stuck in an outdated and now disproven ideological fantasy that open borders, you know, so long as they're legal open borders or something, can lead to American prosperity and solidarity.

00:10:52.020 You know, they can't redefine reality and said no amount of money is going to let them redefine reality.

00:10:58.000 So I think there is a way that both groups need to recognize their interests are aligned, you know, in significant ways.

00:11:07.940 You keep coming back to immigration.

00:11:09.840 And the public opinion polls have been pretty clear that was a top issue for people in 2024.

00:11:17.840 Why migration?

00:11:19.420 So is it just, you know, they're taking our jobs or is there something deeper?

00:11:22.600 And what were the other big issues?

00:11:24.720 Well, I think for migration first, if you think of what issue touches every single other issue, you know, whether it's housing prices, ultimately the size and scope of the welfare state, which impacts taxation, education, health care.

00:11:40.720 I mean, every single political issue is touched by mass migration because that impacts the – that is the makeup of the country.

00:11:48.680 So if you –

00:11:50.500 Right.

00:11:51.460 It's such a simple point you make.

00:11:53.080 But sometimes you'll hear ideologues, they'll say, America is just an idea.

00:11:57.740 Say, no, I think America is like people.

00:11:59.540 Isn't it – isn't a country made up of people?

00:12:01.500 A people with a common history, a common heritage who speak the same language.

00:12:06.640 Literally, you speak the same language.

00:12:07.960 Literally, exactly.

00:12:09.000 I mean, how am I supposed to communicate with the rest of the world when we speak, you know, speaking different languages?

00:12:15.080 I mean, how are we supposed to come together as a coherent political body whenever we can't even communicate?

00:12:20.500 So – but again, worshiping, you know, the same God, having a same moral framework.

00:12:27.040 And, you know, you see that, again, how migration touches everything else.

00:12:31.220 But you see that whenever the – there are two conflicting visions of what the moral basis and the basis of truth are in this country.

00:12:38.600 And migration affects that.

00:12:41.160 That's where you get one side knows what a woman is, as you mentioned a lot, and one side doesn't. 1.00

00:12:45.980 So it touches everything else.

00:12:48.120 But I think to – you know, we've got – we do have to bring together the libertarian side as well.

00:12:53.960 And I think that there's a clear economic argument for the reduction in mass migration as well.

00:13:00.360 I mean, you look at how much – whether you like it or not – how much illegal immigration explodes the welfare state.

00:13:08.040 I mean, right now, the cost of illegal aliens right now is an estimated roughly $150 billion a year.

00:13:15.240 That's net of tax receipts.

00:13:17.200 That's more than we give to Ukraine.

00:13:18.600 That's a lot of money.

00:13:19.540 That's exactly right.

00:13:20.560 And that's $1,100 per taxpayer.

00:13:25.020 That's about $9,000 per year per illegal alien.

00:13:28.380 And this is economically unsustainable, and that's why American citizens can see it.

00:13:34.040 They can see that their children are going to school and they're having fewer teachers per classroom

00:13:40.300 because we have to deal with illegal alien children who don't speak our language, who need special attention. 1.00

00:13:46.080 That's why lines at the doctor's office are longer because we've got a mass influx of people straining our health care system.

00:13:52.920 I mean, it touches every single aspect of life.

00:13:55.680 And at the end of the day, Americans look at the country and they say,

00:14:00.340 I feel like I went to bed one night and woke up the next morning and I don't recognize the nation that I'm living in anymore.

00:14:07.360 And that's a huge, huge problem.

00:14:10.160 Right.

00:14:10.420 And you can't convince people out of that. 0.86

00:14:14.380 You know, you can't convince people, hey, don't believe your lying eyes.

00:14:18.200 Hey, your feelings are wrong.

00:14:19.960 You know, it's just, and I think a lot of, now actually, the majority of Americans have expressed that they agree with that view.

00:14:25.940 So I totally agree.

00:14:28.340 It's very simply put.

00:14:30.260 Migration is about who makes up the citizenry, you know, and what more basic political question is there than that?

00:14:38.000 What were the other big issues?

00:14:39.340 You were on the ground.

00:14:40.300 You've just won your first election to Congress.

00:14:42.920 What put the Republicans over the top?

00:14:45.480 You know, for a long time, Republicans wanted to stay away from social issues.

00:14:49.980 It was, let's focus on taxation.

00:14:53.100 Let's focus on regulation.

00:14:54.580 And those are all important issues we've got to deal with on the size of the welfare state, things like that.

00:14:59.780 Social issues had a major, major impact in this election.

00:15:03.640 I could see it in my race.

00:15:05.080 You could see it across Texas in the Cruz race as well.

00:15:07.760 You see it across the country.

00:15:08.940 Great point.

00:15:09.360 Ted Cruz had been running on migration mostly, and then toward the end of the campaign, there was that great ad where Colin Allred, the football player tackles a little girl on the football field.

00:15:19.620 He was taking on men and women's sports, and I think that really, really pushed Senator Cruz over the finish line.

00:15:26.400 Yep.

00:15:26.940 And I think it's because, it reminds me of the line in Orwell's 1984, where it was, the party told you not to believe the evidence of your eyes and ears.

00:15:35.640 That was their last and most final command.

00:15:37.580 And I think whenever the Democrat Party's entire messaging is contrary to what you know is common sense, it's contrary to basic reasoning, it's contrary to everything you can see in the world, that just doesn't work politically.

00:15:52.620 Nobody wants to live in a world where boys are going in girls' bathrooms or their locker rooms or playing on their sports fields. 0.98

00:16:00.400 There's something so obviously disordered about that, and you don't have to have a philosophical foundation.

00:16:08.940 You can just see it.

00:16:10.180 It's a great point.

00:16:11.840 Some people can give you all the profound philosophical or theological reasons as to why this is wrong, but some people think it's just kind of gross and yucky.

00:16:21.380 And I think that's actually enough.

00:16:23.260 It's called the wisdom of repugnance, actually.

00:16:25.220 Right.

00:16:25.980 That's normal.

00:16:26.780 And I think that we've got to, there's a level of common sense that we have to embrace, and we have to embrace it because it's common sense.

00:16:33.000 So the Democrats ran on that.

00:16:35.060 We ran on basic, basic common sense, and we beat them.

00:16:38.780 What's amazing to me, though, is the degree to which they've doubled down.

00:16:43.000 We had a vote earlier this week on taking out, stopping federal funding for sports, girls' sports that allow boys to play in them, right?

00:16:53.960 Pretty common-sensical, I guess.

00:16:56.140 Pretty basic common sense, 158 Democrats voted against it on the floor, 158.

00:17:01.980 I'm actually somewhat surprised to hear that because, at least in the liberal media, you're beginning to see a little turn.

00:17:11.140 Maybe we need to ask ourselves how we lost so many demographics.

00:17:15.940 Maybe we need to ask ourselves if we haven't gone a little too far.

00:17:18.660 Even some of the old elder statesmen of the Democratic Party seem to me.

00:17:22.440 Right.

00:17:22.960 But you're telling me your Democrat colleagues in the House haven't learned a damn thing.

00:17:27.440 No, they haven't, and I actually think I misspoke there.

00:17:30.320 It wasn't 158.

00:17:31.380 It was over 200 of them voted against it.

00:17:33.520 So excuse me.

00:17:34.420 It was 158 who voted against the Lake and Riley Act, which would have told DHS to apprehend illegal aliens who are committing burglary and theft on American soil.

00:17:44.580 So illegal aliens who are pillaging American citizens on our territory would have told DHS to apprehend them. 0.99

00:17:52.160 Why are they doing that?

00:17:53.280 Is it because they just are true believers, ideologues, and they think we need to let illegals commit crimes and we need to let fellows into the girls' room? 0.89

00:18:01.820 Or is it some stick and carrot of funding?

00:18:06.280 Or I don't know.

00:18:06.900 What is it?

00:18:07.800 So, and I'll give you one more example and then I'll answer your question.

00:18:11.000 We just walked off the House floor today and we voted on one of Nancy Mace's bills, which would have declared rape and domestic violence a deportable offense. 1.00

00:18:21.320 So if you're not currently a deportable offense, if you're an illegal alien on American territory right now and you rape an American citizen, this bill would have said you need to be deported.

00:18:31.560 And if you had committed that in your home country, you shouldn't be allowed into our country. 0.95

00:18:35.460 And that bill had a majority of Democrats vote against it.

00:18:40.560 And it raises the question, I think, for the Democrat Party, which is, do you represent the interests of American citizens who are here, who are law-abiding? 0.98

00:18:51.780 Or do you represent the interests of rapist illegal aliens? 0.92

00:18:55.740 And their voting record suggests the latter. 0.99

00:18:58.000 You're not even being needlessly provocative.

00:19:00.700 You're not even just throwing bombs.

00:19:02.080 No.

00:19:02.300 That's their vote.

00:19:03.800 That was, you can look at the congressional record.

00:19:06.440 That is how they just voted today.

00:19:09.620 So, but to your question, why are they doing this?

00:19:14.560 And I think that there are sort of two answers.

00:19:17.780 One of them is what we alluded to earlier, which is the electoral consequences of open borders and creating chaos.

00:19:24.780 So, Democrats know that you bring in massive amounts of people, which effectively disenfranchises American citizens, right, once you allow illegal aliens to vote. 0.94

00:19:34.580 And Democrats are pushing to allow illegal aliens to vote.

00:19:37.240 And in municipal elections, you see that in San Francisco and in parts of New York, that is the direction they're going.

00:19:42.920 Chuck Schumer has said that the goal is amnesty for illegal aliens, which, of course, gives them voting rights.

00:19:49.700 So, that changes the political composition of, obviously, where they're voting.

00:19:55.100 But there's also the question of the electoral count.

00:19:59.480 So, mass migration increases the population in blue states, particularly like New York and California.

00:20:08.500 And whenever we appoint.

00:20:12.580 And apportion.

00:20:13.360 Apportion, exactly, electoral votes that benefits blue states at the expense of red states.

00:20:19.760 You see the same thing with congressional appointment as well.

00:20:22.500 Because this is the problem.

00:20:24.260 It's why the Democrats are telling a half-truth.

00:20:27.140 When they say, well, look, we bring in the illegals, but they can't vote. 0.99

00:20:30.840 And actually, in some cases, they do vote.

00:20:32.620 But, okay, give it to them.

00:20:34.020 Yeah, generally, they don't vote.

00:20:35.640 Because we have birthright citizenship, their kids vote, their grandkids vote, and their kids and grandkids are overwhelmingly likely to vote for Democrats.

00:20:41.660 Right.

00:20:41.960 But even with none of them voting, congressional apportionment comes from population, not from citizens.

00:20:49.440 Right.

00:20:49.680 So, you just flood the state, you flood California with illegals, guess who's getting more congressional seats. 0.99

00:20:55.300 Right.

00:20:55.600 And think about that.

00:20:56.500 We're in a political environment right now where neither party is likely to have a major majority in the House, whether it's Republicans or Democrats.

00:21:05.040 Right now, we've got a two- to four-seat majority, depending on who's in and out, right?

00:21:09.120 So, whenever you're talking about flooding, you know, 10 million-plus illegal aliens into the country, that has a major impact, potentially, on the balance of power in the House of Representatives in Washington.

00:21:21.480 I mean, these aren't small changes.

00:21:23.360 These are major political changes.

00:21:25.060 To say nothing about the fact that the Electoral College also relates to that kind of apportionment, too.

00:21:30.060 I mean, every four years, whenever we think about who's going to win the electoral vote, we're talking about are they going to get 270, or are they going to get 272, 280?

00:21:40.220 I mean, it's rare that you see these big landslides like President Trump just got.

00:21:43.680 Until they run Kamala.

00:21:44.820 Then we're good, actually.

00:21:46.260 Right.

00:21:46.720 Right.

00:21:46.900 So, these are major, major political changes.

00:21:49.520 But I do think there's another angle here, which is illegal aliens, libertarians notwithstanding, they do commit crimes at higher rates than American citizens do. 0.85

00:22:02.680 They do undermine our cultural fabric.

00:22:04.660 They tear it in half.

00:22:06.120 They do create – they do reduce social trust.

00:22:08.800 I mean, there is a lot of serious cultural problems and social problems with the mass influx of illegal aliens. 1.00

00:22:15.400 You mix that on top of what you see the left doing in cities where Soros-backed prosecutors are refusing, absolutely refusing to prosecute crimes.

00:22:27.880 I look at my own home state.

00:22:30.120 I spent a lot of time in New York City as a boy and as a young adult.

00:22:33.920 And I grew up in the era of Giuliani.

00:22:36.520 New York was safe.

00:22:37.600 You could walk around anywhere, basically.

00:22:39.700 You'd be fine.

00:22:40.900 Bloomberg was okay, too.

00:22:42.140 And over the years, right now, in midtown Manhattan, people are being stabbed in the chest in broad daylight on commuter trains.

00:22:50.980 Right.

00:22:51.140 When you get out into the boroughs, women are being set on fire on subways. 1.00

00:22:54.280 I mean, you were talking about third-world stuff.

00:22:56.920 Third-world stuff.

00:22:58.000 And you often find that it's the same people committing hundreds and hundreds of crimes and prosecutors refuse to – and local DAs refuse to throw them in jail.

00:23:06.700 So you ask yourself, why is the left creating an environment that is inherently destabilizing for American citizens?

00:23:13.680 And you can think about it as what is the type of citizen that is beneficial electorally to Republicans versus the type of citizen that is good for Democrats?

00:23:23.480 And what is the social environment that is good for either political party?

00:23:28.440 And I think that whenever you turn society upside down, you create an environment where the law is not enforced, either at the border or within the country.

00:23:36.920 That creates a level of chaos that is much more conducive to big government solutions.

00:23:42.400 You know, the Democrat mantra for a long time has been never let a good crisis go to waste.

00:23:47.720 And I think the next step is if there's not a good crisis, create one and then use it to your political advantage.

00:23:53.940 Sometimes you hear the phrase anarcho-tyranny.

00:23:56.780 Right.

00:23:57.020 Those seem to be opposites, but not really.

00:23:59.260 One actually creates the conditions for the other.

00:24:02.060 That's exactly right.

00:24:03.740 So I think that there's a – it's really cynical, but I think that that is what the left is doing.

00:24:09.420 And we've watched them do it.

00:24:10.500 We've just got to have the courage to stand up against it.

00:24:13.640 So, okay, in the remaining moments that I have you here, what are the odds that the White House can do – it can fix these problems on its own?

00:24:23.160 The White House has substantial power on its own, especially through the agencies.

00:24:26.840 And what are the odds that Congress will be able to support the White House and even advance its own agenda?

00:24:32.380 And, you know, any president, certainly any Congress in a two-year period has a very limited number of things that it can actually get over the finish line.

00:24:41.700 And that's when – before you even consider herding cats and whipping votes among Republicans.

00:24:46.220 So how many things can you really get done – at least I didn't say two years – and what are the odds you get them done?

00:24:52.140 Right. I think that – well, I can tell you we're going to fight to get as much as we possibly can done.

00:24:57.340 Now, the biggest priorities, if you were to rank them, I think, for Congress would be border security, energy, taxes.

00:25:05.420 Maybe not exactly in that order, but those would be sort of the top priorities.

00:25:09.320 There is a recognition that we have to get this done to save the country, that we don't have a choice.

00:25:16.300 President Trump is going to come in and he's going to institute the massive variety of executive orders.

00:25:21.460 And these are going to be great.

00:25:22.320 Think of border security, for example.

00:25:23.860 Bring back Romaine in Mexico. 0.98

00:25:25.740 Maybe bring back Title 42 and other executive measures that secured the border, allowed us to deport illegal aliens. 0.98

00:25:32.120 It is Congress's job.

00:25:34.800 It is our responsibility to not watch that happen and sit back and relax.

00:25:40.040 It is our responsibility to codify those executive orders into law.

00:25:44.520 And it's actually quite simple.

00:25:45.600 The president's writing the laws for us in a way.

00:25:48.660 That's a great point.

00:25:49.800 Because the Democrats would say we're going to govern by executive order.

00:25:53.140 And then I remember this during Obama.

00:25:54.680 Then the Republicans come in and they say, well, just as you can write your executive order, we can undo your executive orders.

00:26:00.320 But if the executive order is codified in law, it becomes a lot harder to undo.

00:26:06.260 That's exactly right.

00:26:07.240 So I've got a Remain in Mexico Act that I introduced, first bill introduced.

00:26:10.720 We've got over 90 Republican co-sponsors.

00:26:13.480 Good start.

00:26:14.180 I mean, that is 90 co-sponsors.

00:26:16.620 I mean, that's real unity right there.

00:26:19.320 And all it does is takes President Trump's 2019 migrant protection protocols, his executive order, and codifies it into law.

00:26:28.220 Very, very simple.

00:26:29.240 So I'm hoping we can move that.

00:26:31.000 I think that there's going to be a variety of border legislation.

00:26:34.060 But to your question, we just – we don't have a – there is no other option.

00:26:40.340 Failure is not an option here.

00:26:42.160 We cannot survive another four years of a future Democrat president flooding our country with illegal aliens. 1.00

00:26:49.260 We can't survive not being energy independent.

00:26:53.040 We have to be able to produce our own oil.

00:26:55.000 But we can't be buying it from Russia and China and Venezuela and hostile foreign regimes.

00:27:00.400 So failure is not an option here.

00:27:02.780 Good point.

00:27:03.820 We sometimes get a little complacent as Republicans.

00:27:06.620 I find myself doing it too.

00:27:08.100 I'm here in D.C.

00:27:09.260 I'm actually going to go back to Nashville, but I'm going to come back to D.C. for the inauguration.

00:27:13.600 And it's all really fun.

00:27:14.720 And we're all seeing our friends and celebrating.

00:27:17.280 And you forget – what was it, six months ago?

00:27:20.400 Well, Trump almost had his head blown off on stage.

00:27:24.860 He was hit in the air.

00:27:26.020 He was an implausible 20-degree turn of the head is the reason that he's alive and president today.

00:27:32.600 He was nearly prosecuted.

00:27:35.400 Well, he was prosecuted four times.

00:27:37.220 They tried to send him to jail.

00:27:38.620 They tried to put him off the ballot so people wouldn't even have the chance to vote for him.

00:27:43.000 The liberals were openly campaigning on destroying the Supreme Court to give themselves a permanent majority to do whatever they want with our law.

00:27:51.040 They were openly campaigning on getting rid of the filibuster so they could ram through whatever kind of legislation they wanted.

00:27:56.380 They were openly talking about giving millions, possibly tens of millions of people amnesty, fundamentally change the electorate of America, give themselves a permanent majority forever.

00:28:05.320 That's what Elon Musk was calling attention to.

00:28:08.020 We were like this close.

00:28:09.540 And because Trump so thoroughly destroyed Kamala Harris in the ballot box, and even this president, Joe Biden, who allegedly has dementia, so they have to get him out and put this woman in.

00:28:21.040 Because of all of these implausible events, we got a reprieve and an opportunity, maybe a slim opportunity, to fix the country before the Democrats deal the death blow.

00:28:33.260 That's a big charge that you and your colleagues have in the House.

00:28:35.800 It's a huge charge, and I think we recognize that it's almost like a second chance.

00:28:40.680 It's providential.

00:28:41.720 Yeah.

00:28:41.940 We've got to use it.

00:28:42.900 You know, whenever you think of all of the things that we have to do before us right now, it makes me think of how do we get there?

00:28:51.140 And courage is the first virtue, right?

00:28:53.860 Because without courage, none of the others matter.

00:28:56.440 That's a great point.

00:28:56.760 We've got to have the courage to secure the border.

00:28:59.540 We're going to get attacked like crazy whenever we do it.

00:29:01.860 Whenever we start deporting illegal aliens and actually taking this country back, the leftist media is going to come after us.

00:29:07.960 Like the business lobby, the cheap labor lobby is going to attack us.

00:29:13.180 Whenever we start drilling on American land like we should be, the green energy activists are going to start coming after us.

00:29:19.940 Whenever we stop boys from going in girls' bathrooms, the transgender activists are going to come after us. 1.00

00:29:25.980 My point is we're going to be attacked from every single conceivable angle, and we've got to have the backbone to withstand that and carry out the agenda that voters told us they want in this country.

00:29:38.240 People want their country back.

00:29:40.180 We want to be able to recognize the country that we grew up in.

00:29:43.800 We want to be able to live in a normal, common-sense nation where we can get a good job, get married early, have lots of kids, provide for our families without the welfare state.

00:29:54.560 That's the America that everybody wants to live in.

00:29:57.460 We've got a mandate.

00:29:58.400 We've got to execute, but we've got to have the backbone to do it, and I think we do.

00:30:01.700 So true, and your point on courage, it's not just one virtue.

00:30:05.020 It's the prerequisite for all the other virtues because there have been plenty of members of Congress who have known all the right things and who could write probably a pretty good essay about all the right things, but they just, you know, it takes a spine and a few other anatomical features to actually do it.

00:30:20.540 You know, and they couldn't be bothered, but you've got to do it because if we look back two years, four years, and we've squandered this opportunity, it could feel – we might wish that we hadn't even won.

00:30:34.880 We'll never live this down.

00:30:36.420 That's right.

00:30:37.060 That's right.

00:30:37.880 Well, I see why they elected you, past president, Brandon.

00:30:40.740 You know, I think that's the right vision.

00:30:42.580 That's the right stuff, and best of luck.

00:30:44.980 Thank you.

00:30:45.420 Thanks for having me on.

00:30:46.280 Thank you, sir.

00:30:46.740 Thank you, sir.

00:30:50.540 Thank you.

The Michael Knowles Show - January 19, 2025

New Republican Leadership & New Vision ｜ Rep. Brandon Gill & Michael Knowles

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