The Tucker Carlson Show

00:00:00.000 welcome to tucker carlson show it's become pretty clear that the mainstream media are

00:00:10.900 dying they can't die quickly enough and there's a reason they're dying because they lie they lied

00:00:16.580 so much it killed them we're not doing that tucker carlson.com we promise to bring you the

00:00:21.300 most honest content the most honest interviews we can without fear or favor here's the latest

00:00:27.580 so did you read the um the cy hirsch piece about how biden was driven out of his job yeah so i read

00:00:38.320 a summary of it i have not read the piece itself i just read it this morning um here's just here

00:00:43.820 here's the cliff notes obama colludes with nancy pelosi and hakeem jeffries and schumer and calls

00:00:52.540 sunday morning calls biden and says you're done kamala is gonna 25th amendment you and you gotta

00:01:00.440 step aside and who places the call obama obama does so obama calls the sitting president and tells him

00:01:06.540 you're done then um tells i mean this is what the piece says tells kamala harris okay you're gonna be

00:01:15.000 um you're gonna be the nominee but if you don't gain traction if you're not popular we're gonna

00:01:21.820 take you out too um so i'm my question i mean it's all shocking it sounds true uh new york times

00:01:30.740 and washington post by the way wall street journal have not done any meaningful reporting on this so

00:01:35.040 this is this is what we know so far is that legal it certainly presents a lot of legal questions that

00:01:41.240 could be problematic for example if in fact the 25th amendment is worthy of being invoked yes if

00:01:48.800 his condition is such that it needs to be invoked and then they don't invoke it then they're leaving

00:01:54.140 the country in a precarious position of being led by a man not in possession of his faculties

00:01:58.220 if on the other hand it's not worthy of being invoked then they've used an extortive threat yes to oust

00:02:07.180 the guy who's at the top of the ticket who's the current incumbent president and that's not okay

00:02:13.560 i mean i'm pretty sure that

00:02:15.900 qualifies in some way as extortion but if it's not extortion it's just a very underhanded

00:02:24.260 manipulation of the process but voters don't enter into the calculation at any point no so i know this

00:02:30.500 is like a tired observation at this point but the same people who've been lecturing us berating us

00:02:35.260 finger wagging for years now about democracy just kicked the president out of his spot

00:02:43.000 without any votes being cast at all ignoring the votes of democratic primary voters like i i can't

00:02:49.500 imagine a graver attack on democracy than what they just did right and it denigrates their own party

00:02:57.420 faithful the the voters who showed up in what was essentially an uncontested primary election

00:03:03.880 election and they've turned that into a sham because i i'm guessing i i can't know for certain

00:03:09.640 but i'm guessing they've known for some time just as we've been able to tell for some time

00:03:13.660 that president biden has problems yes they didn't do anything about it all of a sudden when

00:03:19.920 it they decide the timing is right perhaps because of his debate performance which i suspect

00:03:25.820 they had a hand in planning because they knew how it would turn out at some point they said okay

00:03:32.520 the time is right now now we're going to show the world that he can't handle the job but i find it

00:03:40.040 difficult to believe that they didn't so you think that it's possible biden was set up yeah yeah they

00:03:46.200 knew he was failing they had to have a kind of pivot point to change the story and that's maybe why

00:03:52.840 all the lackeys all the bootlickers at cnn instantly pivoted as one from biden cheerleaders to biden

00:04:00.120 denigrators instantaneously in fact uh my wife sharon who you've met uh she and i were watching

00:04:05.480 the debate together charming cool woman isn't she though she is amazing i don't know how i convinced

00:04:09.800 her to marry me anyway that thought did occur to me i was impressed well i just thought i'd put that

00:04:14.680 out there no it's actually true uh her immediate reaction when things turned remember when the cnn

00:04:21.560 panel came on right after the debate ended she said this appears orchestrated this is all choreographed

00:04:29.320 it's like they were ready to do this this has the feeling of being planned in advance they knew what

00:04:35.480 was going to happen and when else tucker have you seen a presidential debate between two general

00:04:42.600 election opponents occur that early in the year exactly before either nominee has had convention

00:04:48.760 before either nominee is technically fully the nominee right i i can't recall a time when that has

00:04:54.680 happened and so why then it seems awfully curious that the biden campaign team agreed to that

00:05:05.320 and the only rational explanation i can think of was the one that we're alluding to here well

00:05:11.080 especially because they were telegraphing sending signals that they might not debate trump at all because

00:05:15.880 he was at this point a felon or an accused felon i mean they were leaking this for months you know

00:05:21.960 it lowers us the sitting president shouldn't have to debate a guy charged with crimes they were they

00:05:26.520 were saying that and then in a day they're just like oh yeah of course we're gonna have this debate

00:05:31.160 you know really early like what is that yeah that is an indication i think i i think the most

00:05:38.760 rational explanation there are other explanations that one could draw i think but the most

00:05:42.520 logical explanation to me is that they knew that they couldn't hide his condition much longer the

00:05:49.560 media and the white house staff had done a really good job hiding him protecting him explaining all sorts

00:05:57.240 of errors uh wandering off the wrong end of the stage shaking hands with people who weren't there

00:06:03.000 saying weird stuff that was unintelligible um but they realized they couldn't keep that contained much

00:06:10.440 longer and so they said all right let's agree to a debate and if things don't go as um they should

00:06:18.760 inevitably knowing how things were going to go then we'll do what we've got to do my very first

00:06:25.240 reaction uh one of the first tweets that i sent i think it was driving my wife nuts because i was

00:06:31.160 live tweeting commentary during the debate one of my first tweets was it looks to me like they gave him

00:06:35.960 the wrong shot yeah because you know a lot of times when he comes in like to do the state of the union

00:06:41.160 he's um he's really really up sort of like he's just consumed like six red bulls at once yes and uh

00:06:48.600 uh and amped up and kind of angry he was really low energy from the very outset anyway that makes me wonder

00:06:56.680 all kinds of things right down to how they prepared him it does seem like a perilous moment to me because

00:07:04.120 we've now seen the kidnappers face i mean they've kind of showed us exactly how things actually work

00:07:09.720 voters play no role in it it's donors and democratic party leaders like obama and schumer and jeffries

00:07:16.040 and pelosi who make all the decisions and they're not even pretending anymore no not even pretending

00:07:22.440 anymore because look they have a very different experience in the political world than those of us who

00:07:28.520 are republicans because they've always got this media bubble shield around them right it's like

00:07:34.440 they've got this laser shield and that laser shield doesn't um leave them vulnerable to the same sorts

00:07:41.480 of forces that the rest of us have and so um they can get away with all sorts of things tucker can you

00:07:47.320 imagine the kind of absolute venom that would be released against republicans if we pulled a stunt like

00:07:54.680 that i i can't even begin to imagine how that would take us down but it's not even touching them

00:08:01.000 because the media choose not to report on it it's not even to mention totally right because they're

00:08:06.040 of course they're co-conspirators in it what did you think as a senator prominent senator for the

00:08:13.160 preceding three and a half years where you know you have to deal with the white house i mean of course

00:08:17.240 just our process requires you to deal with the white house did you know that biden was impaired

00:08:24.440 yes i could tell just based on things that i saw from a distance right uh we lost my mother-in-law a

00:08:32.120 few years ago to alzheimer's uh she had had the disease for um nearly a decade the doctors told us

00:08:39.480 soon after she was diagnosed what sorts of things to watch for and they said you'll know that it's

00:08:44.840 starting to get a lot worse when it starts to affect her posture and particularly her gait when she

00:08:50.920 starts shuffling kicking her feet forward yes rather than walking in a fluid smooth motion like

00:08:56.920 she always has you'll know that things are progressing quickly and that that is an outward

00:09:02.840 manifestation of what's going on inside of her mind i saw that same gait and posture in president

00:09:10.600 biden during his first term in office i don't remember exactly when it was in 2021 that i noticed

00:09:16.120 that but it was sometime during his first year now obviously there are other reasons why someone

00:09:21.880 should could have that happen for sure where it wouldn't necessarily be reflective of his cognitive

00:09:26.520 decline but then i saw plenty of reasons to believe there was cognitive decline happening as well yes um

00:09:34.440 they kept him shielded not only from the public and from non-friendly press but also from members of

00:09:41.800 congress now remember look i've been in the senate for 13 and a half years uh i've i've served well

00:09:48.440 we've had three different presidents uh uh you know obama when biden and his vice as his vice president

00:09:54.600 and then you know trump and now biden as president we have seen a lot more of other presidents uh trump

00:10:02.600 was a lot more gregarious he was a lot more willing and eager to engage with rank and file members in

00:10:07.960 congress than obama was but obama was still up on the hill a fair amount i mean there's one time in

00:10:13.800 particular i remember walking in the basement of the capitol i was turning a corner and bumped right

00:10:19.560 into president obama and we had a great little chat oh mike good to see you let's talk soon about

00:10:25.720 criminal justice reform it's great we'd run into him uh he would call from time to time just to check

00:10:31.560 in on things that we agreed on projects that we were working on together um trump of course was very

00:10:38.360 active uh members of congress could call him and get him on the phone very very quickly he was very

00:10:45.320 engaging with biden it hardly happens at all really like they shielded him from us um in some ways uh

00:10:53.880 uh my my my wife i think this was in maybe the first half or the first quarter of 2022 went over

00:11:02.920 to an event at the white house for senate spouses hosted by the first lady who was herself a you know

00:11:09.800 long-time member of the senate spouses organization and while they were there president biden just kind

00:11:17.320 of came wandering in i think they were in one of the ballrooms kind of came wandering in she said there

00:11:22.200 was no secret service with him no staff with him he just kind of walked in she she said instinctively

00:11:28.760 i just said oh hello mr president it's good to see you he asked her do you work in the east wing and

00:11:36.280 she said no no mr president i'm sharon sharon lee uh uh senator mike lee's wife you know he swore

00:11:43.240 me into the senate twice first in 2011 then in 2017 just before he left the vice presidency

00:11:50.040 and we had interacted with him a lot she thought that would take care of it he looked confused

00:11:54.280 moments later he said do you work in the west wing and he was not quite there moments later whoa moments

00:12:03.160 later someone came up uh to him one of the other senate spouses i think it was a democrat

00:12:10.040 and had a phone in her hand said hey my brother-in-law is a big fan it's his birthday

00:12:16.200 uh where you would say hi to him this is biden's signature move this is he's really really good at

00:12:23.640 this i remember when i first came to the senate and he would have dinner and other gatherings with

00:12:28.840 senators he he got pat toomey's dad on the phone when he found out he lived in scranton and he was

00:12:34.200 like yeah how the hell are you this is joe biden i understand you're from scranton by the end of it

00:12:40.120 pat toomey's dad and then vice president biden felt like they were old fraternity totally i knew biden and

00:12:45.480 i remember exactly very good at this oh excellent but this woman handed him the phone it rang

00:12:52.520 the woman's brother-in-law answered hello and then he got a confused look on his face

00:12:59.800 held out the phone hung it up and handed the phone back now that for joe biden that's

00:13:06.440 very significant very and this is sitting president of the united states yes yes and this was i believe

00:13:12.760 year and a half two perhaps a little more than two years ago so we would see little snippets

00:13:18.600 like this that's a big snippet and then we would see the the clips on tv which in some ways were worse

00:13:26.280 i'm still stunned that the media uh did everything that uh they could to minimize

00:13:34.680 uh the significance of this but still they were caught on camera they were out there and uh they

00:13:41.880 just sort of didn't comment on it as if we didn't say anything about it wasn't real that is an amazing

00:13:48.040 story so that was almost three years ago you said i mean do senators i mean there are only a hundred of

00:13:54.840 you you all know each other pretty well i've noticed um smallest club in washington which is a small

00:14:00.840 city do people do people talk about this yes yes um republicans talk about it a lot of course when we

00:14:08.120 talk about it with our democratic colleagues uh there will sometimes be nods and uh statements to

00:14:15.000 the effect that yeah well you know there are good days and bad days and then they try to move on as

00:14:20.520 soon as possible they don't like to talk about it i suppose i understand why they don't want to talk

00:14:25.080 about it but it's a thing that sometimes needs to to be talked about well especially since we've

00:14:29.960 got a couple wars going on that we're paying for i mean they're very high stakes that's right this

00:14:34.920 moment and and if you don't have someone at the top who is a sentient being who who understands what's

00:14:42.200 at stake and can make real-time calculations after making an initial decision to say i don't know

00:14:48.760 uh withdraw from afghanistan uh by september 11th of 2021 if in the days and weeks leading up to that

00:15:00.920 there are all sorts of sort of warning signs that that might not be the best approach by the way

00:15:07.720 why on earth would you tie the withdrawal to the anniversary of a terrorist attack against the united

00:15:14.600 states i i think that's really bizarre but there are all sorts of warning signs that he making that

00:15:22.360 deadline uh would itself cause problems now i had been supportive for years of the idea of withdrawal

00:15:28.600 so me too was president trump and when president trump was still in office i talked to him about this

00:15:33.800 a fair amount and it was national security advisor robert o'brien and what they would tell me is

00:15:38.440 look we've got a really good plan to do this we think we can pull this off by maybe

00:15:42.440 the first or second quarter of 2021 you know if he's uh re-elected there were some um there was

00:15:49.480 some prep work that had to be done in the lead up to those months uh and they weren't able to pull

00:15:55.240 it off in 2020 but their plan involved making sure that there was not a single weapon that could fire

00:16:01.720 uh left in the country uh president trump i think took it even further he didn't want a single nail or a

00:16:07.320 single screw left intact that any gun that couldn't be exported would have to have its barrel melted

00:16:13.640 down or exploded and rendered unusable he wasn't going to leave any weaponry behind that could be

00:16:20.680 usable by the enemy but with biden having made this arbitrary decision to withdraw by the anniversary

00:16:28.200 of the 9-11 attacks he didn't back off now why is that he's the commander in chief of course but

00:16:35.320 once he made that arbitrary decision if he's not in full possession of his faculties might that explain

00:16:40.920 why he had this dogged determination to proceed with that even though there are all kinds of warning

00:16:46.760 signs flashing i mean given what we saw at the debate and now adding to that the story you just told

00:16:52.520 about your wife's interactions with him at the white house where he couldn't even talk on the

00:16:56.600 phone i mean who's running the government that's the who has been running the government for the

00:17:01.400 last four years who's running it now he's still president apparently yeah why do the bad people

00:17:05.960 have so much power because the bad people have all the money where they get all the money you gave

00:17:10.040 it to them by using their businesses businesses that undermine this country and empower countries

00:17:17.000 that don't seek the best for your family trust us but there is an alternative it's called public

00:17:22.840 square public square is a network of over 75 000 independent businesses small businesses in this

00:17:29.480 country from which you can buy guns and ammo fresh food household goods thing you so you need to live

00:17:37.640 and when you buy them you can feel certain that you are not doing a bad deed you are doing a good deed

00:17:42.280 that will make this a better and more independent country and make your kids future brighter public

00:17:48.440 square.com we are honored we are proud to have them as a sponsor of this show tucker says it best

00:17:55.720 the credit card companies are ripping americans off and enough is enough this is senator roger

00:18:01.640 marshall of kansas our legislation the credit card competition act would help in the grip visa and

00:18:08.360 mastercard have on us every time you use your credit card they charge you a hidden fee called a swipe fee

00:18:15.000 and they've been raising it without even telling you this hurts consumers and every small business owner

00:18:21.320 in fact american families are paying eleven hundred dollars in hidden swipe fees each year the fees visa

00:18:28.200 and mastercard charge americans are the highest in the world double candidates and eight times more than

00:18:34.200 europe's that's why i've taken action but i need your help to help get this passed i'm asking you to

00:18:40.520 call your senator today and demand they pass the credit card competition act paid for by the merchant's

00:18:47.400 payments coalition not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee www.merchantspaymentscoalition.com

00:19:04.680 hillsdale college offers many great free online courses including a recent one on marxism socialism and

00:19:10.840 communism today marxism goes by different names to make itself seem less dangerous names like critical

00:19:17.080 race theory gender theory and decolonization no matter the names this online course shows it's the same

00:19:23.480 marxism that works to destroy private property and that will lead to famines show trials and gulags

00:19:30.200 start learning online for free at tucker for hillsdale dot com that's tucker f-o-r hillsdale dot com

00:19:44.120 look what we don't know is how common those were we see we saw so little of them see so little of him

00:19:50.600 it's hard to say way whether uh those were to what degree those were aberrations we all hoped and wanted to

00:19:57.880 believe that maybe just maybe yeah uh sometimes he's uh got on a lot on his mind or he's tired or

00:20:04.840 whatever and uh everybody has down moments maybe uh just maybe there are times when he's lucid uh and

00:20:11.320 those vastly outnumber those that aren't now that seems to be contradicted by everything we saw at

00:20:18.520 during that same time period uh from clips from the public but then again he was sometimes giving

00:20:24.520 speeches where he appeared to be sort of in control not necessarily as sharp as he once was but but

00:20:31.320 aware of his surroundings those are all scripted yes so we're so i mean you're the constitutional scholar so

00:20:36.520 this is a question not a statement but my understanding is that under our system the

00:20:41.160 people rule that's the fundamental point and they rule through their elected representatives and so

00:20:46.440 the people who are elected have all the power because the people have all the power i think

00:20:50.040 that's the way it works popular sovereignty yeah and so if unelected exec unelected officials in

00:20:57.400 say the executive branch are making all the meaningful decisions that's illegal that's

00:21:02.760 unconstitutional isn't it yeah especially considering the fact that the way the constitution is set up

00:21:09.080 the president of the united states is the executive branch yes the with the exception of the vice

00:21:14.840 president uh who has an independent status and set of responsibilities under the constitution but

00:21:23.880 they're fairly narrow um the president of the united states if we were operating in a manner truly

00:21:32.040 consistent with the structure text original understanding of the constitution the president of the united

00:21:37.720 states would be in charge of the entire executive branch with the ability essentially to

00:21:43.560 fire anyone for any reason or no reason at all uh and so because the power resides in him

00:21:51.480 because he's the power resides in him person and so yeah it's very constitutionally problematic to

00:21:57.720 have others who are not elected who are not him who are performing the executive role uh not him now

00:22:04.520 there's no way for any of us from the outside they kept him so shielded and so insulated no way for us to be

00:22:10.360 able to assess to what degree like how many hours out of an average day he was on his a game he was really lucid

00:22:21.640 there's no way for us to know that all we know is that in all these clips that we saw and then anecdotal

00:22:29.320 accounts from individual members talking to him i remember having one conversation with him on the

00:22:35.240 phone where he was calling to tell me about uh his decision to re-expand two national monuments in utah

00:22:43.320 uh national monuments that together are i think uh larger than two delawares um he i short a short time

00:22:56.040 into the phone conversation i could tell he was reading from a script and not only reading from a

00:23:01.400 script but his voice would start to trail off at the end of each sentence and so i he yes he was he was

00:23:08.760 scripted so when was that um i i believe this was sometime perhaps in the fall of 2021 so right after

00:23:18.840 he elected but i'm not sure this one could have been in 2022 that's i mean i i knew because his

00:23:25.800 sister val was telling other people that he had some kind of neurological impairment during the campaign

00:23:31.800 during the 2020 campaign so i but what's interesting and infuriating and scary is that someone had to

00:23:37.720 write that script for him so anyone who's writing a script for a boss to perform a phone conversation

00:23:43.800 is obviously fully aware that that guy is impaired like did you have scripts for phone conversations

00:23:49.000 well occasionally um a u.s senator will have a list of calls to make yeah and the senator staff might say

00:23:56.400 here's what you ought to cover here totally this this and this but the idea that but i mean but the idea

00:24:02.560 there is to to read that and then say okay that's the stuff i'm going to say and have a colloquy but

00:24:07.760 you don't actually read from a script when you're having a phone conversation with a colleague or a

00:24:13.040 counterpart in the house or something like that because people can tell there are all sorts of

00:24:18.000 telltale signs that you're reading the way we pronounce certain words the word two in the middle of a

00:24:24.000 sentence uh spoken uh colloquial anguish it's going to be more of a two than it is a a two you know

00:24:32.640 there are things like that that can um signal i am reading from a script and if you do that with a

00:24:38.160 colleague or somebody that you have to interact with a lot it's not going to be a trust building

00:24:43.600 exercise it's totally nuts i mean but where does that leave us as citizens with you as a senator

00:24:49.760 i mean do we have a right to know what the hell is going on with our government who's running it

00:24:54.520 what's going on with biden who knew for how long this is a massive charade it's obvious now the

00:25:00.380 whole thing is fake i mean that's the conclusion that i'm reaching don't we have a right to know

00:25:05.280 the details of course of course we do because we should be concerned because this potentially

00:25:09.880 affects our national security this certainly affects all kinds of policy decisions policy decisions

00:25:16.400 and you know one of the problems of course is that we've made the federal government as a whole

00:25:21.340 more powerful than it was ever designed or intended to be yeah remember we've got three lawmaking

00:25:28.440 functions or three functions of government rather you've got the lawmaking function performed by

00:25:33.360 congress yes the most dangerous power it was therefore given to the most dangerous branch under

00:25:38.240 circumstances where uh that branch the legislative branch congress where i work uh you can fire every

00:25:45.600 member of the house every two years and one third of all the senators every two years because we've

00:25:49.500 got the most dangerous power then you've got the executive branch headed by the president uh whose job it is

00:25:56.200 to enforce the laws and then you've got the judicial branch headed by the spring court whose job it is to

00:26:01.720 interpret the laws and resolve individual disputes that arise about what the law put in place either by

00:26:08.240 the congress or uh through the constitution means so legislative power is by far the most

00:26:14.640 dangerous but what's happened over the last 80 years or so 85 years basically since the new deal era

00:26:22.840 washington dc got immensely more powerful starting on april 12th 1937 that's the day supreme court decided a case

00:26:30.860 called nlrb versus jones and laughlin steel company i regard that as the switch in time that saved nine

00:26:37.300 remember this is fdr's court i wrote a book about this a couple years ago called saving nine fdr's court

00:26:43.240 packing plan was moving forward yes and the justices panicked is two years to the date after they had

00:26:49.840 moved into their new building uh when they issued this decision in which associate justice owen roberts

00:26:55.980 joined the court's liberals and came up with a new definition of the commerce clause commerce

00:27:01.680 clause gave congress the power to regulate interstate commercial transactions and channels

00:27:06.260 and interstate uh uh channels and instrumentalities of interstate commerce um all of a sudden on april 12th

00:27:14.040 1937 the supreme court rewrote that so that the commerce clause also gave congress the power to regulate

00:27:19.440 anything and everything that when measured in the aggregate if it's economic in nature has a substantial

00:27:25.880 effect on interstate commerce now tucker what that means is congress can regulate anything at once so

00:27:30.280 all of a sudden congress went from a limited narrow purpose legislative body to an open-ended one

00:27:37.840 rendering the 10th amendment almost a nullity because if any of the 18 articles of article 1 section 1

00:27:44.380 i'm sorry article 1 section 8 if any of those clauses are open-ended and limitless the 10th amendment

00:27:51.140 means nothing so congress found itself newly possessed of the power to regulate labor manufacturing

00:27:57.760 agriculture mining health safety and welfare not just in the district of columbia or on federal land

00:28:05.140 with federal funds but anywhere everywhere as long as they said the magic words and connected it somehow

00:28:12.140 to an impact on interstate commerce newly possessed with this power congress realized oh my gosh we're

00:28:18.500 going to be a lot more accountable we're going to have to do a lot more work so to a degree they

00:28:24.520 stopped passing laws and started passing a lot of platitudes we shall have good law in area x and we

00:28:31.600 hereby delegate to agency or department y the power to make and interpret and enforce laws carrying the

00:28:39.600 force of full force of the federal government to enforce them uh uh in area x and from that moment

00:28:47.320 forward we delegated all this lawmaking power over to unelected unaccountable agencies this made the

00:28:53.700 presidency and the executive branch vastly more powerful than it was ever intended to be so what

00:28:59.460 we've seen here tucker is that the aggregation the accumulation of power in the hands of the few

00:29:04.100 it's exactly why we have a constitution and exactly what our constitution has a belt and a set of

00:29:10.820 suspenders and another belt and another set of suspenders in order to avoid so power has been taken

00:29:16.300 away from the american people in two steps first from the people to washington dc where we've

00:29:21.560 federalized previously non-federal power then within washington dc we've taken the lawmaking power

00:29:27.060 the most dangerous power of government away from the people's elected lawmakers over to unelected

00:29:33.680 unaccountable bureaucrats ostensibly serving under the leadership of the incumbent president all of whom

00:29:40.880 or many of whom have civil service protections that makes it impossible to fire them so that's

00:29:45.860 permanent washington it's not the elected officials permanent washington permanent washington and it's

00:29:50.320 literally permanent and by the way at a time when you know it's getting pretty hard to find a job in

00:29:55.280 the united states the federal government is on a hiring spree like they're expanding as everyone else

00:30:00.480 is suffering i mean it's so but here's what and i say say this with respect but i've never understood

00:30:06.160 this in the 35 years i spent in washington i saw congress get less powerful every cycle and the

00:30:12.780 executive get more powerful under republicans and democrats and you sort of wonder like where's the

00:30:17.780 self-respect of congress yes so why don't they do something about that james madison didn't foresee this

00:30:24.540 particular feature james madison predicted in federalist 51 and uh i believe to some degree in

00:30:32.700 federalist 10 and and 15 that power would be made to counteract power that the natural incentives

00:30:39.940 of the people serving in each branch would cause them to defend their own prerogates exactly

00:30:46.180 what i what i don't think he foresaw was this um uh this process by which federal authority

00:30:54.540 would be suddenly become open-ended remember state legislatures are bound only by their state

00:31:03.220 constitution in terms of what they can do and broadly speaking they are what we call general

00:31:07.960 purpose legislative bodies they can legislate on pretty much anything as long as it's not

00:31:12.040 prohibited by their state constitution or the u.s constitution they can just legislate because

00:31:17.860 they feel the need to we can't at least we're not supposed to we're supposed to be dealing with

00:31:23.380 interstate and foreign trade or commerce uh immigration laws bankruptcy laws uniform system of weights and

00:31:30.900 measures uh declaring war granting letters of mark and reprisal uh laws governing the disposition and

00:31:38.280 use of federal land uh the army the navy how we coordinate national guards or militias as they're

00:31:45.140 described in article one section eight and so forth but there is no general purpose legislative power

00:31:51.400 there is nothing in there that says congress shall have the power to enact laws to make life better

00:31:57.640 for the american people or enact such laws as they deem appropriate uh for national legislation nothing of

00:32:04.100 the sort so we've drifted so far from that and once we drifted from that which i believe occurred

00:32:09.100 sort of by the extortive threat of the court packing plan on april 12th 1937

00:32:15.480 once we ceased to be a power a legislative body of of limited uh enumerated powers

00:32:24.880 the die was cast because congress knew we can't keep up with all that anyway and even if we tried

00:32:31.580 to remember tucker when you whenever you make a new law a national law especially you're going to make

00:32:37.120 one group of people happy you're gonna make a whole lot of other people very unhappy right and so this

00:32:43.940 was an easier way toward the interest of a drive for perpetual or long-term incumbency

00:32:50.380 to make it easier so imagine for example you're one of the people who voted for the original

00:32:57.500 iterations of the clean air act which to put it in oversimplified terms we shall have clean air

00:33:03.940 what idiot's going to vote against that uh and we hereby delegate to the epa the power to

00:33:10.140 make and interpret and then enforce laws carrying the force of generally applicable federal law

00:33:16.360 regulations carrying the force of federal law but decide what clean air is what pollution is

00:33:22.080 how much you can pollute and how much you'd be fine find if you do um years go by and the same

00:33:29.700 people who voted for that see the epa come out with some crazy ruling uh to cite one example that

00:33:35.360 we've seen at times in my state they'll identify this region or that region of the state and say

00:33:40.160 all right here are your ozone limits in that area and you're going to have a really hard time getting

00:33:46.200 permitting of any sort if you're out of compliance with ozone but they'll set the ozone level

00:33:51.440 uh sort of below or at the rate where mother nature herself has set them so that it's impossible

00:33:59.220 to comply now a congress wouldn't do that and if it did do that it would be problems people would be

00:34:04.820 held accountable for that but when epa does it members of congress have this way of saying ah

00:34:09.100 to their constituents who come and say this is shutting down my business we can't operate this

00:34:13.760 way you got to fix it they'll say yeah you know what i'm going to do i'm going to write them a strongly

00:34:18.620 worded letter i'm going to tell them that i mean it hey guys knock this off it's like the

00:34:24.540 robin williams used to just describe the the unarmed english bobby who being unarmed upon seeing the

00:34:32.240 commission of a crime would yell on this very british accent stop or i'll yell stop again

00:34:37.000 social media are great they're important they're the main way we communicate with each other they're

00:34:43.380 where politics happen in this country but one of the problems with social media is that the rules

00:34:47.900 change the people in charge don't want you to say something they don't tell you that and the next

00:34:52.720 thing you know you're without a platform well now you have an option parlor it's back the original

00:34:59.780 free speech app taken off the internet by the censors has come back in full force parlor was

00:35:07.120 the first big app to be pulled off because it was the first big app to make free speech a top priority

00:35:13.960 now other platforms may be relaxing their policies and they change a lot but parlor will not change

00:35:21.100 its distinct approach is here to stay by paving the way for other apps protect users free speech

00:35:26.840 parlor has set the standard in the industry it is now launched on a hyperscale private cloud called parlor

00:35:34.180 cloud and that means your data are secure your words cannot be controlled by third-party companies

00:35:40.060 it's uncancellable again parlor has been canceled they don't plan to be canceled again and they've taken

00:35:46.520 extensive and very expensive steps to make sure it's not going to happen parlor is not at the mercy of

00:35:52.840 other companies that don't believe in free speech and here's the best part it's ad free you are not

00:35:58.360 the product on parlor parlor is committed to providing a space where you can share and engage

00:36:03.000 without interference of ads or invasive targeting so it's more than just a platform it is effectively

00:36:09.000 a movement and its goal is to keep the free flow of information open globally where everybody can talk

00:36:15.400 without fear of suppression so it's upholding the values this country was founded on free expression open

00:36:21.640 dialogue also innovation by the way we're on parlor at tucker carlson and you can go there and find us

00:36:28.920 and stay informed about what's happening in the world so join a place that embraces your right to

00:36:35.560 say what you actually think and that fosters connections between people without free speech

00:36:40.840 you can't connect with other people we're all just lying to each other but parlor offers you that

00:36:46.040 a seamless social media experience tailored to your needs you can get parlor from the app store google play

00:36:50.760 or visit parlor.com at parlor you are valued you can say what you think and you're awarded for doing so

00:37:12.120 but i get maybe what madison and the other framers never foresaw when they set up a system that had

00:37:18.440 inherent power struggles like that's the point right but i don't think they foresaw that there

00:37:23.240 are people who actually don't want power because it comes with too much responsibility accountability

00:37:27.960 it's scary to them and they'd rather sort of pass the buck pass the power to somebody else i mean

00:37:33.320 that's what it looks like to me yes yeah it uh and i think that is an accurate description of it and i

00:37:39.160 think tucker there is it's easy for that to happen once you leave the domain of limited

00:37:48.520 legislative jurisdiction and you become an open-ended lawmaking body where the sky's the limit

00:37:55.880 and where you've got a big country uh the world's biggest economy the world's most powerful military

00:38:01.800 there's so many things to deal with it's easy it can even feel like the logical thing to do

00:38:08.040 to delegate out this decision-making process or at least a lot of it but you cut out voters you cut

00:38:14.120 out the citizens when you do that exactly that's the whole point remember the progressive dream

00:38:20.040 for us who for uh those of us who love liberty uh this is a nightmare but the the dream of the

00:38:27.400 progressives is government of by and for the experts uh masterminds those who could come in and

00:38:36.440 say oh we're the very scientific elite experts and we know exactly how the people need to be

00:38:41.880 governed the totally useless class who actually could not get jobs in any other place than ngos and

00:38:50.040 federal agencies but tucker these are experts and many of them have master's degrees and phds and

00:38:55.000 highly specialized in their field and they really know their stuff you fix my air conditioner no

00:39:00.040 you can't not not worth a darn no that's exactly right so um how long i mean just can i didn't even

00:39:06.840 realize you trace the specs in 1937 to the new deal i didn't even know that um but it makes sense how

00:39:12.760 long before the united states senate becomes the roman senate and becomes just a useless appendage

00:39:19.000 and then disappears look we're on that path the more we strengthen the executive branch the more that

00:39:24.840 power we take that away power away from the american people and from their elected lawmakers the

00:39:30.200 closer we get to that i think we're on almost an uh uh parabolic curve in that direction we're getting

00:39:38.440 closer and closer to it i think there's still time to turn it around but we have to do it let me give

00:39:44.600 you some examples of why you know in my office in washington you should come by sometime i'll show you

00:39:50.840 my my monument to uh the constitutional problems we face i keep two stacks of documents in my office

00:39:58.680 in the russell building in washington one stack of documents is a few inches tall and it's a few

00:40:05.080 hundred to a few thousand pages long and consists of the laws passed by congress in the last year

00:40:10.200 some would argue that's a few hundred or a few thousand pages too many but uh regardless those are

00:40:15.480 the laws passed by congress last year then there's the other stack the other stack which is printed

00:40:20.840 on you know double-sided paper very thin paper very small print is the federal register for for those

00:40:28.520 people who are unburdened by uh uh knowledge of what the federal register is i wish i didn't uh i

00:40:36.280 wish i weren't burdened by it the federal register is the annual cumulative index of federal regulations

00:40:43.080 as they're announced first for notice and comment and then once they're finalized

00:40:47.160 they go out you know peasants prepare to be regulated give us your thoughts on this so as

00:40:51.160 to replicate some sort of feeling of a democratic input process they don't really care at the end of

00:40:55.320 the day uh uh what the public comments and response and then they finalize it those are a hundred

00:41:03.400 thousand pages more or less that get issued every year hundred thousand pages of federal regulations

00:41:10.120 every year well just regulations they sound softer than laws some cases maybe they are but those

00:41:16.760 hundred thousand pages are replete with a lot of things that are just law they they have all the

00:41:25.640 incidents of law other than that they haven't been enacted by congress but they're enforced with

00:41:30.760 firearms yes they're enforced in almost every industry you can think of almost every aspect of human

00:41:37.400 existence has a federal agency sometimes more uh regulating that area interesting story a few years ago

00:41:48.280 a few of us on the judiciary committee on which i said submitted a request to the congressional research

00:41:54.520 service to help us answer a question the question was essentially tell us how many federal crimes are on

00:42:00.520 the books how many provisions of federal law create a crime we wanted to know that the more or less

00:42:07.080 the universe of federal crimes that exist the answer took a while when it came back it was stunning it

00:42:14.280 said the answer is unknown and unknowable but it's at least 300 000 crimes crimes and a lot of that had

00:42:23.640 to do with the fact that this byzantine labyrinth of federal regulations about a hundred thousand pages

00:42:29.640 a year uh or which initially go into this massive document about a hundred thousand pages per year

00:42:35.560 called the federal register ultimately they'll be codified into a larger uh uh catalog known as the

00:42:42.520 code of federal regulations there are so many criminal provisions of those regulations that it

00:42:49.720 makes it very difficult to count but it's at least 300 000 and these are devised by

00:42:55.240 federal employees who are not judges correct and they're not elected lawmakers correct so i mean

00:43:02.840 again you're the constitutional scholar but i i don't see where they have the authority to do that

00:43:07.160 but tucker they're experts how could you not trust experts well leaving aside the fact that

00:43:11.320 unwashed masses in congress they're like some of the lead i mean i've spent a lot of time around them

00:43:15.320 my dad ran a federal agency i'm certainly very familiar with them but even if they were impressive

00:43:21.000 which they're not that still seems like an end run around democracy is yeah and that's the whole

00:43:26.600 point that's the whole point is that you don't trust governance to the peasants you've got to trust

00:43:33.160 the government governance to the experts that is the progressive dream so ultimately uh while progressives

00:43:40.280 tout themselves as being incredibly democratic they're actually quite the opposite yes they're the most

00:43:47.160 anti-democratic species you'll find in american well they just they just prosecuted a coup against

00:43:54.280 a sitting supposedly elected president who got like several billion votes they've told us for the past

00:43:59.160 four years and they just took him out because they didn't like his his polling right and and they'll be

00:44:04.200 the first ones to defend this now i there there is a fix to this and it's one that i've been pushing

00:44:09.560 the entire time i've been in the senate i've now made it my single most uh uh top priority

00:44:15.400 the closest thing there is to a silver bullet fix to this problem of lawmaking by executive branch

00:44:22.760 agency is a proposal known as the reigns act it's r-e-i-n-s it's an acronym that stands for

00:44:29.800 regulations from the executive in need of scrutiny and what it says it would require us to follow

00:44:36.360 essentially that the existing requirements of article one section seven remember article one section one

00:44:43.560 and very first operative provision of the constitution says that all legislative powers

00:44:47.800 here and granted shall be vested in congress article one section seven makes abundantly clear that there

00:44:53.960 is only one way to make a federal law you have to have bicameral passage of the same bill text

00:45:01.240 house and senate most of the time it doesn't uh matter in which order uh unless it's a

00:45:07.400 a revenue bill than it has to start in the house but other than that it doesn't matter in which order

00:45:13.320 the house and the senate have to pass the same text and then you present it to the president for

00:45:16.840 signature veto or acquiescence that's the only formula by which you can make a federal law we've

00:45:22.840 been disregarding that for a long time so what the reigns act says is that if there is a federal

00:45:27.160 regulation on the one hand that uh operates internally doesn't have it's not a major rule meaning it

00:45:32.920 doesn't impose affirmative legal obligations on the part of the american public and isn't

00:45:37.560 economically significant maybe it determines what time the lights go on and off in the department of

00:45:42.200 commerce uh the reigns act wouldn't worry about that but for the outward facing affirmative legal

00:45:47.240 obligations economically significant or otherwise qualifying as what we call a major rule

00:45:52.440 those rules those regulations wouldn't be self-executing they couldn't take effect automatically they

00:45:57.880 couldn't take effect in fact unless or until congress affirmatively enacted that regulation into law

00:46:05.640 and so that that way we you know for those who are concerned about me making sure that we preserve the

00:46:11.320 expertise that we've got in these federal agencies we're not discarding that we're actually giving them

00:46:16.680 probably more of an advantage than they should have even under the reigns act uh by virtue of the fact

00:46:21.960 that these things would be considered uh on a fast track basis but the american people would be in

00:46:27.880 charge because they couldn't become law unless both houses of congress enacted it into law i've been trying

00:46:34.200 to get this passed for a very long time when when trump took office in 2017 i i i put it into overdrive and

00:46:42.120 went to a bunch of my democratic colleagues member by member saying i know you must be concerned about

00:46:47.560 this presidency because it's all they talked about and if you are concerned about it you really ought

00:46:52.440 to look into the reigns act because look at all the control that this president has over regulations

00:46:57.880 this is something that should not be partisan it shouldn't be just a republican thing even though

00:47:02.600 almost everybody who supports the reigns act happens to be a republican to a person they all said

00:47:08.680 essentially the same thing mike we need the expertise of those agencies to which i'd say we'd still have it

00:47:14.600 we still have it it's just we would be the ultimate has anyone ever met a federal employee

00:47:19.560 and there's some again i'm the son of one but there are some good federal employees but in general

00:47:24.920 you know people who can't be fired don't perform as you'd hope i mean that imagine that

00:47:29.960 it's pretty mediocre so what okay so biden's now or biden biden takes and he exists the people

00:47:35.960 who are controlling biden are making noises about reforming the supreme court what is that

00:47:41.160 that is a bald-faced attempt for him to end run what he himself said in the early 1980s as a u.s

00:47:47.560 senator it was i believe 1982 or 1983 when he described it was on the judiciary committee yes

00:47:53.080 on the judiciary committee i think he was chairman at the time by then um he said uh it was a boneheaded

00:47:58.920 idea when fdr proposed packing the court he appears to be going back on that now now he's he's kind of

00:48:06.280 um soft peddled his way into court packing uh little by little he's getting there he keeps

00:48:12.840 talking about supreme court reform he's been increasingly flirtatious with the idea of court

00:48:17.000 packing uh he's trying to impose this new set of ethical standards from one branch to another what

00:48:23.720 is can you just define court packing yeah court packing consists of something that is technically

00:48:30.680 allowed by the constitution because the constitution doesn't prescribe the size of the supreme court

00:48:36.680 that is set by statute uh but for um you know over 150 years we have had nine justices on the court

00:48:47.960 there have been times when that number has been higher there have been times when the number

00:48:54.920 has been lower but we've had more than a century and a half where it's been consistently

00:48:59.560 at nine justices my view and the view of of most people including joe biden until a few years ago

00:49:07.160 including uh uh the late uh associate justice ruth bader ginsburg uh just uh not too long before she

00:49:15.800 died acknowledged that it's a bad idea to change that number even though constitutionally we're allowed

00:49:21.880 to do it by statute because what you'd end up with tucker is you you'd end up politicizing the court

00:49:28.280 whatever administration that decides to do this would only do it most likely with a congress

00:49:36.440 and a senate willing to put in and a president willing to put in justices of that party's political

00:49:45.240 ideology such that people would stop to stop seeing uh the court as an adjudicative body and much more as a

00:49:55.400 political one especially since once we start this it'll set off a nuclear chain reaction now i've

00:50:00.920 always been opposed to court packing i think all republicans have all democrats have until very

00:50:05.320 recently but if democrats take this step let's let's imagine yeah knock on wood let's hope this

00:50:11.400 doesn't happen i don't think it'll happen but if somehow in this year's election uh democrats were to win

00:50:18.440 the white house keep the majority in the senate and perhaps even expand their majority and and win

00:50:25.240 back the house i have no doubt but that they would pack the court meaning expand the court they would

00:50:32.520 increase it probably by four justices taking it from nine to 13. now just imagine the next time when

00:50:40.680 political forces are such that republicans take it back you think republicans could possibly decide

00:50:49.640 now that's fine we're not going to do this there would be immense political pressure on us at that

00:50:53.400 point republican lawmakers to add an additional four five six or seven and the the pendulum would swing

00:51:00.600 back and forth and as it swung each time it swung you would see additional appointments made to the

00:51:05.960 supreme court and before long it would start to look like the intergalactic senate on the star wars

00:51:11.080 movie yeah or the brazilian supreme court you know um but can i ask i mean if kamala harris gets elected

00:51:19.080 president and the senate in the house fall to democrats senate majorities expanded i mean they're never

00:51:26.600 they're never going to be another republican government after that i mean that's a one-party

00:51:29.880 state at that point they're not going to go through this again are they well uh that that is of grave

00:51:35.480 concern because if that were to happen there are some changes to the law that i fear they would

00:51:41.000 put through um these voting rights bills that they keep talking about wanting to pass uh are among them

00:51:49.400 so they pass these voting rights laws we already have voting rights don't we we do but uh they keep

00:51:55.800 touting them you know under the banner banner of uh civil rights and making uh all americans

00:52:01.000 civil rights they want to vote they want to subject any state law decisions regarding

00:52:08.200 legislative redistricting within the state to pre-clearance by political appointees within what

00:52:15.320 they envision as a democratic presidential administration so they would have to come to the federal

00:52:22.360 political um political appointees and say mother may i uh adopt this um legislative redistricting plan

00:52:33.560 or this or that set of reforms to the way we conduct our elections and those would have to be

00:52:40.120 pre-approved they also want to uh essentially divest the power to draw legislative uh uh boundaries uh from the

00:52:50.120 the state legislatures and give them to non-partisan independent commissions thus further taking away

00:52:57.240 the power from elected lawmakers and putting it in the hands of unelected unaccountable experts

00:53:03.480 these sorts of things coupled with what i fear they would also do uh they would enact another law uh

00:53:10.920 bringing the district of columbia into this family of states making dc a state and and perhaps

00:53:17.720 puerto rico as a state if they conclude that puerto rico and dc would be reliable uh i mean as long as

00:53:23.080 we're picking up democratic seats weekly dysfunctional territories incapable of governing themselves why

00:53:27.800 not haiti too why not well haiti isn't currently um you know a a u.s territory so that would be the

00:53:34.920 biggest distinction a lot of your life in the district of columbia a lot of good things to say

00:53:38.840 about it i spent my whole life there but there there's no self-government they're not capable of

00:53:44.280 self-government no look at the city i mean that's crazy and more to the point tucker it's it's really

00:53:50.520 small it's geographically compact but perhaps of most importance the founding fathers set aside uh

00:54:00.680 this idea of an independent district what became the district of columbia for the purpose of wanting

00:54:05.800 an independent uh neutral place that could serve as the seat of our national government and so they they

00:54:13.480 had land donated um roughly half and half uh from maryland and virginia i think the maryland side was

00:54:20.040 a little bigger uh decades later maybe a century or so uh later sometime in the late 1800s i believe

00:54:28.760 they decided that the virginia portion of it wasn't necessary for the seat of national government so that

00:54:33.560 was given back to the state of virginia that's now arlington right um and uh and then what remains of

00:54:41.640 it was the maryland contribution so the the remedy here if they want to be a state if they want to have

00:54:47.080 representation voting representation in the house and two senators in the senate the way to do that is

00:54:54.280 to give the maryland portion of dc or at least that portion of it uh that's not deemed necessary to

00:55:01.080 the independent functioning of the national seat of government back to maryland you this was part of

00:55:08.200 a state from the beginning and it should not be its own independent state that's just a pure power

00:55:12.120 grab it's a power grab because they want to pick up four of what they would regard as consistently

00:55:17.800 reliably uh democratic senators so if they adopt those reforms and then these voting rights reforms

00:55:26.120 we could see the democrats finally achieving their goal i've never heard them articulate it like this

00:55:31.400 but i think they look at other countries and they crave what other countries have been able to do

00:55:36.280 take for example our southern neighbor mexico for close to a century mexico was governed

00:55:43.240 lock stock and barrel by one political the party el partido revolucionario institucional exactly

00:55:53.160 it's interesting when you think about it by the way how can a party be at once revolutionary

00:55:58.360 and institutional but you know progressives it's what they do i've noticed that most of us well actually

00:56:04.440 all of us go through our daily lives using all sorts of quote free technology without paying

00:56:09.960 attention to why it's quote free who's paying for this and how think about it for a minute think

00:56:16.040 about your free email account the free messenger system used to chat with your friends the free other

00:56:22.280 weather app or game app you open up and never think about it's all free but is it no it's not free

00:56:30.760 these companies aren't developing expensive products and just giving them to you because they

00:56:35.080 love you they're doing it because their programs take all your information they hoover up your data

00:56:41.000 private personal data and sell it to data brokers and the government and all of those people who are

00:56:48.440 not your friends are very interested in manipulating you and your personal political and financial decisions

00:56:54.600 it's scary as hell and it's happening out in the open without anybody saying anything about it

00:57:00.280 this is a huge problem and we've been talking about this problem to our friend eric prince for years

00:57:05.240 someone needs to fix this and he and his partners have and now we're partners with them and their

00:57:10.280 company is called unplugged it's not a software company it's a hardware company they actually make a

00:57:16.280 phone the phone is called unplugged and it's more than that the purpose of the phone is to protect you

00:57:23.640 from having your life stolen your data stolen it's designed from a privacy first perspective

00:57:32.600 it's got an operating system that they made it's called messenger and other apps that help you take

00:57:36.360 charge of your personal data and prevent it from getting passed around to data brokers and government

00:57:41.720 agencies that will use it to manipulate you unplug skin is to its customers they will promise you and

00:57:47.800 they mean it that your data are not being sold or monetized or shared with anyone from basics like

00:57:54.120 its custom libertas operating system which they wrote which is designed from the very first day to

00:57:59.160 keep your personal data on your device it also has believe it or not a true on off switch that shuts off the

00:58:06.280 power it actually disconnects your battery and ensures that your microphone and your camera are turned off

00:58:12.280 completely when you want them to be so they're not spying on you and say your bedroom which your

00:58:17.080 iphone is that's a fact so it is a great way one of the few ways to actually protect yourself from big

00:58:23.800 tech and big government to reclaim your personal privacy without privacy there is no freedom the

00:58:30.040 unplugged phone you can get a 25 discount when you use the code tucker at the checkout so go to unplugged

00:58:35.960 dot com slash tucker to get yours today highly recommended

00:58:55.000 that party governed mexico with an iron fist for the better part of a century and i suspect that

00:59:02.920 something like that is what they would like to do and something like that is what they would be

00:59:07.400 able to achieve if they swept the house and the senate and the white house this year i think they've

00:59:13.080 got ambitions to go in that direction that's why there's no there's no question i mean they're

00:59:16.440 totalitarian i mean they steve bannon is in jail right now a bunch of people i know have gone to

00:59:21.160 prison you know while fentanyl dealers remain and tens of millions of illegals are i mean obviously

00:59:27.640 that's their goal is totalitarian rule but i wonder if it's possible this cycle like what do you think

00:59:32.600 could kamala harris win she could win there's no question about it and republicans would make a

00:59:40.040 huge mistake by discounting her uh if by discounting her they're assuming we don't have to work that

00:59:48.040 hard to defeat her a few things we know about kamala harris well she's the i mean technically the head

00:59:53.960 of the body you serve in yes she's the president of the senate um kamala harris despite her gaffes that

01:00:00.520 we've seen when she's operating on script and she's got good when she's got good staff preparing

01:00:06.040 her material and she sticks to that material she's actually pretty good now i disagree with almost

01:00:11.880 everything she says of course but when she stays on script she can be a compelling speech speaker far

01:00:18.520 more compelling than president biden uh i mean biden of yesteryear uh did a better job than he's done in

01:00:26.360 the last few years but uh she's a much more compelling speaker uh than others and i think

01:00:31.240 she's going to be very carefully scripted over the next few months so yeah i think we should be very

01:00:36.280 worried about it we've already seen the media sponsored apotheosis of kamala harris i always think

01:00:46.760 about this the great um uh the great mural um i guess it's a fresco technically uh at the top of the

01:00:58.600 capital rotunda the inside of the dome you've got this um beautiful painting by constantino constantino

01:01:05.400 bromidi an italian born american immigrant um and it's called the apotheosis of george washington

01:01:12.760 it shows george washington uh ascending into heaven following his death and he's surrounded

01:01:18.360 by these 13 angels each representing one of the original colonies and he's surrounded and then there

01:01:24.600 are two other angels right next to him one of which represents liberty and the other one represents the

01:01:30.120 majesty of government or something like that and it's he's being glorified and almost deified

01:01:36.040 there is a very familiar ring uh the connection between that painting and what the media is trying

01:01:46.520 to portray of kamala harris in the last few days you've seen the complete erasure of any reference to

01:01:53.640 kamala harris being the border czar which didn't go well there's been an effort a sustained and fairly

01:01:59.880 successful effort by the media to erase the fact that she was widely regarded as one of the most if not

01:02:05.880 the very most uh progressive liberal uh uh member of the united states senate uh there's been this uh

01:02:15.560 rebirth of kamala harris as this uh great warrior who is um ready willing and able at a moment's notice to take

01:02:25.800 the reins as america's chief executive and they're scrubbing things she has said in the past crazy statements

01:02:33.160 she's made from defunding the police uh to aggressive radical climate change policies uh green new deal

01:02:41.320 stuff uh uh and that's just the tip of the iceberg they're papering over all that so yes kamala harris

01:02:48.360 is a threat because she's got this media industrial complex that's completely behind her how much since

01:02:56.040 she is the president of the senate and you've been a senator for 13 and a half years how much contact

01:03:00.680 well of course she served in the senate with her yes um what's she like she's she's a lot like

01:03:08.120 how she seems on tv she's got a funny playful side to her um she's when she is on script she can be very

01:03:19.000 um um emotionally compelling in her speech but she is very very liberal and especially when she went off

01:03:27.240 script in the senate judiciary committee you could tell that uh you you could tell and oftentimes you

01:03:33.560 served on the committee oh yeah yeah served on the committee with her we we worked together in the

01:03:38.440 senate for four years so she was elected in 2016 and she remained in in the senate until she became vice

01:03:45.000 president so um so what was she like in committee oh she was feisty definitely one of the most far left

01:03:52.680 members of the committee uh she did not hesitate to take what i thought were very aggressive attacks

01:04:02.520 against trump era remember the the entire time that she and i were in the senate at the same time the

01:04:10.440 entire time she was in the senate corresponded uh precisely with donald trump's time as president

01:04:16.600 um she was uh one who never hesitated to take really aggressive and sometimes cheap pot shots

01:04:26.280 at president trump's judicial nominees and at times badly mischaracterize them donald trump

01:04:33.800 his positions and his personnel did you get a sense that she regarded the constitution as

01:04:40.120 sacred or even important well she's certainly one who would

01:04:47.160 pay lip service to the constitution to channel the inner isaiah to draw near to the constitution

01:04:52.920 with her lips while her heart may have been far from it because she didn't seem to acknowledge

01:04:58.360 key core limitations uh on the constitution i've never saw from her an acceptance or an

01:05:05.880 understanding of the the twin structural protections of the constitution the vertical protection that we call

01:05:11.800 federalism leaving most of the power of the states and localities or the horizontal

01:05:16.120 protection uh that we call uh separation of powers never saw that from her and i saw a hyper obsessiveness

01:05:25.560 on focusing on certain rights that were invented out of whole cloth by the she's an abortion fanatic

01:05:32.680 and i think even if you think of yourself as pro-choice which i definitely don't but you know

01:05:37.320 a lot of good people do think of themselves as pro-choice it's hard to understand the fanaticism

01:05:42.680 that sort of crazed wild-eyed enthusiasm for abortion from her what do you think that is yeah

01:05:49.160 well part of this i i suspect she may be a product of her training her education her upbringing and her

01:05:57.720 political coming of age um american law schools uh with very few exceptions tend to indoctrinate

01:06:05.160 for whatever reason you know roe versus wade uh into things it's like more fundamental than magna

01:06:11.320 carta uh to many it's more fundamental than the bill of rights i mean these people who don't think

01:06:15.720 you have the right to say what you think travel where you want to travel associate with who you

01:06:19.560 want to associate with the core human rights bestowed by god they do not acknowledge defend yourself but

01:06:24.680 you do have a right to kill your child like what is what is that yeah it's a weird thing i've never

01:06:30.760 seen anything like it and whenever you have a chance with uh with a progressive colleague if you ask

01:06:37.880 them um what exactly is it in the constitution that does that then they'll then they have to go

01:06:45.640 through but why are they so obsessive it's like look if you make the case you know 13 year old girl

01:06:50.120 raped you know wants to have an abortion even people opposed to abortion like i kind of get why you feel

01:06:55.400 that way you know right but the idea that abortion makes you happy that it's the only in a country

01:07:01.160 that doesn't we're not at replacement birth rate so like the one thing we need to do is like have more

01:07:05.800 abortions like where the hell does that come from yeah it's weird it's become instead of being safe

01:07:11.560 legal and rare as the you know sort of the clinton era democratic party sold it abortion should be safe

01:07:17.320 legal and rare um it's now a sacrament and you've got people being encouraged now to share their

01:07:26.760 stories women who have had abortions being encouraged to share their stories of uh why it was such a good

01:07:32.680 thing that that they had one which seems really awful uh so awful it's well it seems to me just like your

01:07:41.720 conventional human sacrifice cult that every civilization has had more luck well it does

01:07:47.960 seem that i mean it does i never thought that because i grew up in a world where people made

01:07:52.760 arguments in favor of abortion or opposed to abortion on the basis of science or their understanding of

01:07:57.160 it or on the basis of extenuating circumstances like rape um you know minors being pregnant okay i

01:08:03.240 get it but i never imagined a world where the treasury secretary would be like the one thing you can

01:08:07.720 do to help america and its economy is have more abortions as jenny ellen said like

01:08:11.720 that's just religion yes yes it is and they're asked to accept it as if a religious article of

01:08:17.400 faith i still remember the first time i learned about roe versus wade i was 10 years old um my dad

01:08:24.440 had just been uh appointed by president reagan as the solicitor general of the united states that is

01:08:30.440 the chief appellate advocate for the u.s government before the supreme court and i was asking him some

01:08:36.840 questions about his job and he mentioned roe versus wade and he said do you know what that is and

01:08:40.760 i just finished the fourth grade and i said no not really what what's that and he explained it to me

01:08:46.680 and uh he said what do you think of that and i said well i'm not sure that i see this as um

01:08:51.800 seems like a legislative decision rather than a judicial one so that's one problem the other

01:08:57.720 problem is i don't see anything in the constitution that makes this a federal issue

01:09:00.920 um this seems like one that maybe ought to be ironed out more by the states uh i don't think

01:09:07.560 i'd ever see my dad more happy uh uh to know that one of his children had listened to his his

01:09:13.400 discussions about federalism and separation of powers and that sort of thing but if that was

01:09:18.360 evidence kind of funny you were having this conversation in fourth grade well all families

01:09:22.680 have that conversation about that age if about separation absolutely exactly present one clause

01:09:29.480 over potatoes not like how are the bengals this season i think it was 30 before i realized not

01:09:33.640 every family talks about that but uh anyway if that was evident to me as a fourth grader and it's not

01:09:40.280 like we were talking about that all the time we talked about it more than other families did uh

01:09:44.840 because my dad was a professor of constitutional law and then the solicitor general of the united states but

01:09:48.520 but but that was evident to me just based on the face of it this was never something that should

01:09:54.360 have been shoved down the throats of the american people this is a fundamentally legislative decision

01:09:58.200 because it's a policy choice and it's a policy choice that is nowhere directed required or commanded

01:10:03.640 by the constitution and because there's nothing about it that makes it federal it is the kind of

01:10:09.000 policy decision that needs to be made with some exceptions like for you know where federal funding is

01:10:14.600 involved or federal territory federal personnel or whatever uh by state policy makers rather than

01:10:21.160 national ones and yet when they undid roe uh two years ago you had all these people one of my favorites

01:10:30.120 was prince harry of all people prince harry came out with this statement oh this is bad for democracy

01:10:37.800 and my response to that was i number one it's rich being lectured on democracy by an

01:10:43.800 actual prince uh a uh a literal lineal descendant both through his mother and his father uh of king

01:10:52.840 george the third but secondly there was nothing democratic about roe versus wade it was one of

01:10:57.880 the most anti-democratic things we've seen could we deport prince harry in theory if he does something

01:11:03.400 wrong well that's yeah i mean i think he's crossed the line just with just how annoying he is yes

01:11:08.040 yes so did you um detect in kamala harris just in the extensive time you spent with her um as a

01:11:15.800 colleague like a set of principles things that you know red lines she really cared about authentically

01:11:23.960 look she's a progressives progressive uh if there was an opportunity to expand the size scope reach

01:11:29.800 and cost of the federal government she supported those things if there was an opportunity to expand

01:11:33.560 what she would describe euphemistically as reproductive rights uh she was in favor of those

01:11:39.880 things raising taxes um making the heavily graduated income tax system even more graduated

01:11:47.560 stick it to the rich she was in favor of those things so yeah her consistent threads she was somewhat

01:11:53.480 predictable in that regard uh she had a fairly coherent legislative strategy she would always do the thing

01:11:59.480 that that um progressive democrats really expanded their power yeah so uh you're mormon part of the

01:12:08.920 lds church i was joking before we went on that you're really part of me you're related to everybody

01:12:15.160 know everybody um and so you've been in which is a religious minority in this country and so you've

01:12:19.960 been an advocate i think for religious liberties you know since you got there uh do you notice

01:12:26.200 this hostility toward christianity increasing at the in washington it's interesting um i think there is

01:12:34.920 increased hostility toward christianity toward organized religion in general in washington within the

01:12:42.680 senate itself there is a a pretty healthy culture of respect of um individual religious beliefs and

01:12:53.000 backgrounds uh and um weekly prayer breakfast brings together republicans and democrats of every

01:13:01.960 political stripe you can imagine and every religious stripe you can imagine in those contexts there's very

01:13:08.200 much an atmosphere of respect but i've started seeing a couple of things that are disturbing that i

01:13:13.240 never thought i would see just in the last few years i remember during the trump administration

01:13:20.600 we started to see for the first time ever a couple of my democratic colleagues including some on the

01:13:25.800 judiciary committee who would say things like this i'm not comfortable with this nominee because i fear

01:13:33.560 that the dogma lives loudly within her this was i believe senator diane feinstein uh speaking of

01:13:42.760 then circuit judge nominee amy coney barrett um she was afraid that she was too catholic and that

01:13:50.280 because the dogma the catholic dogma as she put it lives too loudly how dare she yeah i i thought that

01:13:56.840 was a little unsettling on another occasion uh my friend and colleague maizey hirono democratic senator

01:14:02.840 from hawaii made a comment during a uh judiciary uh committee markup that she was concerned that um

01:14:14.040 we were seeing too many judicial nominees coming through the committee uh who had extreme religious

01:14:19.800 beliefs and i i think there was at least one other member of the committee uh who chimed in christian

01:14:26.440 beliefs uh yeah i mean they were typically christian beliefs she wasn't saying i'm worried that they're too

01:14:31.320 buddhist or too zoroastrian it was almost always i think in the context of someone who was a christian

01:14:38.200 of one stripe or another and so i felt the need to weigh in at that meeting because sometimes we need

01:14:43.640 to do that in order to set the record and to give the the member an opportunity to to pair it back i

01:14:49.880 thought i i'm not sure she meant not sure she realized exactly how far she went in saying that and

01:14:56.040 that's a very collegial way of doing it and so i jumped in and i said just i need to set the record

01:15:02.040 straight here we need to be very careful when we talk about this there are at least two maybe three

01:15:08.040 maybe more provisions of the constitution that i think caution us against and more appropriately

01:15:15.000 prohibit us from imposing this kind of filter uh from imposing a religious test from discriminating

01:15:23.800 against someone based on their free exercise of religion uh and so we need to not do that so

01:15:31.640 you can find their religious beliefs unusual or you might find them um to be candidates that you

01:15:38.040 don't want to support for some other reason but i don't think their religious beliefs should be on

01:15:42.520 trial here in fact constitutionally they can't i thought at that point she would back down or at least

01:15:49.320 clarify or narrow her statement and instead she said no why i meant what i said when i said what i

01:15:56.440 meant a lot of these a lot of these nominees are just too extreme in their religious beliefs and i'm

01:16:01.160 going to call them out i'm going to oppose every one of them if i think their religious beliefs are

01:16:05.320 too extreme i want and a lot of these famously you don't have to comment because you said she's your

01:16:09.960 friend but macy rano is not considered by the outside world a genius but i wonder um to put it mildly

01:16:16.520 but i i wonder if they see their self-aware enough to know that they're the religious fanatics

01:16:21.880 well yeah yeah and by the way sometimes we get a uh too into the rhetorical flourish that we use on

01:16:28.360 the senate floor my friend yeah and colleague the distinguished senator i don't want to put you in a

01:16:33.000 position to attack your but yeah look look relative to um not just the founding generation but pretty

01:16:39.640 much all generations of americans until very recently uh those who are hostile toward christian

01:16:47.800 beliefs or toward any belief system when it comes to somebody's worthiness to serve in government um

01:16:57.320 that's historically aberrational that's extreme and it's culturally also throughout most of our history

01:17:05.240 we have been a religious nation we are still a religious nation in fact uh uh yeah i don't think

01:17:10.760 you get away with saying the person's too jewish for me i don't think that'd work exactly exactly

01:17:15.400 so how how the hell do you get away with saying something like that i i i really don't know other

01:17:19.960 than that the the media won't go after you because they share the view if the media shares that view which

01:17:26.440 in many cases they do now a friend mentor and and church leader of mine a guy named neil maxwell died a few

01:17:33.080 years ago i had this great line that stuck with me over the years he said if if india is the world's

01:17:39.720 most religious nation and sweden is the world's least religious nation then america can adequately

01:17:47.320 be described as a nation of indians governed by swedes sometimes those in our government don't

01:17:53.320 necessarily reflect the religious beliefs and the religious sensitivities of the people as a whole and

01:17:58.280 that's one of the many reasons why i often distinguish differentiate between america

01:18:04.920 america the country and the united states government there are two different things it's one of the

01:18:10.600 reasons why i bristle every time when anyone of either party refers to the president of the united

01:18:16.360 states or to congress as quote-unquote running the country we don't run the country the president

01:18:22.120 the united states certainly doesn't run the country president of the united states happens to be the

01:18:27.160 chief executive officer of the united states government and the commander in chief of the

01:18:31.720 u.s armed forces runs a large organization with immense power to be sure i don't want to denigrate

01:18:37.000 the office but he doesn't run the country the country itself consists of the american people

01:18:43.320 he's not running the economy that's why presidents shouldn't go too far in over promising uh uh what

01:18:49.640 they're going to do for the country i'm going to create this many jobs or to create to claim credit

01:18:53.880 for jobs that have been created presidents can't do that we've we've got to get back to a proper

01:18:59.400 understanding of what government is and more importantly what it isn't government's not there

01:19:03.160 to be your rich uncle your best friend your fun aunt it's not there to make everything fair no

01:19:09.080 government exists for the purpose of protecting life liberty and property making sure that

01:19:13.320 um we don't fall victim to those who would take that which belongs to us or or do us harm either

01:19:22.680 from the inside or the outside preserving our freedoms preserving our enemies foreign and domestic

01:19:27.400 right exactly life liberty and property the further afield you get from that tucker

01:19:33.320 the more you run into problems the more removed anything in government is from the protection of

01:19:39.000 life liberty and property and within the federal government it's even narrower federal government's

01:19:43.720 job is to protect life liberty and property in specified enumerated limited ways immigration bankruptcy

01:19:49.720 laws weights and measures trademarks copyrights and patents interstate and foreign trade or commerce

01:19:55.880 and so forth we've gotten so far afield to that that we we tried to make government the all-powerful

01:20:02.280 omniscient omnipotent omnipotent benevolent decider of all things that is wrong that's always going to

01:20:10.440 set that government up for failure and it's always going to sow civil discord among the people because

01:20:16.520 we've assigned to government attributes that are incompatible with the mortal human condition right

01:20:23.240 in a world increasingly defined by deception and the total rejection of human dignity we decided to

01:20:28.920 found the tucker carlson network and we did it with one principle in mind tell the truth you have a

01:20:35.720 god-given right to think for yourself our work is made possible by our members so if you want to enjoy

01:20:42.600 an ad-free experience and keep this going join tcn at tucker carlson.com slash podcast tucker carlson.com

01:20:50.440 yes and one of the hallmarks of a dysfunctional government and and a illegitimate democracy in my

01:21:12.600 opinion is a leadership class that doesn't represent the people who elected them so i want to ask you

01:21:17.240 about two specific cases one in you know where you work and the other where you live so first where

01:21:22.400 you work the united states senate it doesn't seem like the leadership of the senate you know in some

01:21:28.980 cases mitch mcconnell specifically doesn't seem like he shares the views of republican voters which is a

01:21:34.400 huge like a legitimacy problem it's like how did that happen okay so first if mitch mcconnell were here

01:21:41.460 he would tell you that he does that he very much is on board of those and then he would describe all the

01:21:46.180 things that he's done and all the ways in which he you know really resonates with the words of

01:21:51.840 ronald reagan and the objective of limited government and lower taxes and softer regulations he'd say

01:21:58.780 all of those things but mitch mcconnell who's who's been the republican leader in the senate now for

01:22:05.100 a record period of time going a couple centuries 18 years a couple centuries since then at least since

01:22:11.560 though william howard yeah war of 1812 in that range um he would say i'm very very much uh um um

01:22:18.880 on board with all republican party principles but it misses a few points in that when you're the leader

01:22:27.900 for that long you've consolidated and taken every opportunity to accumulate power we've already

01:22:33.780 seen the secretion of power remember the only reason why we have the constitution the only

01:22:38.280 reason for any constitution is to limit government and the purpose of our u.s constitution in particular

01:22:44.100 is to protect the american people protect their life liberty and property by

01:22:50.260 preventing the protecting against the excessive accumulation of government power

01:22:56.780 in the hands of the few so it does these along two axes one vertical which is federalism

01:23:01.800 the other horizontal which is about separation of powers but we've messed with both of those

01:23:08.220 since the late 1930s then there's been a corresponding accumulation of power within congress within each

01:23:14.940 house of congress and within each caucus republican and democratic of each house of congress where

01:23:21.440 there's been an accumulation of power now this is especially poignant and impactful in the united

01:23:26.660 states senate where the whole thing was designed around the principle of equal representation among

01:23:34.360 the states it's the one constitutional amendment that is preemptively itself unconstitutional and

01:23:40.620 therefore uh impossible to bring about you cannot amend that part of the constitution that allows

01:23:47.120 and requires equal representation among the states in theory you could adopt a constitutional amendment giving

01:23:53.600 every state a different number of representatives but every state would have to be equally represented

01:23:58.860 and our senate rules reflect that understanding and our traditions our precedents reflect that

01:24:04.080 there isn't a vast distinction under the senate rules as they're written and as they've historically been

01:24:11.260 applied between any other member and the current minority or majority leader under our precedents

01:24:17.800 even the only technical distinction is that what's called the right of first recognition if multiple

01:24:23.700 members are seeking recognition at the same time and one of them is the majority leader then the majority

01:24:28.080 leader gets recognized but we've built this up just over the last couple or three decades started

01:24:33.740 maybe when uh lbj was in the senate prior to lbj the uh the floor leader as it was once called i believe

01:24:42.220 the but the majority minority leader of each party wasn't that significant lbj started building up the

01:24:48.780 position but it's really blossomed over the last 20 years or so where they've now got all this power in each

01:24:55.300 caucus built up behind the law firm of schumer and mcconnell respectively and so once that happens i call

01:25:04.520 it the firm the law firm of schumer mcconnell johnson and jeffries once they get into that position

01:25:08.800 if they share this mindset that accumulation of power within their conference within congress is a

01:25:15.760 good idea they start to operate as their own constituency as with the hive mind particularly

01:25:22.360 on spending bills so the law firm of schumer mcconnell johnson and jeffries will get together and

01:25:27.360 they'll figure out what's going to be in the next spending bill they'll release it predictably foreseeably

01:25:32.140 um with only uh days sometimes hours before the expiration of a spending period it'll be a couple

01:25:38.980 thousand pages long contain hundreds of earmarks uh uh uh often a lot of things uh um that bear a faint

01:25:48.960 but distinct resemblance to the home states of members of the firm uh special benefits for this or that

01:25:55.920 state and industries that are popular there the firm then becomes the proxy the leader of what i

01:26:03.880 call the uniparty they bring that to the floor and what happens these spending bills brought forward

01:26:08.440 with too little time to amend them they tell members look you got to take or leave this we don't have

01:26:13.260 time to amend it because we've made sure of it uh you can vote against it but if you vote against it

01:26:18.400 and it doesn't pass the government's going to shut down we will blame you for a shutdown

01:26:21.940 so we recommend you just vote against it now i've done this i've voted against it i've voted against

01:26:26.920 them basically every time they do this and on occasion it's resulted in a shutdown i've been

01:26:31.880 blamed for shutdowns it's not pleasant but this is what happens they become much more about the

01:26:37.520 accumulated power and uh and about maintaining the prerogatives of accumulated leadership so infuriating

01:26:43.840 i mean you get elected statewide in utah every six years three times now i guess and i don't know

01:26:51.800 that's not a small thing right and then you show up in the senate and you can't even get a copy of

01:26:56.520 the spending bill like a month out like it's so insulting right right that drive you insane

01:27:01.820 absolutely insane it is the single most frustrating thing you know i when i was running for the senate

01:27:06.220 it was a live matter to be talking about nancy pelosi's reference to the obamacare bill you got

01:27:11.520 to pass it to find out what's in it i assumed that that was an aberration that that was unusual

01:27:15.760 what i found is it's not terribly unusual it doesn't happen all the time but it happens

01:27:20.300 but for your own leader to do that to you yes yes exactly do you ever say to him hey mitch mcconnell

01:27:26.040 hey snapping turtle why why don't you why can't i what are you doing to me i have you're more loyal

01:27:32.260 to chuck schumer than you are to your own republican members what lost count of the number of times

01:27:37.400 that i've raised the issue with him and with the conference uh as a whole with senate republicans

01:27:44.240 and uh you know for the first uh six years i i was in the senate we were always told

01:27:50.480 this feature or that feature is not in line yet so we're gonna have to go along with this meaning

01:27:54.980 uh we don't control the majority in the senate republicans control only the house and obama's in

01:28:01.760 the white house finally but once we get more power everything will be great right and then we got the

01:28:06.480 majority in the senate and in the house we still had a democratic president but a lot of us made the

01:28:10.940 case well we're driving the ship now we should be able to write our own bill yeah but the the obama

01:28:15.540 so finally we get to 2017 and i really amped up the discussions internally within the conference and

01:28:23.080 said all right at this point from this point forward the spending bills need to be on the floor i don't

01:28:26.960 you know you're supposed to have 12 different spending bills uh each according to a different

01:28:31.860 function of government so that not everything can be tied together and we haven't done it that way in

01:28:36.440 a long time i said that'd be ideal but even if you can't do that if you want to do it in one bill

01:28:40.380 then you've got to give us at least a few weeks maybe a month or so to debate it discuss it and

01:28:45.000 most importantly in the senate the opportunity to amend it unlimited debate and amendments are

01:28:49.880 supposed to be the norm and historically were the norm in the senate that's collegial and it's how our

01:28:54.980 rules operate and those rules reflect back what the constitution contemplates um and we were told

01:29:02.760 yeah you'll have an adequate opportunity to do this you'll have we operated with continuing

01:29:11.060 resolutions more or less for the first year of the trump administration just punting the ball forward

01:29:14.940 every couple months finally it wasn't until i think it was uh march 23rd 2018

01:29:21.420 when we were finally at about that point where i knew we would have to pass something

01:29:27.640 but we had a few weeks left but it was a wednesday night uh maybe 8 35 8 36 p.m on a wednesday night

01:29:37.680 we got this email from our majority leader colleagues attached to a spending bill

01:29:44.760 may come up sometime you ought to become familiar with it every alarm bell in me went off right then i

01:29:52.980 opened the thing up instantly and my heart was pounding thinking okay this is our big opportunity

01:29:57.700 we got to make sure that we're ready for this to my surprise this was 2232 pages long

01:30:04.920 so i immediately scrambled the jets within my office i got every available legislative staffer

01:30:11.540 on my team uh pulling essentially all-nighters uh because we wanted to make sure we were ready we had

01:30:18.200 no idea what the schedule would be i really hoped that as we had been promised we'd have the

01:30:22.740 opportunity to debate them discuss them offer amendments pull out this or that earmark or special

01:30:27.180 benefits for thoroughbred race horses or uh distillers of of kentucky bourbon or whatever it was

01:30:33.720 tucker the house of representatives passed that bill without a single amendment before lunch the next day

01:30:42.860 the senate despite my protestations passed it at about three in the morning uh later that night

01:30:51.000 it was too late uh right then to call president trump i didn't want to wake him up so i called

01:30:55.900 him first thing in the morning to advise him to veto it because this was quite contrary to you know

01:31:01.280 what he thinks is good government his staff the white house staff at the time screened out the call

01:31:07.880 they didn't give him the message until after he had already signed the bill by that time it was a

01:31:12.380 friday night i got on the plane uh friday evening was flying back to utah maybe half an hour into

01:31:17.620 the flight i'm in seat 43 foxtrot uh very back of the bus uh flying back to utah was the one part of

01:31:25.320 the flight where everybody was quiet and um my secretary texted me saying the president's trying to reach

01:31:33.000 you and i said well i wish you'd call me earlier but i'm i'm on a plane now i obviously won't be able

01:31:39.060 to talk to him i'll be on the ground in maybe four hours and next thing i knew i saw these delta flight

01:31:45.080 attendants looking um sort of disheveled walking down the center aisle with a bright

01:31:50.960 sort of neon orange headset with an equally bright neon cord that stretched the entire length of the

01:31:58.440 fuselage of the plane they walked all the way back to row 43 um um at the back of the plane where i was

01:32:05.720 and said excuse me we have the white house situation room on the phone the president of the

01:32:10.220 united states would like to speak with you and he was looking at me like what are your seat

01:32:13.500 and brought me back to the galley and he showed me how to work it push the button when you're ready

01:32:18.700 to talk i still thought this is an elaborate practical joke but i got on hello mr president

01:32:24.240 mike how are you listen i had to sign it congress had left town there was no other way around it there

01:32:32.140 would have been a shutdown would have caused all kinds of problems and congress wasn't there mike

01:32:35.960 and i said mr president with all due respect your staff is not shooting straight with you they're

01:32:41.360 lying to you if they told you that we were still in town we still could have done something we still

01:32:45.780 could have passed a short-term stopgap measure to keep us funded for another i don't know 72 96 hours

01:32:52.160 or or perhaps a week or two as we debated and discussed it

01:32:57.260 uh the the the the connection wasn't stable and cut out a short time later they sent back a message

01:33:05.140 okay he'll call you when you get on the ground i thought that'll never happen he'll he's busy

01:33:09.460 sure enough as soon as i landed in salt lake city i hadn't even gotten to the curb yet uh or to my car

01:33:14.820 before i got a call from him and he wanted to talk we talked for like an hour and i explained to him

01:33:19.260 what had just happened to him and that it couldn't happen again i said if this it does happen again if

01:33:24.780 your staff tricks you into this again and if what i now refer to as the firm does this to you again

01:33:30.740 i fear what it could do to our base that expects something different out of us and i fear what could

01:33:37.740 happen in the november 2018 midterm elections we could lose the majority if we lose the majority

01:33:43.140 as sure as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow they're going to impeach you i don't know what for

01:33:48.620 but they'll make something up and if that happens it could really cause problems for you so let's

01:33:54.620 just not do this again well that turned out to be prescient didn't it it did it did it prescient in

01:34:00.340 a way that i had hoped it wouldn't be um but why would can i just ask why would his staff

01:34:06.500 block your message why would they want him to sign something like that well the thing about it this

01:34:13.420 way tucker they face a lot of the same pressure that convinces most members of congress from both

01:34:20.500 political parties uh to go along with it nobody wants to be accused of causing a shutdown but the

01:34:28.040 firm the firm gets together and decides what is an acceptable bill what about the total destruction

01:34:33.800 of the united states which this is bringing about we're bankrupt and that's going to be very obvious

01:34:37.880 and if we lose our status as issuer of the world's reserve currency which is on its way well on its way

01:34:44.140 well on its way thanks to some very specific missteps by the biden administration well we brought

01:34:48.680 russia into the loving embrace of china literally the second we kicked russia out of swift i was like

01:34:52.960 we're done the usd is done i hope i'm wrong but i don't think i am but anyway the point is when that

01:34:58.220 happens we're going to be impoverished and all the things that we take for granted will be gone

01:35:03.260 and the people who signed bills like that and voted for bills like that are responsible is there

01:35:08.600 does anyone in our governing bodies like acknowledge that in private we talk about it a lot in private

01:35:15.200 those who feel like i do and there are a number of us who do including some who sometimes vote

01:35:20.880 inexplicably for these things uh many of us do talk about it in private and there's usually some

01:35:29.020 type of general agreement but it's followed up by sort of a cognitive dissonance so it's like

01:35:34.500 alcoholism it's like you wake up hung up well you wouldn't know because you're mormon but like those

01:35:37.900 of us who used to drink too much like you wake up on sun you're like i gotta stop this shit this is

01:35:41.300 terrible and then you do it again i mean maybe it's like that right right uh perhaps it's that

01:35:47.580 it's like um my wife hates it when i use this term but it's a biblical term um i think it originally

01:35:53.700 came from the book of isaiah like a dog to its vomit yes uh a dog to its vomit it refers to what

01:35:59.060 happens when people return to that which is familiar even though it's not necessarily a good

01:36:04.240 thing and maybe a bad thing or a disgusting thing you do it because it's there it's it's the

01:36:11.080 decision before you and unless you decide in advance uh i i don't always quote rush lyrics uh

01:36:19.660 in in media interviews but to quote free will by rush if you choose not to decide you still have

01:36:26.320 made a choice that's right unless you decide at the outset i'm not going to vote for something that

01:36:31.500 i have not read or have the opportunity even to read that i have had no opportunity to vet with my

01:36:39.980 staff and get input from constituents uh i will vote no every time in fact that was a campaign

01:36:48.560 promise that i made from the first time i ran for the senate which is the first office i ever

01:36:54.220 ran the first public office i ever sought in 2010 and i've stuck with that if if if they don't give

01:37:01.500 me the ability i'm pardon my ignorance i didn't realize that you've only run for one office it was

01:37:05.860 the u.s senate you won yes never expected by almost anybody to win that is crazy actually i don't

01:37:12.540 think i was challenging a three-term incumbent i remember i remember him very well and so uh people

01:37:17.560 were shocked uh when i won but anyway unless you decide in advance i'm not going to do that i'm not

01:37:24.420 going to vote for a bill that i haven't had the opportunity to vet uh at a minimum it needs to be

01:37:32.000 something that i'm i'm able to um consider with enough time to have a few staff members pour over

01:37:40.460 it and help advise me on what provision means what you've got to remember tucker these bills that bill

01:37:45.080 back in 2018 march of 2018 2232 pages long you have to remember these do not read like a fast-paced

01:37:53.980 novel they're full of cross references and it takes an army of very well trained people who know what

01:38:02.700 they're doing uh to recognize where they're going in order to understand it if you don't have the

01:38:07.360 opportunity to at least um meet with your staff and scrutinize this thing and then have the opportunity

01:38:12.940 to amend it and then have the opportunity to to improve it uh and get feedback from your

01:38:18.720 constituents you have no business voting for it but here's what's happening here's what is

01:38:23.460 frustrating to me most about the firm and the uniparty that it generally manages i've explained

01:38:30.260 what the firm is the uniparty as i conceive of it is that apparatus which manifests itself most

01:38:37.800 obviously and frequently in the form of these massive omnibus spending bills um

01:38:44.820 that blurs the distinction between the two parties in those areas which is again most acutely observed

01:38:52.700 in the spending bill context the firm puts the bill together the four of them are the only ones who

01:38:59.080 have really seen the whole thing maybe a couple of appropriators from both houses and their staffs

01:39:04.880 but most of the members have seen nothing about it but then when it comes forward something quite

01:39:13.020 consistent usually happens most or all democrats will tend to vote for it and then enough republicans

01:39:21.940 in both houses will join most or all democrats in order to get it over the line to make it look

01:39:28.680 bipartisan and in the senate to make sure that it passes the 60 vote cloture standard remember takes

01:39:35.540 a simple majority to pass legislation typically but uh most legislation in order to get to final

01:39:42.880 passage on a simple majority you first have to satisfy cloture you have to bring debate to a close

01:39:47.360 which takes takes three-fifths or 60 votes to get there and so republicans end up supplying the

01:39:54.480 difference so over and over and over again even sometimes we're in the majority you have spending bills

01:40:00.060 that unite most or all democrats and then anywhere from 10 or 12 to maybe

01:40:06.680 1920 as many as 25 or so republicans will join with the democrats so then i guess what you're saying

01:40:14.720 the term uniparty which i use all the time isn't really accurate it's probably more precise to say

01:40:21.080 you have the democratic party which is being served by a lot of powerful republicans as well

01:40:25.360 because this is a i mean this what they're doing is consistent with the values and views of the

01:40:30.420 democratic party it's inconsistent with those the republican party so you just mitch mcconnell's

01:40:34.720 working for the democrats so that's what it looks like to me yeah and insofar as the democrats tend

01:40:40.600 to want to spend more money than republicans i think that's that is a fair assessment have more wars

01:40:46.040 and sure you know just the the signature um the signature aims of the democratic party he's on board

01:40:52.860 with them now if they were here members of the uniparty or uh members of the firm were here they

01:40:58.240 would say well look but these also had our earmarks in them he's also had some of our priorities and

01:41:05.260 we had to take the bad to get the good there are things in here that uh really helped defense in ways

01:41:11.740 republicans are all about defense and we needed to get that uh the the defense part of it the military

01:41:17.740 industrial complex and it's a lure it's the gateway drug for republicans to join the uniparty can you

01:41:23.300 say that one more time just i just want everyone to write who's listening to this if you've made it

01:41:27.380 this far in the conversation this is the key please write this down and put it on your fridge

01:41:31.200 the military industrial complex is a highly addictive substance that serves as the gateway drug

01:41:37.020 to progressive spending bills in other words they throw in uh special handouts for the pentagon

01:41:45.840 uh and bring in the you know i'm pro national defense crowd and that's how they get them to vote

01:41:54.060 for spending bills that help perpetuate the two trillion dollar annual deficit and that's why we're

01:42:01.440 35 trillion dollars it's not working we're not safer at all our military is not stronger we can't

01:42:06.920 so do the houthis whoever they are and so it's actually having the opposite as things often do

01:42:13.060 the opposite of the advertised effect right and no one notices that

01:42:17.300 does anyone think the military is stronger now it's got more funding than ever is it stronger

01:42:33.300 of course it's much weaker a lot of people think that it's stronger and there are some metrics for

01:42:37.660 that we've got more sophisticated weaponry than we have in the past but on the other hand um uh our

01:42:44.200 end strength seems to be suffering by virtue of the recruiting impairment that this administration

01:42:49.820 has inflicted upon itself uh the way they're presenting themselves the way they're running the the

01:42:57.160 pentagon to pursue woke ideological uh agenda items uh is itself a turnoff to a lot of the target audience

01:43:06.300 well sure but even just judging by its effects judging the tree by its fruit we went to war against

01:43:11.580 the taliban in 2001 were they better armed then or now they meaning the taliban yeah they're better

01:43:20.460 armed now yep the houthis are most americans including me had not heard the term houthi five

01:43:26.660 years ago and now they're closing a key shipping lane with like childish drones against the u.s

01:43:33.720 navy so like what that is not success it's not and i remember the exact moment in 2015 i was speaking at

01:43:42.780 some event in iowa when i heard about what was going on in yemen and immediately i thought oh gosh i really

01:43:48.860 hope that we don't get involved in a proxy war here and we did uh and it's it's now bled into three

01:43:58.600 different presidential administrations and it has led to um uh yemen being even more of a leverage point

01:44:07.260 for iran exactly being able to arm the houthis and having incentive to do so this is one of the things

01:44:14.360 that happens when we get involved in proxy wars generally one of the reasons why uh you know in

01:44:21.300 federalist 69 um alexander hamilton comments that one of the distinguishing characters our model

01:44:26.880 for our government really is based on the british system in many respects we've got a bicameral

01:44:31.900 legislature we've got a chief executive um but under the british system as hamilton points out in

01:44:38.000 federalist 69 the king the chief executive have the ability to take the country to war

01:44:43.040 independently unilaterally the constitution by contrast requires a declaration of war by congress

01:44:52.260 now we never passed an amf or a declaration of war with regard to yemen they regard all kinds of

01:45:00.280 other existing authorities from the 01 and 02 amfs to inherent article 2 power in the presidency

01:45:05.940 it's all uh unpersuasive in my mind but to authorize all this so i've been opposing this

01:45:11.820 ever since 2015 because i believed that this was first and foremost about benefiting the industrial

01:45:16.400 military industrial complex and that it would tend to be one of these um entangling affairs that

01:45:24.280 gradually escalated and it's been exactly that it's interesting i've found some unlikely allies on that

01:45:30.120 uh here's a picture from a couple years ago me and bernie sanders arm in arm just

01:45:35.840 after uh passing one of the first successful efforts at using the war powers resolution

01:45:41.700 to get us uh uninvolved in the conflict in yemen it was vetoed and we weren't able to override the

01:45:51.520 veto at the end of the day but that's how we get involved and we we get involved by degrees and

01:45:57.700 they've redefined what war is to the point now where in effect the executive branch has the ability

01:46:03.660 opportunity to get away with fighting war without anyone ever authorizing it or declaring it in

01:46:08.480 congress and uh because we've redefined what war is i just wonder without again calling any of your

01:46:15.700 colleagues out by name but i know a lot of them super nice people some impressive people you know

01:46:21.460 varying degrees but there are definitely some smart people in the senate um on both sides but do they

01:46:27.320 ever just stop to say the effects of what we're voting for are not good our fiscal situation is

01:46:34.920 really dire the the military that we fund is not achieving the desired outcomes do they ever like

01:46:41.740 look at the results sometimes yes but you gotta understand one feature tucker the military

01:46:49.960 issues are to us kind of it's our own microcosm of what progressives experience everywhere else

01:46:59.600 so for republicans we regard republicans far too many have concluded that this is conservative like

01:47:07.540 making sure that we have a military strong enough and foreign policy dedicated enough to ensure

01:47:14.460 that the world is safe for democracy generally transgenderism and that's what it's well i mean do they

01:47:19.740 ever pay like do they know what the state department does republicans don't like that part but they like

01:47:23.660 the making the world safe for democracy and they like the uh so-called rules-based international order

01:47:29.860 in effect more or less since the end of world war ii they love that stuff and so you'll actually find

01:47:35.240 republicans without realizing it parroting the same reasoning as progressives generally progressives

01:47:41.400 generally when the particular government program doesn't work their instinct is always to say we just

01:47:46.380 didn't give it quite enough fuel if we had just given a little bit more money more resources if we

01:47:51.920 had invested more in it then it will work communism is a great idea it just hasn't been tried right

01:47:56.500 correctly right hasn't been tried we got to do it a little bit okay so they're all about the i mean i'm

01:48:00.340 not gonna lecture we're just in one one question so like the rules-based order thing i couldn't be more

01:48:04.800 for rules-based order i think all orderly people are for rules-based order i used to live in a country that

01:48:09.580 had one but the rules-based order advocates supported the theft of billions of dollars in

01:48:16.860 personal property of the so-called russian oligarchs many of whom opposed putin had nothing

01:48:21.900 to do with the invasion of ukraine zero and we sat back and allowed the biden administration to steal

01:48:26.580 all their stuff because they had russian last names that's not the rules-based order that's theft

01:48:30.480 that's right that's right and we've delegitimized the very rules-based international order that we claimed

01:48:36.780 exactly to be protecting made everybody cynical about the american project and in the meantime

01:48:41.320 we have really presented the first major threat that you and i have seen in our lifetimes

01:48:46.560 uh uh to the u.s dollar as the world's reserve currency yes because you know in all of this we've

01:48:56.040 driven um we've driven russia and in some ways iran into the loving embrace of china and you now have um

01:49:04.520 turkey the gulf states exactly malaysia like the the parts of the world that are getting richer and

01:49:11.320 stronger are fleeing from us that's not good i know a guy who um who is a lawyer who works in the

01:49:18.140 petroleum industry and he's the guy who handles all the legal implications of the the contracts the

01:49:24.560 rapidly developing contracts that are written when there's a uh a petroleum super tanker yes

01:49:30.360 traveling he irons out the details of how things are going to be denominated he it's like 20 years

01:49:35.420 ago he was explaining to me that these are all no matter where you are in the world these are pretty

01:49:39.820 much transacted in u.s dollars yes that's just one of the uh unifying forces behind it that's starting

01:49:45.900 to not be the case i know anymore and that's very chilling because that we've all benefited from

01:49:52.560 that to a very significant our prosperity hangs on it so in the name of uh protecting the rules-based

01:49:59.080 international order we've weakened it in the name of maintaining economic and military security for

01:50:08.260 the united states we've made ourselves more vulnerable and so one has to ask at what point

01:50:13.920 will the american people uh uh and more importantly their elected representatives in congress get wise

01:50:20.800 enough to say we've been listening to the wrong voices we've got to stop deferring to the military

01:50:26.520 experts uh who will always have incentive to tell us that they need more yeah more cowbell liz cheney

01:50:33.020 and toria newland don't know what they're talking about okay so speaking of curious ironies my my last

01:50:37.560 question i think about this all the time but i'm not an expert you are and it's about your state utah

01:50:42.980 which is an amazing place lovely place most conservative state was always thought to be just because of its

01:50:48.980 population heavily lds inherently conservative people prosperous family oriented just great in

01:50:55.980 my opinion um how did a state like utah wind up with a governor and lieutenant governor who are just

01:51:03.180 like open out of the closet liberals like what is that right let me let me speak broadly i mean i i i don't

01:51:14.900 know that i would characterize them the the way you did but i understand the point well that's just the way

01:51:18.780 it looks to me from afar but first of all well i believe that the people in my state the state of utah i think

01:51:26.640 we're one of the most conservative states i i think we're naturally skeptical of government yep uh we're

01:51:32.680 naturally inclined to respect the constitution and understand the need for limitations on power

01:51:37.480 we're actually the only faith that i'm aware of that has is a matter of of doctrinal belief the fact that the u.s

01:51:43.420 constitution was written by wise men raised up by god to that very purpose but they're also more

01:51:48.460 constitutionally just as an observer of mormons my whole life there's on a basic level they're

01:51:53.040 conservative like they believe in sobriety and faithfulness they don't like debt working hard

01:51:58.500 is like a precept of the religion it seems sure and so like they're in on the most basic level they're

01:52:03.760 conservative yes so getting back to the neil a maxwell quote that i gave you a minute ago yeah um about

01:52:10.620 america being which i love the nation of india led by sweden governed by swedes utah for being one of

01:52:17.380 the most conservative states culturally economically historically we have no conservative media

01:52:25.360 establishment to speak of we've sure we've got some great uh people on uh radio station or two who

01:52:31.740 provide competing voices but as far as our two statewide uh print media outlets deseret news and the salt lake

01:52:38.680 tribune both very liberal how can the desert news which i think was always owned by the lds church

01:52:43.400 is it still yes it is well how does that work well the deseret news seems to be defining deviancy

01:52:50.760 downward defining how it is in in reference to where the salt lake tribune goes and as the salt lake

01:52:58.440 tribune has moved further and further to the left the deseret news from my vantage point is more or less

01:53:05.420 tracked with it and gotten by by saying look we're not as bad as they are we're the conservative ones

01:53:10.840 and in many respects they they still maintain elements of conservatism they are um they're

01:53:17.400 conservative in the sense that they will always advocate the benefits of the rule of law they're

01:53:23.540 not going to call for the defunding of the police they are pro-religion uh pro-god pro-family

01:53:30.360 and that sort of thing and so in that respect they they're they're able to portray themselves

01:53:37.320 and i think genuinely view themselves as utah's more conservative paper but they ignore the fact

01:53:44.340 that um outside of those areas where uh consistent with the deseret news ownership and the also the

01:53:52.840 ownership of the broadcast media entity that uh is also owned by the church kslm um even though they

01:54:01.780 are themselves defenders of religion of families and of some conservative values they're run by

01:54:10.580 the journalistic profession the guild so to speak uh and the guild as as you know uh journalists

01:54:18.020 by and large are liberal now there are a lot of professions that are like that my profession i'm

01:54:23.940 a lawyer uh lawyers lean left also but i'm not aware of any profession that leans more consistently

01:54:30.700 to the left than journalists and so the these journalists maybe still see themselves as the more

01:54:39.160 conservative paper but in their heart and in their writing and in their broadcast messaging

01:54:43.640 they lean left at least far to the left of where most of utah's population goes but spencer cox really

01:54:51.760 your governor well he just seems again you know him it's your state i don't know him but just looking

01:54:59.900 at it it's like that guy should be governor of vermont or california or new jersey or some sort of

01:55:07.520 failed state like that why yeah i i wouldn't put him uh in that category certainly um but there are

01:55:15.220 those who have concerns with him they're certainly policy decisions that he's made um that i haven't

01:55:21.760 agreed with but i think what you're getting at is that sometimes utahns tend to elect people who um

01:55:29.900 when they're first elected uh speak more like conservatives and then behave a little bit less

01:55:35.500 like conservatives over time and some of this goes back to this point that uh while we are a

01:55:40.980 conservative state we have no conservative media establishment to speak of other than that you know

01:55:46.860 small cadre of very effective um uh radio personalities but the print media statewide and the statewide

01:55:54.600 broadcast entities radio and television lean pretty consistently to the left and that has an impact

01:56:01.940 so too we've got a lot of universities in utah uh like about 10 of them and they like most academic

01:56:10.340 institutions have tended to lean left now not as far left as what you see you know harvard and

01:56:16.500 princeton and and frankly most universities in america but definitely much farther left than they

01:56:23.720 used to be and much farther left than most utahns are those things are having an effect and it's

01:56:29.680 causing problems it does cause me concern you want to hear my theory yeah i think utah is too nice and

01:56:35.780 has been too nice for too long and the people who live there i say this is a native californian so i

01:56:40.220 saw this happen they've lost sight of the central truth in life which is it takes a long time to build

01:56:45.560 something functional and beautiful and it can be destroyed very very quickly very quickly california

01:56:50.540 obviously the greatest state this country ever produced and now it's in some ways the worst and it

01:56:56.520 happened in a generation in my lifetime and i just don't think the people of utah understand how

01:57:02.620 quickly their state could become a slum california has become a slum and that could happen because

01:57:09.300 you know you're like you're comfortable you're prosperous you're like you know we've been too

01:57:14.440 mean like putting people in prison for rape like maybe we shouldn't do that like and you don't

01:57:19.280 understand that the second you allow disorder slovenliness debt like you the whole thing can

01:57:27.520 disappear right in 10 years right and and in a place like utah where the republican party has been

01:57:33.820 dominate dominant for most of my lifetime not all of it but most of it um there is sometimes an

01:57:39.980 assumption that if they're republican they are going to do conservative things now i mean in the

01:57:46.300 meantime there are a lot of people who will push agenda items that are themselves um very carefully

01:57:53.620 disguised uh progressive dream pieces for example uh there was a voter initiative pushed through a few

01:58:02.180 years ago that tried to take away some of the redistricting legislative redistricting authority from

01:58:09.700 the utah legislature and put it in an independent uh bipartisan or non-partisan commission you see where

01:58:15.780 this is going i mean anytime you put it in the hands of unelected unaccountable experts the way

01:58:21.360 the thing works particularly in conservative state is going to move you further to the left

01:58:25.060 uh so it passed it's one of the reasons i'm not a big fan of voter initiatives i we've got a

01:58:32.220 republican form of government we shouldn't dilute it with these um uh you've got legislatures for a

01:58:38.200 reason i think it's better to have them do it but regardless it's allowed under our state constitution

01:58:41.860 it passed well our legislature as well it needed to modified what they did so as to keep the

01:58:51.940 legislature more or less you know still in charge of the ultimate product our utah supreme court five

01:58:58.360 members on it all five of those members have been appointed by republican governors and confirmed

01:59:04.660 by our utah state senate republican dominant for many decades all five of them recently agreed that

01:59:14.640 the legislature's modification of the original um uh redistricting reform um was unconstitutional

01:59:23.980 under our state constitution this is how we get brought into a progressive system bit by bit by bit

01:59:30.720 by the appeal of the the uh the allure of the uh scientific expertise and the use of the left's

01:59:40.080 touch words like the partisan gerrymandering and the the rigged legislative districts it's the whole

01:59:45.700 point since the founding it's been understood that this is how it works the legislative body it's a

01:59:51.240 political alone can make this law but i i mean so utah is successful and conservative because of its

01:59:58.440 population because of its this is my view it's the dominant religion in the state isn't in my view

02:00:02.840 is inherently conservative in a you know non-political non-partisan way but just work hard you know don't

02:00:09.520 accrue debt stay married has it there were some people who said when california began to collapse

02:00:15.380 you guys need to build a wall on your western border to keep the californians out you didn't do that

02:00:19.800 i think it was a mistake but now that you've been flooded with californians is there any discussion

02:00:24.580 of instituting a probationary period before you let them vote you know you come to our state from

02:00:31.340 your failed state it's almost like we import criminals from venezuela you can't vote right

02:00:35.680 away why do you allow californians to vote right away when they come to utah why not a cooling off

02:00:40.440 period of a couple decades yeah i i don't know that constitutionally we could get away with that

02:00:45.460 much but the contours of that have not been entirely clear um but generally speaking there is an

02:00:50.580 understanding of the under the constitution that u.s citizenship means that you can move from one

02:00:54.880 state to another but it's california you're moving literally from you know west la to salt lake and you

02:01:02.480 get to bring your values with you that can't be good some of that happens but some of it has been

02:01:06.900 surprising now i was last re-elected just a year and a half uh close to two years ago now and we did a

02:01:14.380 lot of polling during that debate um during that uh campaign and that election process and when we

02:01:21.640 drilled down on the cross tabs and we evaluated those who had moved in from out of state including

02:01:26.980 a whole lot who had moved in from california we were shocked at how conservative they were

02:01:33.300 many if not most of them were more conservative more supportive of me uh than um than a lot of people

02:01:42.520 who had lived in utah for many decades so they were like cuban exiles then yeah i think the birds of a

02:01:48.740 feather flock together and if if you've seen the failures of california and you see that um some of

02:01:56.940 those failures some of those problems are related to the fact that california has been intoxicated uh by

02:02:04.580 the progressive uh lies the false promises of a progressive nirvana you're not necessarily going

02:02:13.780 to choose utah as your next place to live if what you're seeking is another progressive nirvana and

02:02:20.720 so they tend to be self-selecting they're voting with their feet and those who choose to go to

02:02:25.760 obviously there are exceptions but by and large those who have chosen to move to utah from california

02:02:31.640 recently i believe lean more conservative even i hope that's right because you've seen in a bunch

02:02:37.340 of other places jackson wyoming for example dallas people who leave california liberals because

02:02:45.380 honestly they hate diversity that's part of it they want to live in a whiter place that's just a fact

02:02:49.720 i know some of them move to bozeman funny how that works right well it should be illegal by the way

02:02:56.080 you vote to defund the police you should be required to live in oakland for the rest of your life

02:02:59.940 but but then they do they they come with their creepy white guilt their you know terrible attitudes

02:03:07.540 about government just their kind of decadent nihilist views like that does happen yeah it does

02:03:15.180 and it reminds me have you ever you ever read a book called the naked communist no i i read this

02:03:21.960 recently so it was written by a guy named kleon skasm oh well famous guy yeah a friend of my wife's

02:03:27.220 family and he was actually at our our wedding i i didn't even know until our wedding day that

02:03:32.200 mark skasm's father yeah yeah exactly mark skasm's father uh a great man as is mark um i somehow didn't

02:03:39.780 realize my wife's family was really close to kleon skasm until our wedding day and he introduced himself

02:03:45.120 to me in the temple just before ceremony started and i was like wow the kleon skasm is here i was asked

02:03:51.300 recently by the skasm family to speak at a at a gathering of kleon skasm fans and family members

02:03:57.720 um honoring his life and in preparation for that i read one of his books that i hadn't previously read

02:04:02.940 i've read a bunch of his other books um but i i read the naked communist a book that he he wrote i think

02:04:10.760 first back in the 50s and then continued to update it uh periodically until around the time of his death

02:04:16.400 but he outlines the he outlines the plan by which um those who wanted a more progressive form of

02:04:26.720 government were influenced by marxist philosophy uh generally and wanted to sort of inculcate a lot

02:04:35.580 of that into the united states i think we underestimate uh as americans the extent to which we have been

02:04:42.620 marinating in progressive messaging which has elements of marxist philosophy built into it

02:04:48.540 from the time we could crawl uh from the time we entered kindergarten or whether you went to public

02:04:53.320 school or private school even many religious schools um and regardless of whether you where you

02:04:59.260 attended university unless you went to hillsdale or a couple of other places more likely than not

02:05:04.220 you received a lot of conditioning with progressive ideology so much so that we almost don't have

02:05:12.180 adequate language as part of our lexicon to communicate the true purpose and function of

02:05:19.220 government and i think that's how we end up with this mess where we're 35 trillion dollars in debt

02:05:23.240 adding to it at a rate of two trillion dollars a year with no plan to get out of it because we've

02:05:28.420 bought lock stock and barrel this idea that government's job the federal government's job is

02:05:32.660 open-ended it's there to uh right all the wrongs to make everything fair and that's all a big lie

02:05:39.920 and that's how we get stuck in it but if we can reinvigorate this idea that the constitution and

02:05:48.100 the limited government it guarantees us is our birthright and that liberty is good that government

02:05:52.620 expands only the expense of individual liberty will be better off we've got a real opportunity

02:05:57.220 with this election people love to say every time this year's election is critically important i think

02:06:02.880 this one is especially an especially important inflection point in addition to the presidential

02:06:07.900 election we've got one of the most liberal progressive and frankly lawless presidential

02:06:12.920 administrations in u.s history the senate's on the line i think republicans have a real shot at

02:06:19.120 recapturing the majority that's happening at the same time when our current senate republican leader

02:06:25.900 who is in his 18th year or world record uh uh uh in the senate for either party uh is going to be

02:06:33.900 stepping down as leader we'll have the chance to elect somebody else and i i hope i expect i'm pushing

02:06:40.780 uh messaging to my colleagues constantly let's focus before we get to the who let's focus on the what

02:06:47.400 let's talk about what it is that we envision for this position we want somebody who will foster

02:06:52.900 uh and promote the kind of atmosphere in which individual members and the states they represent

02:06:58.580 their respective voters can have a voice because that voice has been narrowed it's been narrowed to

02:07:05.060 a very small choke point and it has not inured to the benefit of the american people and it's frankly

02:07:11.060 one of the reasons why we're 35 trillion dollars in debt well i i just really really hope that you're

02:07:17.600 driving the reforms i know you will be senator mike lee of utah thank you for spending all this time

02:07:22.520 thank you doug thanks for listening to the tucker carlson show if you enjoyed it you can go to

02:07:28.360 tuckercarlson.com to see everything that we have made the complete library tuckercarlson.com

Sen. Mike Lee： Witnessing Biden’s Decline, and Obama Seizing Power From the Shadows

Summary

Transcript