The Tucker Carlson Show - Sen. Ron Johnson： What’s Really in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and Uncovering the Truth About 9-11

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00:00:29.080 You tried the other day to raise science-based questions about 9-11

00:00:33.920 and you asked, Building 7 was never hit by a plane.

00:00:36.640 Why did it fall down in exactly the same way the first two towers did?

00:00:39.820 156 witnesses, you know, first responders saying they heard explosions before the buildings came down.

00:00:45.060 There was never a steel building that ever collapsed because of a fire.

00:00:48.940 The vaccine injured.

00:00:49.860 So these would be American citizens who obeyed their government

00:00:54.180 and took a shot that they were required to take

00:00:57.080 and then were injured by or killed by that shot.

00:01:00.140 To date, worldwide, there's over 38,000 deaths associated with the COVID vaccine.

00:01:04.300 24% of those to date either occur on the date of vaccination or within one or two days.

00:01:09.920 We're right now burning about a half a trillion dollars a quarter

00:01:13.320 just to get us by into next year.

00:01:15.480 That should shock everybody.

00:01:16.800 And that's my whole purpose here.

00:01:18.500 We haven't talked about the numbers.

00:01:19.680 We haven't put this in context of the big mess we're in,

00:01:24.420 the deep hole we've dug ourselves.

00:01:26.780 And I'm just going to force that debate.

00:01:28.540 So you told me something that made me laugh at breakfast in a dark way,

00:01:53.060 which is that none of, or very few of the people you work with,

00:02:00.180 your colleagues whose job it is to appropriate money to run the U.S. government,

00:02:03.980 have any idea how much they're appropriating.

00:02:07.100 They don't know what the numbers are.

00:02:08.820 Can you walk us through a description of the ignorance of Congress

00:02:13.740 when it comes to numbers?

00:02:15.500 So you want me to throw my colleagues under the bus?

00:02:17.860 No, it was just like, I was amazed by what you told me.

00:02:21.480 Of the dollars they appropriate, they know that.

00:02:23.940 But that's only 25% of the budget.

00:02:26.260 The story I told you at breakfast is a couple of years ago.

00:02:29.420 This was after the COVID spending spree, but we continued on that spending spree.

00:02:34.600 We were in the midst of an omnibus spending debate.

00:02:37.660 And this is where McConnell was doing a deal with Schumer

00:02:40.760 on a massive omnibus spending bill.

00:02:44.260 And we were going to violate for the first time

00:02:47.300 our conference's position on earmarks.

00:02:50.020 You know, our conference's position is we do not accept earmarks.

00:02:53.580 All of a sudden, the Republican Senate is going to be accepting earmarks.

00:02:57.600 So I got up in front of the group.

00:03:00.740 I'm generally the skunk in the room or, you know,

00:03:02.820 the kid who says the emperor has no clothes.

00:03:06.040 I just asked my colleagues, hey,

00:03:07.200 anybody know how much we spent last year in total?

00:03:10.900 Dead silence.

00:03:12.580 I went out to the Washington press corps.

00:03:14.000 By which you meant what we spent last year?

00:03:15.900 The federal government.

00:03:16.520 What the federal government spent in total.

00:03:19.300 Just the bottom line number.

00:03:20.540 If anybody knew, they didn't volunteer it.

00:03:22.520 I went out to the Washington press corps.

00:03:24.680 Asked them the same question.

00:03:25.740 And one of the reporters said, well, it's over a trillion dollars.

00:03:28.260 Now, that's just discretionary spending.

00:03:29.780 That's about 25% of the budget.

00:03:31.040 I mean, total spending.

00:03:32.800 The answer is, I think, $6.3 trillion.

00:03:34.540 Understand, the federal government is the largest financial entity in the world.

00:03:42.080 We, in theory, are the 535 members of the board of directors.

00:03:46.820 And nobody really knows in total how much the federal government spent because we never talk about it.

00:03:53.580 And as that relates to the current-

00:03:56.640 Weird thing not to talk about, since that's your job.

00:03:59.760 But that's how it's been set up.

00:04:01.940 It's discretionary, which we appropriate, and then mandatory.

00:04:06.080 That just gets spent.

00:04:07.200 It's on automatic pilot.

00:04:08.500 So it's out of sight, it's out of mind, and it's completely out of control.

00:04:12.000 May I ask how that works?

00:04:14.340 So I thought the Constitution gave the Congress the responsibility, the duty, to appropriate the money.

00:04:23.000 So Congress has written laws like the Social Security law.

00:04:26.160 Yeah.

00:04:26.580 Then Medicare and Medicaid.

00:04:28.200 And they've turned, they call those entitlements.

00:04:30.420 So it doesn't make, they're not annually appropriated.

00:04:34.060 It's just you set up a law saying if you qualify, you get X number of dollars.

00:04:39.360 So it's on automatic pilot.

00:04:40.880 And there's no cap on that spending?

00:04:42.700 No, none.

00:04:43.820 You qualify, you get it.

00:04:45.360 So whatever it takes.

00:04:46.420 What has happened over the years is in addition to Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, they've slid what should be, in my mind, discretionary spending into mandatory.

00:04:56.000 And so I'm the guy that pointed out the conference again.

00:04:59.100 Do you guys realize in 2019, other mandatory, again, not Social Security, not Medicare, not Medicaid, other mandatory, pretty well runs the gamut of other appropriation accounts.

00:05:08.660 That was $642 billion.

00:05:11.880 Last year, fiscal year 2024, that was $1.3 trillion.

00:05:16.540 This year, it's a little over a trillion.

00:05:18.340 And that's pretty much, as far as the eye can see, according to CBO, a trillion dollars.

00:05:22.140 So, again, total discretionary spending is about $1.7, but they've literally slid about a trillion dollars now ongoing of other mandatory or what should be discretionary into what they call now other mandatory, a trillion dollars.

00:05:40.380 And I don't think anybody was really aware of that either.

00:05:43.580 So what's right now for 2025 or let's say 2024, what did the federal government spend total?

00:05:51.380 So in 2019, total federal government spending was $4.4 trillion.

00:05:56.720 Yes.

00:05:57.160 This year, we will spend over $7 trillion.

00:06:00.560 So I remember somewhere around during the Obama administration, about when I got elected, 2010, 2011, we had our first trillion-dollar-a-year deficit in 2009.

00:06:12.920 You know, I think it was $1.4 trillion.

00:06:15.180 And we stopped talking about hundreds of billions, which used to move the needle, to now trillions.

00:06:20.020 You know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, it just doesn't seem that much.

00:06:24.320 $4,400 billion spent in 2019.

00:06:28.900 $7,000 billion spent this year.

00:06:31.980 Projected to spend $7,300 billion next year.

00:06:35.580 And now let's kind of bring this back to the debate that we're talking about on the One Big Beautiful Bill.

00:06:40.460 Wait, may I ask just one more bottom line number?

00:06:42.200 Okay, so we're going to spend over $7 trillion this year.

00:06:44.660 How much do we take in in tax receipts every year?

00:06:46.780 About 5.1.

00:06:48.400 So we've got a structural deficit of around 6% right now, CBO's projecting over the next 10 years.

00:06:54.440 6%.

00:06:54.840 So federal revenue will be, according to CBO, 18.1, even though it's about 17.1.

00:06:59.880 But they're projecting that we're going to increase, have an automatic tax increase next year.

00:07:04.280 So they bumped that to 18.1.

00:07:06.220 And federal spending is going to be about 23.4, 23.5%.

00:07:11.600 So that deficit spending, where does that money come from?

00:07:16.780 We borrow it or we print it.

00:07:20.680 Okay.

00:07:20.840 By the way, put this in an even better historical context.

00:07:23.440 In 1930, less than 100 years ago, the federal government spent 3.1% of our GDP.

00:07:30.580 State and local governments back then spent 9.1%.

00:07:33.800 So that was pretty much the vision of our founding fathers, a limited federal government, you know,

00:07:39.580 within the constraints of the enumerated powers and most governing at the point of the states,

00:07:45.900 you know, state and local governments, where it's more accountable, more efficient, more effective.

00:07:49.020 You know, we've blown that up.

00:07:50.060 Now the federal government's spending close to 24%.

00:07:52.300 State and local governments are over 16%.

00:07:55.220 So now total government spending is about 40%.

00:07:57.800 40%.

00:07:58.460 It's three times what it was back less than 100 years ago.

00:08:03.420 And I would argue, as government grows, our freedoms necessarily recede.

00:08:08.900 Of course.

00:08:09.620 Because government has more claim on your income or they borrow money, which causes inflation, which is a silent tax.

00:08:16.720 Do we have any sense of what percentage of the American population, 350 million or whatever it is in that range,

00:08:22.000 our net receivers get more from government than they pay in?

00:08:26.840 My guess is it's more than 50%.

00:08:28.560 And, of course, that's the death knell of a democracy is when the population, the voting public,

00:08:35.920 realizes they can vote themselves benefits at the expense of somebody else.

00:08:40.760 And what they don't realize, the expenses, it's costing them all because the massive deficit spending,

00:08:46.440 because we're not taking enough revenue to cover the expenditures.

00:08:49.220 That's what has eroded the value of our dollar.

00:08:52.120 That's what caused 40-year high inflation.

00:08:54.060 And that hurts everybody.

00:08:55.520 So you think that most, at this point, your guess is most Americans receive more from the federal government,

00:09:01.800 from government at all levels.

00:09:03.400 Again, I shouldn't even say because I haven't checked that figure.

00:09:05.820 Yeah.

00:09:06.720 My guess is probably more than 50%.

00:09:09.140 I mean, when you consider all the entitlements, whether it's Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,

00:09:13.680 and people say, oh, that's my money.

00:09:14.720 Well, in some cases it is.

00:09:18.860 Most people probably get more out of Social Security than they actually did put in.

00:09:23.620 Certainly do that out of Medicare.

00:09:25.360 Certainly out of Medicaid, nobody puts any money into that.

00:09:27.540 That all comes out of the general funds.

00:09:29.140 So we have food stamps.

00:09:31.100 We have all these trillions of dollars worth of transfer payments.

00:09:37.600 Why is this not sustainable?

00:09:40.460 You often hear it's not sustainable.

00:09:41.660 What happens if it continues?

00:09:45.060 Well, again, when I ran in 2010, we'd just experienced our first deficits in excess of a trillion dollars.

00:09:53.860 We were spending about $3.5 trillion a year.

00:09:56.960 3.5.

00:09:58.100 So it's more than double just since 2010?

00:10:00.860 Yeah.

00:10:01.700 Yes.

00:10:02.840 We were $14 trillion in debt.

00:10:04.900 Now, I remember I announced in April of 2010, started my campaign in basically June of 2010, doing parades.

00:10:14.920 And what I would shout is, this is a fight for freedom.

00:10:18.440 We're mortgaging our children's future.

00:10:20.380 It's wrong.

00:10:21.060 It's immoral.

00:10:21.600 It has to stop.

00:10:22.300 That was my campaign theme.

00:10:25.000 Again, we were $14 trillion in debt, spending $3.5 trillion.

00:10:27.900 Now, we're almost $37 trillion in debt.

00:10:32.440 We're spending $7,000 billion, $7 trillion.

00:10:36.280 And CBO projects, over the next 10 years, we will add another $22 trillion to the debt.

00:10:44.520 That's what our projected deficits over the next 10 years is, $22 trillion.

00:10:48.960 Again, that's assuming about a $4 trillion increase because of taxes are scheduled to automatically increase.

00:10:55.300 If those taxes don't increase, first of all, I'm not sure you get the full $4 trillion.

00:11:00.100 But again, take $4 trillion away if we extend current tax law, which is I'm in favor of that.

00:11:08.200 I don't want to increase anybody's taxes.

00:11:10.120 But I don't think this is necessarily time to do additional tax cuts, particularly when those things aren't focused toward economic growth.

00:11:16.880 But anyway, so we are projecting deficits for the next 10 years of a minimum of $2.2 trillion.

00:11:25.300 And I would argue that is a rosy scenario.

00:11:28.460 And particularly when you take a look at what they've done with the one big beautiful bill, they're not seriously reducing spending to what I've been calling for as a pre-pandemic level.

00:11:39.660 Again, the danger is spouting out too many numbers here.

00:11:44.320 I just want to put this in perspective.

00:11:46.880 President Obama, over the course of his eight years, his average deficit was $910 billion.

00:11:54.020 Over the last, and I want to quick do this so I'm accurate, over the last four years of his administration, it was about $550 billion.

00:12:02.940 Okay?

00:12:03.500 So half a trillion dollar deficit over his last four years.

00:12:07.600 President Trump came into office in his first three years, the average deficit was about $800 billion.

00:12:14.420 So he bumped up Obama's four-year average from $550 to $800.

00:12:18.980 Then COVID hit, and we had a deficit of $3.1 trillion just that one year.

00:12:25.240 Now, what we should have done in 2021 when Biden came into office is we should have returned to a reasonable pre-pandemic level.

00:12:31.640 The pandemic was over.

00:12:32.780 We didn't have to keep, you know, we had unemployment spike up to, I think, 25 million people, normal unemployment somewhere between five and six.

00:12:40.100 But within a few months, it was around 11 and then returned to pretty much normal early in 2021.

00:12:45.160 We didn't have to keep stimulating the economy.

00:12:47.760 But Biden did.

00:12:48.620 Biden averaged $1.9 trillion per year in deficit.

00:12:52.660 So Obama, when he left, his last four years, $550.

00:12:57.280 Trump, before the pandemic, a little more than $800 billion per year.

00:13:02.800 Biden, in his four years, went up to $1.9 trillion.

00:13:06.020 And now CBO is projecting, and again, a rosy scenario that we'll be averaging $2.2 trillion over the next 10 years.

00:13:14.160 So we'll take our debt from $37 trillion up to $59 trillion.

00:13:21.680 And if we extend the current tax law, take away $4 trillion in revenue, roughly, add another $4 trillion.

00:13:32.400 The spending cuts they're talking about, they're paltry.

00:13:37.800 You know, $1.5 trillion.

00:13:39.140 Some of those are fake.

00:13:40.180 Some of those are extended way out.

00:13:41.600 But they're offset by 10 years.

00:13:45.420 10 years?

00:13:46.380 Yeah.

00:13:46.700 I mean, we'll spend the money up front for the border, for defense.

00:13:50.420 So that also takes away from that $1.5 trillion in spending.

00:13:54.280 So at most, we're maybe cutting spending $1.2 trillion.

00:13:58.080 Part of that, a few hundred billion, I think, is student loan forgiveness, which the Supreme Court will probably rule unconstitutional.

00:14:04.240 We're not going to spend it anyway, but they count that as savings.

00:14:06.720 So much of the savings they're talking about in the one big, beautiful bill is phony.

00:14:11.100 It's fake.

00:14:11.600 Or it's in the out years, where if Republicans lose power, Democrats will just restore it.

00:14:18.540 But no matter how you slice it, from my standpoint, CBO's $22 trillion of 10-year deficit is a rosy scenario.

00:14:26.520 It'll probably be more than that.

00:14:27.900 And what happens then is what's happening right now in the bond market.

00:14:33.560 Interest rates are creeping up.

00:14:35.740 You can't control that.

00:14:37.200 If global creditors look at the United States as uncreditworthy, our 50-year average interest payment that we've paid on our debt is over 5%.

00:14:46.400 So I think it's as high as 5.8.

00:14:50.100 It's not the most exact figure.

00:14:53.160 But right now, we're borrowing probably about 3.3%.

00:14:55.640 That's been the average over the last 25 years, 3.3%.

00:14:59.000 And that's kind of where we're at right now.

00:15:00.320 So if we increased that interest, if that interest expense increases to, or rate increases to 4.3%, add another $4 trillion in deficit spending.

00:15:10.760 If it goes up to the 50-year average of 5.3%, add about $8 or $9 trillion to the $22 trillion.

00:15:17.620 So again, you go $22 trillion plus extending current tax law, add another close to $4 trillion.

00:15:24.680 If interest rates start creeping up, and they are, just one percentage point, add another $4 trillion.

00:15:29.720 So you can see very quickly, you go from $22 to $26 to $30 trillion, add down to $37 trillion, we're up to $67 trillion in debt.

00:15:38.700 I don't think we'd ever hit that.

00:15:40.600 I think something's going to happen.

00:15:41.680 We'll have a debt crisis.

00:15:42.560 We'll have failure in our bond auctions, spiking interest rates even more.

00:15:46.980 And again, we're spending more on interest this year than we spend on defense.

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00:18:41.500 You often hear the phrase debt crisis.

00:18:43.860 What does that mean exactly?

00:18:45.260 What would that look like?

00:18:47.100 Depends whether it's a chronic or an acute crisis.

00:18:49.880 I'd say we're already in a chronic debt crisis.

00:18:52.780 That is what I would consider the devaluation of the dollar.

00:18:55.980 I laid out, and we talked about this, my pre-pandemic options going back to 98, 2014, 2019.

00:19:01.980 So a dollar you held in 1998 is only worth 51 cents a day.

00:19:06.780 Ouch.

00:19:07.680 A dollar you held when I-

00:19:08.900 It's devalued that much just since 98?

00:19:10.600 It's been cut in half.

00:19:11.360 When I ran 2010, that dollar is worth about 68 cents.

00:19:15.760 A dollar you held during Obama in 2014 is worth 74 cents.

00:19:20.080 A dollar you held just in 2019 is only worth 80 cents.

00:19:24.240 So again, that is the devaluation of the dollar.

00:19:26.160 That's inflation.

00:19:27.500 This is why everything is so expensive.

00:19:29.300 Yeah, that's a silent tax.

00:19:31.140 It's how you spend 300 bucks at dinner, and you're like, I didn't even get drunk.

00:19:34.700 Like, how did that happen?

00:19:36.080 That's the effect.

00:19:36.860 Yeah, and that's why you had 40-year high inflation.

00:19:39.320 So that way, I would consider the chronic debt crisis.

00:19:42.620 It just continues.

00:19:44.280 And it's the danger.

00:19:45.980 We have not tamed inflation yet.

00:19:48.920 We've tamed it, but we haven't conquered it.

00:19:50.760 So I think that's always on the horizon, particularly if we continue deficit spend.

00:19:55.360 Particularly if the bond markets continue to react as they are, keep driving interest rates up higher,

00:20:01.420 and you start increasing the amount of interest expense, crowding out other spending.

00:20:05.520 So an acute debt crisis would be where you have a bond market failure, and like what happened to Greece.

00:20:13.020 All of a sudden, you can't sell your debt.

00:20:15.700 So you either print the money, which sparks another round of 40, 50-year high inflation,

00:20:21.000 devaluing the currency rapidly.

00:20:24.340 You know, we're not necessarily immune to hyperinflation.

00:20:27.360 Other countries have experienced it.

00:20:28.960 So failure to sell your debt in a bond auction, what does that look like?

00:20:37.960 You just put out your bonds and nobody wants them?

00:20:40.720 Nobody buys them.

00:20:41.920 And so, again, the advantage the U.S. has over any other country is we are the world's reserve currency.

00:20:47.480 So we can print dollars.

00:20:49.900 So we can get by that moment, except for you're printing dollars, and inflation is pretty easy to define.

00:20:57.820 It's too many dollars chasing too few goods.

00:21:00.260 So you just print all those dollars, and again, the dollar devalues.

00:21:04.640 The cost of your debt is lowered.

00:21:08.080 Again, it's a silent way of addressing these massive deficits.

00:21:13.740 How far away from a moment like that are we?

00:21:16.500 I don't know.

00:21:17.240 I would have thought we would have experienced it by now, but we've experienced it instead as, again, 40-year high inflation, the devaluation of the currency.

00:21:27.400 I mean, I think that's pretty shocking when you take a look at that.

00:21:29.600 It's a dollar just 11 years ago.

00:21:34.100 It was only worth 74 cents.

00:21:36.540 Six years, it's only worth 80 cents.

00:21:38.720 That's an amazing level of devaluation.

00:21:42.660 Now, it's not even close to hyperinflation where you've got inflation rates of hundreds of percent.

00:21:51.240 So when that crisis comes, what do you do?

00:21:55.520 Well, you have a great deal of turmoil in your society.

00:22:00.440 It won't be pleasant.

00:22:02.740 It's what we need to try and avoid.

00:22:05.100 And by the way, why I'm not in a full-blown panic, people like Art Laffer, economists of the Laffer curve,

00:22:12.380 he does correctly point out America has enormous wealth.

00:22:18.360 I mean, hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of wealth.

00:22:21.600 So $37 trillion in relationship to hundreds of trillion dollars worth of wealth, that's manageable.

00:22:31.040 It's just like if you're a billionaire but you don't work, you can have some pretty large mortgages on homes,

00:22:36.920 but you still have to generate some income to service the debt.

00:22:41.700 And I think that's kind of the point we're making.

00:22:43.580 I mean, it's not irrelevant debt-to-GDP ratio.

00:22:47.720 And we do have massive wealth, but we need to manage the cash flow problem here, too,

00:22:54.740 as well as just the pernicious impact of all these transfer payments, providing encouragement for people not to work.

00:23:05.020 There's a great article written, I think, in 2017 by Nick Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute,

00:23:09.960 our miserable 21st century, you know, talking about how 20% of working-age men are permanently out of the workforce,

00:23:16.440 you know, on Medicaid, using the Medicaid card to buy opiate drugs to, you know, help finance their living.

00:23:23.340 You know, all kinds, all those pernicious impacts of a society where we literally don't require people to work,

00:23:31.320 we actually incentivize them not to.

00:23:33.820 So that's, to my mind, that's one of the biggest problems we have with a big wealthiest.

00:23:38.340 And you need mass immigration to fill the gap.

00:23:40.760 Yeah, somebody's got to do the work.

00:23:42.000 Right.

00:23:42.540 And, you know, we were talking earlier when I first entered this political realm, going to dairy breakfast,

00:23:48.020 the first issue I heard in Wisconsin was, you know, we don't have enough workers.

00:23:51.960 Now, I come from a manufacturing background where for 20 or so years,

00:23:55.780 you couldn't find enough people to work in a manufacturing plant, which is why I always kind of scratch my head.

00:24:01.380 Listen, there are certainly products that we have offshored that we need to reshore,

00:24:07.300 you know, things that are strategic, that impact our national security.

00:24:11.160 But right now, I think our biggest problem is we don't have enough workers.

00:24:14.700 If you bring all this manufacturing back to America, who's going to work the factories?

00:24:19.320 And we certainly shouldn't be bringing back high labor content product.

00:24:23.720 Right.

00:24:23.840 I think you need to diversify your supply base.

00:24:26.700 You can't be so dependent on an adversary like China. 0.62

00:24:30.120 Spread it around.

00:24:30.800 You know, that would reduce your risk.

00:24:34.400 So, what you're saying, like the numbers you're describing are the bottom line numbers.

00:24:40.060 This is not like higher math.

00:24:41.600 This should be obvious to everybody.

00:24:43.700 What's the reaction been?

00:24:45.880 Well, they just ignore it.

00:24:47.540 Again, one of the reasons I'm digging my heels in as the one big beautiful bill comes over the Senate is we haven't had the discussion or the debate.

00:24:57.280 The only number you heard about in the whole House debate here was $1.5 trillion, which sounds like a lot, right?

00:25:04.660 I mean, $1.5 trillion in spending reduction.

00:25:06.960 And, of course, they're focusing on programs like Medicaid.

00:25:10.080 The main problem with that is Obamacare, which is now called Medicaid expansion, along states to gain the system, putting at risk Medicaid for the truly vulnerable.

00:25:19.360 But that's all you really heard about.

00:25:23.220 You don't ever put that in context.

00:25:25.680 You know, $1.5 trillion compared to $89 trillion spending over the next 10 years.

00:25:30.400 It's barely a rounding error.

00:25:32.540 You know, we haven't been talking about the massive annual deficits.

00:25:36.420 We don't talk about the debt.

00:25:39.500 Why is the—I mean, when you were describing the progression of debt accumulation, it feels like it's been really rapid in a short period of time.

00:25:50.060 Like, the federal government's spending almost twice what it was just the other day.

00:25:53.800 Where's all that money going?

00:25:54.920 How did that happen?

00:25:55.880 What is that?

00:25:57.000 Well, again, it was really sparked by the pandemic.

00:26:02.920 Yeah, I'll give the Tea Party movement a fair amount of credit.

00:26:05.440 You know, I ran because we were a mortgage on our kids' future.

00:26:09.020 We were running deficits for, you know, I think three years in a row, over a trillion dollars.

00:26:13.360 But once we got to town in 2011, we started having these budget debates.

00:26:17.940 We had divided government.

00:26:19.720 Obama didn't get everything he wanted.

00:26:21.660 We did something called the Budget Control Act, which literally reduced discretionary spending for three years in a row until we learned how to weasel around it.

00:26:28.560 So we pretty well flattened out federal government spending at about $3.5 trillion for five or six or seven years.

00:26:35.440 And then the last couple of years of the Obama administration started creeping up.

00:26:38.760 And then under Trump, it went from about $4 trillion to $4.1 to $4.4.

00:26:44.320 And then it went to $6.5 and we've never looked back.

00:26:47.980 And the analogy I use there is I don't know of an American family if they had an illness and they had to borrow $50,000 to pay for the medical bills.

00:26:55.600 If that family member got well, you wouldn't keep borrowing $50,000 and spend at that level.

00:27:01.120 But that's exactly what we've done.

00:27:03.500 And like nobody other than, you know, I'm the first guy who wrote the Wall Street Journal article about we really need to return to pre-pandemic levels.

00:27:12.160 It doesn't seem radical.

00:27:14.360 And I've laid out options, you know, Clinton, Obama, Trump.

00:27:17.360 The COVID pandemic, this was just like a couple years ago.

00:27:19.680 So, I mean, what Biden should have done, I mean, we had, we overspent in 2020.

00:27:26.080 When we first were talking about that CARES Act, it was like $750 billion, which, you know, I knew we had to do something fast and massive so markets wouldn't collapse.

00:27:33.700 But within like a week or two, that went up to like $2.2 trillion.

00:27:36.620 We sent out direct payment checks to 166 million Americans three times way late, way, way after unemployment had already returned from the 25 million person high.

00:27:51.900 Again, 25 million people unemployed when normally you're at five or six.

00:27:56.080 We sent out direct payment checks to 166 million Americans three times.

00:28:00.600 So we way overspent even in 2020.

00:28:02.860 So you had trillions of dollars sloshing around the economy as you come into 2021.

00:28:08.440 The economy is coming roaring back because you have all this pent-up demand and all these dollars sloshing around.

00:28:13.640 The last thing you should have done is add more fuel to the fire.

00:28:17.500 That's what Biden and Democrats did.

00:28:20.000 Again, on average, $1.9 trillion of deficit spending over the next four years.

00:28:26.340 We never came down off of that $6.5 trillion.

00:28:29.260 You know, a little bit 6.2, 6.3, but, you know, then started going back up again.

00:28:33.680 And that's really the moment, that's when a bass boat suddenly cost $100,000 or your car cost $90,000.

00:28:39.520 You know, brand new Suburban is 80 grand or whatever.

00:28:42.040 That's when the country became obviously unaffordable, I think, unless I'm misremembering this.

00:28:46.100 Yeah, or your meal deal at McDonald's all of a sudden jumped from five to ten bucks.

00:28:50.020 When did that happen?

00:28:51.220 I don't understand why there's no will to fix that.

00:29:00.600 I mean, that seems like pretty basic macroeconomics in the Congress.

00:29:03.720 Nobody's—

00:29:04.220 I haven't heard McConnell say this, but I've heard the quote attributed to him, and this is the one thing I agree with him on.

00:29:11.120 Show me one member of Congress who ever lost because they spent too much money.

00:29:14.820 Yeah.

00:29:15.640 There just isn't public pressure.

00:29:17.300 There's not public awareness.

00:29:18.340 You know, we don't educate our young people.

00:29:22.580 We don't—the news media doesn't connect the dots that, you know, why people can't afford things is because of massive deaths of spending, which sparked 40-year high inflation, devalued the dollar.

00:29:31.740 I mean, to me, it's pretty obvious.

00:29:33.660 But normal Americans, they just get all surly about it.

00:29:36.440 Okay, well, then let's meditate for a moment on the consequences of it.

00:29:40.460 I asked what happens when there's a debt crisis.

00:29:42.980 Why haven't we had one yet?

00:29:44.100 You said we probably should have had one.

00:29:45.840 I don't know why we haven't, but we're going to get one if we keep doing this.

00:29:48.760 I said, what will the effect of that be?

00:29:50.400 You said massive instability in the society.

00:29:53.140 What do you mean?

00:29:54.580 Like, what will that look like?

00:29:56.000 Maybe it would awaken people to the threat if they knew what would happen in a debt crisis.

00:30:02.080 Well, so if you're living on different transfer payments or different types of welfare benefits, you know, you may not get those.

00:30:09.460 You know, you can't borrow more money, so you're going to have to take what money we spend on other government programs and we'll have to service our debt.

00:30:17.300 You have to pay it off unless we want to go into full default.

00:30:20.080 And that's where you just say to Japan and China and Germany and everyone else who's bought those bonds, like, we're not paying.

00:30:26.860 Yeah, which means you'll never float more debt.

00:30:31.000 So you can't, you know, other than print more money, which then creates even more hyperinflation.

00:30:37.000 So now people can't afford anything.

00:30:38.660 I mean, yeah.

00:30:39.140 Has anyone ever defaulted, any country ever defaulted on debt and just said, we're not paying, come and get it?

00:30:43.780 Oh, I'm sure they have.

00:30:45.240 I'm not.

00:30:45.560 But that's not common.

00:30:46.260 I think it happens enough.

00:30:48.660 But what always happens is, you know, countries like the U.S. go in there and we help them restructure their debt.

00:30:55.220 I think that's happened numerous times.

00:30:57.980 But no one's going to come and help us restructure our debt.

00:31:00.540 Nobody can.

00:31:01.740 Again, we will lose our position of the world's reserve currency and we'll lose our ability to print dollars that people accept.

00:31:08.460 I mean, it's a marvelous thing that we just print dollars, we can send them overseas, and people will produce products and ship them over here.

00:31:16.840 High quality products at pretty low cost.

00:31:18.620 I think it's one of the reasons we've been able to keep inflation in check, producing all these massive deficits over the last couple decades.

00:31:24.980 Because we do import a lot of products.

00:31:26.820 You know, we've got billions of people either un or underemployed around the world.

00:31:31.820 We provide the capital.

00:31:33.800 You know, they produce the factories, they produce the goods.

00:31:35.820 And then we just give them, you know, paper.

00:31:40.040 It's fiat currency.

00:31:41.520 You know, we print it.

00:31:42.340 We keep printing it.

00:31:43.060 And it's been working out pretty well.

00:31:44.800 At some point in time, that gravy train might stop.

00:31:48.340 And then, I mean, then you have like a total collapse of the current system.

00:31:53.280 Yeah.

00:31:54.980 Again, I can't predict.

00:31:56.500 I'm trying to avoid it.

00:31:58.220 It'll be painful.

00:32:00.100 And who really suffers are people at the lower end of the income spectrum.

00:32:05.000 That have no safety net.

00:32:07.440 They don't have any kind of hard assets that will inflate with inflation.

00:32:10.520 Right.

00:32:10.780 They just be destitute.

00:32:13.520 A lot of them.

00:32:14.640 Yeah.

00:32:15.540 In a country that has no kind of organizing principle or national identity where people are not as united as they were in, say, 1929.

00:32:23.920 I had my comms staff put together a video.

00:32:28.220 I asked them to find all these Republican leaders that have talked about balancing the budget.

00:32:33.400 You know, we have a spending problem.

00:32:35.360 It starts out with President Trump saying in the State of the Union, I'm going to do something we haven't done in 24 years, balance the federal budget.

00:32:41.760 Then every Republican leader, some form of, we don't have a revenue problem.

00:32:47.460 We have a spending problem.

00:32:49.180 In those clips, we have Elon Musk saying, if we don't fix this, there won't be money left over for anything.

00:32:55.400 And I think that's a pretty accurate statement.

00:32:59.040 So how many people can you really trust?

00:33:00.840 Well, if you think about it, probably not that many.

00:33:03.140 Let's say you've got 20,000 Instagram followers.

00:33:06.520 How many of them would show up at your house to help you if you had a crisis?

00:33:09.760 Maybe about eight.

00:33:11.000 That's a high number.

00:33:12.660 The same is true on the Internet.

00:33:13.940 Who do you trust with your private information?

00:33:16.420 That question has never been more relevant.

00:33:18.180 Data brokers record every single detail of everything you do online.

00:33:21.380 Then they sell your digital profile to scammers and invasive advertisers who make a living off of harassing you.

00:33:28.080 If you're getting harassed, that's why.

00:33:29.700 You probably are.

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00:34:47.760 Tucker, does this bill get us closer to fixing it?

00:34:50.720 No, it exacerbates the problem.

00:34:52.940 How can that be?

00:34:54.720 Because we're not serious about returning to a reasonable pre-pandemic global spending.

00:34:58.000 We've picked a number out of the air, $1.5 trillion.

00:35:00.880 It's totally out of context.

00:35:02.680 It's not really related to the moment.

00:35:05.980 It's missing the moment.

00:35:07.920 Can I ask you, who came up with that number?

00:35:10.840 Like, whose lie is that?

00:35:12.620 I think my best guess is conservatives in the House, who I love, didn't want to be blamed if this thing failed.

00:35:25.060 So they said, well, listen, in order for us to accept a $5 trillion increase in the debt ceiling, we've got to get at least $1.5 trillion in savings.

00:35:34.780 Spending cuts.

00:35:36.020 I don't think they were looking at the big picture.

00:35:38.320 I think they just pulled a big—I criticized them at the time, privately.

00:35:42.680 I said, listen, you set the bar way too low, you guys.

00:35:44.900 This is completely inadequate.

00:35:46.460 They set the bar way too low that it should have been easy to meet it, quite honestly.

00:35:52.140 But even that was difficult because they didn't go through what I would consider the right kind of process.

00:35:58.740 So maybe we can shift in terms of what we have to do, what I'm trying to accomplish here, and my digging my heels in.

00:36:05.800 Doge has kind of shown us what we can do here.

00:36:09.040 We've never had a process to control spending in the federal government.

00:36:12.460 We don't have a balanced budget requirement.

00:36:14.360 I didn't realize this, just found out, do you know they established the appropriation committees because the authorizing committees were big spenders?

00:36:22.840 So the appropriation committees were supposed to be the control on the big spenders.

00:36:26.420 Well, that didn't work.

00:36:28.260 The Budget Control Act of 1974 didn't work.

00:36:31.140 Simpson-Bowles didn't work.

00:36:32.840 The Budget Control Act didn't work.

00:36:34.760 It did for three years, but then we weaseled our way around it.

00:36:37.500 So what process could possibly work to control spending?

00:36:41.560 Well, first of all, you have to know the numbers.

00:36:44.360 You have to understand what a deep hole we're in and have a commitment to address it.

00:36:51.360 But Doge has pretty well shown us how to do it.

00:36:53.800 Now, I come from the private sector.

00:36:54.960 I think we probably spent more time either analyzing my department head budgets or my own overall company budget than Congress in total spends analyzing the $7,000 billion budget of the federal government.

00:37:09.500 So Doge has shown us if you go line by line, contract by contract, you will discover and uncover spending that if the American public saw it, they'd be outraged by it.

00:37:21.940 If you eliminated it, my guess is most Americans wouldn't even know it's eliminated, but the only people that would know would be the grifters who have been sucking down the waste, fraud, and abuse. 0.99

00:37:33.760 The NGO community.

00:37:34.380 So you have to go step by step.

00:37:36.460 So that's why I've always been supportive of a multiple step reconciliation process here.

00:37:40.820 I was always recommending three steps.

00:37:43.000 First step, give President Trump the funding on the border, defense, bank $850 billion of real savings, not make believe, you know, now.

00:37:52.020 And Lindsey Graham agreed to this $85.5 billion each year for four years to pay for the four years worth of spending and then extend that out 10 years.

00:38:03.620 That gives you $850.

00:38:04.580 That's more than half of what the House budget reconciliation supposedly gives us.

00:38:09.480 Second step, I would just extend current tax law.

00:38:11.540 Now, if we would have been smart enough in 2017, had somebody like Chairman Crapo who really came up with this idea of let's just use current policy for taxes, then we can make this stuff permanent.

00:38:22.040 You should never pass, in my mind, a tax law that automatically expires, just creates all these fiscal cliffs and puts all kinds of uncertainty in the economy.

00:38:32.580 Yeah, why do they do that?

00:38:33.360 Yeah, because we – so this gets a real budget wonkery, but for spending, to score it, you use current policy, which means if a spending program ends, if you want to extend it, you just – you score it based on, oh, it was going to be extended anyway, so it doesn't cost anything.

00:38:50.520 For taxes, though, we use current law.

00:38:53.240 So if the tax cuts are ending and you want to extend them, well, you're just going to end the fact that they are going to end, so now to extend them, it's going to be a trillion-dollar score.

00:39:03.720 So then you've got to pay for it, and it's hard to pay for it.

00:39:06.380 And so that's how it was all scored back in 2017, where if we would just use current policy, if we use current policy now, we can just extend current tax law, and there's no score.

00:39:16.860 So that's really what we're doing now.

00:39:18.600 But we have to recognize when you're comparing to the CBO budget, CBO budget is assuming it does – taxes do increase, and bring in about another $4 trillion worth of revenue.

00:39:29.880 So that's why I say the $22 trillion in projected deficits is probably a rosy scenario.

00:39:35.900 I mean, it seems like the core problems are just so familiar.

00:39:38.960 One is short-term thinking, and the second is the misplaced belief that you can see what the future will be. 0.95

00:39:45.300 And both of those are, like, silly and unwise. 0.75

00:39:49.160 Maybe – are we bumping up against the inherent limits of the system? 0.75

00:39:53.000 Well, I would say we're missing the – focusing on the right thing.

00:40:01.080 We had to focus on spending.

00:40:03.680 And the reason I say that is spending is pretty certain.

00:40:07.500 Again, who knows what revenue you're going to bring in?

00:40:09.760 It's hard to predict.

00:40:10.640 But spending, that's pretty easy to, you know, predict what that's going to be.

00:40:16.940 Plus, I personally voted for President Trump because I wanted him to defeat the deep state.

00:40:22.660 Yeah.

00:40:23.180 You don't defeat the deep state by continuing to fund it at Biden's levels.

00:40:26.880 Yeah, I know.

00:40:27.880 So, again, when you start talking about controlling the deficit, well, you can control the deficit by tariff revenue or selling the gold card.

00:40:34.580 But that keeps funding the deep state.

00:40:37.260 You have to focus on spending.

00:40:39.380 And we've just gone through an unprecedented level of increased spending other than World War II.

00:40:47.540 Just quick aside on that.

00:40:49.440 We entered World War II spending 11.7% of our economy, of our GDP on federal government, 11.7.

00:40:56.080 That got ramped up to 41% during the war.

00:40:59.760 But by 1948, because we had responsible leaders, you know, the greatest generation, that actually went down to 11.4% of GDP.

00:41:06.900 And we returned to a pre-war level spending.

00:41:08.480 And we had a massive recession, too.

00:41:10.480 I mean, you know, the war is over.

00:41:12.960 Let's return to a reasonable pre-war level spending.

00:41:16.140 We didn't do that during the pandemic.

00:41:18.480 And that's what we have to do.

00:41:19.580 We have to focus on doing it.

00:41:20.660 It's such a reasonable thing to do.

00:41:22.580 It should have been done in 2021.

00:41:24.080 We didn't do it for four years.

00:41:25.940 But now we're just pretty well accepting that.

00:41:27.680 We're accepting the fact that Obamacare, now called Medicaid expansion, is putting at risk Medicare for the truly vulnerable.

00:41:35.220 Even though we all ran on repealing and replacing that and obviously failed in the first Trump term.

00:41:40.220 But now we're all okay with it.

00:41:41.400 Now we're not going to touch that because they renamed it.

00:41:44.680 Are you kidding me?

00:41:46.120 Well, but this is how it works.

00:41:47.840 Like in 20 years, we'll be like, well, of course you have to protect trans kids.

00:41:50.480 You know, what seems crazy at first becomes accepted and then it becomes the hill to die on.

00:41:56.580 It's just like your expectations change, right?

00:41:59.960 So, again, I'm trying to force the discussion over the real numbers, okay?

00:42:07.760 And again, $1.5 trillion in abstract seems like a lot, but we've really ramped up from 2019 to this year.

00:42:18.700 That's over 10 years.

00:42:19.780 That's $29 trillion of increased spending over 10 years.

00:42:23.380 $29 trillion.

00:42:24.540 And we're talking about cutting out $1.5 of that?

00:42:27.500 Yeah, it's a joke.

00:42:28.180 It's a joke because people don't want to cut it out.

00:42:31.860 And so I guess that's my question.

00:42:33.120 You said that the problem with democracy is once the majority figures out they can just steal money, then, you know, then you're just like headed to the cliff and there's no pulling back.

00:42:42.780 Are we there?

00:42:43.480 Well, again, they're not stealing it.

00:42:45.040 They just don't realize that how it's financed is by printing money and they can't afford things because of that.

00:42:51.200 Well, if you're taking other people's money at the point of a gun, it's called theft.

00:42:54.320 Yeah, they try and tax it, but we're not taxing anywhere near enough.

00:42:58.240 Right.

00:42:58.380 No, right.

00:42:59.000 So we're going to have to borrow $2.2 trillion for the next 10 years every year.

00:43:03.780 At least.

00:43:04.520 But that's effectively a tax because it devalues the money in your pocket.

00:43:07.720 So you're basically paying $10 for a Big Mac and a Coke.

00:43:10.980 Yeah, inflation is a silent tax.

00:43:12.440 Yeah.

00:43:12.560 It's really nasty.

00:43:15.380 Do you have any hope?

00:43:18.040 I'm not the world's greatest optimist.

00:43:20.920 Yeah.

00:43:22.000 I mean, how can you be?

00:43:23.180 I fear we've passed the point of no return.

00:43:26.760 The reason I'm digging my heels, and Tucker, I don't want to.

00:43:31.080 I bet you don't.

00:43:31.580 I really don't.

00:43:32.200 I mean, I'm not looking forward.

00:43:33.000 Listen, I love what President Trump is doing.

00:43:34.960 He is such a unique individual, unique political figure, unique president.

00:43:41.920 He is doing things that only he would do.

00:43:45.040 Nobody else would do it.

00:43:46.480 And it's things that have to be done.

00:43:48.580 Okay?

00:43:48.860 So I'm so supportive of most of what he's doing.

00:43:55.520 But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here.

00:43:58.560 We've never had such an unprecedented level of spending.

00:44:01.580 Returning to a reasonable level is just so common sense and not that hard.

00:44:07.260 It's not going to be easy.

00:44:08.980 But what I've done in laying out those pre-pandemic options, go back to Bill Clinton, 1998, when

00:44:15.340 we actually had a surplus for the first time in 1969.

00:44:17.820 I don't think we spent too little in 1969 or 1998.

00:44:21.640 Obama in 2014 or Trump in 2019.

00:44:24.760 There are three options.

00:44:26.400 Leave Social Security, Medicare, and interest as they are.

00:44:29.280 Spend what you need to spend.

00:44:30.340 But for all the other outlays, you just increase them based on population growth and inflation.

00:44:35.520 A very reasonable control, right?

00:44:38.440 You end up somewhere between $5.5 and $6.5 trillion.

00:44:42.280 Now, I would go back to Clinton, recognizing that 9-11 happened after that.

00:44:46.780 So you probably have to plus up defense.

00:44:48.700 Although I'd like to hone how we spend our defense dollars.

00:44:52.240 I think we talked about that earlier.

00:44:53.580 I don't think we spend them well.

00:44:54.640 But somewhere between $5.5 and $6.5 trillion.

00:44:59.540 And then I've printed out the budgets, a couple thousand lines.

00:45:04.060 And then go through those budgets line by line.

00:45:06.580 You just ask the question, well, this is what Clinton was spending, fully inflated.

00:45:12.040 Why are we spending this much more?

00:45:13.960 Or this is what Obama spent.

00:45:15.580 Why is it, you know, or Trump.

00:45:17.080 Why is it so much more?

00:45:18.720 Explain yourself.

00:45:20.200 Like I said, in business, this would be simple.

00:45:22.340 Yeah.

00:45:22.920 I'd just say, I'd tell my manager that I said you could increase your budgets based on inflation,

00:45:27.800 the number of customers you serve.

00:45:29.380 You're 10% above that.

00:45:30.600 Cut it. 0.63

00:45:31.920 Kind of like, I don't care how you do it.

00:45:33.360 Just do it.

00:45:33.900 Get back down to that level.

00:45:35.740 You know, to do it is, you know, so it doesn't harm our business.

00:45:38.340 So it doesn't harm people's lives.

00:45:39.660 But just do it.

00:45:40.740 Because what we were spending, 1998, 2014, 2019, I think it's probably pretty adequate.

00:45:46.760 And by the way, if you go through it line by line, there will be lines I think you look at,

00:45:50.660 scratch your head and go, we probably shouldn't be spending anything on that.

00:45:54.820 I think Doge has taught us that.

00:45:56.340 So again, we-

00:45:56.960 For sure.

00:45:57.560 You know, Trump, again, I think that was brilliant.

00:45:59.260 What Trump and Elon did with Doge.

00:46:02.980 But we haven't realized those savings yet.

00:46:05.180 I think we stopped spending on contracts.

00:46:07.140 But unless we set up and pass a rescission package on the discretionary end, unless we

00:46:12.360 take whatever they discovered in mandatory and eliminate that through the reconciliation

00:46:17.540 process, those monies will just be sitting out there unobligated.

00:46:22.340 And some Democrat Congress and some Democrat president will spend it without even having

00:46:26.580 to appropriate it.

00:46:28.200 Can I ask about the defense budget?

00:46:30.320 So it's in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars.

00:46:34.700 We face no invasion threat.

00:46:36.340 We never have.

00:46:37.640 We're separated from the rest of the world by two large oceans.

00:46:41.220 Our standing force is not that huge, actually.

00:46:43.760 It's not like all that money is going to pay for soldiers and Marines and airmen.

00:46:48.020 And why are we spending that much on defense?

00:46:51.800 We haven't won a war in 80 years.

00:46:53.560 So like, I'm a little-

00:46:55.340 And I know that all Republicans are required to take the Liz Cheney position. 0.99

00:46:59.400 You know, that's just great.

00:47:00.520 Defense spending is just by its nature inherently good.

00:47:03.780 But what is that?

00:47:05.400 What's all that money going to exactly?

00:47:07.380 We did not heed Eisenhower's warning.

00:47:11.940 I think the military-industrial complex has way too much power.

00:47:15.760 However, I would love, and we should do this, is we should go back, at least as far back

00:47:21.540 as Vietnam, and analyze each one of these foreign entanglements, each of these foreign

00:47:27.020 wars, and ask ourselves and gather some basic information.

00:47:30.780 First, what was our goal going in?

00:47:35.340 Secondly, you know, what did it cost in human life, ours, and our adversary, our enemies?

00:47:42.480 What did it cost in terms of dollars?

00:47:45.000 And then the final question is, did we accomplish the objective?

00:47:49.400 I think if you do that, and I hate to say this because it's true. 1.00

00:47:54.500 I mean, this is, we're filming this on Memorial Day.

00:47:57.180 Yeah.

00:47:57.860 The finest among us.

00:47:59.580 Well, I agree with that.

00:48:00.160 People who love this country, who've stepped up the plate, willing to serve and sacrifice

00:48:03.800 more than a million, have paid the ultimate price.

00:48:06.720 So, I don't even like saying this, but the fact of the matter is, if you did that kind

00:48:12.940 of analysis, you wouldn't walk away very satisfied.

00:48:15.320 Well, but doesn't our respect for the men who died in military service require us to do that?

00:48:20.880 I think it does.

00:48:22.740 So, if you would, to do that, I mean, I was just recently in Hanoi a couple years ago.

00:48:28.700 What wonderful people.

00:48:30.160 Yeah.

00:48:31.320 They love Americans.

00:48:32.720 I mean, after, even though they love America, because they're entrepreneur, they're hard

00:48:37.200 working.

00:48:37.720 They want, like most people in the world, they want what we have.

00:48:41.460 They respect the values of America, the principles of freedom, individual liberty.

00:48:47.320 Okay.

00:48:48.420 We never should have been to war with them.

00:48:50.080 We never should have bombed those people.

00:48:52.180 But follow it all the way through.

00:48:54.540 Afghanistan, Iraq.

00:48:57.420 Syria.

00:48:57.780 I mean, so, I mean, what have we accomplished with the Ukraine war right now?

00:49:03.560 Oh, I know.

00:49:04.920 We have actually solidified the relationship between Russia and China and North Korea and

00:49:10.620 Iran.

00:49:11.300 Yes.

00:49:11.700 That's completely opposite of what our goals ought to be.

00:49:15.160 Yeah.

00:49:15.320 So, it's just not working.

00:49:16.580 I mean, we have not accomplished these goals.

00:49:18.160 They've been miserable failures.

00:49:19.780 How many people died in Iraq based on that false intelligence?

00:49:23.780 The best book I read on Afghanistan is written by special ops folks, and they basically made

00:49:31.320 the point that we'd pretty well accomplished what we need to accomplish in Afghanistan before

00:49:35.940 Tommy Frank ever put a boot on the ground.

00:49:37.900 You know, we said, hey, listen, you guys harbored Al-Qaeda.

00:49:41.780 Don't do it anymore.

00:49:43.420 Kind of punish the Taliban, and that's probably where we should have left that. 0.95

00:49:48.940 How many Americans lost their lives?

00:49:50.480 How many, you know, Afghanistan citizens lost their lives?

00:49:55.080 What did that cost?

00:49:56.360 Again, it's almost incalculable.

00:49:58.900 So, a new report, which you may not have seen because it was suppressed, shows the abortion

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00:50:07.020 Not just dangerous to the baby that it kills, but to the women who take it. 1.00

00:50:10.340 11% of women who take the pill experience, quote, serious adverse effects.

00:50:15.880 Why is it still on the market?

00:50:17.060 Huh, because it's abortion-related, and our leaders love abortion. 0.98

00:50:21.980 It'd be easy to turn that figure into a rant about abortion, but there's another angle

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00:51:13.440 Well, given all of that, and given that no one has ever been punished, no high-ranking

00:51:20.040 military officer I'm aware of has ever been punished for any of these failures.

00:51:23.320 The withdrawal from Afghanistan was humiliating and costly, and it was just a disaster in every 1.00

00:51:28.560 way.

00:51:29.620 And the only guy who's punished is Stu Schiller, who's a Marine officer who points out that

00:51:34.140 it wasn't a success, but the architects were rewarded.

00:51:37.680 So, given all of that, why are we sending these people even more money?

00:51:44.620 Again, it's the military-industrial complex.

00:51:46.500 And, you know, there's some just basic metrics people use, like percent of GDP spending on

00:51:54.400 defense, where we're kind of a low level, and we should be, you know, we should be, I

00:51:57.980 mean, we've got right now, you know, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, McConnell,

00:52:01.740 they want to dedicate 5% of GDP to defense.

00:52:05.640 So, where are you going to get that money?

00:52:08.340 I mean, I realize we're kind of down at historic low levels, but it's still a trillion

00:52:11.740 down.

00:52:12.020 So, where are we spending it?

00:52:12.960 And that's why I would have loved to have seen somebody like Eric Prince, who wrote

00:52:17.180 an excellent article, Too Big to Win, become defense secretary and really take a look at

00:52:23.200 how are we fighting these wars?

00:52:24.900 What do we need to do to defend America?

00:52:29.920 Somebody said to me the other day, I was talking to an informed person about this grousing about

00:52:34.380 it, like, if you don't win a war for 80 years, why does your budget keep expanding?

00:52:37.860 And this person said, the real reason is America's industrial base is overwhelmingly

00:52:43.820 military now.

00:52:46.080 So, actually, the only real thing we make are weapons.

00:52:49.040 And so, that's what that money does.

00:52:51.720 I don't think that's necessarily true.

00:52:53.220 You know, there's certainly, again, you still have that industrial base.

00:52:56.940 You spend a trillion dollars out of a $28 trillion economy, $29 trillion economy.

00:53:02.140 It's a pretty good chunk, but it's not the majority of it.

00:53:04.440 We make a lot of stuff.

00:53:06.180 I think that's kind of a mistaken notion as well.

00:53:10.720 Industrial production continues to rise here.

00:53:13.940 Yeah, we don't have, again, we become more and more productive.

00:53:18.140 That's a good thing.

00:53:19.320 Again, right now, we don't have enough workers to be manufacturing a whole lot more stuff.

00:53:23.840 I mean, the last thing we should be doing is trying to attract high labor content product

00:53:27.700 back to the U.S. 0.63

00:53:28.400 We just don't have enough people to do it.

00:53:30.220 Interesting.

00:53:31.240 So, that's probably like a Raytheon talking point, then.

00:53:35.440 I don't know.

00:53:37.000 I'm just putting the basic numbers.

00:53:38.780 I mean, I...

00:53:38.960 No, that's interesting.

00:53:39.600 So, what happens to this bill?

00:53:41.660 Well, again, what I'd like to do is split it in two parts.

00:53:44.900 Do the, you know, quite honestly, what has to be done now.

00:53:49.120 And that is, provide the funding.

00:53:51.280 I think they're asking way too much.

00:53:52.920 I pointed this out with Kristi Noem.

00:53:54.300 They're looking for $46 billion for the fence, right?

00:53:58.060 Or for the wall.

00:53:59.420 Well, in the first Trump term, I can't remember the exact numbers.

00:54:02.320 I think something like 485 miles.

00:54:04.940 We spent $6.6 billion.

00:54:06.540 So, that's like $14.4 million a mile.

00:54:10.320 Now, they want $46 billion?

00:54:12.720 That's billed over 3,000 miles.

00:54:15.800 So, I asked her, square that circle for me.

00:54:19.060 And she really didn't.

00:54:20.500 She was actually saying they're projecting $12 million.

00:54:22.580 I was willing to give her $14.4 million.

00:54:24.320 Even though I was in Israel when I was chairman of Homeland Security, they built their very 1.00

00:54:28.300 effective fence for less than $2 million a mile.

00:54:31.160 So, but lay that aside.

00:54:35.200 So, provide border funding.

00:54:38.060 The price you have to pay for that is more defense spending.

00:54:41.520 Bank what savings we can.

00:54:44.040 You know, take the good work the House has done.

00:54:46.640 Bank that savings.

00:54:48.200 Extend current tax law.

00:54:49.220 Take an automatic tax increase off the table.

00:54:51.140 Provide that certainty to the economy.

00:54:53.020 Bump up the debt ceiling for a year.

00:54:54.940 To keep pressure on us to come back and then do the big, beautiful bill.

00:54:58.880 Well, we'll consider President Trump's tax proposals.

00:55:02.660 So, listen, I'm all for no tax on cash tips.

00:55:06.380 Can't collect it anyway.

00:55:08.340 So, why even try?

00:55:09.620 And that keeps currency circulating through the economy as well.

00:55:12.800 I think that's a good thing.

00:55:13.420 I don't want to go to a government-backed digital security.

00:55:16.180 So, that's good.

00:55:17.960 I mean, the other tax proposals he made in the campaign, they're not pro-growth.

00:55:23.100 They're just going to reduce revenue.

00:55:25.360 You know, no tax on overtime.

00:55:26.740 You know, I ran a continuing shift in operation.

00:55:29.320 I think the one time and a half or double time is more than enough incentive.

00:55:34.080 You know, we all live under a tax system.

00:55:36.080 Income is income.

00:55:37.320 Why would we increase the regulatory burden on people who administer payroll to cordon off

00:55:42.460 some of the overtime to don't tax it? 0.98

00:55:44.780 I mean, just be a pain in the butt. 0.94

00:55:46.020 Why doesn't everyone just pay the same rate? 0.99

00:55:47.600 I don't understand that.

00:55:49.360 And then everyone has skin in the game.

00:55:51.020 Everyone has a better sense of what their government is spending and on what, if it's coming out

00:55:57.400 of your—and that suggests a kind of equality under the law that would be sort of nice if

00:56:02.580 everyone was held—and I mean, non-profits, too.

00:56:04.360 I think we should get rid of all non-profits immediately.

00:56:06.860 Why isn't Harvard's endowment paying taxes?

00:56:08.820 Like, what is this?

00:56:09.720 Why not just—the same rate for everybody?

00:56:12.020 Labor, capital, same rate.

00:56:13.940 One rate.

00:56:14.820 You can be a non-profit by not making a profit.

00:56:17.060 Right.

00:56:18.160 I've done that, too.

00:56:19.280 I still pay taxes.

00:56:20.140 Honestly, I mean, if you're a university, a church, something like that, you bring in

00:56:22.860 revenue, you spend it, you've got no profit.

00:56:24.800 You're a non-profit.

00:56:25.620 Yeah.

00:56:26.060 So, no, the other reason I wanted to split this into two parts is, you know, we need

00:56:30.420 to take the time to go line by line, to do a doge impact on the entire budget, to find

00:56:36.920 the outrageous spending, eliminate what people won't even notice, but also to simplify and rationalize

00:56:43.280 our tax system.

00:56:44.400 We have a grotesquely complex tax system.

00:56:48.640 Everyone's out of compliance.

00:56:49.860 Everybody's committing a felony unwittingly.

00:56:51.640 Every single person.

00:56:52.440 You, me, every other American.

00:56:53.520 So, simplify it.

00:56:54.380 Again, using basic principles.

00:56:57.540 Don't try and socially and economically engineer through the tax code.

00:57:00.740 We're terrible at it. 0.95

00:57:01.680 You can't—you're not that smart.

00:57:03.540 So, raise the revenue you need.

00:57:05.920 Try not to do any economic or social harm.

00:57:08.280 So, that would imply a very simple tax system.

00:57:11.260 They always say, lower the rates, broaden the base.

00:57:13.640 But, fair.

00:57:14.380 I don't—personally, I've done well in this country.

00:57:17.760 I don't mind having a progressive tax rate.

00:57:20.680 I really don't.

00:57:23.180 Certainly exempting a certain amount of income so, you know, people can live without having

00:57:26.820 to pay tax and stuff.

00:57:27.860 But within those confines, keep it as absolutely simple as possible.

00:57:31.820 Now, one thing I know is there's nothing simple about simplifying the tax code.

00:57:35.320 I mean, everybody's got their little tax break.

00:57:38.060 And, you know, even right now, one of the reasons I'm not looking forward to this ordeal

00:57:43.460 that's going to come about over the next couple of weeks as I dig my heels in is, you know,

00:57:47.460 there are a lot of people that support President Trump and have supported me.

00:57:50.280 They want no tax and overtime.

00:57:53.160 They—by the way, if all you live on is Social Security, it—the chance of you paying

00:57:58.460 a dollar tax on that is almost infinitesimal.

00:58:00.680 So, we don't tax Social Security right now.

00:58:03.120 But let's face it.

00:58:04.700 If you have Social Security and you have income above that, I mean, why should you exempt some

00:58:09.840 of your income?

00:58:11.200 I think us oldsters have stolen enough from younger generations.

00:58:15.720 I mean, you see the wealth transfer.

00:58:17.160 I used to have a chart on this.

00:58:18.360 But the transfer of wealth from young to old over the decades, it's literally immoral.

00:58:25.280 It's immoral.

00:58:25.820 So, let's not—

00:58:26.780 Let's not exacerbate that problem.

00:58:28.560 It's disgusting.

00:58:29.360 And again, if you're going to—if you can do something on tax—again, I don't think

00:58:32.860 this is the point—I don't want to increase people's taxes, but I don't think this is

00:58:36.380 a point in time to be cutting taxes that aren't incentivizing growth.

00:58:41.000 And again, I don't—I'd rather not be incentivizing, you know, again, trying to use the tax code

00:58:45.580 to try and come up with some way to incentivize growth.

00:58:47.940 Just keep it simple, uncomplicated, rational, income is income, you know, basic principles

00:58:53.760 like wherewithal to pay.

00:58:54.760 I mean, design—approach all of these things with principles.

00:58:58.460 Because the big problem in the House, what was the goal there?

00:59:03.000 I would think the goal of this Republican budget reconciliation would be to reduce the

00:59:08.460 deficits.

00:59:09.360 Seems like in the House, the only goal was to pass one big, beautiful bill by Memorial Day.

00:59:14.720 Great.

00:59:15.180 You achieved your goal.

00:59:17.300 But you didn't solve our fiscal situation.

00:59:19.740 You didn't even come close.

00:59:20.640 Yeah, I mean, I'm not impressed by the people managing this in the House, I'm just going

00:59:26.020 to say.

00:59:26.960 So I'm not surprised.

00:59:28.640 But it, of course, needs the Senate as well.

00:59:31.900 Well, it needs presidential leadership.

00:59:34.720 And he needs to get behind fixing this problem.

00:59:38.220 Now, he said in the State of the Union, he's going to balance the budget.

00:59:41.660 Fine.

00:59:42.420 But I know in his mind, he thinks he's going to balance the budget with tariff revenue.

00:59:46.880 I'm sorry, tariffs are a tax.

00:59:48.780 We're not quite sure who pays them, whereas the foreign companies, the foreign countries,

00:59:54.760 the U.S. consumer, I mean, again, the instance of tax is never particularly certain, but tariffs

01:00:01.120 raise the cost of goods.

01:00:03.800 For what?

01:00:05.780 Again, there's no doubt there's certain products, high-end semiconductors, pharmaceuticals,

01:00:12.840 rare earth minerals.

01:00:14.220 We got to be basic in those.

01:00:15.940 We have to produce these here just from a standpoint of national security.

01:00:19.080 Is there a better way of doing that than just generalized increasing of a tax, which

01:00:23.260 is what a tariff is?

01:00:24.540 I would argue there probably is.

01:00:25.960 How about this?

01:00:28.500 We just give you a tax holiday for five or 10 years.

01:00:33.320 Again, you've got a high-end semiconductor plan in a different country.

01:00:36.280 We're not collecting the tax on it anyway.

01:00:38.640 It's no skin off our, you know what's, to just, well, come on over here, produce that

01:00:42.160 here.

01:00:42.760 We'll just give you a 10-year tax.

01:00:44.280 Talk to the people who are going to invest in it.

01:00:46.040 What's it going to take?

01:00:47.140 How long a tax holiday?

01:00:48.280 What's reasonable?

01:00:49.820 You know, just incentivize it that way.

01:00:51.340 But don't incentivize it by mucking up our tax code.

01:00:54.140 Or, I'd say even worse, you know, things like the CHIPS Act, where you pay money to

01:01:00.000 grifters that don't really, you know, fulfill their end of the bargain.

01:01:05.360 Again, we're just not good at doing these things.

01:01:08.560 The free market's not perfect, but it is the most efficient allocator of capital.

01:01:12.740 So, I mean, you provide somebody a tax holiday, and I think you can bring those things back.

01:01:18.700 You're pretty good.

01:01:19.080 Plus, permitting reform, if you want to do precursor chemicals for pharmaceuticals, I

01:01:24.640 mean, you got to permit the refineries.

01:01:27.740 You got to permit the mines if you're going to mine rare earth minerals and if you're going

01:01:30.840 to refine those things.

01:01:31.760 So, again, we have to look at this, but it requires presidential leadership to go make

01:01:38.700 the case, the logical case.

01:01:41.160 And that, from my standpoint, in terms of me digging my heels in, I'm a reasonable guy.

01:01:47.700 But you're not going to sell me just by saying, you got to pass one big, beautiful bill.

01:01:52.000 I'm tired of the rhetoric.

01:01:53.380 I'm not prone to slogans.

01:01:55.160 It's like, lay out the case.

01:01:57.000 If you can lay out the case that we are promoting growth, and this is what the revenue is going

01:02:01.920 to be, and this is how we actually shrink the deficit, and this is how we avoid a debt

01:02:04.540 crisis, you know, I want to be on board.

01:02:06.960 I want to see this president succeed.

01:02:08.680 How many of your colleagues in the Senate have your position on this?

01:02:11.740 Well, it's interesting.

01:02:14.400 There's a fair number that are coalescing around the number, and I've never really, I've laid

01:02:19.160 out options, but I've never dug my heels in on a number for a pre-pandemic level spending.

01:02:24.360 But I've laid it out, I think, logically enough.

01:02:26.600 Most people are, you know, there's a pretty big group say that it should be no more than

01:02:29.680 $6.5 trillion in the next fiscal year.

01:02:32.900 So, that implies about an $800 billion difference between what we're expected to spend, which would

01:02:38.660 be about $8 trillion of spending reduction over 10 years.

01:02:42.540 It's a long ways from the $1.5 trillion.

01:02:45.060 Again, what I've always said is, I need a commitment to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic

01:02:49.340 level spending, realizing we have to get the votes, but maybe even more importantly, a process

01:02:55.520 to achieve and maintain it.

01:02:58.740 And that's that line, do the work, but it'll take time to do the work.

01:03:03.440 But we need a commitment.

01:03:04.460 I can't do it.

01:03:05.440 I don't have access to all the information.

01:03:07.080 We really need, and what I proposed in one of my Wall Street Journal columns was a budget

01:03:10.480 review panel made up of senators, House members, staff of the OMB, Office of Management and

01:03:17.420 Budget.

01:03:17.700 I mean, those are the guys that know their stuff.

01:03:19.620 And then have this as a review panel and bring up, just like in business, budget review

01:03:25.020 meeting, bring up the department heads with their budget gurus and stuff and explain it.

01:03:30.200 Go line by line.

01:03:31.680 Again, why are you spending so much more than a fully inflated Bill Clinton level?

01:03:36.360 Or Obama or Trump?

01:03:38.020 I mean, explain yourself.

01:03:39.340 Why should we be spending even a dime on this category right here?

01:03:42.720 So you've got top lines within the federal government, more than 2,000 lines.

01:03:49.020 Under each one of those lines, there's probably hundreds of lines between all those.

01:03:53.280 So you've got a lot of work to do.

01:03:54.700 But it doesn't get done if you try and rush this thing through now by July 4th is what would

01:04:00.140 be the goal for the Senate.

01:04:01.040 So I want to break this up into two parts to give us the time to go through that budget

01:04:06.240 line by line.

01:04:07.480 Will you get it?

01:04:09.900 Right now, I think I've got at least four that will dig their heels in and say, again,

01:04:14.800 we want to see you succeed.

01:04:15.900 We want to pass this.

01:04:16.980 We want to pass something.

01:04:18.560 We'll pass what must be passed now.

01:04:21.800 Again, we've already set this up in the Senate with our budget resolution to provide the defense

01:04:25.800 and border funding plus $850 billion in savings.

01:04:30.320 Tack that onto the House where we extend current tax law and increase the debt ceiling.

01:04:35.020 By the way, that's going to be a massive amount.

01:04:37.440 It should shock everybody.

01:04:39.020 What we're going to have to increase the debt ceiling for just to get us by another year,

01:04:42.940 probably $2 to $2.5 trillion.

01:04:45.720 Because we have to refill the extraordinary measures, the buckets they've taken from to

01:04:50.040 extend the debt ceiling.

01:04:51.740 We're right now burning about a half a trillion dollars a quarter.

01:04:56.680 So you're talking, if you extend in next year, five quarters at half a trillion dollars,

01:05:02.660 that's $2.5 trillion just to get us by into next year.

01:05:08.340 That should shock everybody.

01:05:10.020 And that's my whole purpose here is we haven't talked about the numbers.

01:05:15.500 We haven't put this in context of the big mess we're in, the deep hole we've dug ourselves.

01:05:22.740 And I'm just going to force that debate.

01:05:24.640 I'm not trying to be obstinate.

01:05:26.300 I'll probably be accused of grandstanding.

01:05:28.540 I don't want to do it.

01:05:29.220 I'd rather not do this.

01:05:30.400 I'd rather have the House having really succeeded and the president totally behind, again,

01:05:35.120 returning to pre-pandemic level spending.

01:05:36.780 But somebody's got to do it.

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01:05:59.240 Sweet Nectar, the new flavor out from Alp, really, really good.

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01:06:09.560 Stay tuned for Morning Play.

01:06:10.540 It's interesting if you pull back a little bit.

01:06:18.040 So as with the defense budget, you don't win a war for 80 years, but you keep getting more money.

01:06:23.000 A primary driver of the deficits and the debt is health care spending.

01:06:28.340 Is the country getting healthier?

01:06:30.260 No, we're getting sicker.

01:06:31.200 And again, that's shifting gears into really the failure of our health care system of establishment medicine, of pharmaceutically driven medicine.

01:06:42.180 They call it Rockefeller medicine.

01:06:44.200 This is where I've been so supportive.

01:06:45.500 Why do they call it Rockefeller medicine?

01:06:47.000 He's really one that really pushed pharmaceutical drug companies way back when.

01:06:52.120 I don't understand the full history, but again, that's all petrochemical-based, chemistry-based.

01:06:57.680 And rather than really focusing on health, it's all, we've got a pill for this.

01:07:05.480 Here's an example.

01:07:07.760 And I think this is true, but there was a debate in terms of what caused heart disease.

01:07:13.780 Is it too much sugar?

01:07:14.980 Is it cholesterol?

01:07:15.920 Yes.

01:07:17.640 From the pharmaceutical industry standpoint, they had a drug to lower cholesterol.

01:07:21.760 Statins.

01:07:22.640 So guess what they chose?

01:07:25.500 Cholesterol.

01:07:26.400 The winner!

01:07:27.680 The winner, because we've got a drug to manage that.

01:07:31.760 Now, there are all kinds of emerging serious side effects of statins.

01:07:39.100 One that I read about was sudden hearing loss.

01:07:42.520 Guess who lost their hearing just like that?

01:07:44.860 Who?

01:07:45.320 Me.

01:07:47.400 Two weeks after I returned from Moscow, I just lost my hearing.

01:07:50.420 Just like stepped out of the shower, and I lost my hearing, my balance in an instant.

01:07:56.100 Like all you're hearing?

01:07:58.360 In my right ear.

01:08:01.400 So you start researching all this.

01:08:03.400 I mean, you know, NIH reviewed me because it thought it might have been Havana syndrome.

01:08:08.680 Yes.

01:08:08.880 But as I got involved in the whole COVID, and I got to meet all these doctors who had a second opinion that weren't going along with the narrative, that had the courage and compassion to actually treat COVID patients that took seriously the vaccine injured.

01:08:22.900 It just connects you to just alternate opinions, you know, alternate thinking.

01:08:28.980 And one of them, you know, laid out the listed side effects of statins, and one of them is sudden hearing.

01:08:35.120 A lot of people are thinking it could be a main driver of Alzheimer's.

01:08:38.780 But again, they'll never admit it because that's a multibillion-dollar industry right there.

01:08:43.040 Do you think it's possible that statins are responsible for dementia?

01:08:47.400 People are saying that.

01:08:48.380 I don't know.

01:08:48.840 I'm not a doctor, not a medical researcher, but my eyes have been open.

01:08:51.940 Because that's really scary right there.

01:08:54.080 If that's true, that's – I mean, that's –

01:08:55.900 I mean, people are making – are positing that.

01:08:58.800 I will say since – so I took myself off statins.

01:09:01.940 I've had a number of health conditions that just improved as a result.

01:09:05.640 Seriously?

01:09:06.220 Yeah.

01:09:07.020 I was complaining for years, quite honestly.

01:09:09.460 So they put me on statins when I went in for a CT scan, and they saw calcium buildup on what they call the Widowmaker.

01:09:16.560 But that's external.

01:09:18.480 I can always bust through the arterial wall and cause real problems.

01:09:22.920 But I had a heart catheterization a couple years ago.

01:09:25.680 I woke up from that and go, man, I wish my plumbing was as clean as yours.

01:09:31.020 So I don't know.

01:09:31.820 Is it because I was on statins all those years?

01:09:33.440 But I know I was going – being treated because I was having pretty severe dizzy spells, almost the point of passing out frequently, going up a step or whatever.

01:09:43.220 I took myself off statins under a doctor's care.

01:09:46.600 That's gone.

01:09:48.980 What?

01:09:49.300 I'll give you another one.

01:09:50.920 This is – so I also – this is very personal.

01:09:54.120 This is strange I'm getting into this, but –

01:09:56.720 It's a safe space.

01:09:57.460 So I've always had acid reflux for years, okay?

01:10:02.780 And so I was on everything.

01:10:04.040 You know, Zantac and Prilosec and then Nexium, which, by the way, were great in terms of relieving symptoms, but also have some pretty nasty side effects.

01:10:12.500 So, again, you know, reading these alternate opinions on stuff, hydroxychloric – no, hydrochloric acid has been known for decades to be a gestivate.

01:10:26.560 The theory behind what causes acid reflux is you don't have enough stomach acid.

01:10:32.680 You're not – you're not digesting the food properly.

01:10:35.960 You're not providing the signal to the, I guess, sphincter muscle, whatever, that closes your stomach off from your esophagus.

01:10:44.960 So what you do to solve it is you introduce more acid, you know, in the form of a natural vegetarian-based product, and that's called hydrochloric acid.

01:10:57.220 So I take one tablet now before my evening meal.

01:11:01.900 I miss it probably at least half the time.

01:11:04.980 I don't have it anymore.

01:11:07.060 So I don't take any of that stuff anymore.

01:11:09.460 This worked far better.

01:11:11.200 It's just completely natural, and it's completely opposite of what all these other patented drugs do for you.

01:11:18.860 So it's just – it's just HCL, and they call it baiting or something like that, but it's just an over-the-counter supplement, and it's worked great.

01:11:29.880 I mean, you would think given what we –

01:11:31.820 So I will get all kinds of guff for talking about this stuff, but it's just – because that's what – that's what they do.

01:11:37.880 This is the –

01:11:39.860 Well, you just described your life improving, your health improving, and that's somehow a thought crime?

01:11:44.000 Like, how does that work?

01:11:45.340 It will be because the pharmaceutical industrial complex, again, it's all about drugs that can treat chronic illness, which is why you can't talk about these things,

01:11:56.220 which is why they completely sabotaged the treatment of – early treatment of COVID using things like hydroxychloroquine and, you know, particularly ivermectin,

01:12:07.180 which I heard – because, yeah, I was at the tip of the spear.

01:12:09.960 I got all kinds of people calling me, what doctors would treat this?

01:12:14.320 And so I heard the amazing stories of recovery with ivermectin.

01:12:18.820 You know, we will hold a hearing on this.

01:12:20.680 There's one attorney that got called in to sue a hospital because somebody's loved one was in the hospital,

01:12:27.740 and they were begging them to use ivermectin.

01:12:30.680 The hospital just refused.

01:12:32.340 So this lawyer went in there and sued, was successful, saved that person's life.

01:12:37.380 So in the end, because he did this, I think he had something – this is a rough number –

01:12:41.880 something like 200 families that he went to court for to force the hospitals to use ivermectin or budesonide or some of these other drugs, right?

01:12:52.900 He won about half the cases.

01:12:55.320 Of those 100 cases, I think he lost two or a couple of patients.

01:13:00.260 Otherwise, they all survived.

01:13:02.060 Of the 100 cases he lost, they all died.

01:13:05.560 And, whoa.

01:13:08.100 So you take a look at these hospital protocols.

01:13:10.120 There's a great documentary, VAX-3, that really goes through this and just talks about the hospital protocols using remdesivir,

01:13:18.020 which the nurses called run death, death is near.

01:13:21.000 The Anthony Fauci said this is the treatment, even though they – whatever study it was,

01:13:26.000 they changed the endpoint from, you know, death to just days in hospital, which I don't think even that was true.

01:13:32.760 The number of conflicts of the people reviewing that that were associated with Gilead.

01:13:37.560 I mean, the WHO recommended against using remdesivir, and yet we still use it.

01:13:42.760 I mean, you see what happened during COVID, thoroughly corrupt.

01:13:46.320 And, you know, we just had our hearing on the signals on myocarditis, which they completely downplayed, hid for months on the COVID injection.

01:13:57.200 So why are we giving any money to a system that not only fails to improve public health, but actively conspires against it?

01:14:06.440 I would say the primary reason at this point in time is because in 1997, Clinton, through regulation, allowed pharmaceutical companies to advertise.

01:14:16.940 And you look at those ads, you don't have any idea what those drugs do.

01:14:21.020 But that's common around the world, right?

01:14:22.060 Most countries allow that.

01:14:23.160 No, only America and New Zealand allow that.

01:14:25.740 I knew the, yeah, I just want to evoke that.

01:14:29.160 So only the United States and New Zealand out of every country and planet Earth allow drug companies, pharma companies to advertise.

01:14:36.480 Right.

01:14:36.840 On television.

01:14:37.360 And so you take a look at those ads.

01:14:39.040 I have no idea what any of those drugs are treating other than they allow dogs to jump higher and people to play around the pool.

01:14:47.420 Make your wife hotter, yeah. 1.00

01:14:48.480 Oh, just, you know, I mean, just they look wonderful.

01:14:50.460 And then if you listen to these side effects, you know, spoken, you know, possible death, you know, it's like, again, I sold plastic.

01:15:01.200 I'm used to marketing.

01:15:02.680 There is no way anybody would spend a dollar, a dime on an ad for a product where you got to list all the horrible side effects.

01:15:11.540 Why do they do it?

01:15:12.880 It's not to sell.

01:15:13.580 Again, you don't know what the drug is for.

01:15:15.300 They're not selling those drugs.

01:15:16.040 No, they are buying the narrative.

01:15:18.100 Exactly.

01:15:18.620 I worked in the media my whole life.

01:15:20.800 And that is what we saw during COVID.

01:15:23.460 I mean, that's what completely opened up my eyes.

01:15:26.420 They're paying NBC and Fox News and CNN and CBS and everybody else not to criticize the COVID shots.

01:15:31.960 I ran in 2010 after I'd given a Tea Party speech and two things I said, which my campaign guy said, never say that again, is I defended big oil and big pharma.

01:15:41.360 I said, what, am I the only guy that likes a gas station in every corner of the town because I run it down to empty?

01:15:48.900 Or am I the only one that wants a life-saving new drug?

01:15:51.940 By the way, there are wonderful drugs.

01:15:54.420 For sure.

01:15:54.920 There are, that we need, particularly in acute care.

01:15:58.540 But we do need, and this is what, again, I give Bobby Kennedy and Trump so much credit for laying aside their political differences,

01:16:04.380 joining an alliance to focus on a problem that they both agree that needs to be solved, and it's chronic illness.

01:16:11.620 Bobby Kennedy says 75% of our health care spending is on chronic illness.

01:16:16.020 And so I just laid out, you know, I had a chronic condition, acid reflux, GERD.

01:16:21.720 And kept treating with all these pharmaceuticals.

01:16:24.660 They weren't cheap.

01:16:25.520 You know, Prilosec, Nexium, they're not cheap.

01:16:27.080 Leviated the symptoms, but didn't fix it.

01:16:31.220 I go to something that just is far cheaper.

01:16:35.200 I think it works better.

01:16:37.460 I don't even have to even take it every day.

01:16:38.960 I think I've probably replenished the acid in my stomach, which declines with age.

01:16:44.280 And just so, I mean, every other day I take one, if I remember, it was an evening meal and pretty well solved the condition.

01:16:51.240 I have cured a chronic, I'm not treating it anymore.

01:16:55.000 I was treating it with Prilosec and Nexium.

01:16:57.200 I pretty well cured it.

01:16:58.500 Now, I still take this because it's a digestive aid.

01:17:01.700 It's like you eat the right stuff.

01:17:04.840 Why can't, if Clinton allowed pharma to advertise, allowed pharma to buy the media, which they did, I can verify that since I worked there, why can't that be undone as easily?

01:17:16.000 Well, it can.

01:17:17.260 You ought to use your influence with President Trump to make sure he supports Bobby if he decides to do that.

01:17:23.340 But we should do that.

01:17:24.220 And again, I'm a free market guy.

01:17:26.380 I mean, I'm...

01:17:27.620 But we couldn't even have a debate about the most obvious things during COVID because the media wouldn't allow it.

01:17:34.220 And again, I can verify that firsthand since I worked there.

01:17:37.540 And you just couldn't, they did not want in any way to criticize pharma companies, period.

01:17:43.020 So that's where it started.

01:17:43.880 We're not criticizing these people, period.

01:17:46.340 And it's because they pay all the bills.

01:17:48.260 So if you ended that, which you could do, I think, with a stroke of a pen, you could have informed consent again.

01:17:56.380 People would have a chance to know what they were being prescribed and decide whether or not to take it, right?

01:18:01.300 That would be the hope.

01:18:03.620 Yeah.

01:18:03.760 You know, I had a public event and it was really based on your interview with Casey and Callie Means.

01:18:12.980 And so we put that together.

01:18:14.140 Bobby Kennedy showed up and we had a bunch of social media influencers on nutrition.

01:18:17.960 And one of the witnesses specializing, he's a psychiatrist specializing in nutrition's impact on mental health, I think, probably made the best little snippet of testimony.

01:18:29.360 He said, you know, they don't want to know the root cause of chronic illness.

01:18:37.220 Again, who's they?

01:18:38.180 I remember listening to, you asked that too.

01:18:40.520 What's that, Catherine Witt or you just said?

01:18:45.180 Oh, wonderful.

01:18:46.840 Yeah.

01:18:47.080 Wonderful woman.

01:18:47.880 Yeah, exactly.

01:18:48.600 You asked her, who are they?

01:18:50.260 Yeah.

01:18:50.840 I ask that myself all the time.

01:18:52.680 My guess is they attend Davos.

01:18:54.980 Whoever they are, they're there.

01:18:57.120 They're not invited to my house for dinner.

01:18:58.680 But I thought that was a very interesting comment.

01:19:00.140 They don't want to know the root cause.

01:19:03.440 Because if they find out it is some pharmaceutical product or some pesticide or some herbicide or some toxin in our food, that's going to disrupt multi-billion dollar business models.

01:19:17.980 And those businesses are fully engaged in lobbying.

01:19:21.740 They're fully engaged and have captured our regulatory agencies.

01:19:26.380 I'm talking about this all the time.

01:19:27.020 Listen, government is power, right?

01:19:29.420 That's a pretty good definition of government.

01:19:31.000 It's power.

01:19:32.200 And as Lord Acton aptly stated, power corrupts.

01:19:36.540 And so what has happened over the decades is these businesses, and I have a great deal of sympathy for them being over-regulated by big government, right?

01:19:44.500 But they're smart, especially the big ones.

01:19:46.300 They got smart people there.

01:19:47.240 So not only do they figure out how to survive with over-regulation, they learn how to capture it.

01:19:52.900 Of course.

01:19:53.440 And then they promote it.

01:19:54.560 And then they capture it for their benefit to the detriment of their competitors, particularly smaller competitors, and detriment of the American public.

01:20:03.520 And that is what has happened, I would say, across the board in government, whether it's pharmaceuticals, whether it's military industrial complex, whether it's our big food.

01:20:11.000 That's, in my mind, that's the hope.

01:20:13.180 That's what I want to see Donald Trump defeat.

01:20:15.860 And you first defeat it by exposing it.

01:20:18.740 People have to understand this is what's happened.

01:20:21.960 But certainly what I learned, you learned, Bobby Kennedy learned during COVID, it is very difficult defeat, back then, what I called the COVID cartel.

01:20:31.120 That is a powerful group of interests, and they're not going away.

01:20:35.540 Let's start with a really easy one, and those are the vaccine injured.

01:20:38.240 So these would be American citizens who obeyed their government and took a shot that they were required to take on pain and punishment, and then were injured by or killed by that shot.

01:20:53.140 They've received almost no attention.

01:20:54.680 You're literally one of the only lawmakers who ever mentions them.

01:20:58.080 You've had a bunch of hearings.

01:20:58.900 You know them personally.

01:20:59.560 Describe the scale of the injury and death from the COVID shots, if you would.

01:21:05.220 Well, just on VAERS alone, I think we're over 38,000 deaths associated with the COVID vaccine.

01:21:11.800 VAERS is the federally created...

01:21:14.320 Yeah, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

01:21:16.040 Yes, but that's a government reporting system.

01:21:19.680 Now, some conditions are mandatory to be reported, but they're still not.

01:21:25.360 The two complaints about or hits on VAERS is it doesn't prove causation, but it also dramatically understates the number of adverse events because people just don't report them.

01:21:37.440 Sometimes you don't connect the dots.

01:21:38.780 So, on VAERS' system, to date, worldwide, there's over 38,000 deaths associated with the COVID vaccine, and 24% of those, to date, either occur on the date of vaccination or within one or two days.

01:21:54.260 Wow.

01:21:55.080 Yeah, I know someone who was killed by it.

01:21:57.260 You know, we saw all these athletes dropping like flies on the field.

01:22:01.520 You saw newscasters just toppling over from their anchor chair.

01:22:06.300 And, like, that wasn't reported.

01:22:10.740 You'd get it through social media.

01:22:13.140 You might have a local news story, but there's no national news media that'd hop down and say, what is happening here?

01:22:19.380 No, because that wasn't real.

01:22:20.780 It was all denied.

01:22:21.940 Yeah.

01:22:22.400 It was all denied.

01:22:22.980 A lot of 23-year-old soccer players have heart conditions, it turns out.

01:22:26.540 Yeah.

01:22:27.280 Yeah.

01:22:27.680 It's all that exercise they do.

01:22:31.200 I don't know why I'm laughing.

01:22:32.300 It's horrible.

01:22:32.660 So, 38,000 globally just on VAERS.

01:22:36.600 Is anyone keeping track of the injuries and the chronic illness caused by those shots?

01:22:42.300 I think they're primarily calling it long COVID now.

01:22:44.620 Okay.

01:22:45.200 That's, you know, that's their excuse.

01:22:47.880 And even those that are vaccine injured want to think it's just long COVID.

01:22:53.920 I mean, nobody wants to admit that they maybe should have taken a little more time, gotten a little more educated about this experimental COVID injection.

01:23:00.520 They don't want to think there may be a ticking time bomb in terms of turbo cancers.

01:23:05.580 But, again, more and more evidence is coming out that in tumors, they find the spike protein.

01:23:10.720 The spike protein, as well as the modified RNA, it's not true mRNA, that does degrade very rapidly, circling the body for months, possibly years.

01:23:19.860 Again, they find the spike protein in autopsied hearts, in tumors.

01:23:25.460 You know, we know from people like Kevin McKernan that there was DNA contamination.

01:23:29.920 It can integrate into the cell, could cause cancer.

01:23:33.920 Again, there's so, yeah, I hate talking about it because I know 70, 80% of Americans got vaccinated.

01:23:40.000 They don't want to hear about it.

01:23:40.820 No, they don't.

01:23:41.980 They want to just move on.

01:23:43.060 That's why it's so difficult to hold people accountable for this.

01:23:46.040 Well, here's an easy way to do it.

01:23:48.000 So if I sell any product, a food product, for example, and it turns out to kill people.

01:23:53.900 You get sued.

01:23:54.800 Exactly.

01:23:55.980 So only the vax makers have this exemption granted to them by Congress, the shield.

01:24:01.380 And I've never heard a real argument for why they should maintain that or why Congress continues to protect them.

01:24:08.780 Why?

01:24:08.980 By the way, so I talked to Barbara Lowe Fisher, who was the mom who really pushed that thing through.

01:24:13.840 So that law itself does not provide liability.

01:24:18.540 This is the 1986 law.

01:24:20.660 It was regulations kind of the wink, wink, nod, nod to get it passed that they implement, you know, promulgated regulations that actually provide that liability protection.

01:24:31.240 And again, it wasn't just for the three vaccines, I think, at the time that were on the schedule.

01:24:36.980 It exempted all future vaccines, which has led to an explosion because, again, the greatest risk—

01:24:44.220 There's no downside.

01:24:45.640 Yeah.

01:24:45.880 I mean, you just keep cranking these things out.

01:24:48.140 They aren't tested in a true placebo-controlled trial.

01:24:52.700 Sometimes the trial period, as meager as it is, only lasts for a week.

01:24:58.820 It's just—it's shocking.

01:25:01.400 This is, you know, Aaron Seary testified at our hearing last week, and he's expert at all this in terms of—the American public would be shocked at how little testing these vaccines actually receive.

01:25:12.740 But you have this—it's almost a religion around the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

01:25:19.940 I mean, I understand that.

01:25:20.960 It's such an elegant solution, isn't it?

01:25:23.100 Just a 100% safe shot in the arm, and you never have to worry about that.

01:25:27.220 Well, that's fine.

01:25:27.500 Maybe they're super—

01:25:27.800 The problem is just not true.

01:25:29.040 Well, but let's say it is true.

01:25:30.320 They're super safe.

01:25:31.340 Peter Hotez is like a legitimate physician.

01:25:33.500 He's telling the truth.

01:25:34.540 He's not deranged.

01:25:36.180 And, okay, then prove it.

01:25:38.860 But then hold them to the same standard that every other product that you buy, certainly every product that's mandated by government, is held to.

01:25:45.680 And that's one that's backstopped by the courts. 0.88

01:25:48.820 Right.

01:25:49.240 Tort law.

01:25:50.180 Like, I don't understand.

01:25:51.180 Like, why would there be this one thing that's exempt from a process that every other thing is subject to?

01:25:57.020 Because there were so many injuries manifesting themselves before that law was passed that those manufacturers are going to be sued out of existence.

01:26:07.040 And, again, the religion and faith that these vaccines are just so crucial.

01:26:12.740 Even though you read a book like Dissolving Illusions, you realize the main reason most of these diseases were eradicated is because we no longer live in squalor.

01:26:20.800 Right.

01:26:21.400 We have sewers.

01:26:22.440 We have sanitation.

01:26:23.480 Right.

01:26:23.920 Okay, so, I mean, you see the chart coming down here, and then the vaccines start occurring here, and, yeah, the tail goes out.

01:26:28.780 And, you know, vaccines may have eradicated some of these diseases.

01:26:31.180 I don't deny that.

01:26:32.820 But the main thing is we, you know, we actually improve sanitation.

01:26:38.160 And what we are ignoring now is treatment.

01:26:41.660 And that came out with COVID.

01:26:43.280 It's like, I mean, I couldn't, you know, the reason I got into this is I'm chairman of Homeland Security.

01:26:48.580 I'm the only guy holding hearings on this stuff because none of this stuff makes sense.

01:26:52.260 So why are they just pillorying something like hydroxychloroquine?

01:26:55.900 I mean, if it works, give it a shot.

01:26:57.740 I mean, what's the harm?

01:26:59.020 It's incredibly safe.

01:27:00.100 Ivermectin.

01:27:01.220 But that was completely sabotaged all for the purpose of forcing this injection, what they call the vaccine, on everybody as a solution.

01:27:13.180 Why aren't we talking about treating disease?

01:27:15.200 Measles.

01:27:16.580 Why aren't we focusing on treatment?

01:27:19.080 Again, I'm telling these doctors, generally, a very treatable disease.

01:27:22.540 Just about any disease can kill you.

01:27:24.740 Okay, but a lot of diseases can be treated.

01:27:26.980 We ought to be focusing a lot more, from my standpoint, on treatment as opposed to loading up our children, our infants, with dozens and dozens of doses and not even asking the question.

01:27:40.160 So, okay, have these been thoroughly tested?

01:27:43.200 I mean, have we tested giving multiple vaccines at the same dose?

01:27:46.840 I mean, every time you put a vaccine in somebody's arm, you're messing with their immune system.

01:27:53.460 Why do we have all these autoimmune diseases nowadays?

01:27:55.620 You know, what is causing autism?

01:27:58.460 I mean, we're just not able to ask the question because, to get back to my witness in that last event, is they don't want to know.

01:28:04.900 And they attack anyone who asks, including you.

01:28:08.660 And, I mean, watching what's happened to you has really been the greatest of all wake-up calls for me because, I would say, of the senators I know, which is most of them, you're, like, the most temperamentally moderate and accountant, number-based, like, not a wild-eyed radical at all.

01:28:22.960 Well, at all, and there are some crazy people in the Congress, you're not, you're the opposite, you, like, budgets and stuff.

01:28:30.860 So, if they're calling you a wacko, they discredit themselves. 0.74

01:28:34.900 That's just, as an observer, my observation.

01:28:37.400 Again, but that's what they do.

01:28:39.620 You know, so, during COVID, quick story here.

01:28:41.880 I was on a telephone town hall, and this is when Omicron was ramping up.

01:28:47.660 Yes.

01:28:47.800 And this is already by the time we've got a partisan split on COVID, right?

01:28:52.840 I mean, Republicans don't wear masks, Democrats do.

01:28:55.340 You know, Republicans aren't freaked out by it, Democrats are.

01:28:58.400 But, again, I'm talking to these doctors.

01:29:00.020 I know they were very concerned for the, for example, on Delta, that variant.

01:29:04.560 It was more difficult to treat.

01:29:05.680 They had to, like, double and triple the dose of ivermectin to have it actually be effective.

01:29:09.200 So, you know, nobody knew what was going to happen with Omicron.

01:29:12.320 I think people were thinking it looked like it was going to be more mild.

01:29:15.520 I'm on a telephone town hall with my constituents, probably a couple thousand.

01:29:18.600 I said, listen, take this seriously.

01:29:21.660 COVID can still be a deadly disease.

01:29:23.520 So, whether you're vaccinated or not vaccinated, you know, there are things you can do, vitamin D.

01:29:28.580 You know, you can gargle.

01:29:30.480 You know, that helps reduce the viral load.

01:29:33.000 Within 10 minutes, my comms team were being contacted by national news outlets saying,

01:29:39.680 what's this that we're hearing that Johnson's saying that Listerine will replace a vaccine?

01:29:44.120 Now, of course, I said nothing of the kind.

01:29:46.360 I just said, you know, there are things you can do to help protect yourself, you know.

01:29:51.860 And they actually went so far as to go up to the governor of, I guess it was New Hampshire,

01:29:56.060 knocked on his door, Republican governor, and said, hey, what do you think about this

01:29:58.800 wacko Republican senator who says that vaccines can, or Listerine can replace the vaccines? 0.96

01:30:04.220 He said, well, when batshit crazy knocks on your door, slammed the door in his face.

01:30:07.940 I mean, that was the, so again, what they do.

01:30:10.920 Is that what Sununu said?

01:30:12.060 Yeah, what they do, what they do.

01:30:13.220 Really one of the worst people ever attempted to politics.

01:30:15.220 What they do is they discredit people.

01:30:18.520 So then once they've done that, you know, whether as falsely as they discredit you, now

01:30:23.060 you're discredited.

01:30:23.660 So now, next time, next thing that comes up that is true, that you're talking about,

01:30:28.540 things, oh, this guy, he's thoroughly discredited.

01:30:30.760 This guy's discredited.

01:30:31.700 He's discredited.

01:30:32.340 He thinks Listerine is there.

01:30:33.320 That is, that is what they do.

01:30:34.380 Just like, you know, the CIA used the conspiracy theorist.

01:30:38.480 Just call somebody conspiracy theorist and then don't have to listen to him anymore. 0.93

01:30:41.680 This guy's obviously a nutcase.

01:30:43.240 So no, I've lived this up close and personal. 0.96

01:30:45.780 The problem is that it does, it does make everyone into a nihilist.

01:30:49.860 It's, it's happened to me.

01:30:50.900 I've tried and fight it.

01:30:51.820 It's like, it feels like everything's a lie.

01:30:54.720 So you don't believe anything.

01:30:57.400 And, you know, you just like, don't go to the doctor, for example, which is where I am.

01:31:00.720 Or I know a lot of people like that.

01:31:02.520 And that's, you know, you should probably go to the doctor.

01:31:04.240 I mean, you know, get a checkup.

01:31:05.840 That's okay.

01:31:06.940 But they've so devalued their own currency.

01:31:09.740 They've so discredited themselves through lying and just the most evil kind of like blaming

01:31:15.000 you for their problems that it's, I don't know, it's had all these effects on our society

01:31:19.200 that I don't think we've even grappled with.

01:31:21.360 Well, I try and tell established members of the medical profession that they ought to

01:31:27.520 be concerned that a very large percentage of American people simply don't trust them

01:31:32.360 anymore.

01:31:32.820 Like at all.

01:31:33.500 And that's not good.

01:31:34.520 That's not good.

01:31:35.440 You know, I think they're evil.

01:31:36.800 When I was, when I was chairman of the European Subcommittee on Foreign Relations, we had,

01:31:40.040 I think, Gary Kasparov come in and talking about Russian disinformation.

01:31:43.940 Yeah.

01:31:44.100 And I thought it was interesting because it's, they're not, Russia is not trying to convince

01:31:48.500 you of something with their disinformation.

01:31:51.160 They just want people not to trust anything.

01:31:54.620 That is the whole purpose of their disinformation.

01:31:56.840 I feel like Albert Bourla did more to achieve that in the United States, the head of Pfizer,

01:32:02.740 than like any Russian ever could. 1.00

01:32:04.260 And, you know, Joe Biden did that.

01:32:07.660 Susan Rice did that. 1.00

01:32:08.740 I mean, all these people, they just lie right to your face.

01:32:11.760 And there's no recourse.

01:32:13.080 So is there even conceivably a chance that Congress would repeal the protections that

01:32:20.860 the vaccine makers enjoy?

01:32:23.800 That'll probably be a stretch.

01:32:25.260 Then can I ask this?

01:32:26.180 Where's the trial bar on this?

01:32:27.660 The trial bar has kind of like wrecked America by encouraging lawsuits for like the most frivolous

01:32:32.220 possible.

01:32:32.600 I get sued all the time by people.

01:32:33.860 I don't like what you said.

01:32:34.900 I'm suing you.

01:32:35.480 And you have to deal with it.

01:32:36.240 They come to your house.

01:32:37.300 Process servers.

01:32:39.000 But, and that's because the trial bar has gotten rich from this, from the tobacco, asbestos,

01:32:43.600 all these shakedown, these totally fake money-making operations that they Morgan and Morgan

01:32:49.060 with the ambulance chasing and all that.

01:32:52.180 But why aren't they pushing for the repeal of the protections that vaccine makers uniquely

01:32:58.980 enjoy?

01:33:00.220 That's a really good question.

01:33:01.400 Yeah.

01:33:01.780 You know, so as somebody from the private sector, I avoided lawyers in the judicial process like

01:33:06.580 a play.

01:33:07.020 Me too.

01:33:07.640 So it's not, you know, I'm not overly enthused about saying, but we need to expose vaccines 0.82

01:33:15.140 to that check and balance.

01:33:16.600 Okay.

01:33:16.840 And we do.

01:33:17.520 I would say we have to, we have to cap awards.

01:33:20.960 I mean, there's got to be something to, because we do need pharmaceutical companies.

01:33:25.280 You know, I want those life-saving new drugs.

01:33:27.140 It can't be a piñata party for lawyers.

01:33:29.000 No, I agree.

01:33:29.760 But it's got to be based on science.

01:33:31.220 And that's why I really think the root cause, I mean, the thing that Bobby Kennedy must address

01:33:35.740 is we have to restore integrity to science.

01:33:39.120 You know, this is, you know, Eisenhower warned us about this in his farewell address.

01:33:42.880 It doesn't give us much coverage.

01:33:43.740 But public financing of science and research would lead to a scientific and technological

01:33:48.920 elite to drive public policy.

01:33:51.120 I would view that corrupted.

01:33:52.860 So when you pay for science, you get the result you want, whether it's climate change, whether

01:33:57.400 it's vaccines, whether it's, you know, drugs and that type of thing.

01:34:01.120 We need to restore integrity.

01:34:02.840 You know, peer review is a joke.

01:34:04.640 Peer reviewers are basically volunteering.

01:34:06.560 So you'll get peer reviewers who might have a different paper themselves, and they just

01:34:10.900 discredit that.

01:34:12.860 So what is truth?

01:34:14.340 So you have to restore integrity to science.

01:34:17.160 There's got to be, like, everybody from opposing sides have to be at the table.

01:34:20.500 You've got to make your data available.

01:34:22.420 Some of these studies are published.

01:34:24.600 Nobody gets to see the data.

01:34:26.520 So that, I think, is the first step that Bobby has to accomplish, is try and restore integrity,

01:34:33.660 particularly for government-funded science.

01:34:37.180 Well, you tried the other day to raise science-based questions about pivotal events in American

01:34:42.620 history 24 years ago, 9-11, and you asked a question that I think any honest person would

01:34:48.460 ask, like, Building 7 was never hit by a plane.

01:34:51.620 Why did it fall down in exactly the same way the first two towers did?

01:34:55.260 That shouldn't be verboten.

01:34:56.880 So you asked that question.

01:34:57.740 I want to read the response from a Republican in the House, a new member called Mike Lawler,

01:35:02.640 I guess from New York.

01:35:03.760 And he said this.

01:35:06.300 I don't know if you know him.

01:35:07.780 You probably don't.

01:35:08.380 He just got there.

01:35:09.320 Quote, Senator Johnson should stop peddling conspiracy theories about the worst terrorist

01:35:14.540 attack in our nation's history and one that forever altered the lives of so many of my

01:35:18.680 fellow New Yorkers. 0.99

01:35:20.060 Crap like this dishonors and disrespects the innocent lives lost, our brave first responders 1.00

01:35:25.720 and all families and survivors who still carry the pain of 9-11 each and every day. 0.99

01:35:31.540 So I think Lawler was, like, in high school when 9-11 happened.

01:35:35.280 He doesn't really seem to represent New York anyway.

01:35:37.220 But whatever.

01:35:37.700 The point is, why would he attack you personally for asking, like, the most obvious question

01:35:43.080 ever, one rooted in science, which is how did this happen?

01:35:46.980 Like, what is that?

01:35:48.660 I don't know.

01:35:49.000 It sure hurt my feelings.

01:35:49.840 I know you don't care.

01:35:52.140 But I just thought, why Mike Lawler, who literally just got there, got a lot of problems in New

01:35:57.040 York?

01:35:57.220 Why is he mad at you for asking that?

01:35:58.540 You think he would want you to ask?

01:35:59.800 What is so off base about that is the only reason I'm looking at this is because the then

01:36:07.640 chairman of the permanent subcommittee investigation, now I'm chair, but, you know, Senator Blumenthal,

01:36:11.900 he wanted to do this investigation on Saudi's negotiation with PGA.

01:36:17.520 And, you know, he's doing it because he's from Connecticut and got 9-11 families.

01:36:21.060 They want to know what Saudi involvement was.

01:36:22.560 Yes, fair.

01:36:23.320 I didn't agree with that.

01:36:24.520 I thought, this is a private sector negotiation.

01:36:27.780 You know, let them take care of that, okay?

01:36:30.320 But he did it anyway.

01:36:31.680 So leading up to a pretty well-publicized hearing, I started getting 9-11 family members

01:36:38.580 see me in the hallway.

01:36:40.100 They would literally in the hallway in Congress, and they would have a heavily redacted document

01:36:45.580 they got from the FBI in terms of what the Saudi involvement was in 9-11, what we knew.

01:36:50.580 And they asked me, can you please get this unredacted?

01:36:54.280 We want to know what the government knows about these things.

01:36:56.540 Now, this is 20-some years after 9-11.

01:36:58.540 It's probably about time.

01:36:59.980 So in the hearing, you know, I asked Senator Blumenthal, would you join me in requesting

01:37:06.720 from the Biden administration this information from the 9-11 family?

01:37:09.600 So, well, he had to.

01:37:13.460 But the bottom line is, I got down this road because the 9-11 families want to know the

01:37:19.460 answer.

01:37:20.380 And once I opened up that inquiry, now I started getting all kinds of information.

01:37:27.280 But me ask, why is anything still redacted from 9-11?

01:37:29.460 It was 24 years ago.

01:37:31.000 It changed this country completely.

01:37:33.380 Every American has, I mean, Lawler's right in the sense that it really affected every

01:37:37.060 American.

01:37:38.140 Why would our government continue to lie about it?

01:37:41.880 I can't answer the question.

01:37:43.240 All I can say is it raises my suspicion.

01:37:45.360 Yeah.

01:37:45.680 And then when you start getting the information, again, I'm just as prone to everybody else 0.72

01:37:51.360 going, oh, that's wacko.

01:37:52.840 Yeah, me too. 0.53

01:37:53.360 That's what you're saying.

01:37:54.540 But then you start getting the information and you start going, wow, is that weird?

01:38:01.960 You know, building number seven, you see it come down and we've all watched because it's

01:38:06.060 cool to watch.

01:38:06.840 You know, these buildings being demolished.

01:38:09.020 Boom.

01:38:09.440 Just, you know, free fall.

01:38:10.440 Well, the only way that happens is if you remove all of their supports at the same time,

01:38:16.720 you blow them all out so that a building can really free fall.

01:38:21.880 If it's collapsing something else, it's like, you know, you build like a fire and it collapses

01:38:26.920 off to the side or something, right?

01:38:28.960 So that was pretty strange.

01:38:30.240 But, you know, the more documentaries I look at this stuff, the more information I receive.

01:38:35.760 You talk to guys like Richard Gage, the head of the architects for 9-11 Truth, they feed

01:38:42.020 you information and you start asking a lot of questions.

01:38:45.360 And you just realize there's a lot here that simply has not been answered.

01:38:50.440 And, you know, the firefighters want to know.

01:38:52.000 I mean, there was never a steel structure building that ever collapsed because of a fire.

01:39:00.460 Especially building seven.

01:39:01.540 And we don't get a lot of buildings that, you know, commercial airliners run into, so

01:39:04.940 you could be like, who knows?

01:39:06.420 You're right.

01:39:06.800 But building seven was not hit by anything.

01:39:08.760 It's actually quite a distance from the other towers.

01:39:10.740 It's not right next door.

01:39:11.700 It's hundreds of yards away, I think.

01:39:15.940 And debris hit it and it caught fire.

01:39:18.560 And then the whole thing collapsed, as we saw on camera.

01:39:23.320 That was not even included in the 9-11 report.

01:39:25.320 There's no mention of building seven.

01:39:27.220 It's like, anyway, the point is.

01:39:28.800 You also have people, because they never explored explosions, but there, you know, a guy named

01:39:33.440 Graham McQueen researched this.

01:39:35.860 He dug up, you know, footage filmed at Ground Zero.

01:39:40.460 156 witnesses, you know, first responders saying they heard explosions before the buildings

01:39:44.980 came down.

01:39:46.180 So what is, I mean, there, trust me, there are a lot of unanswered questions.

01:39:50.280 I mean, things that you just can't explain that.

01:39:54.240 But so I'm not sure where it goes.

01:39:57.460 I know you had Kurt Weldon on.

01:39:59.680 He's got a lot of information on kind of the before and after because he's connected

01:40:05.440 to the firefighting community.

01:40:06.940 The firefighters want to know.

01:40:09.080 So there are some very legitimate questions, a lot of them, that remain unanswered.

01:40:15.840 All swept under the rug.

01:40:17.180 I mean, they were, and you look at this, news reporters are talking about explosions.

01:40:22.240 By the next day, nobody was.

01:40:25.860 There is, there's a lot of, there's a lot of power.

01:40:28.380 I'm interested in your evolution on this.

01:40:31.320 So you said before Blumenthal, your colleague, Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut, raised,

01:40:39.720 kind of raised this in a different way.

01:40:41.720 You were not wondering what happened to building seven.

01:40:44.480 No, never, never, don't think I've ever heard of it.

01:40:48.240 Really?

01:40:48.980 Yeah.

01:40:49.280 I figured the Twin Towers came down.

01:40:51.080 Again, I'm not a New Yorker.

01:40:52.620 You know, this, it affected all of us.

01:40:54.500 We all saw them come down.

01:40:55.500 We said, the world has changed.

01:40:56.940 Yes.

01:40:57.200 This changed the world.

01:40:57.960 And it did.

01:40:59.380 Oh, more than any other event in my life.

01:41:01.200 Not for the better.

01:41:01.820 No, not at all.

01:41:02.560 Okay.

01:41:02.700 This is, this is a seminal event in our lifetime.

01:41:05.960 And the fact that there's so many unanswered questions that the Bush administration was so resistant

01:41:11.400 to even a 9-11 commission, that the commissioners claimed that it was set up to fail, that you've

01:41:17.140 got a Bob Carey who's, you know, since passed, said this is a 30-year conspiracy.

01:41:21.120 It's, I mean, I could go, I could go on and on.

01:41:23.480 Senator Carey said that?

01:41:24.280 Yeah.

01:41:25.280 Of Nebraska?

01:41:26.540 Yeah.

01:41:27.100 The comment, comment.

01:41:28.340 Receipts of Medal of Honor in Vietnam, by the way.

01:41:29.800 He's kind of walking away and go, this is a 30-year conspiracy.

01:41:32.340 Well, what do you mean by that?

01:41:33.180 Nobody ever found out.

01:41:34.080 So, again, that's, I'm just throwing out little snippets, but as I said, it's, it's,

01:41:39.860 it's, it's amazing the questions that you see, the legitimate questions that have been

01:41:44.600 raised that remain unanswered.

01:41:46.640 That's all, that's all I can say.

01:41:47.860 All I have is questions right now.

01:41:49.220 I don't have any answers.

01:41:50.120 I get it, but I, I just, I feel exactly the same way.

01:41:52.860 I have no clue.

01:41:54.220 I have no theory of everything in this at all.

01:41:57.300 But my question is, you just came at this cold though.

01:42:00.520 Yeah, no, this was not something that I was, you know, hankering to, to delve into.

01:42:05.400 One of the questions.

01:42:06.060 No, it's kind of, it's kind of like Bobby Kennedy, how he got involved in childhood vaccines.

01:42:10.120 Yes.

01:42:10.540 He was giving all these speeches on the environment and all these moms would show up with their

01:42:13.960 t-shirts and, you know, he kept them at bay for quite some time until one of the moms

01:42:17.600 found out where he lived, came with him, came to his house with a stack of science,

01:42:22.340 which he knew how to read because he was an environmental lawyer and said, I'm not going to leave

01:42:26.500 until you read this.

01:42:27.040 And to his credit, he sat down and read it and further to his credit is once he read it,

01:42:32.820 he couldn't, you know, once his eyes were open, he couldn't, he couldn't close them as much as

01:42:36.300 he probably wanted to, as much as he realized the morass he was stepping into.

01:42:40.940 I can't close my eyes.

01:42:42.360 I can't.

01:42:43.040 And, and, you know, particularly with childhood vaccine injuries, it's bad enough with the COVID

01:42:46.880 vaccine.

01:42:47.380 I mean, I, you know, the Ernest Ramirez, you know, lost his son.

01:42:51.760 I mean, it's just, it's just heartbreaking.

01:42:53.780 I mean, these, Facebook dissolving these groups that were the only lifeline for some

01:43:00.180 of these vaccine injured and they started committing suicide afterwards because they

01:43:03.020 lost that connection that they didn't have before these groups.

01:43:06.160 But you, I mean, you look at the, the documentary just vaxxed and you see these parents had a,

01:43:14.020 and they have a video of a perfectly normal child and they take them in for a well business.

01:43:18.880 So they get a vaccine that night, they spike a fever, have a seizure.

01:43:21.500 Now they've got a 26 year old son who is extremely autistic, can't verbalize, acts up as, I mean,

01:43:31.240 it's just, it's horrible.

01:43:33.340 And you see the stats where you go from, it's hard to verify the 10,001, but I mean, we know

01:43:39.180 by CDC's own, you know, hundreds to one to now 30 something to one.

01:43:45.760 What's, by the way, while they've actually narrowed the definition of autism, they didn't

01:43:50.500 expand it.

01:43:51.100 They narrowed it.

01:43:53.200 What's causing that?

01:43:55.660 And, you know, after the, the makers of vaxxed went on a road trip with a, with a bus premiering

01:44:02.560 this thing and other parents would come up to the bus bus. 0.96

01:44:06.500 And so they started videotaping their stories and they got some like 10,000 stories of parents,

01:44:13.760 almost identical.

01:44:14.960 It's like perfectly normal child, got the video to prove it, go in, you know, within

01:44:20.040 that night or within days.

01:44:22.640 You start looking at the increase in SIDS versus the increase of the, you know, vaccine

01:44:28.480 schedule.

01:44:29.380 Again, I, I'm not a doctor, not a medical researcher.

01:44:32.280 My eyes have just been opened up to how so much true, so much information, so many questions,

01:44:39.720 probably the best way to put it.

01:44:40.860 They've just been suppressed.

01:44:42.040 You can't even ask them.

01:44:43.420 Anybody who does gets marginalized, vilified, discredited, and that's, that's how they,

01:44:49.740 that's how they battle this.

01:44:50.600 They don't battle it with the truth.

01:44:51.660 They don't, you know, in my public events, I always invited the federal officials.

01:44:55.940 I always invited the executives from the big firemen, you know, come in and defend yourself.

01:45:01.380 This is an open forum.

01:45:02.480 I'll give you plenty of time.

01:45:03.420 I'll be very fair.

01:45:04.980 You know, speak your piece.

01:45:06.260 I want to hear from you.

01:45:08.140 They won't do it.

01:45:09.340 They, they, they will.

01:45:09.980 I mean, Peter Hotez famously, you know, Mr. Vaccine Pusher gets offered what, what was

01:45:15.280 the final offer?

01:45:15.980 Two point some million dollars?

01:45:18.040 Sit down and argue with not a doctor, a lawyer.

01:45:22.180 Yeah.

01:45:22.500 You know, just debate RFK Jr.

01:45:25.320 And he wouldn't even do it.

01:45:26.520 What does that tell you?

01:45:27.440 He's just calling people names.

01:45:29.380 So just back to 9-11 for a minute.

01:45:32.000 You never really thought about it.

01:45:33.940 Like most people, me too.

01:45:35.180 I yelled at anyone who asked questions about it myself.

01:45:37.360 So I, I'm sympathetic actually in some ways to people who don't want to hear it.

01:45:42.040 But now that you've looked into it and you said you don't have a coherent theory as to

01:45:46.780 what it was, but you've got a lot of questions, which questions trouble you the most?

01:45:51.620 Well, it starts with Building 7.

01:45:54.660 Yes.

01:45:54.920 Where you look at that and it just, yeah, I mean, this, this is really weird.

01:45:59.800 You know, it, it does come down just like a, you know, building demolition type of project.

01:46:05.660 You, you, you get a documentary of this Alaskan structural engineering professor that does a

01:46:11.480 four-year study on it, pretty well debunks NIST's analysis.

01:46:16.540 And again, you don't have to be a structural engineer to say this doesn't, this really

01:46:19.980 doesn't make sense.

01:46:20.860 When you start putting together at what temperature steel, uh, melts, uh, they had molten steel

01:46:29.100 in the twin towers and I'm not sure we had a number seven, but if one column, it says

01:46:34.800 in one column expanded and went off kilter and that's what brought the whole thing down.

01:46:38.940 Well, it wouldn't come down so symmetrically.

01:46:42.640 You wouldn't have a free fall.

01:46:44.140 Uh, then you get deeper into it.

01:46:46.280 And, you know, there was a, I think his name was Barry Jennings.

01:46:49.060 As he was there, went up there, they'd already cleared out building seven, even though he

01:46:53.600 went up there to their command center and, um, somebody goes, get out of there.

01:46:58.320 Uh, it was predict, I mean, literally predicted to come down, even though, again, a steel structured

01:47:04.120 building had never collapsed due to fire because they're protected that way.

01:47:08.460 Um, he heard explosions.

01:47:10.300 He had to, got down to the sixth flight, the sixth, uh, floor and had to go back up to

01:47:16.140 eight because something had been blowing out.

01:47:18.040 And again, what, you know, what caused the building?

01:47:21.060 It was not hit by an airplane.

01:47:22.400 No, I mean, they, they did, it was damaged, but even this says, you know, not significant

01:47:26.460 damage by the twin towers falling.

01:47:29.460 So again, there's just so many things.

01:47:31.000 I mean, you could spend quite some time.

01:47:32.140 I mean, uh, I mean the ash contains, uh, residual of both burnt and unburnt thermite, which is

01:47:40.860 used to, to demolish buildings and it's military grade and there's nanoparticle thermite.

01:47:46.200 And, you know, we have all these, these metal spheres that you, you only get these iron

01:47:50.620 spheres with extreme temperatures and again, jet fuel burns at below, I think, a thousand

01:47:55.220 degrees of Fahrenheit and again, nothing's adding up.

01:47:59.180 I mean, you know, just structurally, just basic engineering, basic physics, it doesn't

01:48:03.600 make sense.

01:48:04.720 So I would like to, you know, and this took years to, uh, conclude, conclude the report,

01:48:10.400 uh, to just a lay person, it doesn't make sense.

01:48:13.800 Particularly when you listen to the, you know, structural engineering professor, just, you

01:48:17.540 know, nuke the, the explanation, they can, they never looked at a plausibility of some

01:48:23.780 kind of controlled demolition.

01:48:24.920 They, they never, uh, put in their report, all these reports of people saying there were

01:48:30.420 explosions and there's just so much ignored.

01:48:33.280 I mean, in fact, the Bush administration dragged their feet, obstructed setting up a 9-11

01:48:40.180 commission.

01:48:40.700 Again, I, I could go on and on and on and on.

01:48:43.880 I don't have any answers.

01:48:45.220 I just have a, a host of questions.

01:48:47.620 Then if you were upset, if you were Congressman Mike Lawler, um, and you were upset that someone

01:48:54.520 was a conspiracy theorist, and if you were sincerely bothered by that, by conspiracy theories,

01:48:59.160 which, okay, I understand that.

01:49:00.660 The, then you would know the only way to end a conspiracy theory is with an explanation

01:49:05.860 that makes sense.

01:49:06.700 It's, why is there no effort to provide one?

01:49:09.840 Why isn't there a study, a government study of building seven?

01:49:14.660 And just let's put this stuff to rest, like defeat it with the truth.

01:49:17.980 Why isn't there?

01:49:18.760 My guess is because they are very effective at marginalizing and discrediting anybody who

01:49:24.480 even asked the questions.

01:49:25.280 But why would they want to hide the truth?

01:49:27.700 I, you'd have to know exactly what they're trying to hide to be able to answer that question.

01:49:31.320 I can't.

01:49:32.180 Of all issues for Mike Lawler to be upset about, this one, it's really caught my eye.

01:49:37.520 Like, why do you, why are you mad about it?

01:49:40.260 Again, you just got there and you're attacking is, you know, a senior senator who's like thoughtful

01:49:46.600 and sober and asking totally real questions.

01:49:49.960 Who are you covering for exactly, Mike Lawler?

01:49:52.460 And by the way, it wasn't like I went out of my way and had an interview just on this.

01:49:55.920 I mean, I was asked a question, probably wandered into a space I maybe shouldn't have wandered

01:50:00.920 into.

01:50:01.800 But again, I was just describing all the ways the federal government has lied to us.

01:50:05.940 Yes.

01:50:06.280 And yeah, I've been, I've been targeted by the FBI's misinformation campaign on Hunter

01:50:12.720 Biden's computer.

01:50:13.480 I mean, I've, you know, they've given me BS briefings to throw me off the trail.

01:50:17.780 So I've seen this.

01:50:19.320 I, you know, again, I didn't run for the U.S. Senate because I want to get involved in

01:50:24.880 investigations.

01:50:25.540 I ran because we were more during our kids future because I knew bomb, Obamacare wouldn't

01:50:28.960 work.

01:50:29.240 But you come become chairman of Homeland Security, you know, within immediately you've got the

01:50:35.680 Hillary Clinton email scandal.

01:50:36.920 That's in our committee's jurisdiction, federal records, plus for the oversight committee.

01:50:41.340 So you start doing those investigation and just one investigation, just more so than

01:50:45.880 another, the same cast of characters, the FBI that wrote the exoneration memo for James

01:50:51.480 Comey transferring to Crossfire Hurricane to, you know, the group that, you know, Vindman

01:50:57.380 and the impeachment inquiry of Trump, I mean, you just see it all and your eyes are opened

01:51:04.260 up to the total corruption of these federal government agencies and you realize we've just

01:51:08.360 been lied to over and over and over and over again throughout history, at least, you know,

01:51:15.540 history that's recent in my past.

01:51:18.960 I wonder why you haven't just ignored it like everybody else.

01:51:21.280 I met you right in early 2011, right almost 15 years ago when you, when you first got

01:51:26.200 there, you're a business guy from Wisconsin, very closely divided state.

01:51:30.240 You didn't win by a huge margin.

01:51:31.700 You never have won by, you never won by 30 points.

01:51:34.980 So, you know, whenever you talk about something in public, you're taking a bigger risk than

01:51:39.760 say the senator from Utah or South Dakota because you could lose an election.

01:51:43.840 I never in a million years thought you of all people would be the guy to like ask questions

01:51:48.780 about 9-11 or the VAX or January 6th and a whole bunch of other issues.

01:51:54.180 And yet you have been the only guy in a lot of cases to ask those questions.

01:51:58.660 Why?

01:51:59.420 Why are you doing this?

01:52:00.660 Would it just be easier to talk about tax reform or something?

01:52:04.200 I would ask you the same question.

01:52:05.520 You know, why have you been so instrumental in broadening the Overton window on some of

01:52:10.980 these things?

01:52:11.780 And of course, the Overton window is all about, this is what you can discuss without threat

01:52:18.280 or without, you know, risk.

01:52:20.740 And, but you got to go beyond that.

01:52:22.700 So, because I was part of the cover up and I feel guilty about it.

01:52:26.040 That's why.

01:52:26.520 And I'm trying to atone for my previous sense.

01:52:28.360 That's the real reason.

01:52:29.140 In my case, I have a responsibility.

01:52:30.960 You know, I was chairman of the Senate Oversight Committee.

01:52:34.200 So again, you start there, Hillary Clinton has this email scandal. 1.00

01:52:37.780 That's my committee's jurisdiction.

01:52:39.840 That has to be investigated.

01:52:41.140 I can't, I can't turn a blind's eye toward that.

01:52:43.140 And then like Bobby Kennedy, once your eyes open, eyes are open to this, you also can't

01:52:47.460 turn a blind's eye.

01:52:48.740 But, but I think it's just the empathy you have for the, the vaccine injured.

01:52:52.160 Like again, I didn't reach out to them, you know, because I was holding hearings because

01:52:56.660 nobody else was on early treatment when I still had the chairmanship.

01:53:01.400 People start reaching out to you and then you become aware of these people that are

01:53:05.020 completely being gaslit or being ignored.

01:53:07.040 I mean, I could not believe in that Milwaukee event I held in June, 2021, where I met Brianne

01:53:12.380 Dresson and Maddie DeGarry and other vaccine injured, Cheryl Rutgers.

01:53:18.380 Again, I was hoping there'd be some measure of sympathy expressed by the news media.

01:53:24.020 They would ask them their stories, you know, tell us about your experience.

01:53:27.360 Now, the first question was, hey, Ken Rutgers, you just want to try and make money

01:53:30.340 off of a lawsuit here?

01:53:31.500 Is that why you're doing this?

01:53:33.040 So you develop, you develop an empathy for these people.

01:53:36.860 And then, you know, listen, I'm not a New Yorker.

01:53:39.460 I wasn't impacted any more than the world was by 9-11.

01:53:43.480 9-11, not anywhere like the firefighters who lost their loved ones or the 9-11 families.

01:53:49.220 But then they come up to you and they're literally begging you, please, I just, I want some closure

01:53:54.800 here.

01:53:55.160 I want to know what happened.

01:53:56.660 The government's not being honest.

01:53:58.600 You combine that with the fact that I know the government just freaking lies through their

01:54:02.200 teeth to the American public all the time, which is outrageous.

01:54:06.560 It is outrageous.

01:54:07.980 Okay.

01:54:08.420 So, you know, my eyes are opened.

01:54:12.140 Somebody's got to do it.

01:54:13.260 I actually have a responsibility to do it.

01:54:15.380 Now I'm chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

01:54:19.720 That's responsibility.

01:54:21.240 Now, you have to pick your targets.

01:54:22.820 I've always said I'm like a mosquito in a nudist colony.

01:54:25.540 It's a target-rich environment.

01:54:26.880 But I guess I'm focusing on the things where there are legitimate questions by Americans

01:54:33.580 who are grieving, who are suffering because they don't have an answer, because their vaccine

01:54:39.840 injuries aren't being taken seriously.

01:54:41.540 So, we're not providing the research for it.

01:54:43.660 So, they're not getting treatment.

01:54:44.920 They can't be helped.

01:54:46.580 So, you take up their cause because nobody else is doing it and you have a responsibility

01:54:51.160 to take up that cause.

01:54:53.100 So, no, I mean, my life would be a whole lot easier if I just ignored this stuff.

01:54:55.920 Yeah, what do your colleagues think?

01:54:57.940 It's such a rebuke.

01:54:59.160 I know you like them and they like you and I'm not trying to cause you any problems, but

01:55:02.020 kind of a rebuke to them.

01:55:04.620 It's like the vaccine injured show up at their offices too.

01:55:08.400 Yeah, that was actually, I encourage the vaccine injured to go because I, you know, I like my

01:55:12.600 colleagues.

01:55:13.120 It's a collegiate place.

01:55:14.180 You know, they're, you know.

01:55:17.920 So, I said, show up, you know, request and be pretty insistent.

01:55:22.900 Meet with the sender.

01:55:23.820 Meet with your house members, whatever.

01:55:26.880 In so many, so they showed up in mass and I really felt bad afterwards because they

01:55:31.580 were treated horribly in many cases.

01:55:34.600 Yeah, horribly.

01:55:36.580 Rudely.

01:55:37.800 Staff only met with them, treat them rudely.

01:55:40.700 It was, it was, it was not a good experience for the vaccine injured.

01:55:43.660 I, again, I, I didn't, I didn't witness it.

01:55:45.740 I just heard the stories.

01:55:46.740 I felt, all I can say is I felt terrible having encouraged them to do that.

01:55:50.920 And it ended up being such a bust and such a negative experience in so many cases.

01:55:55.580 And their only crime was following instructions from the U.S. Congress and the executive brand,

01:55:59.320 just like doing what they were told.

01:56:00.580 Yeah.

01:56:00.780 I mean, they were accused by the most absurd charge level at them that they're anti-vax.

01:56:06.040 I mean, Maddie DeGarry, her mother signed her up for the trial.

01:56:12.080 Brianne Dressen, she signed up for the AstraZeneca trial.

01:56:15.500 And what happened to them?

01:56:16.820 Well, Brianne Dressen, I mean, close to, close to suicide.

01:56:20.680 I mean, she, she, she couldn't be touched.

01:56:23.140 I mean, she was sensitive to light.

01:56:24.540 She has all these neurological problems.

01:56:26.300 Maddie DeGarry has a feeding tube. 1.00

01:56:29.000 She was in a wheelchair.

01:56:30.340 I mean, horribly.

01:56:31.180 And, and in her case, the, the drug company said that she has a stomach ache, basically.

01:56:38.060 That that's how they reported it to their government reporting.

01:56:41.300 That this girl who'd been in the hospital, you know, dozens of times, her, you know, her young life,

01:56:47.200 I wouldn't say it's over, but it's not normal anymore.

01:56:51.100 No, these people suffered horrible industries.

01:56:53.760 I mean, Ernesto Ramirez, single parent, this is, this, his son, I think 16 year old son,

01:57:01.640 somewhere around that age, it's his life, died suddenly, boom.

01:57:08.600 And you just heard, again, you saw that so many times.

01:57:13.280 And it's, and it's still, it's still being covered up because nobody wants to admit it.

01:57:16.600 I mean, if you're a doctor and you push this or recommend it to your patients, you, you

01:57:20.920 don't want to know that something you recommend or push on your patients might've killed them

01:57:25.340 or result in permanent industry.

01:57:26.940 Members of Congress who cut videos, you'll get the vax.

01:57:30.100 You know, our federal health officials, the news media who relentlessly, I mean, Stephen

01:57:35.240 Colbert, you think he'll ever admit to vaccine injuries after he does his little skits with

01:57:39.820 the little, you know, uh, hypodermic needles in the background.

01:57:44.600 So no, I mean, that's the, the, the whole problem is there's, you've got an entire society

01:57:48.800 that doesn't want to admit they're wrong, including people who got the injection that

01:57:53.320 don't really want to think about it, just move on through life.

01:57:57.280 And by the way, to provide some comfort, I think they were definitely hot lots.

01:58:01.240 I've, I've written oversight letters on this.

01:58:03.020 It looks like probably about 5% of the 4% of the injections created about 80% of the adverse

01:58:08.640 events.

01:58:09.120 I can't remember the exact percentages, but really, oh yeah, no.

01:58:12.440 And so I write to the CDC that don't reply, reply back, but, uh, it's just to me in manufacturing,

01:58:19.720 this is a process out of control.

01:58:21.420 I mean, you've got, you really do.

01:58:23.020 I mean, I, I don't have the stats right with me, but it's obvious there were hot lots here,

01:58:26.500 which should provide some people comfort.

01:58:28.480 I think about 75% of the vaccine lots, very few adverse events associated with it all.

01:58:32.380 You know, I won't speculate why, but there are hot lots, but you write about them, you

01:58:39.280 lay out all the stats and the response they get from the CDC is, we don't see any hot

01:58:44.540 lots.

01:58:45.360 We don't, we don't see, it's just like, we don't see a safety signal.

01:58:48.640 Well, if you're not looking for it, you're not going to see a safety signal.

01:58:52.460 But these people are in charge of public health.

01:58:53.960 They're supposed to care.

01:58:55.620 You know, they're, they're, they were, they were fully vested in this vax, in this injection.

01:59:00.340 Uh, this was the solution.

01:59:02.780 Uh, they pushed it.

01:59:03.980 They ignored the safety surveillance.

01:59:06.100 I mean, the, the V-safe system, uh, this was set up specifically to track the safety

01:59:12.040 of the COVID injection.

01:59:13.580 10 million people volunteered on this, on their mobile device.

01:59:16.480 Now, the questions they asked were pretty mild.

01:59:19.320 They really weren't designed to really expose serious adverse events.

01:59:23.980 You know, they had a list of kind of mild symptoms, you know, irritation of the arm,

01:59:27.520 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:59:28.100 Now, the, the, the second part was a little bit more serious.

01:59:31.140 Did you lose a day of work or school?

01:59:34.180 Uh, did you seek medical care?

01:59:36.260 That's as serious as it got.

01:59:37.680 Okay.

01:59:38.440 Um, but the results were shocking and even more shocking.

01:59:42.960 They hid it from the public for two years.

01:59:44.600 It took Aaron Seary two years, suing the government to release the results of the online mobile application,

01:59:53.420 the V-safe data, the results were 25% of the people of the 10 million people, 25% lost a

02:00:00.100 day of work or school because their adverse event was, you know, they felt bad enough.

02:00:04.340 25%, 25%, 8%, I think 7.8% sought medical care.

02:00:08.940 And I think more than a majority, two or three times.

02:00:13.900 That's a, that's a reasonably sick, because I know people with adverse events that suffered

02:00:19.080 and they never sought medical care.

02:00:21.560 So, well, we'll get over it.

02:00:22.780 You know, of course, that's what the officials told us.

02:00:25.620 Oh, that just shows you it's effective.

02:00:28.640 Your arm's burning up.

02:00:30.020 You know, you're numb.

02:00:31.220 You can't, you can't, you know, you can't walk.

02:00:32.820 Well, that's just, it's working.

02:00:34.360 It's supposed to make you sick.

02:00:35.820 It's work and medicine.

02:00:39.600 So, well, you remain cheerful and single-minded and I think underrated in many ways as a U.S.

02:00:49.580 center.

02:00:49.840 So, I'm grateful that you spent all this time.

02:00:51.560 Thank you.

02:00:52.120 Well, thank you.

02:00:52.800 And again, I've been watching you.

02:00:57.300 You know, I appreciate what you've done, the risk you've taken in your career.

02:01:01.580 I mean, all the issues, you know, going to Russia, questioning what happened on January 6th.

02:01:09.500 I mean, all these things.

02:01:10.400 I mean, you are, and this is important, you are expanding the Overton window.

02:01:14.100 You are, you are helping expand what is, can be talked about.

02:01:18.760 And the harm done because we haven't even been able to ask some of these questions.

02:01:23.960 We haven't been able to discuss this.

02:01:26.200 You know, we haven't had the type of debate that we should have in this country.

02:01:32.840 You're a big part of that.

02:01:33.920 And I thank you for what you've done.

02:01:36.120 It's been easy and fun, but I appreciate it.

02:01:38.060 Thank you, Senator.

02:01:39.260 Thank you.

02:01:44.780 We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day.

02:01:48.700 We know the people who run it, good people.

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The Tucker Carlson Show - May 28, 2025

Sen. Ron Johnson： What’s Really in the “Big Beautiful Bill,” and Uncovering the Truth About 9-11

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